"The test of a first-rate intelligence is...

...the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." (F. Scott Fitzgerald).

So let's see how smart you are.

Examine the following seemingly contradictory ideas and see whether you agree if both statements in each pair are true.

A. The Atlanta Public School system is doing a fantastic job transforming itself from the execrable wasteland it was before Bev Hall arrived into something better.

However,

B. The Atlanta Public School system is still, statistically, one of the worst-performing school districts in one of the worst-performing states in the country.

A. Bev Hall has been widely recognized and lauded by her peers around the country for the job she has done, especially given the severe difficulties any administrator would face in an urban environment like Atlanta with its terrible history of low standards, parent indifference and institutional corruption.

However,

B. Bringing your school district up from Horrible to Mediocre is not the same thing as creating excellence. In other words, Bev Hall deserves her accolades, but let's put her record of slow, steady progress in context. She has not taken something good and made it great. She took something terrible and made it acceptable. As a parent, though, do you aspire to "just acceptable" for your child's education?

A. The overall progress of the Atlanta Public Schools reform effort under Bev Hall has been steady and substantial, if not earth-shattering.

However,

B. Parts of the APS, such as the Program for Exceptional Children, have been badly neglected by Dr. Hall, who allowed the PEC to languish for a year and a half without leadership and who thereby created a catastrophic mess that her new PEC director, Aaron Fernander, will have to clean up.


A. The built-in inefficiencies and dysfunction in APS (or virtually ANY large urban school district in the U.S.) should preclude the existence of any truly excellent schools under the umbrella of such a bureaucracy.

However,

B. Schools like Morningside and particularly our new school Springdale Park, if they are lucky enough to have a truly great principal (like Ms. Brown and Ms. Pruitt) and great teachers (and we have them!) and a strong parent community (check!) can be little oases of excellence in a desert of mediocrity.


Here's what you should have gained from this exercise: just because APS is on the rise doesn't mean it is where it needs to be, or that we should be satisfied with its progress. Just because Bev Hall has won some awards (and is likable as a person) doesn't mean she gets a pass for her terrible neglect of the PEC or her other missteps, such as failing to swiftly identify and punish test-score cheating.

If you want a great school, it's your job to make it great. If that means you ride herd on the APS staff and the PTO to get some stuff done, that's what it means. You do not delegate your child's education to a large urban public school system and expect great--or even good. You only get great if you are relentless about pursuing it.