ATLANTA — Georgia’s new school voucher program, set to begin in 2025, is being delayed after controversy over how the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement’s “failing schools” list was released.
Now, Georgia parents are waiting to see if their children’s school is at the bottom 25% when it comes to academic achievement.
If they are, they could be eligible for a $6,500 school voucher they can use to pay for private school, under Georgia’s new school voucher legislation.
Channel 2’s Richard Elliot was at the State Capitol, where confusion over the law could put the program in jeopardy.
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The school voucher law passed by the Georgia General Assembly was supposed to help parents pay for private school if their public school was in the bottom 25% of achievement. But an interpretation of that law could include so many children that the stay might have trouble paying for it all.
The interpretation by the Georgia Education Savings Authority (GESA) could expand which students are eligible for vouchers from those in the 25% of schools at the bottom of the achievement rankings to any student living in the attendance zone of what the state calls a failing school — even if they aren’t attending it.
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As a result, the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement (GOSA) created and published several versions of the school list but each time they pulled it back. The new list may not come out until after New Year’s Day.
GOSA Director Joy Hawkins said in a statement shared with Channel 2 Action News that her office is conducting a “careful, thorough and conscientious analysis of the validation process to ensure the ultimate list is correct, and it will therefore be posted at a later date in the New Year.”
Lisa Morgan, president of the Georgia Association of Educators, said the organization has opposed vouchers from the start.
She said she thinks the law, as written, doesn’t do what lawmakers intended it to do, and that the new interpretation by GESA doesn’t either.
“As in so many things, when legislators pass a law, the intention and the implementation often are not in alignment,” Morgan told Elliot.
There is word that lawmakers will tweak that bill during the next session to clarify the language.
When the state released the list of low-performing schools several weeks ago, it listed 45 underperforming schools in DeKalb County, 21 in Clayton County, eight in Cobb County, five in Rockdale County and 23 in Henry County.
However, those numbers could change when the state re-releases the list of schools next year.
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