District Administration - March 2010 - (Page 36)

The Moxie of Kathy Cox “We still have a lot of work to do, but we are making steady progress by focusing on what works for all students.” Cox has also brought more focused and rigorous curriculum changes to the state, and she looks forward to realizing more gains, like the recent rise in ACT scores. In 2008, Georgia’s ACT scores boosted the state’s national ranking to 41st, up from 47th in 2002. Effective Teachers, Academics Cox’s success lies in part in her energy to meet various goals. Last year, Cox’s office reported that Georgia students who took the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) revealed significant improvement in eighth-grade math. In part, the success could be attributed to her push for effective teachers. Early in her role as superintendent, in 2003, Cox said “all of the laws, policies and rules in the world won’t make a difference unless we have an effective teacher in every classroom. Towards that end, we must dramatically improve our ability to recruit, train, and retain the best and brightest teachers and thus ensure that a quality instructor is in every classroom across the state.” That same year, Georgia’s NAEP score of 270 was six points lower than the national average. But six years later, in 2009, Georgia’s eighth-graders scored Kathy Cox visits Chattahoochee High School in the Fulton County Schools to listen to the band practice with Principal Tim Duncan. 278, up three points from 2007 and just four points behind the national average of 282. Cox helped bring more focused and rigorous curriculum changes to the state, and views the increased scores as “evidence that Georgia Performance Standards are helping our students be more competitive at the national level.” She is confident this is “just the beginning of the gains our students will show on national tests as our new curriculum takes hold.” Cox’s office rewrote all K12 standards in English, math, language arts and social studies to align with testing. She realized that getting serious about math would require an even more serious investment. In 2008, 14 percent of all Georgia math teachers were not fully certified, according to the Georgia Professional Standards Commission. To remedy the situation, Cox established a task force, and in 2009, the Georgia legislature voted to increase the starting pay for new secondary school teachers with proper math or science certification to that of a fifth-year teacher—a boost of about $4,500. “Math is a chronic part of the achievement gap,” says Cox. “I am most proud of tackling that issue, especially the issue of low expectations. I wanted to show that, in Georgia, we are as serious about numeracy as we are about literacy.” The Evolution Controversy For all of her accomplishments in beefing up the curriculum and posting gains in math, Cox’s tenure has not lacked critics or controversy. Her 2004 proposal to strike the word “evolution” from the state’s textbooks and replace it with “biological changes over time” raised the ire of educators, legislators and even former President Jimmy Carter. He released a press statement saying, District Administration Peering over a middle school student at LaFayette Middle School in Walker County, Cox helps the boy complete a project. 36 March 2010

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - March 2010

District Administration - March 2010
Contents
From the Editor
News Update
Curriculum Update
Conversations
Administrator Profile
District Profile
Toward a More Perfect Union
The Moxie of Kathy Cox
Logging On to Learn
Battling Sexual Abuse
Supervisor’s Opinion
Problem/Solution
Crisis Response
Product Focus
New Products
Tech Disruptions

District Administration - March 2010