Georgia's 2018 Gubernatorial Candidates, pt. 1 - Education

I've been simultaneously excited and filled with dread about writing this post. You can check out the candidates' websites for yourself. It's Kemp vs. Abrams here in Georgia in a race for governor that's getting quite a lot of national attention.

As with the lieutenant governor post, I'll start with education since I've got 20 years experience in public education. I also have two children enrolled in public schools - one in middle school and one in high school. Additionally, I completed my Ed.D. last fall. Long story short...education matters a great deal to me.

The first thing I notice about Kemp's "education" page is that it's really a brief smear article about Abram's not paying taxes. The claims about Abram's tax situation are explained here. In a nutshell, she owes taxes and is on a repayment plan. Lee and I have been on a tax repayment plan for most of our married lives so I'm not sure this is as scandalous as the article on Kemp's page would have people to believe. 

After stomaching the "article" I scrolled on down to find a link to Kemp's various ideas about education. He states that literacy is a main concern of his. He notes that 63% of 3rd grade students are reading below grade level and "that means 1.7 million adults...have low literacy skills." I don't think 3rd grade reading levels are a direct cause of low literacy rates among nearly 2 million adults. I understand the paragraph to mean that low levels of childhood literacy may result in low levels of adult literacy, but I'm struggling with the inaccuracy of the wording.

Further down the page, I came across this paragraph:

Of course, I'm excited about the idea of getting a raise, but read that next paragraph. See the typo? Bothersome. Even more bothersome is the notion that "we will dismantle Common Core." I don't know what we can begin calling Common Core State Standards to get people off their ragey Facebook high horses, but Common Core isn't all bad. The students in the U.S. struggle to compete with students in other developed nations. The Common Core raised the bar for all students across the U.S. Georgia already bailed on the actual Common Core standards in favor of adopting the Georgia Standards of Excellence. So "dismantling the Common Core" is basically a direct appeal to the Facebook crowd who shares and likes all those silly posts about how they don't know how to do their kids' math anymore. Since Georgia doesn't really "do" the Common Core, are we planning to dismantle it for all the states who do? That seems to be a little ambitious and rude.

I'm down with respecting local control, but I don't know how Kemp is going to require local districts to "value teachers' time." Most of the "burdensome mandates" we face in education are truly aimed at improving education. The hoops we jump through to get students the services they need are a necessary evil...for now. When we have districts being sued because they over-identify African American males for special education then there should be some accountability. Do we in education like the measures that are put in place? Nope. But I'd rather do a stack of paperwork now if it helps a student avoid mis-identification into a program that is nearly impossible to escape.

Kemp speaks of preK programs and assures voters that he will protect lottery resources that fund preK and childcare facilities. He also promises to protect HOPE scholarships and makes a point to criticize Abrams saying that she will extend HOPE scholarships to illegal immigrants. I found an article from the local news station outlining the two stances. Basically, Abrams states that any student who has risen through the Georgia school system and is accepted into a Georgia college should be eligible for the HOPE scholarship. Kemp disagrees. I'd be interested to know how many students this actually affects. 

I did a little digging on the immigrant question. This post from 2017 stated that there were 69, 858 children who were immigrants (notice it doesn't say "illegal"). When I realized the data omitted "illegal" status, I went digging again and found this site. I did a little math because the data wasn't quite broken down to K-12 students. In the under 16 range there were 31,000 children. I divided that number by 16 to find how many children we might expect at each age 1-16 and that totaled 194. I multiplied 194 by 12 (the number of ages 5-16, i.e. school-aged children) and got 2,328. In the age range of 16-24, there were 59,000 people. I divided this number by 9 (the number of ages 16-24) and got 6,500. I multiplied 6,500 by 3 (ages 16, 17, 18 assuming these are school-aged kids) and got 19,500. Adding 19,500 and 2,328 I have a grand total of 21,828 school-aged children who are here illegally. If we divide the total down further to get an idea of how many high school seniors we're talking about it's 1,679 kids. According to this site, there were 321,551 college students enrolled in 2016. Let's say EVERY one of the 1,679 seniors decided to apply for the HOPE scholarship. First of all, they have to have a 3.0 to even apply. Those illegal seniors would account for LESS THAN 1% of the students in Georgia. So basically, all this blustering about the HOPE scholarship is for NOTHING. 

Next, I paid a visit to Abrams' page on education. Here's her plan in summary:

Again, some vague language and a typo to boot. Of course having a fully funded education system would be amazing and both candidates are calling for increased funding. I agree with everything on this list, although things like "give educators the tools they need" is kind of ridiculous...what does that even mean? I like Abrams' "Bold Action for a Brighter Future Plan" because it emphasizes affordable preK and childcare for all families. I cannot begin to explain here how devastating it is to children to miss out on preK, especially when they're coming from an economically disadvantaged family. I see kindergartners every day who begin school already behind their peers who attended preK. Abrams mentions closing tax loopholes and getting rid of the $58 million that supports private schools. I'm all for it. I work with teachers on a daily basis who spend their own pocket money to support projects and initiatives for the betterment of our public school students. 

Another tidbit that I didn't know until just last year...if your child is enrolled in private school, but you want special education testing done, you can drop them off at your assigned public school and we'll handle it for you. At no cost. And at our inconvenience. Never mind the students we have sitting in our already full classes, we'll stop what we're doing and test your kid. Additionally, when a student is placed in a residential program, guess who gets to continue keeping them on the roll for testing accountability?? You guessed it...the school they were districted for. Ya'll...there are things that go on in public education that just make no sense. Supporting private school students and students who don't physically attend my school is one thing I'm over. Pardon my tangent...

One last note before I wrap up this part of the blog, just in surfing the candidates' websites for education I was struck by the way one candidate tries to tear the other one down, while the opposing candidate focuses on issues. You can visit the sites yourself and see what you think.