Early Learning and Student Success
- Create in each county of the state an early learning partnership that includes all public and private human service organizations.
- Create public-private partnerships in local communities between local businesses and educational and human services organizations for the purpose of supporting early childhood initiatives that address healthy child/family development and economic benefits to the community.
- Adopt a statewide awareness and engagement initiative to ensure that high-quality early childhood education is a top priority for the state.
- Provide opportunities for all children from birth to five-years-old to participate in high quality learning experiences that are designed to promote all aspects of a child’s development, whether provided by families in the home or through a licensed public or private program.
- Align developmental and academic standards for all children ages birth through 8 years old to provide a continuity of learning experiences and personal growth.
- Ensure adequate financial support for the implementation of quality programs for all young children.
- Ensure that teachers work and plan together, learn and share effective teaching practices, and are provided support for their on-going learning in order to provide an environment where students learn best.
- Ensure that teachers use a variety of technologies to teach and measure what students know and can do.
- Ensure that teachers teach challenging and problem-solving lessons that are flexible enough to meet the interests and needs of individual students.
- Ensure that teachers use varied measures to determine what students know and can do.
Teaching and Learning
Teaching and Learning Resources
- Evaluate and utilize the most effective instructional models and learning supports
(i.e. digital, blended, competency, virtual, etc.) implemented by school districts. - 5Ensure full integration of current technology and training into the classroom.
- Continue to develop and maintain a comprehensive data system for monitoring student progress (PreK-12) and making decisions to improve educational practice.
- Develop partnerships with business, industries, public agencies and the community to promote shared use of services and facilities.
- Identify and recruit the most talented candidates into teacher preparation programs.
- Continuously evaluate the effectiveness of teacher and leader preparation programs.
- Collaborate with the Georgia Professional Standards Commission, the Georgia Department of Education and other credentialing agencies to provide comprehensive strategies to find, grow and keep the most talented educators.
- Evaluate the effectiveness and viability of the pilot teacher and leader compensation programs.
- Organize personnel, distribute leadership and implement processes that maximize student learning.
Human and Organizational Capital
Governance, Leadership and Accountability
- Develop and implement at the local school district level an accountability system based on local district educational goals that are aligned with state educational goals and state accountability system, and which include clearly defined measures of school district, school and student success.
- Pursue all local and state options to provide for the equitable, effective and efficient delivery of instruction to all students in Georgia regardless of where they reside.
- Change and streamline the process by which local school districts obtain flexibility from state mandates so it is based on school and district performance expectations outlined in the district’s strategic improvement plan and takes into account the needs, resources, and characteristics of the local community.
- Establish and maintain high performance organizations through development of local school district governance and leadership teams.
- Streamline and align the agencies with jurisdiction over components of the education enterprise and to whom local school districts of the state must answer.
- Change the method of selection of the state superintendent of schools.
- Change the method of selection of members to the state board of education to non-partisan election of one member from each congressional district for a term of office of even-numbered years by persons in each congressional district qualified to vote for members of the General Assembly.
- Change the method of selection of members of local boards of education from a choice between partisan and non-partisan elections to non-partisan elections only.
- Develop safe, orderly, supportive learning environments built on respect and encouragement where all individuals believe they can make a positive difference.
- Make each school and school system an inviting place to be for students, parents, staff and the larger community.
- Establish each school as the center or hub of the community in which it exists.
- Determine stakeholder perceptions of schools and school districts.
- Develop a culture and climate that foster innovation and responsible risk-taking.
- Develop school and district cultures that are sensitive and responsive to the cultural, racial, ethnic and socio-economic make-up of the communities they serve.
- Get to know and be willing to truly listen to the students in our schools.
Culture, Climate and Organizational Efficacy
Financial Resources
- Expand the scope and duration of the work of the Special Council on Tax Reform and Fairness for Georgians for the purpose of comprehensively reviewing the state tax structure and identifying ways that it can be strengthened.
- Identify in both state and local budgets for public education sufficient fiscal resources for implementing both a comprehensive data system and an evaluation system that uses data to measure and improve effectiveness in meeting objectives for enhanced student learning.
- Initiate an ongoing process at the local school district level for systematically evaluating all expenditures to enable the development and adoption of budgets that are focused on district strategies for maximizing student learning.
- Provide a high level of flexibility to local school districts in decision-making authority about the most effective strategies for the expenditure of funds to enable all students to be successful in school, coupled with appropriate methods for evaluating school and district success and for implementing positive state interventions where they are found to be needed.
- Implement a cohesive and stable mechanism for the financial support of early learning programs and services for children ages 0 to 5 at a level that prepares all of Georgia’s youngest citizens for success in their subsequent school years.
- Provide the most optimal partnership between the state and local school districts in sharing the responsibility for financial support of public education, while ensuring that disparity in local fiscal capacity does not impede the implementation of Vision Project recommendations in all Georgia districts.
- Provide an ongoing level of state financial support for public education which, when combined with local revenue available to boards of education, makes the attainment of our Vision for Public Education in Georgia a reality and ensures its sustainability.