Dear Chip,
Congratulations, once again, for far exceeding my expectations on how far a politician will go in misrepresenting the facts to peddle a worthless piece of legislation - in this case - HR 1162. HR 1162/HB 797 makes T-Splost look great in comparison (See Sunday's AJC article).
I can't believe you dragged Mark Richt into your propaganda piece. Has Georgia Tech, your alma mater, forbidden you to link your name with theirs in the same sentence?
Since you insist on bringing up SAT scores once again, I must give you the remedial SAT lecture. From the College Board site; "A Word About Comparing States and Schools - The SAT is a strong indicator of trends in the college-bound population, but it should never be used alone for such comparisions because demographics and other nonschool factors can have a strong effect on scores." In other words it's meaningless because the #1 Ranked State, Illinois, tests 5% of students and Georgia tests 80% - whether they plan on attending college or not.
What if you had the power to subject the Georgia Bull Dogs to such bogus ranking criteria? Talk about personal catastrophe!
And then we have your the "math is simple" argument. The only simple aspect of Georgia's QBE formula is your understanding of it. Check out this explanation and please get back to the voters. Hey, how did the polling go on that line? Guess we'll find out when we get robo calls in October.
Oh, and how about those cost efficient public charter schools you want to send all of Georgia's students to? No football stadiums (sorry Mr. Richt, Nerf football is all we will pay for), no performing arts centers, no baseball fields, no bus transportation, remedial needs funding? ESOL? AP courses? special needs kids? I really don't want to hear what your solution would be for those kids Chip.
Inaccurate? Who cares, right Chip?
Have a wonderful holiday weekend with your family and children who I understand don't attend public school,
Elizabeth Hooper
However, if you really think your ideas would work, maybe you should open your own charter. If Amendment 1 passes, you'll probably just need to write what you put above on a napkin to get it approved and fully funded.
There's a lot of name calling on this blog so happy to see you write out your thoughts. Just a few things to keep in mind through your decision making time. Remember that the Board of Regents, State School Board and PSC are all appointed entities today. They are appointed for their expertise and 'getting rid' of one is possible. Will you read one more article? I thought Benita Dodd from the GA Public Policy Foundation had one of the best explanations I've run across. "To be profitable, a company must offer a product that attracts enough consumers then keep them satisfied or lose them. Or it must monopolize the market and keep out any competitors that could build a better widget. That may explain why Georgia’s education monopoly bureaucracy is reluctant to allow competitors to enter the marketplace of ideas." http://georgiapolicy.org/choice-charters-and-the-children/ Most school boards in the state have proven to be resistant to charter schools, not all, but most. There are bricks & mortar charter schools in less than 15 of our 180 school systems. That's it even though the charter school law is 11 years old in Georgia. If the school systems do what they should, the commission should only see denied schools that get a chance to appeal but will be denied by the commission as well. Only 16 out of nearly 60 were approved over the 2 years the commission was in place the first time. Like the State School Board, they want to do a good job.
Bill...Your anti-government, ant-tax positions have blinded you. You write that if the government wasn't "stealing all the wealth and putting it into the government schools" there would be wealth with which to pay teachers well. Rubbish! If the government didn't "steal" money from the people for education, people would have more wealth, but that wealth wouldn't be spread such that all children could receive an education. It would reside in the hands of: those without children, those with grown children, and businesses. Education tax dollars come from parents of school age children AND from individuals and businesses without school age children. If there weren't taxes, the parents of school age children would have to foot the bill, 100% of the bill, to educate their children. And if they didn't have $7,000 per child, the child wouldn't receive an education. As to the paperwork from the "Educracy" and your free-market mentality of parents measuring success independently, your logic is flawed again. Without the paperwork and standards for the paperwork, the free-market schools would be able to write their own performance reports, manipulate their reports any way they deemed fit, and withhold un-flattering data. The parents would have only their child's data with which to make their decisions, but no reliable data upon which to compare it.
You asserted that public education only started 50 years ago and that until that time, "parents educated their children". In fact public education has existed in the US since the 1700s and every state has required children attend elementary school since 1918. Per the ARC.ORG website, Pennsylvania required free public education for only the poor children as far back at 1790...poor, you know, the people who couldn't afford to pay for educating the own children. Why is it your responsibilityto pay for some other parent's child to get an education? It's because, unless you attended private schools your entire life and your children attended private schools, you benefited from other people paying for your education and now it's payback time. Further, you benefit from public education every day of your life when you see the doctor, lawyer, accountant, store manager, financial advisor, carpenter, nurse, etc that received public education. Lastly, you're just wrong -- plain and simple...There is a hugh a difference between karate lessons and public education. For starters, karate lessons are optional and society doesn't tax to pay for them. Under your Anarchist model, only the rich/elite would be educated and America would be Lords and Peasants. You
Your exteme views of gov't and taxes run contrary to your argument that gov't should make sure you can "get an education, buy medicine, and live (your) life in freedom" but without stealing your money to give to others. Your ability to get an education was funded by taxing your parent's generation and building national infrastructure. Your ability to buy medicine was made possible by gov't funding of research. Your ability to live your life in freedom was made possible by gov't's national defense and state's locking up felons. You didn't pay for all of this, but you're reaping the benefit. I won't even waste my time on your insane comment that Government Schools = Marxism. Your last comment that the poor could achieve more before government schools than after, is crazy. Prior to government schools, the upper classes received an education and a cycle of poverty and child labor prevailed for the masses. However, there were some exceptions who succeeded based upon natural talents. After government schools, all children had an opportunity to succeed - some seize the opportunity, some don't. The ironic thing is that, as a pro-charter person, you're still advocating "stealing" money from the child-less to give to parents to give to private companies.
http://www.gapsc.com/educatorpreparation/nochildleftbehind/CharterSchoolGuidance.pdf
I know the charters does take some children with special needs like down syndrome, but how long do they stay? ,I have spoken to some parents who left a charter school because the services they received were far inferior to those at traditional public schools. I also talked to a parent who that said she was told by the charter admins that the IEP needed to be modified because the charter school teacher ( a second year teacher) did not see the need for all of the modifications. Traditional public schools can't do that because it is against the law. can a charter school handle children in wheelchairs who have no motor skills and have a feeding tube and are in diapers? Traditional public schools do.
The source doesn't matter, as you can find it from about 3.8 million other sources, just type in "Texas GOP no critical thinking" in Google. Continue singing and dancing. I think the one thing that we can agree on is that there are problems in education. The government is creating those problems, not the teachers and not the administration in the school districts. So how is creating more government going to help solve the issues that have already been caused by the current government? If you want to solve the issues in education, we need less government. We need decisions on education to be made at the local level, not someone at the state capitol or Washington DC telling us how to educate our children. I'm voting NO in NOvember.
"We need an appeals process for our kids.: You have an appeals process; the state BOE approved three new start-up charters and renewed three others this week. The Supremes ruled that taking local dollars for state charters was unconstitutional, not the state schools themselves. The governor, who has told almost everyone to cut another 3% from their state budgets, miraculously "found" state money to fund those state charters above and beyond the state allotment. So children in state charter schools are more valuable to the state than children in regular public schools? Really? Look again at funding; the money follows the child. If those students in state charters had moved to traditional schools, the state would have paid less per FTE for them. Local tax dollars would have been spent on those students' education, but the state (somewhere) would have been able to make fewer cuts. "The traditional public schools keep our local tax dollar to spend on kids." No, the local government allocates money to school districts per FTE. If a student is not enrolled, the TPS does not get the money, so they can't keep it. "If the charter school kids go back there will be more over crowding and even less money..." There may be overcrowding, but some schools are actually under-enrolled. There will not be less money as, again, that child would be earning their FTE funding.
"the charter kids will be home schooled and the school district will lose all the money, even local tax money. They really lose then." The school district won't get the money, since the student won't be enrolled, but they also don't have to staff to educate the child. There is a process by which charters are currently being approved by the state. Yes, they only earn the state allotment now, but they may also re-apply to the local board to qualify the next year for local funds. Maybe the Charter School group should devote their time and energy to helping charter start-ups develop (and improve) valid charter applications rather than fighting to have the state fund your students at twice the rate our TPS students are funded. But a campaign of misinformation is easier than that, I guess...