Have you heard the (good) news about Atlanta Public Schools?

The nonprofit I lead, redefinED atlanta, prides itself on both transparency and accountability, and in that spirit, I wanted to highlight three positive developments as this school year winds down.

Yes, positive developments.

Between the news gushing from Washington, D.C., and the shrinking local education news scene, you’d be forgiven for not noticing that Atlanta Public Schools has achieved some hard-won progress.

I share this at the risk of being seen as naive. I’m well aware of the many areas where students in Georgia, and the country as a whole, are still struggling. The latest Georgia Milestones results for math, for example, show that we are still not yet achieving even pre-pandemic level scores, and literacy scores showed little recovery. Chronic absenteeism is a chronic problem, and students locally stand to be negatively impacted by the recent executive order to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education.

Yet, in the spirit of F. Scott Fitzgerald, I believe it’s possible to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time.

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