 Educational Excellence
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 Goal 11: Improve the overall quality of education in the region.
Goal 12: Ensure that all students, without consideration to race, income, age or community, gain the knowledge and life skills required to succeed in the global economy and society.
Goal 13: Make certain that the quality of public education does not drastically vary depending on where one lives in the region.
Goal 14: Increase the accountability of public school administrators for the quality of education in their respective schools.
Goal 15: Encourage assistance from the business community in addressing the challenges of the public school systems in the region.
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Educational Excellence
A good education system with a strong economy can help close a widening gap between the wealthy and the poor and provide opportunities for all to achieve a good quality of life. The ability of the region's educational institutions to prepare local students to enter post-secondary school and to fill knowledge based positions is crucial to overall economic competitiveness.
Student enrollment in the 14 school systems across the Atlanta region has increased steadily since the 2003-2004 school year. In 2004-2005, school systems in the Atlanta region educated more than 590,000 students, almost 40 percent of the students in the State of Georgia. Student enrollment jumped by almost 80,000 during the 2005-2006 school year to 671,556 students in public schools in the 10 county region, 43 percent of Georgia's total enrollment.
In our original 2003 CREATE Community survey, improving the region's educational quality ranked highest among 22 regional goals. Survey participants in all age, income and ethnic groups strongly supported educational improvement and more equitable public educational opportunities across the entire region.
Thirty percent of the regional residents we surveyed in 2006 have children in the public school system. In fact 30 percent of the respondents said their decision to live at their current home was based on the quality of the local public school. Among our survey respondents, more than 75 percent of parents with children in Atlanta region schools said they would recommend their child's school to other parents coming into the area. Approximately 20 percent of parents with children in public schools said they would not recommend their public schools. In contrast, 49 percent of respondents who do not have children in public school said they would recommend the local system to other parents, while 39 percent said they would not.
For this years report, we were able to gather education data from both 2004-2005 and in some cases, 2005-2006. The latest data available when the 2005 report was releases was 2003-2004.
 Click here for Excel Worksheet of this chart
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