I live in a small city in Georgia. Georgia’s lottery has generated more than $6 billion over the last decade, allowing the state to offer full scholarships (tuition and books) for public universities to any student with a 2.5 GPA (they must have a 3.0 GPA to keep it each year), more money was spent on teachers salaries and classroom technology, and in general a golden era began. Except for the fact that it started the greatest sense of entitlement among college students imaginable while Georgia high school students have among the highest drop out rates and THE lowest SAT scores in the nation.
I am not aware of any education lottery anywhere significantly increasing student performance while, as mentioned above, here in Georgia performance has demonstrably decreased. What, in your opinion, is the reason for enormous amounts of “free money” not significantly increasing education quality or student incentives to learn?
I have my own opinions but I’ll withhold them until some others have posted.
Sampiro, this is of particular interest to me because I was a classroom teacher and Tennessee has just begun its lottery for the purpose of providing higher education.
In my opinion, raising teacher salaries without raising teacher standards is futile. Now that Georgia can pay for the best, they need to require teachers to pass stiff measures designed to weed out those not adequately prepared in their subject matter and in educational methods.
These better teachers should have more control over decision making for their classrooms. There is no reason why a Director of Curriculum and Instruction who majored in math at a state university with an ACT entrance requirement of a score of 11 should be telling a veteran language arts teacher from Stanford what methods to use. (Something similar happened at the school where I taught.)
Ultimately, students must be held to a much higher standard. An average grade should generally be a C – although I am not a stickler for the bell curve.
Any changing of grades other than by a teacher (or by a principal after a conference with the teacher) should be considered a crime punishable with heavy fines. (We had a problem with a guidance counselor changing grades on records in our school. One grade that she changed to passing was for a senior who had missed 45 days of my class and who had a numerical average of 18!)
Remedial classes shoud not be offered in college.
Just some thoughts from someone who has seen the corruption…
As a product of the Atlanta Public School system, alumnus of a Georgia public university (Go Jackets!) and beneficiary of the HOPE scholarship, I too find the paradox presented in the OP interesting. And mysterious.
I think I received a pretty good education (despite the preponderance of typos I constantly let leash on the SDMB!) But it didn’t come easy. My siblings and I did not attend neighborhood schools (which had the reputation for being crappy) and I think it helped that our parents are pretty well-educated themselves. It’s easy to say the system worked for me, damn the naysayers, but the truth is that I don’t know if my experience is typical or if I’m giving more credit to my schoolin’ than what’s due.
I think HOPE is a fabulous program. My sister and I would have gone to college without it, but I know many others who would have had to delay that little dream if not for the scholarship. I got HOPE when it was in its 2nd year, back when no one could forsee it becoming so controversial. It really is an entitlement program now, and it sickens me that rather than put income limits on it, jerks want to hike up the SAT score. I wouldn’t even mind if they put increases on the minimum GPA (though it was mighty hard keeping a 3.0 in college, and I would have certainly lost it if it had been much higher). But I don’t think an impressive SAT should be a requirement because this favors kids who need the money the least. I know that’s an unpopular sentiment in this day-and-age of competitive individualism. But to me it doesn’t make sense to cut out the people who need education the MOST. A kid with a 1400 SAT from a $100,000 household has few barriers to go to college. A kid with a 900 SAT from a $30,000 household could use a little HOPE. I don’t see that giving a kid in the latter situation a full scholarship rewards mediocrity if the grades are high enough, and if high performance is sustained in college.
My father is an elementary school principal in the richest county in Georgia (yeah, that one) but his school caters to some of the poorest kids in the state. Before he was at the school, his students repeatedly performed the worst on all the tests, especially in reading (most of the kids are ESL). Fortunately, he has made some strides by making reading the number one priority. Every classroom is equipped with a library and students’ stories and essays decorate all the walls. Lottery money can’t change one thing, though: these kids are poor. This is a reality for many schools in Georgia.
Also, the leadership of Georgia schools has always been questionable from my father’s point of view. I’m likely to agree with him after that whole evolution-is-a-bad-word thing.
It has been my understanding that the most significant predictive variables in determine the success of children in schools are: Parents’ eductional level, parents’ expectation level/invovlement in the schools, and teacher’s expectations of the students. Much less predictive is the amount of money spent.
Once you get to college, I firmly believe that students get out of their education what they put in. What matters is not so much which school you go to, but how much effort you put into your education. I’ve done a lot of hiring over the years, and learned from experience to pay less attention to the quality of the school an applicant attended and more attention to how the person exhibits the behavioral triats of a self-starter.
Basically, what Zoe and Mace said. Spending money isn’t enough; the money must be spent wisely.
As an obvious example, if Bob is a bad teacher with a low paycheck, giving him a raise will result in Bob being a bad teacher with a high paycheck. The smart thing to do is to hire Bob2, a good teacher, and give him a high paycheck.
Somehow, it wouldn’t surprise me if this is not what is happening.
The one thing I don’t understand, Zoe, is why remedial classes shouldn’t be offered at colleges. Could you explain why not?
School administrators should be responsible only to their local school boards. Idiot politicians should not be able to arbitrarily impose idiotic national policies on them, and asshat parents shouldn’t be able to make their lives miserable simply because their precious baby can’t spell his own name, and they refuse to let this be their own fault.
But wait: This won’t work.
Because if school administrators are freed of responsibility to local parents, some administrators (and, yes, teachers) will misuse that autonomy and completely fail to meet the needs of the local kids, upon forging sufficient political bonds with the school board that his job security is ensured. I’ve seen that happen.
And, of course, the idea that local schools should be autonomous of state and federal requirements is pretty absurd. We’d still have schools refusing to teach evolution (and more than a few teaching some really insane stuff about racism and the Civil War) if we had this.
So, instead, we have administrators trying desperately to comply with No Child Left Behind, despite a complete lack of funding for this compliance, and that’s when he can get a complete day’s work done without some drooling trailer trash mom or dad storming in and wanting to give him hell because Li’l Joon’yer is no better or smarter than his mom or dad, and why does the school permit this? I pay TAXES, you know!
In short, it’s a balance. It takes solid administrators, good teachers, and a school board with their heads screwed on straight.
Efficient.
Under Budget.
Compliant with all standards.
Hallelujah and praise Jeebus on that one. That is my number one irritation with HOPE- the lack of income requirement. This isn’t public money in the same way that taxes are- in fact, poor people probably spend more on the lottery than the upper-middle class and the wealthy. That should be reflected in the allocation as well.
Case in point: the majority (55-60%) of the students at the University of Georgia are from families that have incomes of more than $100,000 per year yet almost all receive free tuition, while according to a recent article there were more than 1,000 students at Georgia Southern from households with incomes of above $300,000 who were on full scholarship thanks to HOPE. While I realize that after taxes $100,000 may not be as much as it seems, it’s still enough to pay at least a portion of your kid’s tuition to a public university. There should be a sliding scale of eligibility for HOPE based on income, number of household members and any special circumstances (e.g. medical bills, legal fees, etc.) in which people who earn lower and middle class incomes are relatively unaffected but upper-middle and above are gradually weaned.
BTW, I agree with Zoe somewhat: I would end remedial classes at universities and four year institutions and restrict them to community colleges. You shouldn’t be allowed to attend a major institution if you’re not reasonably able to do the work.
But what about the situation in which, for example, I am able to do all the work at my public university of choice, even do most of it pretty darn well, except that I have a terrible background in, say, chemistry and need some catching up there.
Should I have to delay entrance into university for a year as I wander off to my local Harvard on the Hill just so I can catch up in that one subject? Even if the other classes I might take there are an utter waste of my time? Or would it be better for the university to accept me and put me through Chemistry for People Who Know No Chemistry?
There absolutely should be income restrictions on entitlement scholarships. Tenure for teachers and administrators should be done away with, and either limit remedial classes to community colleges or exempt them from scholarship monies. If a kid has to take a remedial class, they need to pay for it out their own pockets.
AFAIK, 'most every college has classes for People Who Know No Chemistry And Don’t Expect To Need It, as well as Chem. 101 for those who DO expect to need it. That is not remedial education. Remedial education is math and English at the high school level – the three R’s, basically, plus algebra and maybe a little trig. No one should BE in college without knowing these things. If you can’t read and write at a college level, you can’t pass ANY of your classes, and if you can’t do algebra, you can’t pass the breadth requirements for liberal arts majors, let alone major in a science.
:o Right. Call me a delusional idiot, if you like, who’d forgotten that it’s actually possible to graduate from high school while lacking the three R’s.