Get Schooled

The governor has written a piece explaining his new pay plan that he says has teachers “excited.” I would probably have used the word “incited,” based on the reaction here at Get Schooled.

More than 300 teachers protested the governor's cuts to education at a GAE rally last month at the Capitol. AJC Photo

In his own words…..

By: Governor Sonny Perdue

Last month I proposed a new plan that will transform the way we compensate K-12 teachers and leaders in our state.  It will put them on the same playing field as our state’s top coaches who are rewarded for consistently winning games.

Our current compensation system credits our teachers only for time in the profession and the level of their advanced degree, not the degree to which our students learn.  This antiquated practice encourages some of our most ambitious teachers to leave the classroom, and it prevents some of our best and brightest from ever entering the field in the first place.

The enhanced pay plan will …

Continue reading Gov. Perdue: Teachers “excited” about new performance pay plan. Excited or incited? »

One of our regular posters raised an interesting point during the debate over the charter school planned for Southwest Georgia. The poster noted that the five affected districts have fewer than 5,000 students total. If they were s0 worried about losing funding to a charter school, why not consider the obvious way to save money — consolidate?

Is high school football the tie that bonds rural communities and is it a contributing factor to the resistance to the consolidation of smaller districts?

Good question. Why not?

Here is what the poster wrote:

If this isn’t a case for consolidation of small counties, I don’t know what is….

These are among the smallest counties in Georgia. The five of them combined have fewer than 5000 students. Compare this to Gwinnett, with about 160,000 students, Cobb with about 108,000, or DeKalb with just under 100,000.

Yet, because they do not have economies of scale and have some of the same fixed costs as larger counties, their per-pupil costs are …

Continue reading Is consolidation a solution for struggling rural systems? Would it kill community and football? »

To learn more about the specific challenges to the new regional charter school in Southwest Georgia from the impacted school districts, read the letters of opposition from Randolph and Early counties.

For background on Pataula Charter and the racial overtones of the arguments being made against it, please read my first post on the issue, in which I promised to get these district documents posted. The state school board will meet Wednesday at 8:30 a.m. to discuss objections to the school, which was approved by the new state Charter School Commission. It is unlikely the state board will overrule the commission, which stands by its decision to approve Pataula.

Randolph letter

Early letter

Continue reading Randolph and Early counties: Charter school will increase segregation »

Dr. Susa Beckman Nahmias chairs the Georgia Parents for Responsible Health Education, an Atlanta-based non-profit organization working to improve sexuality education in Georgia’s schools. She and other health professionals are concerned about critical omissions in the state’s new performance standards for health education and she wrote this piece about those concerns:

Teens are becoming complacent about sex since we, as adults, do not talk to them about it. Parent-Child communication is essential – parents need to talk about their personal values to enable their children to develop their own. However, many parents feel ill-informed about the various aspects of sexuality and reproductive health, which is why it is vital that our schools provide students, in an age-appropriate manner, with the basic facts and with the skills to avoid risky sexual behavior.

Kids today desperately have to get this education to counteract misinformation, media in all its forms and peer pressure. …

Continue reading State standards for health ed have to include teen sexuality »

And you thought the governor didn’t care: Just in from the governor’s office:

ATLANTA – Governor Sonny Perdue announced today education legislation has been introduced that would increase pay for Georgia’s top teachers and principals, and increase the integrity of Georgia’s testing system.

“Boosting pay for Georgia’s top teachers is an idea whose time has come,” said Governor Perdue. “Focusing on student improvement with other measures like peer evaluations aligns state funding with our policy priority: improving the education of our students. The new pay model will help the state attract, reward, encourage and retain top teachers.”

Sen. Don Balfour, chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, is introducing SB 386, the Governor’s legislation to increase pay for high performing teachers and principals.

“This legislation rewards our All-Star teachers through higher pay,” said Senator Balfour. “These teachers go all the way for our students and should be rewarded …

Continue reading Governor: Raise pay for ‘All-Star’ teachers. Punish test cheats »

At the last House Education meeting Thursday, House Bill 908, the so-called expenditure flexibility bill,  was pared back to three areas in which desperate school systems can ignore the state mandates and spend the money where they see fit.

Those areas are media centers, the extra 20 days of instruction for struggling students and professional development.

Those three represent only a small slice of the state money coming to schools. Herb Garrett of the Georgia Superintendents Association used Cobb as an example and said those areas gave the county about $15 million to move elsewhere — out of $400 million. That $15 million would not make up for Cobb’s current austerity cut of $60 million, said Garrett.

The media centers – libraries in my day – sent a lobbyist to protest the cuts, but there wasn’t much hope as lawmakers want to give systems some leeway.  If they cut out media centers from the list, they are giving systems leeway over a bag of change.

This week, the big leeway …

Continue reading House Education Committee: Spending flexibility and reforming bad boards »

I admire the work done by Bob Schaeffer and FairTest as I think we need perspective on the testing frenzy that has gripped the country. He’s targeting National Merit testing and scoring now.

(By the way about testing, a bill is pending that would eliminate mandatory CRCTs in first grade here in Georgia. More on that later.)

I found this note from FairTest interesting because one of my kids ran into this issue. My oldest attended boarding school out of state on a scholarship and would have qualified for the National Merit pool in the state where the school was located but missed it by a few points because boarding schools as a group had a higher cutoff.

Until then, I had not been aware that the qualifying score varied state by state. So, for example, a 214 qualifies you for National Merit in Georgia, but you need a 221 in Massachusetts and Maryland. You only need a 201 in Wyoming and a 202 in Nevada and North Dakota.

Schaeffer is upset because the National Merit Scholarship …

Continue reading FairTest: National Merit criteria need public airing and review »

The intervention of a judge in an inquiry-based math curriculum adopted by the board of education took Seattle schools by surprise. The judge ordered the Seattle board to review its decision to approve the Discovering series of texts for teaching math, a decision that she called “arbitrary and capricious.”

According to the Seattle Times:

A King County Superior Court judge has ordered the Seattle School Board to take another look at its decision to use the Discovering Series of texts for teaching mathematics.

In a terse ruling Thursday, Judge Julie A. Spector called the decision to teach from the Discovering curriculum “arbitrary and “capricious.”

A group of parents had sued the school district, the School Board and district Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson to stop the books from being used in high schools.

“We’re very pleased,” said Cliff Mass, one of the plaintiffs.

“What we would hope is they would find the books they selected were a mistake and then replace the books …

Continue reading Seattle judge: Rethink inquiry-based math and textbooks »

In fighting approval of a regional charter school, southwest Georgia superintendents allege that the Pataula Charter Academy would signal a return to the era in Georgia when blacks and whites attended different schools.

The debate is re-opening old wounds of race and disparate education in districts still under court desegregation orders

One of seven charter schools — public schools that operate with greater autonomy in exchange for greater accountability — approved by a new state commission, Pataula plans to open in the fall as a regional public k-8 school. It will enroll 440 students from Randolph, Calhoun, Early, Clay and Baker counties. Some districts now want the state Board of Education to stop Pataula.
Along with drawing from the majority black schools in the region, Pataula is attracting students from two private academies, which are virtually all-white.

“Initially, you will see more urgency on the side of private school parents who are tired of paying tuition,” said …

Continue reading New regional charter school: Not a black/white issue »

A healthy dose of sense is missing from school discipline as demonstrated by the 12-year-old in New York handcuffed and taken to a police station for doodling on her desk. The girl wrote “Lex was here 2/1/10″ on her desk Monday. Education department spokesman David Cantor said the incident shouldn’t have happened, and that common sense should prevail. (Read story here.)

A Georgia state senator is saying the same thing about overreactions in Georgia schools. Here is a good op-ed on this issue by Sen. Emanuel Jones. (This will run in the print AJC on the Monday education page.)

By Emanuel Jones

There is a crisis in our schools, a crisis of common sense. What else do you call it when a well-behaved, 14-year-old boy is treated like a criminal for voluntarily turning in a pocket knife to his principal?

Zero tolerance policies often entrap good kids into a life of crime. I have introduced a legislative package to limit the abuse of zero tolerance policies and impose common …

Continue reading State senator wants to limit abuses of zero tolerance »