The worst political reporter in Georgia digests Nathan Deal’s initial education plans:
Republican gubernatorial hopeful Nathan Deal wants to let teachers decide when to give required standardized tests in their classrooms and to promote students midyear if they’re ready. […] Deal also said he favors greater efforts by schools to tackle childhood obesity by serving locally grown vegetables and requiring more daily exercise.
That’s pretty thin gruel for a subject that consumes 56% of the states budget (pdf warning), in a state where teachers are being furloughed. Although, for someone who has devoted a paltry 137 words to education on the “vision” section of the campaign site, assuming any expectation at all for Deal on this subject is kind of silly. For comparative purposes, Deal devoted 341 words to illegal immigration – something he would have very little influence over.
On the substance, though, the early promotion idea feels at best irrelevant and at worst just plain stupid as a formal policy statement. For instance, my wife and I had our oldest daughter promoted a grade level over a decade ago after moving into a new school district. The old district had a split curriculum, and our daughter was going crazy covering the same materials she had already learned. If the local school systems have that flexibility today, exactly what does Deal’s plan do?
Also, the rationale as described in the article – to keep kids from becoming disinterested and dropping out – doesn’t apply at all (to my situation or the 5th/6th grade example Deal himself uses in the story). Actually, I could think of a number of reasons that cause kids to drop out of school, and being too smart for the grade level doesn’t seem likely to be on the list. Perhaps I’m just missing something.
If this is a preview of what to expect when Deal brings “teh educashun”… color me unimpressed.
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