Saturday, May 06, 2006

What Did Perdue Do??

Yesterday, Sonny was touting his achievements in public education, and (after I finished laughing) I clicked my ruby shoes together and repeated "please, please , please let this election be about education."

What has Sonny done to make our schools better? There's been no measurable progress in test scores, and we continue to lose four of ten children between ninth grade and the graduation stage. (Some people refer to these children "disappearing." Don't fret: they did not disappear. Many of them are in jail.)

So, this problem did not crop up yesterday. It's not as if Sonny became Governor and then, to his surprise, discovered that we were tending the nation's educational basement. No, he knew what he was getting, and yet, he has put forward no bold policy initiatives to improve the situation.

And NO the 65% Deception does not count because it is election strategy not education strategy. He also does not get to count election year class-size reductions and long postponed teacher raises. Those initiatives were in place when he took over- he just postponed progress for three years. $100 gift cards???Don't get me started. How insulting to our hard working teaching professionals!

The Perdue education legacy will be shifting more and more cost to local districts while Atlanta exerts more and more control over local decisions
.

The relative cost share for local school districts is rising, and when asked about how districts would managed the increased costs of his unfunded mandates, Perdue responded that they would "find the money." (Bibb will need 8-9 million, so whoever knows how to "find" that is my new best friend.) "They'll figure it out." That's Perdue's bold strategy. Oh, my, we need a new Governor!

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2 comments:

Ataru Atlanta said...

I think we all know just how badly Perdue has botched education in this state; the hard part will be cutting through the smoke and mirrors he's put in front of the voters.

Amy Morton said...

Yes, but I think that his "ask a teacher" line in the Macon paper today will backfire. I think that teachers do "get it."