Posted on 07/11/2008 7:02:51 AM PDT by Amelia
Governor Sonny Perdue today announced the appointment of a working group tasked with investigating innovative ways to create long-term, comprehensive education reform to make Georgia more globally competitive. This working group...build off the work of the Investing in Educational Excellence (IE2) Task Force and review a provocative national report called Tough Choices or Tough Times to determine how Georgia might reform its education policies and practices to cause needed change for its educational system.
...focus specifically on several areas of education policy reform:
Moving students to postsecondary-level work as soon as they demonstrate the necessary ability;
Enhancing the quality of preschool education opportunities;
Improving P-12 teacher quality;
Creating high performance school systems (in collaboration with the State Board of Education);
Improving the academic performance of underachieving students;
Further enhancing and supporting a world-class P-12 curriculum; and
Ensuring the efficient use of the financial resources Georgia devotes to education....
(Excerpt) Read more at wtoctv.com ...
They will NEVER admit they were wrong, they will just create new buzzwords to explain the next big overhaul. We asked one of the UGA profs who helped create the new standards if other colleges (outside of Ga) would understand Math 1, Math 2, etc on a college transcript. He replied, "Well, they can understand a homeschooler's transcript, can't they?" They want to keep students in Georgia and the best way to do that is to make them too dumb to be accepted anywhere else.
The other problem with waiting and watching the math fiasco, is that I have to afterschool my kids until they fix the silly problem. Mine may be through with hs, by then! And boy, do they hate to see me pull out the Saxon and Singapore books!
I pay a lot of money to send my son to private school. The public schools in my district are just not all that good, you know.
The most galling thing is, the local school district spends MORE tax dollars per student than my son’s private school tuition (even as high as that is). And many of the surrounding counties spend even MORE.
My recent graduate took 5 AP online courses through Virginia's virtual high school. She was very pleased with her instruction in 4 of the 5, and her AP scores back up that claim.
It's definitely a way to help the upper achieving students who are motivated and self-starting
But every classroom now has a "smart board" -even though my kids are not taught their multiplication facts or history. As long as the classroom "looks good" and has the latest technology -that'll fool 'em. A blackboard and a piece of chalk would work just as well -but don't think you can convince a government worker that fact. I noticed our supers all have blackberries and cellphones and trips to conferences in other states. Gov't workers simply don't realize basic financial business economics. They are sure that all white collar workers have free cell phones, blackberries, laptops, and paid family vacations (conferences), along with summers off.
And yes, I just said “supers” with an “s” on the end. I earlier posted that I am in a rural county district with one High School. The layers of beaurocracy that are continuously added to the school systems just DO NOT STOP.
It sort of varies by district, in my experience, but I don't think most Georgia schools really match up to the schools my nieces attend in Virginia (on the other hand, most Virginia schools may not either), and I don't think the state sets its standards high enough in the CRCT and high school standardized tests.
On the other hand, we do have the sort of cutting edge programs such as Virtual School...
The challenge is to keep them "motivated and self-starting" with mediocrity constantly rewarded. Role models are key.
You won’t go wrong with Saxon math, my mom used it on us from third grade up and I got a very solid math grounding. Great college prep work.
I moved to rural Georgia in middle school, from east Tennessee. Tennessee (Appalachia - belive it or not) had stronger schools than rural Georgia. My husband wants to move us back to north Atlanta and into the stronger public school system. I really like the small town values and pace of life we are experiencing in rural Georgia. I am trying to determine which will be better for all of my kids - metro atlanta or small town values/community.
Excellent discussion agenda except for these two:
“Enhancing the quality of preschool education opportunities;
Improving P-12 teacher quality;”
The more preschool we have seen the worse performance has become.
The second one is simpler.
Teacher quality will improve when:
1. tenure is taken away so that ineffective (lazy, dumb, bored, boring, etc) teachers can be fired on the spot...and
2. useless teacher ed courses are no longer required for those who wish to teach.
You've nailed that! There is no school choice, except perhaps for the choice to homeschool, in rural Georgia.
Then you have the whole "who's who" in town - superintendent's kids getting online p.e. class or being advanced to select classes because they are "so much smarter" than all of the other students. I never realized a small rural town in the south could have so much liberal elitism.
You also have the relatives of the board getting hired and/or promoted, and teachers who expect the board members' children to behave and earn their grades fired or forced to resign (I'm convinced that's why unions were formed, just not sure why they have no power in rural Georgia...)
That is a hard decision. Is it possible to find something sort of halfway in between? With the report cards online, you might be able to find an area with good schools but not too urban?
In July 2000, Georgia became the first state to eliminate automatic tenure for new teachers. Supposedly tenure was "reinstated" in 2004, but actually courts have decided that Georgia law does not provide for teacher tenure, although you might call it that...for the first 3 years of employment, a teacher's contract doesn't have to be renewed, and the system doesn't have to give a reason. After that, they do have to give a reason...
Georgia already has simplified certification programs, and you can begin teaching without taking any education courses (that's handy, because some people find that being in the classroom is not what they had imagined it would be).
My comments were not based on the progressive actions being taken in Georgia but rather on what I know in this God awful failed state..NY!
Georgia is progressive in some ways, and still has a long way to go in others. The unions don’t have much power here, however.
If money was the solution, then inner city Atlanta schools would be the top in the country. However, the are about the worst.
Money is what libs have been saying for years and years. The schools have been getting more money now then ever, and they are failing students more now then ever.
ping for later
When your kids score high on the standardized tests, guess who will take the credit for all of **your** hard work at home?
Yep! The principal and teacher.
If you didn't do all that hard work at home and your child received a low score, who would the teachers and principal blame?
Yep! You the parent.
It's a no win game.
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