In May 2014, Gwinnett County Public Schools renewed their IE2 contract, making it one of only four districts in the state not accountable to the state legislature or the State Board of Education. Ideally, this gives GCPS the autonomy to make daring curriculum choices and policy changes to accelerate learning. Judge for yourself.

Here are some key points of IE2:

• GCPS must meet a baseline of students who “exceed expectations” but they have set those expectations by racial subgroup and education program so that they are not required to provide the same level of education to each group. They claim this will close the achievement gap – by setting the bar so low they can easily achieve it.

• IE2 allows GCPS to dodge 14 state regulations including limits on class size that they would have to comply with without the special terms of the contract.

• The contract is a risk for our children. GCPS is permitted to meet the achievement goals for the best 3 out of 5 years of the contract. GCPS can fail to meet the achievement requirements of the contract for 3 YEARS before they are in default of the contract and before the public will know due to the slow reporting by the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement.

• In habitually poor-performing schools, GCPS is not required to allocate additional resources to boost performance as they would in a non-IE2 district.