Business as usual, take 1 1/2

Atlanta high schools broke rules to meet performance standards
[ajc] The morning of the high school writing test, in September 2009, school administrators pulled Chantel and several other Carver juniors aside. All stood a good chance of failing — and of lowering the school’s odds of meeting its do-or-die performance targets. While the rest of the 11th grade took the test required for all juniors, Chantel and the others worked puzzles in a special-education classroom.
Their absences could be excused, because the school had placed them in a grade all their own: 10 1/2.

Looks like I was wrong about the "isolated incident being blown out of proportion".

The New Schools at Carver (as Atlanta Public Schools likes to call the subdivided four-in-one high school) is the school APS points at to show what a great job they're doing. You might think that would attract media attention: That would be the point of using it as the showcase school of the High School Transformation Initiative (HSTI, in APS' endless mission to confuse observers with acronyms). You might think that everyone involved in its administration would be aware of being potentially under a magnifying glass. You might conclude that they would want to be on their best behavior. Dot every I, cross every T, By The Book.

If you thought that, you don't know APS very well. What it means is Look Good At Any Cost. And when in doubt, spend money. Splitting a high school into four parts means a lot of remodeling, plus paying consultants to create your basic educational structures, paying more consultants to teach your teachers how to teach all over again, not to mention hiring five principals (one for each school plus one overall). Wouldn't you just know that one big high school with four 300-student schools within would cost far more than four smaller standalone schools? Economics of scale work backwards in schools--or, at least, in Atlanta.

Ever since HSTI was announced, I've been curious what happened to students who wanted to attend a general-purpose non-specialized high school. Does APS really think that, as in Lake Wobegon, all children can be above average? Or do they think they've gotten so good at cooking the books that it no longer matters what the students actually know?

Do students in grade 10.5 move up to 11.5 the next year? Do they receive .5 of a diploma?