CEO Message

Thank you for visiting the website of Central Educational Center, a national Model High School in Newnan, Coweta County, Georgia (just southwest of Atlanta on I-85).

CEC opened as a publicly-funded charter school in August, 2000. Our charter was just renewed by our local Board of Education and the State Board of Education for another five years in March, 2004. This year, CEC was named a national Model High School by a consortium of professional educational organizations including the International Center for Leadership in Education (ICLE), the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), High Schools that Work, Project Lead The Way, and many others. We were invited by the US Department of Education, CCSSO, and the National Governors Association to attend the regional High School Summit held in Atlanta last March, during which we hosted the Assistant Secretary of Education, Susan Sclafani, her staff, and regional delegates for a feature tour. In June, we were featured in The Achiever, the USDOE’s newsletter for parents and community leaders, and we also presented our case study at the Model Schools Conference in Washington, DC as part of The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s “Bringing Best Practices to Scale” project.

Why all the interest? Why have more than 325 organizations from most US states and 14 other countries visited CEC? And why is CEC featured in Japanese education literature?

Simply this: Central Educational Center SEAMLESSLY combines academics with career and technical education … high school with college … and education with businesses. We are a charter school serving grades 9-12, and our “team members” (CEC jargon for “students”) attend voluntarily from our county’s three base high schools for all or part of every school day. We designed our curriculum around the needs and expectations of business, using a needs assessment. As a result, we focus as much on soft skills (work ethic) as we do on courses, offering a work ethic grade in every class in addition to a course grade. We provide work-based learning opportunities to hundreds of team members each year, providing 470 internships and apprenticeships last year to 185 local businesses. And we offer high school students the chance to take dual-enrollment classes with the local technical college (which is located on our campus), learning alongside adults. CEC is also a center for lifelong learning, teaching adults with technical college and GED courses day and night, housing the county’s evening high school, and providing custom training to local corporations. In all, 1,456 local residents came to CEC this year to learn, including 1,123 high school team members who attended voluntarily. 174 team members earned 219 technical college certificates this year alone – and both totals were records.

Finally, CEC has received a dissemination grant from the Georgia Department of Education and is inviting local communities to apply to receive direct assistance from CEC and the state for up to two years, to result in the creation of new charter schools based on CEC's successful model. Check us out, and start a CEC of your very own!