Laureus Sport for Good Atlanta

The City of Atlanta slightly underperforms in 3rd grade reading proficiency when compared to the state. Performance varies greatly among the four elementary schools in the cluster, with Kindezi and KIPP Strive outperforming the city and Stanton and Jones underperforming. Kindezi and KIPP registered strong improvement from the 2016 to 2017 school years, with both starting from proficiency levels lower than the state but moving in the period to better performance levels.

KIPP West Atlanta and KIPP Strive Academy each outperformed both the City of Atlanta and the state of Georgia. Both registered strong improvements during the one-year period. Kindezi stayed steady, and while 8th grade reading proficiency at Brown doubled in the evaluation period, nearly 90 percent of 8th graders attending in 2017-2018 still were not proficient in math.

All area schools saw their graduation rates improve in 2017-2018. Two of the three area high schools (BEST and Washington) improved their graduation rate faster even than the City of Atlanta, at 9.2 percentage points and 6.4 percentage points respectively. BEST’s overall graduation rate also exceeded the city average by 4 percentage points in the 2017-2018 school year. In the case of Douglass High, the graduation rate did increase by 0.8 percentage point across the two school years, but still lagged the city average by 10 percentage points.

Student Mobility Rate: To assess mobility at the school and district level, the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement (GOSA) divides the number of student entries and exits during the school year by the number of students in the school on the Georgia Department of Education’s fall count date of October 2.

Mobility rates in Kindezi and Kipp Strive are among the lowest in the City of Atlanta, at 5 percent and 2 percent, respectively, in the 2017-2018 school year. The rates declined at a slower pace than did the city as whole during the past two school years, but they are so low as to have little room to fall.

The story is much less positive in Stanton and Jones Elementary Schools, where rates are 20 and 10 percentage points (respectively) higher than those seen citywide. However, those two schools are making improvements at a faster pace than the City.

Mobility rates in BEST Academy and Kipp STRIVE are down over the past two school years for which there are data; in the case of Kipp STRIVE the rate has dropped to just above 5 percent, and BEST’s mobility rate fell 10 percentage points to just over 15 percent. Mobility in both those middle schools is well below levels seen citywide.

Rates in the other two schools in the cluster (Kipp West and Brown) have increased across the two school years, but the similarity ends there. Kipp West’s mobility rate remains (in 2017-2018) at 11 percent, less than half the city average; Brown’s rate, on the other hand, not only increased 5 percentage points over the periods, but at 47.3 percent was approaching twice the average rate (24 percent) for the city overall.

BEST Academy’s mobility rate not only fell faster than the city’s between the two school years, but in 2017-2018 stood nearly ten percentage points lower (at 15.5 percent) than the City average (at 24.2 percent). While the mobility rates for Washington and Douglass High were both higher in both periods than the city and BEST Academy rates, they did show improvement — a 3 percentage point drop in mobility for Douglass and a 6.6 percentage point lower mobility for Washington.

School Climate Rate: The School Climate Star Rating, calculated by the Georgia Department of Education, is based on a scale of one to five stars. A rating of one star indicates a low school climate score, and a rating of five stars indicates a high school climate score. The rating is based on the following components:

* Climate survey responses from students, parents, and teachers/staff; * Student discipline; * Safe and substance-free learning environment; * Student, teacher, administrator, and staff attendance; and * Other factors.

Elementary and middle schools show a similar pattern: KIPP Strive Academy has the highest climate rating among elementary schools, at four stars. Among middle schools, Kipp Strive and West Atlanta both has a four star rating, while Brown and BEST Middle have two. Notably, BEST's performance on proficiency measures exceeds Brown's, so targeted investments in climate improvement at Brown could be expected to move the needle.

Among high schools, Washington High has a higher climate rating than BEST Academy, even though Washington is a lower performing school on most proficiency measures. This would suggest that Washington has key advantages that can be leveraged in increasing student performance. Douglass High seems to have significant challenges, which holds the sole one-star climate rating in the project area, as well as low proficiency scores.

The study area as a whole saw a dramatic increase in educational attainment. In 2000, the shares of residents without a high school diploma were generally twice or more the shares seen citywide. By 2017, shares of residents without a high school diploma in the cluster had dropped to levels comparable to — though still slightly higher than — citywide shares. This coincided with an increase in the shares of residents holding a bachelor's degree or higher, though the percent of higher degree holders in the project area remains lower than the citywide rate.