Gwinnett County Public Schools May in the ranks of the elite school systems in New York and Boston as one of the top candidate urban school districts in the country.
The 160,000-student district - the largest in Georgia - is one of five finalists for the Broad (pronounced "Broom") Prize for Urban Education, in honor of school systems that have shown the greatest improvement in performance, students, especially minorities and low-income students. U.S. Education Arne Duncan is the winner Wednesday at a ceremony in Washington, DC
The price includes $ 1 million gain in scholarships for students in the district in 2010 and $ 250,000 for scholarships for other systems.
For the county north of Atlanta, it also means the recognition of Georgia, where the Superintendent Alvin Wilbanks is known to reduce the achievement gap between white students and minority rights in his district. Black and Hispanic students make up about half of the students.
"I think we have shifted focus away from an emphasis on learning the lessons. The first seem simple, it is a very complex concept," Wilbanks said in a telephone interview. "When I think about a school and a classroom, I can not keep teachers. I watch the students. They are involved? Do they work on tasks, they work together?"
A team visited schools in Gwinnett area does the Broad Foundation Course of the district that needs more students than not, the state noted. The district also open classroom, where administrators can monitor float outside, as do teachers and students to learn what to do.
About 70 percent of managers are evaluated on student performance on tests, which means that they are directly accountable for what students learn.
"The things that do not actually said in the country," Erica Lepping, spokeswoman for the Broad Foundation.
About 72 percent of black students in Gwinnett graduate school, and 61 percent of Hispanic students graduate from. In comparison, 59 percent of black students nationwide and is comparable to the national average for Hispanic students.
The district has steadily increased the rate of black students take Advanced Placement since 2005 to 12 percent last year, with 44 percent scored enough to get to college credit. This is the national average of 8 percent of black students to AP courses and only 4 percent take the existence of the test.
For students of Hispanic Gwinnett declined, the gap between them and their white counterparts in reading the primary by 9 percentage points since 2006.
For the price of the other finalists: Aldine Independent School District in Houston, Broward County Public Schools in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Long Beach Unified School District in California and are Socorro Independent School District in El Paso, Texas.
Los Angeles, California-based Broad Foundation awarded the prize since 2002, the services among the nations 100 largest urban school districts honor. Previous winners include New York City Department of Education, Boston Public Schools, and Houston Independent School District.
