When seniors at both Fayette

County and Sandy Creek high schools posted historic jumps on their average

SAT scores last spring, it didn't go unnoticed at the Georgia Department

of Education.

Fayette school officials say

the spike in scores was the direct result of an aggressive campaign at

both schools to improve SAT performance, a dedicated approach that some

critics have referred to as "teaching the test."

Largely unproven until this

year, the strategy developed by local educators is being rolled out to

all 180 of Georgia's public school districts thanks to state Superintendent

of Schools Kathy Cox, who has faith it will finally pull Georgia out of

the SAT cellar. Cox is a former classroom teacher at McIntosh High School

and commutes from her Fayette home to her job as the state's top educator

in Atlanta.

With the release of 2003 SAT

results three weeks ago, which showed Georgia ranked dead last among all

50 states for the second year, Cox announced her "SAT Improvement

Initiatives," a four-point game plan that's lifted nearly verbatim

from the approach developed in Fayette County:

·Adopt a more rigorous

curriculum;

· Encourage greater enrollment

in college-level Advanced Placement courses;

·Boost the number of tenth

graders taking the PSAT, or pre-SAT exam, to near 100 percent;

·Provide local educators

with the knowhow to analyze the PSAT results so that weaknesses among

a particular class of students can be addressed.

Leading the SAT testing emphasis

for Cox is Charlotte Robinson, the state's first so-called "test

czar," and a former Starr's Mill High teacher.

What Cox and Robinson know

is this: While students statewide struggled just to keep pace in 2003,

Fayette County seniors managed to compile the highest average score in

county history, a combined verbal and math total of 1061 out of a possible

1600.

That's 77 points higher than

the Georgia average of 984, and 35 points above the national average,

1026.

The 2003 score reflects a 13-point

rise from the previous year's 1048. Before that, Fayette's overall average

hadn't budged much more than a few points in either direction for nearly

a decade.

But it was the stunning improvement

in test scores at both Fayette and Sandy Creek that caught attention statewide.

Both schools reversed downward trends that administrators couldn't explain.

Fayette High's average jumped

a record 29 points, to a school-high 1030, while Sandy Creek's increased

15 points, to 1025, both the result of concerted efforts at those schools.

McIntosh High, where Cox taught

until resigning in May 2002 to focus on her campaign, still leads the

county and ranks among the top schools in the state with a score of 1104.

Starr's Mill is not far behind, turning in an SAT average of 1084 last

year.

'Have to do something'

Critics who contend such emphasis

equates to "teaching the test" question the long-range good.

Cox disagrees.

"We're 50th in the country,

we have to do something," she declares.

It only makes sense to prepare

students to succeed at all costs, she said, when more than 80 percent

of county graduates go on to a four-year college after high school.

"The institutional leaders

of this county and I don't mean just school leaders, but community leaders

have all known for some time that in a place where kids are going off

to Ivy League colleges every year, you must prepare them for that,"

she said.

And Cox makes no apologies

for lifting her former employer's SAT strategy near verbatim.

"I can never separate

my experience in this county from my job as state superintendent,"

she said last week.

After all, Cox points out,

her first appointment after winning the election last November was Stuart

Bennett, formerly Fayette County's assistant superintendent for curriculum

and now her second in command, in charge of all policy and strategy statewide.

It was Bennett who took center

stage last week to announce a proposal to deal with truancy, a problem

not necessarily of concern in Fayette County where attendance hovers in

the 96 percent range, but a certain factor affecting Adequate Yearly Progress

(AYP).

In addition to Bennett and

"Test Czar" Robinson, Cox has tapped former Starr's Mill teacher

Stephen Pruitt to be state science coordinator, and more recently brought

on retired county math coordinator Kay Seabolt and special education director

Debbie Thompson.

'Sharp as a tack'

Administrators at the central

office are flattered Cox holds them in such high regard. Fayette Superintendent

John DeCotis seems genuinely proud that one of the district's own has

ascended to such heights.

"She's very smart,"

he said of Cox. That sentiment was echoed by School Board Chair Terri

Smith, who taught at Fayette County High when Cox first came on board

in 1987.

"What I remember is she

was talented very early on," said Smith. "And she's sharp as

a tack. Her heart is in the right place, and that's the truth talking.

There are a lot of smart people out there, but they don't all have her

integrity."

Though many of her reform ideas

are still to come, Cox has made good company around the state and won

favor with everyone from Gov. Sonny Perdue on down. She is seldom without

a smile or a laugh, even when discussing issues as serious as the funding

crisis.

And talk of what goes on inside

Fayette County classrooms is seldom far from her mind.

"I miss the kids,"

she confesses, explaining that her visit to Fayette Middle last week was

one in a series to 2003 Schools of Excellence around the state, where

she drops in to a classroom and teaches for an hour. The visits, scheduled

at a different school every two weeks, helps fill the void from being

out of the classroom, and gets her down to the local level to see what

the problems and issues are.

She scoffed that Fayette Middle

School, a 2003 Georgia School of Excellence, also showed up on the list

of noncompliance AYP schools.

"I'm sitting in a School

of Excellence that doesn't have a single achievement group that failed

to make its progress goals," she said, pointing out that the school's

minority students often score higher on standardized tests than the general

student population.

AYP needs work, she confesses.

"Georgia wasn't ready," she said. "I'll be perfectly frank

here: We lost all of 2002 failing to get ready for this because of the

election, and then last winter the states' political climate made it worse,"

she said.

A good investment

She's not looking forward to

the next session of the legislature, either, as there's no end in sight

to the state's ongoing financial woes.

"The budget process is

going to be awful," she sighed, fearful that so many special interests

around the state will be competing for money that should go to shore up

Georgia education.

The key is convincing the powerbrokers

that good schools almost always make a good investment. Again, she holds

up Fayette County as an example.

Cox and her husband John, a

homebuilder, moved to Peachtree City in 1987, and though local schools

were good then, they were not the best in the metro Atlanta area.

But over the 15 years she taught

in local classrooms, Cox said she saw an unfailing commitment to education

from the public as well as support and respect for classroom teachers

that borders on reverence. That convinced her that Fayette's philosophy

on educating students was worth spreading around.

"That's the wonderful

thing about this county: People care about education, and they understand

the real difference is made with the classroom teacher," Cox said.

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