Education Reform In The News -- Excerpt

PARENTS STILL DON'T HAVE MANY OPTIONS
Staff Editorial
The Atlanta Journal, January 18, 2000

REFORMING public education in Georgia should be a two-pronged approach. Yes, we must do all we can to revive and save the public schools, particularly failing ones. At the same time, children trapped in schools in crisis must be given a way out as we wait hoping improvement will take hold.

        Gov. Roy Barnes has taken on half of that approach with the unveiling of his much-anticipated education plan last week. The A+ Education Reform Act offers a host of aggressive proposals for bringing accountability to schools, ranging from ending tenure for new teachers, grading the quality of each school and testing pupils to see if they are learning.

        Those are important elements for a reform plan. To ensure quality schools, we must weed out incompetent teachers, mark the progress of each school and analyze whether students are mastering skills appropriate for their grade.

        Barnes' plan to grade schools --- with grades ranging from A to F - -- will provide the information parents need about whether their neighborhood school meets standards and if it is making progress. They then should be able to use that information to make decisions about whether they want their children to stay in that school or enroll them elsewhere. But that would require one element that is missing from his education package: a scholarship program for children trapped in failing public schools to enroll in a private one (also known as the Early HOPE scholarship).

        The governor is only willing to go as far as public school choice; he will offer children in failing schools the ability to transfer to another public school in the district. "Yawn," said Jeanne Allen, executive director of the Center for Education Reform in Washington. "That still puts control in the hands of schools and not parents. You aren't giving them much of a choice."

        The threat of competition from the private sector will do more to motivate school-based reform than any transfer plan.

        The governor's ideas to fix what's broken about public education have strong merits. But in the meantime, there is a crisis at hundreds of schools, affecting thousands of pupils, across the state. Barnes himself said last week he believes that 40 percent of Georgia's 1.4 million pupils do not have skills appropriate for their grade level. Barnes proclaimed to lawmakers in his education address last week: "Students should not be forced to attend a school that is failing them. They should have a choice."

        We agree. Proceed with fixing our 1,823 public schools, but in the meantime, give parents all the options possible. Give them public and private choices.

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