You could look for years without finding a Georgia politician who’s done more to earn an “F” on their report card than state school Supt. Kathy Cox.
The latest discouraging development out of the Department of Education is the news that the average SAT college board score for Georgia students has declined for the third year in a row. Georgia still ranks firmly among the bottom five states on this education indicator.
Here’s how embarrassing it is: students in the southern states of Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and Kentucky all had higher average SAT scores than Georgia. Even Texas, where right-wing Christians on the state school board are trying to replace textbooks with biblical tracts, had a better score.
Even California, which is facing bankruptcy from multi-billion-dollar deficits and has made huge cutbacks in education spending, fared better than Georgia in the SAT rankings.
Honestly, how much more embarrassment will this state have to endure before the voters stop electing crooks (Linda Schrenko) and partisan hacks (Kathy Cox) as school superintendent?
Kathy Cox is not an evil person. She is not a criminal, as was Schrenko, a religious nutjob who stole $500,000 in federal funds for her 2002 campaign for governor and is now enjoying her leisure time in the federal prison system.
But Cox most definitely is an educator who didn’t have the guts to stand up to Sonny Perdue and protest his efforts to cut a combined $2 billion in state formula funding for local school systems. She is an extraordinarily weak-willed person who tried to remove from the science curriculum all references to evolution, the “Big Bang” and other scientific theories that upset the Christian fundamentalist wing of her party.
The most embarrassing incident of her two terms as superintendent may well have been when one of her top aides was being interrogated by lawyers in a school funding lawsuit. Here’s a transcript of what Cox’s aide told the attorney:
Attorney: Is science part of an adequate education?
Leonard: Not as required under No Child Left Behind.
Attorney: That is not really my question, ma’am. My question is, do you think science is part of an adequate education?
Leonard: You’re asking my personal opinion?
Attorney: Yes, I am.
Leonard: Not the department’s opinion?
Attorney: Correct.
Leonard: Yes, I think you can do without science.
Attorney: You think you can have an adequate education without any science education whatsoever?
Leonard: My opinion is that I can — I personally can live without science.
Attorney: My question is, do you believe that social studies is necessary for an adequate education in Georgia?
Leonard: Are you asking for my personal opinion?
Attorney: Yes, ma’am.
Leonard: Yes, I think you can fail social studies and get an adequate education.
Attorney: And, in fact, you believe that you can get an adequate education even if social studies isn’t provided, right?
Leonard: I would want children exposed to social studies.
Attorney: Now, you would want them exposed, but you don’t think it’s necessary?
Leonard: I would want them exposed to social studies, but I think they can succeed in the world without social studies, and that is my opinion, my personal opinion.
I’m not the smartest person in the world (after all, I was educated in Georgia’s public schools), but even I can see a connection between that kind of mindset and a public education system whose student scores keep going down year after year after year.
Of course, we should also mention Cox’s personal situation, which includes a bankruptcy filing that has tied up $1 million that was supposed to have been contributed to Georgia’s schools for the deaf and blind. Cox won that money on the TV show “Are you smarter than a 5th grader?” but her creditors are trying to get the funds before the deaf kids do. The publicity from that has brought even more embarrassment to Georgia — as well as raising the question, does a person who’s filed for personal bankruptcy have any business administering an agency with a $5.5 billion budget?
Is this really what Georgia needs for another term as school superintendent?
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