Sally Krisel agreed to meet Hall County schools Superintendent Will Schofield for lunch at Luna’s restaurant three years ago thinking he was going to offer her a job as another run-of-the mill administrator of gifted studies.

Having served as the director of gifted education for the state Department of Education for 10 years, Krisel was pleasantly surprised to find Schofield had a new pitch: leave the state department to serve as Hall County schools’ rigor specialist and expand teaching practices typically reserved for gifted students to all students. Schofield wanted someone who could enforce the school’s motto aspiring to provide “rigor for all.”

“It was such a refreshing idea in the era of No Child Left Behind. And it’s so right,” Krisel said.

Krisel said she and Schofield shared a vision. She signed on with Hall County schools.

Even as a professor of gifted education at the University of Georgia, Krisel has encouraged K-12 educators to expand challenging programs and student interest-driven approaches typically reserved for gifted students to students of all abilities to the benefit of the whole school system.

“All kids do better when they are challenged, when it’s relevant, when it is tied to their strengths and interests and acknowledges their individual learning styles,” she said. “So my job really was to bring everything that I’ve learned in a career devoted to gifted education and help Hall County pull the entire system from the top. And we really are getting great results from that.”

Three years after Schofield and Krisel started implementing their “rigor for all” approach in Hall County schools, evidence is mounting they may be on to something.

In 2005, about one-third of Hall County schools did not meet Adequate Yearly Progress, according to the state Department of Education. This year, for the first time, every one of Hall County’s 34 schools is expected to make AYP.

“And we’ve done that not by hammering away at the bottom, with ‘Let’s practice taking tests and let’s practice bubbling in ovals,’ but we really have done that by focusing on very high-end programs,” Krisel said.

Krisel said Hall County students are being challenged in new ways. She said, for example, three years ago, also before Schofield was superintendent, Hall County schools did not offer foreign language until 11th grade. This fall, students as young as pre-kindergarten will be learning multiple languages.

She said she hopes to jar more educators and politicians out of America’s adequacy obsession.

“In American education, we’ve just been so focused on adequacy, adequate yearly progress. Do y'all really want adequacy?” Krisel said.

“We have this notion that by focusing on the bottom, by having a generation here where we’re focused on ‘Let’s just get everybody up to this minimal level,’ even our most capable students haven’t achieved what they might have because there’s no one up there showing what excellence really looks like.”

Krisel, a mother of two, said public schools should be setting the bar a little higher than where students are currently to ensure a generation of not just adequate adults, but excellent adults who can lead modern America.