The state office in charge of implementing Georgia’s controversial private school voucher initiative has issued and now withdrawn a list of underperforming schools whose students are eligible for the subsidy.
The Governor’s Office of Student Achievement (GOSA), in one of the first steps to implement the program, signed into law by Gov. Brian Kemp in April, released the list of deficient elementary, middle and high schools last month.
Confusion soon set in. The criteria for inclusion on the list weren’t clear, even among those most affected by the rankings: school district administrators.
Denise Watts, superintendent of Savannah-Chatham County Public School System, which had 18 schools on the list, was one of the top school officials befuddled.
“We still don’t know how they [the 18 schools] got on the list,” Watts told The Current at a gathering of school district officials and local lawmakers last Thursday.
“We’ve asked a lot of questions, but we don’t have an answer,” she said on the sidelines of her meeting with local lawmakers to discuss the school district’s legislative priorities.
Watts said the publication of the list without explanation leads to unfair and ungrounded judgements of the county’s schools.
“You go to Jenkins High School, and I guarantee you you will not leave that school saying this is a bad school,” she said. “I invite you to go to Isle of Hope School. I guarantee when you leave that school, you will not say this is a bad school.”
It was a shaky beginning for the vouchers program, whose passage by the state legislature capped a yearslong fight by Kemp and other Republicans to give students in low-performing schools another option.
Under the Georgia Promise scholarship program, students attending the schools deemed deficient will be eligible to apply for vouchers worth up to $6,500 voucher to pay for private school tuition and fees, required textbooks, tutoring services, transportation services and other approved expenses.
The program’s critics say it favors the state’s wealthier metro counties, which have private-school options, in contrast to rural ones. They also say that because $6,500 is a fraction of private-school tuition, the program isn’t a boost to working families.
It is, rather, a “handout to upper class parents paid for by the working class,” Lisa Morgan, president of the Georgia Association of Educators, told the Georgia Recorder in April.
In an attempt to allay the confusion and perhaps its embarrassment following the list’s release, GOSA posted a description of its methodology and an appended list of underperforming schools. But by week’s end, the description had been removed from its website, and bewilderment still reigned.
As of yesterday, GOSA’s website said simply:
“GOSA is currently validating additional data to ensure accuracy of the Promise Scholarship school list. The list has been removed from the website while validation is underway. A verified list will be posted as soon as validation is completed.”
The methodology and school list previously posted on GOSA’s website are still available via an online archive.