Jan 19, 2011
The probationary status stems from complaints that conflicts between members had severely hampered the school board's ability to govern effectively, according to a statement from AdvancEd, the world's largest school accrediting agency and the parent company of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.
"This is designed to improve the school system," Mark Elgart, president and CEO of AdvancED, said at a news conference Tuesday. "The (school) board and the system have a choice here: They can choose to proactively take actions designed to improve it, building on these actions we have outlined, or they can fight it."
AdvancED conducted a special review looking into -- among other things -- a leadership shakeup initiated by Atlanta Public Schools' Board of Education last summer. The board changed its policy to allow a simple majority vote to change the chair and vice chair positions, despite outside legal advice that such a policy change would be illegal. Ultimately, a lawsuit was filed challenging the move.
CNN education contributor Steve Perry asks how Atlanta schools' cheating scandal could affect students.
The special review also found that the board circumvented its own procurement policies in approving a contract for a communications vendor, and that the "fallout" from the friction on the board had become a distraction to staff.
According to AdvancED, the steps the school system must take to show progress include: developing a plan to effectively communicate is mission to staff and other "stakeholders"; hiring a trained mediator to work with board members to resolve issues; ensuring that board policies -- "especially those related to ethics and chain of command" -- are understood and followed; and coming up with a plan for selecting a superintendent that "demonstrates integrity throughout the process."
Atlanta Public Schools, which has 47,000 students, is the largest system the accrediting agency has placed on probation, and the second in the metro area, according to Jennifer Oliver, vice president for communications for the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. The Clayton County school system, south of Atlanta, lost its accreditation in 2008 and is approaching the end of a two-year probation.
In an e-mail response to a question from CNN, Oliver cautioned that Atlanta's public high schools "are still accredited, and it's too early to speculate on about whether (APS) will lose their accreditation." However, she said, a loss of accreditation could mean that "graduating seniors may be limited in scholarships and college admissions if a program requires students to come from an accredited institution and/or uses accreditation of the high school as part of the criteria for evaluating students."
The school system, which had won national awards for closing academic gaps in recent years, was rocked last year by allegations of cheating on standardized tests given to elementary and middle school students. An independent commission found that employees at 12 schools had violated testing protocols, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in June.
Because AdvancED only accredits Atlanta's public high schools, it isn't involved in the test-cheating investigation. "However," Oliver said, "how the board addresses the results of the investigation as leaders of the school system will be of interest to (AdvancED) in regards to the Accreditation Standard of Governance and Leadership, which they are currently not meeting."
CNN Wire Staff
