At 7 a.m. each school day, Eric Adams loads his kids into the car and drives them nearly 40 miles to Northwestern Middle School in north Fulton County. And each afternoon, Eric's wife, Karen, picks the kids up and drives them back to their south Fulton home through rush-hour traffic. But the three hours of extra drive time don't bother these College Park parents. It was their choice. "They're happy," Eric Adams said of his two sons. "And as long as they are happy and they are doing good work, it's worth it."
The Adamses are among nearly 800 metro Atlanta families who chose to transfer their children to better-performing public schools under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Under that law, parents of children attending schools on the state's "needs improvement" list must be offered the chance to send their kids to schools not on the list.
Less than 1 percent of the more than 100,000 metro students eligible for transfers have changed schools. Still, about 250 more parents took advantage of the option this year than in 2002, the first year the transfers were available under No Child Left Behind.
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/1003/05nochild.html