Atlanta’s former George Washington Carver High School is now called the New Schools at Carver. It is a lavish five building campus with covered walkways and scenic grounds. It looks like a miniature private college. It opened in 2005 as a special project aimed at improving low black academic performance.
The school features state of the art science labs, computer labs, job training classes, optional college level courses, and more. Students in Atlanta are among the most well-funded public school students in the entire southeast.
The campus is actually divided into four different schools. The School of Technology at Carver has 305 students who perform dismally on standardized tests. It is 99% black. The Schools of the Arts at Carver has 380 students, who perform slightly better but still dismally below state averages. It is 97% black. The School of Health Science and Research at Carver has 330 students and also performs dismally below state averages. It is 98% black.
Here is where it gets interesting. The fourth school is designed for top-performing blacks from anywhere in the entire district. It is called Early College High School at Carver. It has 321 students, with excellent test schools that are above state averages. It is 96% black. This is a strategy that many large cities are now implementing. They take the best performing blacks from around the whole city and bus them to a special school. That way they can point to an all black school that is overachieving.
To show you the contrast, in 2015 at a total of 39% of Georgia Public High School students passed the 9th Grade US History test and 38% passed the 9th Grade Biology test. At Early College, 44% passed US History and 70% passed Biology. At School of Technology, it was 0% and 1%. At School of the Arts, it was 8% and 2%. At School of Health Science and Research, it was 3% and 3%.
As a last ditch effort to improve test scores, Early College was integrated with the rest of the three schools in 2016. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution called it “merging the top with the bottom.”
The New Schools at Carver is located in a historical south Atlanta neighborhood. Residents of that neighborhood say they are being terrorized by the students.
