I do not know your defintion of middle or upper class. However, with the unemployment in Ga there will be a poorer class of students who will need free breakfast and lunch. Before the CRCT, we began to see a new subgroup($50,000 plus) incomes become $0 income and many parents were applying for help. Many of the students were high achievers and 2 parent homes. This economy does have acronyms: FOOD.SHELTER, AND CLOTHES which are given to all of us. I hope you can continue your economic status in the near future. By the way, some of my exceptional learners had the support of their parents who worked at low paying jobs and qualified for the breakfast and lunch program. Those without the real truth should not throw stones into others glass houses. Keep on sacrificing!

Stop venting about SUB GROUPS. I don’t think students should be broken down into sub groups, unless a person is willing to admit each sub group is not equally qualified to take the test, ie the intelligence potential of each sub group is not equal and therefore admitting students are not equal because of sub group status. Admitting this only opens the door to stating that students should be separated, ie segregated by sub group because their sub group is not inherently qualified to compete with other sub groups, or people not that are not members of a sub group.
– Perfect example of a not allowing sub groups as a scape goat: why is it “five minutes” after an immigrant comes over from India he/she is a doctor??

CLASSISM: It exists, get over it. People make decisions and there a consequences for those decisions. The children of a particular class tend to grow up to be in the same class as their parents. Middle class teach their children what it takes to be middle class. Same applies with poverty. Fact is that middle and upper middle class families give everything they can so that their kids will have the opportunity to be middle class and hopefully surpass their parents. That means parents work harder, sacrificing their youth in school, their young adult years in college and extend their adult years by sacrificing impulse pleasure so that they can afford to live in higher priced areas that good school districts. When that doesn’t work, the families sacrifice more by paying for private schools, in effect shielding their children from negative influences that retard their children’s classroom experience and limit their potential.

Since moving here in 1998, I have seen more students who cannot read on grade level in all subjects. When we are serious about placing students on their realistic reading levels and build their successes on an on-going achievement by moving them progressively as they meet their individual goals, these students will become sucessful readers. We did it in MD and MI. It was called the SRA. All of the good and creative ideas that most teachers used to engage their students’ desire to come to school and participate have almost vanished from the classroom. One day a former principal over heard me say, “Today my class is going to have fun Friday”. Her comment was let them do fun things at home. Well, that Fun Friday activity was having a science(heat)lesson on how popcorn pops and(math) lesson on estimating how many seeds would actually pop.I did the lesson because it was in the QCC’S and in my lesson plan. I am a risk taker at times because I want to capitivate my students’ interests and attention. We are so brain washed with this CRCT business, that good teaching is being destroyed. I am hoping to walk quietly away soon and have a business that will save students’ creativity in the arts.