Top Ten Issues to Watch in 2023

Thank you to Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education for the content on Top Ten Issues to Watch in 2023. 

2022 was a milestone year for the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education, as it marked the 30th anniversary of our founding in 1992 by the Georgia Economic Developers Association and the Georgia Chamber of Commerce. It is difficult to believe that 30 years have passed since we were first established and given our charge – to bring together leaders from across education and business, along with elected officials, to tackle and solve Georgia’s most critical and complex education and economic development challenges. At the time of our founding, public education in Georgia was facing several challenges. Most notably, reading and math performance were in decline and the state’s high school graduation was hovering around 50 percent. Understandably, Georgia’s leaders in business, education, civic and government sectors were deeply concerned. Those leaders knew then, as we know now, that high quality education was not only the key to individual success, but also essential to community, regional, and statewide prosperity. The Georgia Partnership’s mission since that time has remained the same: inform and influence leaders to improve student achievement.

In 2022, we not only reflected on our mission, work, and legacy, but we also
continued to build on it. As Georgia public schools continued to recover from the
devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Georgia Partnership continued to
examine the ways in which education stakeholders are leveraging federal pandemic
relief funds to support student achievement. We accomplished this through the
CARES Impact Study, a multi-year, multi-strand research project designed to capture
the ways Georgia school districts were planning to use the $5.9 billion they received
in federal relief funding. Having launched the study in 2021, we published the study’s
Baseline Report in January 2022 and the Year-One Report in November 2022. The
Year-One Report describes district spending activities to date and highlights the ways
in which the use of relief funds has shifted as school systems transition from crisis
to recovery.

The Georgia Partnership also continued to deepen our Community Engagement
work, partnering with leaders in Thomasville/Thomas County to conduct a comprehensive needs assessment project called The Workforce Plan. The project brought
together multisector leaders and stakeholders from across Thomas County to
determine strengths, challenges, assets, and gaps in the workforce pipeline. Building
off the work Thomas County Family Connections has done assessing the condition
of children and families in the county, the Workforce Plan provides a snapshot of
Thomas County’s economic, educational, and community needs, and brings local
stakeholders together to identify shared interests and existing community assets to
develop strategies to address pressing needs.

In 2022, we also graduated the 14th cohort of the Georgia Partnership’s flagship
professional development experience, the Education Policy Fellowship Program
(EPFP), adding 14 fellows to our 200+ person Georgia EPFP alumni network. It was
the first cohort we facilitated in person since the pandemic. The current, 15th cohort,
like previous cohorts is navigating the ins and outs of the Georgia education policy
landscape. This program is one of the Georgia Partnership’s key strategies to inform
and influence leaders and emerging leaders so that they are then able to meaningfully
contribute to the development of educational policy decisions in our state.

In all that we accomplished in 2022 and the three decades prior, what is still clear to
us is that what was true 30 years ago remains true today: high quality education is
not only the key to individual success, but it is also the key to community, regional,
and statewide prosperity. For the Georgia Partnership, this means that the next
decade of our work must be focused on pursuing an ambitious yet achievable,
North Star goal – ensuring 65% of Georgia’s residents aged 25 to 64 have earned a
postsecondary credential by the end of 2033. The foundational elements of the plan
to achieve that goal are presented in the 19th edition of the Top
Ten Issues to Watch report. The document will serve as a critical
guide for Georgia’s leaders looking to understand our state’s
biggest education challenges and equip them to devise solutions
that improve life outcomes for public school students across the
state. We are grateful for your ongoing support and welcome
your participation in our work. Georgia’s children need you.

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