Alisha Morgan: Leader in New Generation of Education Reform

Nine years after becoming the first African-American from Cobb County to serve in the House, Rep. Alisha Morgan, who represents South Cobb’s District 39, has emerged as a leader on issues of education reform.

Morgan is a strong proponent of offering school choice to parents, and she’s often the only Democrat in the state legislature standing on this side of the issue.

Her husband, David, who serves the South Cobb area on the Cobb County Board of Education, . The revised motion passed unanimously. The state's per-student funding will follow those students to charter schools.

School officials from seven local school districts –not Cobb County– say they're losing millions of dollars, usually in their annual budgets, because the dollars are following those students to charter schools.

The seven school districts challenged the constitutionality of a 2008 law that created the Georgia Charter School Commission, which was approving and funding charter schools that had been denied by the boards of education of local school districts. 

The Georgia State Supreme Court was expected to hand down a decision on the case to determine who has the authority to fund and open charter schools in the state. However, the court decided to delay its ruling on Wednesday.

“I hope the outcome will be in favor of the students and the parents who exercise their rights to school choice,” Morgan told South Cobb Patch. “I hope that they have delayed making a decision to carefully consider how this affects the lives of the kids.”

Morgan has worked closely with Ivy Prep Academy, and she said the students there score in the 90th percentile on most standardized tests.

“That a court decision could close their school is unimaginable. This could rip them away from their school simply because these few local school districts want to be the final voice on school choice.

“Don’t we want to sustain that and replicate that (high performance) in the state? Why on earth would we move in the direction of stopping that when it’s obviously working?”

The state’s charter law, which allows denied charter petitions to be revisited, helped Georgia receive the Race to the Top innovative education funding in August.

States that follow specific guidelines to improve low-performing schools receive grants from the $4.35 billion set aside for the program. Georgia received $400 million, which will be dispersed over four years, in the second round of the program.

“We’re now challenged to do more to inspire others to raise the bar for our children, more to motivate lawmakers and powerbrokers to find ways to make education a priority in both word and deed, and more to lead the nation in creating a student focused educational system in which every child has access to a quality education regardless of zip code, socio-economic status or color,” Morgan wrote in a letter to the AJC in March 2010 about the Race to the Top program.

Morgan heeds her own words and takes action when it comes to reforming the educational system in Georgia. Her devotion and passion are demonstrated again and again with the introduction and sponsorship of her bills, as well as her various symposiums and forums dedicated to getting community members involved and informed about education issues.

In 2009, as part of a bipartisan partnership, Morgan was able to help pass HB251, which offered parents more options for their children's educations, even outside of their local school districts.

That same year, she introduced a bill to create a commission dedicated to closing the achievement gap in Georgia schools. The bill never made it past its second reading in the House. At his town hall meeting last week, her husband discussed some .

Along with House Majority Whip Ed Lindsey (R-Atlanta), Morgan sponsored HB257, which mandated that a teacher’s performance over the last three years be the primary factor when considering layoffs for teachers. The bill never made it to the floor. However, Morgan amended the language in a similar Senate bill– SB184, which is moving to the House for consideration now.

However, it was Morgan’s “Report Cards for Teachers” initiative that created a stir, started many conversations and angered many educators. Morgan, along with her co-sponsor, decided to create a committee about this issue to get more feedback from educators, administration, parents, chambers of commerce and other stakeholders before moving forward.

“In Georgia, there are 180 school districts and 180 evaluation tools. Each school district has their own evaluation tools. That’s a problem,” Morgan said, adding that the “uniform, consistent evaluation tool that measures student growth as its primary component, helps us to identify effective teachers, get the needed support for those who are not as effective and remove the ones who need to find another career.”

Morgan is always on the move, and we’ll keep you updated on what she’s been up to and where she is going in our second part of our profile on the state lawmaker on Sunday!