While she agrees with "99 percent" of the recommendations of Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes' Education Reform Commission, state Schools Superintendent Linda Schrenko said she opposes its proposal to create an Office of Education Accountability.
The office would not be a part of the state Department of Education.
"I see that as a duplicate bureaucracy," Mrs. Schrenko said in a telephone interview with the Rome News-Tribune.
"The example I gave them is that when the Office of School Readiness (the four-year-old Pre-K program) was under the Department of Education, we had six employees and we spent $300,000 or $400,000 a year on administration cost for the program, and the rest went to the local Pre-K programs.
"After it split from the department and became its own agency, they have 92 state positions and their budget for administration is $4.2 million," she said.
"Complaints that the education department cannot monitor the progress of students are unfounded," she said.
"The department has been producing state-wide progress reports for years," she said.
Mrs. Schrenko said she hopes the Georgia General Assembly will stay away from so-called gateway testing, which would require students to pass tests to advance to the next grade.
"I hope they don't do that, especially in the lower grades," she said, "because some kids just have a bad day and flunk the test.
"I think the tests will be a good help in not socially promoting kids, but I think you are going to have to use some other things like the teacher tests during the year and end of chapter, end of book, that kind of thing, semester exams along with the standardized tests."
The reform panel reached no agreement on that form of testing.
State legislators are expected to get a package of education reform bills from the governor stemming from the commission's recommendations.
Teachers and administrators acknowledge there is an outcry for accountability but complain the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and the Criterion Reference Tests don't paint a true picture of student achievement and take up too much classroom time.
"They did consider the input, but they went back and looked at the number of hours that it takes to give the ITBS in all subjects and found total testing time is four and a half hours. That doesn't seem unreasonable...and Criterion Reference Tests should not take any longer than that. So, we are really talking about eight hours a year."
"If the tests are good," she said, "teachers and administrators should not worry about 'teaching the test' to students."
"The test should reflect our standards," Mrs. Schrenko said. "We have a Quality Core Curriculum, and the test will be made up of those standards that the teachers are supposed to be teaching anyhow."
"The commission is recommending schools receive $10 per student in safety money," Mrs. Schrenko said. She had requested $20 per student.
"At least they will be able to have some safety resource officers around the state now," she said.
From where would those funds come?
Mrs. Shrenko said one option is to cut central office and school administration funds by setting aside a straight percentage of state money for use in administration.
"So, if your direct instruction budget is $1 million, 7 percent of that could be spent on administration," she said.
Administrators complain paperwork creates a need for large staffs, but Mrs. Schrenko said the state is acting to relieve that burden.
"We are developing one state application for all the different programs," she said. "So, instead of having 60 different forms to fill out, they are going to have one starting next spring."
Another recommendation from the commission is to pursue alternate certification for professionals interested in entering the teaching profession," she said.