Beverly Hall

Dr Beverly Hall's job of "turning a big ship and getting it to go in the right direction" is paying off.

And, despite her detractors' complaints that her methods to reform Atlanta Public Schools (APS) in the United States are autocratic, she is most proud building a team - recruiting principals and staff - to succeed.

"It's the people that you hire to do the work that can execute," Dr Hall said.

Yet, she also admires the team that helped mould her. She was born in Montego Bay, where her father, Leslie Clare, worked on a sugar estate and her mother, Ivy, stayed at home with the couple's three children, one born after Clare died when Beverly was two. Her family viewed excellence as the only standard.

"You had no choice," Dr Hall said. "You had to succeed."

That mantra followed Beverly Clare through Frome Prep, then high schools St Hilda's and St Andrew's. She moved to the US to attend Brooklyn College in New York, where class work was less a problem than culture shock. By 1970, when she finished a bachelor's degree, she was the only black to graduate from the school as an English major.

"I was able to survive and do that because I came here with so much self-confidence," Dr Hall explained.

NEAR DISASTER

That belief was tested early in her career. Dr Hall's first teaching job in Brooklyn was a near disaster.

"(I) wasn't even sure I was gonna last because I had a horrible first year," she recalled. "I was thinking of graduate school and getting out of it."

Today, Dr Hall, who also worked for New Jersey's public schools, is asking her students - kindergarten through grade 12 - to be resilient, too. She earned a doctor of education degree from Fordham University and holds an honorary doctorate from Oglethorpe University. But her approach is strictly home bred.

"One of the most transferable aspects from Jamaica to here, in terms of how I approach it, is in the challenging curriculum; that you can't water down the curriculum," she explained. "You have to teach to high standards, because kids can do it, and I saw it happen throughout my childhood."

Accusations of cronyism

Before Dr Hall took over as superintendent in mid-1999, more than half Atlanta's fourth graders failed state reading tests. Recent figures show 86 per cent of them passed. That and other successes have led to accusations of cronyism and illegal activity in APS, including corruption in the classroom.

"This school system is doing nothing but cheating and passing our African-American children on," one online blogger raged to the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

Dr Hall dismissed those allegations - which have come from educators and parents - as unfounded.

"The challenge is that you couldn't have cheated for nine years in every school," she said with a chuckle. "After a while, the theory would never hold up. (The allegation) has to do with the fact that lots of people had very low expectations for the children of Atlanta and couldn't quite believe that they could do what they did."

SCANDAL

However, Dr Hall's early watch was tainted by real controversy. APS employees were convicted of criminal charges linked to grants for the district in a scheme that began before she became superintendent.

"When I came in it was difficult to get into the guts of all of the business operations and we had that whole 'E-rate' scandal," Dr Hall admitted. "And so that has been the biggest blip in my tenure here; the fact that I didn't realise that people were really doing illegal stuff."

But the APS boss has plenty supporters as well.

"I think it is a tribute to the fine leadership from Dr Hall," another blogger stated after she was named national superintendent of the year in February. "Yes, the system does have its flaws, but what system doesn't?"

Dr Hall's accomplishments have earned her recognition across the US. She has met with big names in American education, including Margaret Spellings and Arne Duncan, the former and current secretaries of education, respectively. She's certain President Barack Obama is committed to education.

"(Obama) is putting more money towards education than has ever been put at the federal level before," she said.

Yet, Dr Hall is not quite sure what will happen when her contract with APS expires in 2011. Commitments to her family, including husband Luis and only child, Jason, deter her from re-locating to Jamaica. Still, she is willing to assist the government although no one has officially sought her services. The progress of students who now migrate to the US concerns her.

"I'm disappointed in how it has slipped," she said about Jamaica's education. "It used to be when (students) came you could almost guarantee, when you gave them the assessment for some grade levels, they would test above average. That has not been the case for quite a while now."

Jamaica, she argued, still has "very good" teachers, students and schools, but the system has been hampered by dwindling resources, including teacher migration.

Yet, Dr Hall's focus is on the city of Atlanta. She aims to raise APS to the quality of affluent suburban institutions.

"We've managed to turn the corner," said Dr Hall. "Now we have to go full speed ahead and get to be one of the top performers in the country."