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Building Administrators Making a Difference in Georgia Education - Alan Long     Alan Long is Principal at Jefferson County High School in Louisville GA.  He began his teaching career as a coach and PE teacher 28 years ago, and has served as a school administrator for 10 years.  Alan raised his two sons as a single parent, and is proud of the fact both of them volunteered for military service after high school.  “They took my ideas of service to another level” he said, “and I am very proud of their accomplishments.”  He was elected to serve as President of the Georgia Association of Secondary School Principals and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Georgia Association of Educational Leaders.  Under Alan’s leadership GASSP has placed finalists in the NASSP High School and Middle School Principal of the Year process 6 of the last 8 years. He was encouraged by a former Principal to become an administrator, and took the opportunity...

No Governor Left Behind - Part Deux     Name a state program or agency that you would describe as a model of efficiency, effectiveness and progress.  I know.  Me neither.  One of the last solutions anybody would come up with that really wanted to solve a problem would be more governmental involvement. So why does Governor Deal think that a new state agency disguised as the Opportunity School District would fare any better?  I’m not sure he does.  I think he promised himself into an educational corner during the heat of an election and had to come up with something, and Bobby Jindal happened to visit on his way to Washington and said “you should see what we pulled off in New Orleans.  We nearly doubled the number of charter schools and things are going so well I might even run for President.”  But wait a minute.  Are things in New Orleans really going that well for education?  In the early fall of 2014 the Cowen Instit...

Building Administrators Making a Difference in Georgia Education - Richard Green     The role of the building Principal in providing an effective and meaningful educational experience for students has long been recognized as a key to school success.  Great schools do not happen by accident, and are always the result of the vision, planning, hiring effectiveness and leadership skills of the building Principal.  One such leader is Richard Green, Principal of Aaron Cohn Middle School in Columbus, a new addition to the Muscogee County School District.  ACMS is in its second year of operation, and Richard was appointed its educational leader by the MCSD Board before the building was finished.  The building is located on Garrett Road in Midland, and is within the boundaries of Muscogee County.  ACMS has 34 teachers, 2 administrators, a total staff of 63 and 546 students grades 6-8.  About 36% of the students are FRL (free or reduced lunch...

    There’s a wolf in the closet.  He’ll stay there until after the elections, but somebody will open the door for him once the votes are in.  Count on it.  Both candidates for Governor of the state of Georgia have expressed an interest in letting this wolf out, and once out he won’t go back in again.  The lure of $59 billion dollars, regardless of the source of those funds and especially in the ethically challenged Georgia system of politics, is just too much for politicians to ignore.  Both candidates might hem and haw and say they would only use the money “with the backing of teachers and the TRS board of directors,” but that’s Georgia politics at its finest.  Tell the voters what you think they want to hear before the election, and forget you ever said it once you’re in office.  If that doesn’t work, blame someone else for following through on what you really wanted in the first place.     The Georgia...

The Option Game     Supporters of the accountability movement in public education have had 13 years of test driven “reform” to prove their point.  It should be obvious now that 13 years of accountibalism have produced no positive results. If you believe that test scores accurately reflect teaching and learning in our public schools then you also must accept those scores have not shown a positive effect.  If you believe the SAT is reflective of student achievement then 13 years of test and retest and test again have been an abysmal failure in serving as anything other than a reliable predictor of family income.  In spite of the continued demand for “choice” by the professional accountabullies - those that insist that standardized testing is the only way to hold public education accountable - the only success stories they can point to are the gigantic growth of the educational testing industry and draining millions of tax dollars fr...

Governor Deal’s suggestion that Georgia “look at” a recovery school district modeled after the one in New Orleans has raised more than a few eyebrows in our state.  Louisiana, where Advanced Placement exam results for 2013 are ahead of only Mississippi, is known more for LSU football and Duck Dynasty than public education..  Higher National Assessment of Educational Progress scores in 2013 still leave the state at the bottom of the national scorecard, and the US Chamber of Commerce report in 2014 graded the state educational system with an A for choice but a D or F in academic achievement, international competitiveness and workforce preparation.  Less than 20% of Louisiana students met Programme for International Student Assessment requirements for reading and math standards, and recent gains in LEAP (Louisiana Educational Assessment Program) and iLEAP (integrated Louisiana Educational Assessment Program) state tests were due to Louisiana Department of Education manipula...

Truth and Consequences      There were 1,615,066 students in Georgia public schools k-12 and 120,660 teachers to teach them in 2009.  In 2013 the GADOE reported 1,657,506 students and 111,401 public school teachers k-12.  Anyway you count it, public education has lost 9,000 teachers and class sizes have increased in Georgia public schools.  Add to that issue six years with no raises, layoffs or RIF's in many systems, furloughs that actually take money out of teachers’ pockets to help systems cope with decreased state funds, higher property taxes, loss of planning time, the elimination of professional development funds, the lack of instructional funds, the elimination of band, chorus, orchestra, art and elective classes, the destruction of motivation and creativity through the institution of phony reforms, a continuation of the “blame the teacher” mindset, an insistence on teaching to the test, by the test and for the test, the growing numbers of ch...