Former Fayette County school teacher Kathy Cox announced today she is stepping down from her position as Georgia’s school superintendent as of June 30.
Cox, who was up for re-election and qualified to run for this November, will instead become the CEO of a brand new nonprofit “dedicated to building the capacity in state public education systems to implement school reform effectively.”
The new company is called the U.S. Education Delivery Institute and is being backed by Achieve and The Education Trust with a major contribution from McKinsey&Co., according to a news release from Cox.
EDI will “adapt and apply practices developed in the United Kingdom by the Prime Minister’s Deliver Unit, which was led by EDI founder Sir Michael Barber, the release said.
EDI is targeting both K-12 and higher education systems to link state school policies and the schools and teachers which must implement them to help provide dramatically improved test scores, the release said.
“This organization won’t be another think tank, but rather the fuel to inject action in state and local efforts to improve student achievement across our country,” Cox said. “The performance management methods collectively known as ‘Delivery’ provide the critical implementation link between system reform and classroom improvement, and thus greater student outcomes.”
“We must seize the opportunity provided by the emerging national agenda to enable states to deliver outstanding results,” Barber said. “Employing the delivery approach pioneered in the United Kingdom under Tony Blair and since adopted in a number of other countries can return lasting benefits, from decreased crime rates to improvements in student literacy.”
Barber said EDI would be tackling the challenge of improving student outcomes in U.S. public education.
“Kathy Cox is the ideal person to lead this new organization and bring this approach to the US,” Barber said. “She is an inspirational leader with an outstanding track record of delivering results for students in Georgia. In short, she brings both the rigor and experience for EDI to succeed. I look forward to working with her.”
“I will greatly miss my colleagues and friends in Georgia, especially at the Department of Education,? said Superintendent Cox. ?But I feel confident that I will be leaving the Department and Georgia?s public K-12 system better than I found it. And in this new position, I will have many opportunities to work with leaders across the country, including Georgia, so I will still be able to help Georgia continue making great progress.”
