Cobb School District Receives Positive Cognia Review

The Cobb County School District has been accredited for an additional six years following a comprehensive review by its accreditation firm, Cognia.

This review is the first since the Alpharetta-based firm sparked controversy in 2021, when it conducted a special review of the school district due to complaints from the board’s three Democratic members amid partisan conflict.

Cognia announced that special review after receiving a letter from board members Dr. Jaha Howard, Charisse Davis and Leroy Tre’ Hutchins, as well as messages from about 50 members of the district’s staff and community.

That review was eventually invalidated by Cognia CEO Mark Elgart when Cobb schools brought forward evidence that the firm ignored in the review process.

Cognia’s botched report resulted in proposed legislation from state Rep. Ginny Ehrhart, R-west Cobb, and other lawmakers, that barred accreditation firms from evaluating Georgia public school districts on political concerns like board infighting. While that bill failed to move forward, Gov. Brian Kemp signed a similar one into law last year.

During Thursday’s Cobb Board of Education meeting, board member David Banks recalled what it was like when that Cognia evaluation took place several years ago.

“In my opinion, it was corrupt, but, as a result,... Cognia finally realized that they made a mistake and you have to give them credit,” Banks said. “I think what turned out to be a negative wound up to be a very positive situation.”

John Floresta, the district’s chief strategy and accountability officer, presented the findings of the review, highlighting the district’s strengths and areas for improvement.

The accreditation engagement review, which took almost a year to complete, involved feedback from over 72,000 community members and culminated in the district receiving an Index of Education Quality score of 332, significantly higher than the average of 253 across all other Cognia-accredited school districts.

Unlike the special review, which was conducted by volunteers, this review was led by Cognia staff and a team from the school district, including Floresta and Assistant Superintendent Ehsan Kattoula.

“The most impactful change (Elgart) made to the review process was hiring professional and honest reviewers,” Superintendent Chris Ragsdale told the board during its Thursday work session.

Ragsdale said he had no problem saying thank you to Elgart and Cognia, despite past conflicts.

“Cognia should not be a dividing point,” Ragsdale said. “Cognia is an accreditation agency and they were thrust into the middle of political nonsense that was going on here, and again, I’m grateful and thankful to Dr. Elgart that he took steps to make sure the review process for accreditation was factual, fair and accurate.”

During his presentation, Floresta said Cognia had acknowledged several noteworthy practices within the district, such as the “One Team, One Goal” culture, retention of a highly qualified workforce, the Cobb Teaching and Learning System and strong professional learning initiatives.

Overall, Cobb schools exceeded Cognia’s average across its network of other accredited districts on all seven major evaluation categories, including analysis of the learning environment, student performance and stakeholder feedback. Cobb received the highest grade, a 4.0, for stakeholder feedback analysis. In the other six categories, Cobb received a 3.5.

Cognia identified one area for improvement: Develop a process to monitor the implementation of Ellevation, an English language program management and teaching tool, and measure student outcomes.

Several board members emphasized the need to take the report as motivation to improve across all schools in the district.

“As a whole, yes, this is wonderful, but the focus has to be to make sure that everyone improves and to get to that 4.0,” Hutchins said.

Democratic board member Becky Sayler expressed her desire for more granular data in order to better understand the performance of individual schools within the district.

Sayler added that by looking at how individual schools are improving rather than overarching averages, the board can make better informed decisions as a collective.

Over the next two years, the district will have to provide further evidence of continued improvement to Cognia, said Floresta.

To read the full accreditation report, visit media.cobbk12.org/media/WWWCobb/medialib/cobb-county-school-district-215096-aer.d03365100015.pdf.