New Superintendent Carstarphen’s vision for Atlanta’s schools

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“We are looking at how to do it for APS, but I think it could expand statewide,” she stated. “We need a commitment from the Georgia Legislature on expanding early childhood education and we need parents locally and across Georgia to get behind it.” As for charter schools, the new superintendent said the conversation should center more on parent choice.

“Parents know more than the teachers or board or superintendent about what their child needs,” she commented. “We live in a democracy, so we need to o er alternatives and choices and charter schools are just one of those.”

She was adamant that charter schools should not be where you “escape” when one of the traditional public schools isn’t performing as well as it should. Carstarphen also wants to set up advisory councils and oversight committees to give parents and the community more of a voice in the district.

Carstarphen isn’t a fan of so-called high stakes testing, calling it demoralizing and limiting the education process. When asked about the low math rates on the End of Course Testing (EOCT) that Georgia’s ninth through 12th graders must take, Carstarphen – in another instance of complete openness –said she didn’t have the answer yet.

“We know there needs to be more rigor in the classroom to get results, but we’re not even sure what that rigor is, and neither do the teachers. We have no model for it. I need time to gure it out.”

Carstarphen turned the conversation about classroom size back to the need for recruiting the best teachers. She believes that there should be smaller classrooms for early grades, but once students move to middle and high school, having a quality teacher in the classroom is more important than class size.

Carstarphen closed the meeting by addressing the divide of north and south in the district. ere’s an o en unspoken opinion that the schools in north Atlanta are better than the ones in the south, and the new superintendent is not having it. She faced a similar racial and socioeconomic divide between east and west schools in Austin school district and worked hard to erase those invisible barrier lines.

“ ere’s a lot of misunderstanding and judgment about north and south in APS – a tension that shouldn’t exist,” Carstarphen said. “ e district will never be as great as it can be until we make thoughtful decisions so that all families are equal.”

She said APS should feel like a system and not individual schools.

“We need to embrace a fully-functioning school system,” Carstarphen said. “We are all APS, and what we have to ask ourselves is how do we make the entire system strong.”