AJC.com > Blogs > Get Schooled > Archives > 2007 > December
December 2007
IE2 Update: Just In Time For The New Year
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The governor’s 3-year-old Education Finance Task Force — which goes by the catchy little title “IE2,” which stands for Investing in Educational Excellence — will meet next Monday to finalize recommendations on how best to structure the state’s education funding formula.
You may recall that many of the plan’s details — remember the performance model? — have been discussed publicly for months.
Chairman Dean Alford told me this morning that the proposal isn’t likely to change much before it reaches Gov. Sonny Perdue’s desk next week. And Alford still expects the recommendations to be turned into some bills for the Legislature to consider when it reconvenes the following week.
Joe Martin, executive director of the Consortium For Adequate School Funding in Georgia, which has sued the state for not properly funding public schools, supports many details of the task force’s plan.
But, he told me, the governor’s group still hasn’t addressed what Martin sees as the core issue — that is, how to adequately fund public schools. With the threat of additional austerity cuts looming in the next state budget (not to mention all the talk of eliminating some school property taxes), Martin believes his organization’s lawsuit against the state is more important than ever.
“After three years of work by a lot of good people — and a lot of hard work, I should be fair in saying — you may be impressed more by what you don’t see,” Martin said of the expected task force recommendations, “than what you do see.”
UPDATE: Turns out, task force members aren’t going to recommend what to do about the funding formula after all. Instead, they’re only expected to recommend that state lawmakers allow more flexible spending rules for school systems. When they’ll decide what to do about the outdated formula, which was created in 1985, is anybody’s guess.
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Tracking Troubled Teachers: Shouldn’t More Be Done?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Last week, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune published a confidential national database that includes names of teachers who have been professionally sanctioned at some point in their careers.
Created for the National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification, the purpose of the database was to help track rogue educators — particularly those who may have harmed children — and prevent them from obtaining teaching jobs in other states, if necessary.
Now Georgia officials — who were actively involved in creating the so-called Clearinghouse — are concerned the whole effort may be abandoned because the searchable database was based on voluntary state sharing agreements, which included a provision that the information not be made public.
“Odds are that the whole thing’s probably going to fall apart,” Gary Walker, director of the Educator Ethics Division at the Georgia Professional Standards Commission, told me.
Currently, when a teacher from another state applies for a teaching certificate here, investigators at the PSC run the name against the database. If there’s a match, they call the state where the teacher was flagged and find out what the problem was.
Walker said many of the database cases from Georgia (nearly 3,000) involve ethical, but not necessarily criminal, violations, such as defaulting on a student loan. But he also cited several examples where sex offenders were caught before they were given new jobs because the database acted as a warning system.
I spoke with one metro Atlanta teacher whose name was listed in the Clearinghouse. A former physical education teacher, she told me she had broken her contract two years ago to take a job as a computer support specialist. Her certificate was suspended for about six months, she said, but now is in good standing.
Needless to say, she was horrified her name was included in a database alongside those of child predators. She also was alarmed her identity (name and date of birth) had been exposed by the Florida newspaper’s actions.
“It doesn’t seem fair and it doesn’t seem right that I should be compromised in that way,” she said.
I personally don’t understand why the database wasn’t tailored to include only the most severe cases of teacher misconduct. Then, perhaps, the privacy concerns would be less of an issue.
Walker said there’s a possibility that could happen in the future if the current sharing agreements crumble. But, he added, a new database would take time to develop.
The question: How many students would be put at risk in the meantime?
UPDATE: In a not-altogether-unrelated story, a first-year social studies teacher in Gwinnett County recently resigned his job just two days before being charged with the sexual assault and battery of a female student.
Let’s Ban Big-Box Schools
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It seems like we’re constantly bombarded with stories and studies proclaiming how bad public schools are.
Teachers are targeted as being, at best, ill trained or, at worst, too lazy to get a “real job.” Politicians are blamed because they’re uninformed about what goes on inside schools — or they’re corrupt.
Then we hear parents are the problem because they aren’t involved; students themselves are lazy.
We read how the only real problem with education is student discipline. That our problems all stem from a lack of funding or class size or poor administrators or …
Well, you get the picture.
There may be some merit in all those claims. I think many of our educational ills can be chalked up to one simple explanation: the size of our schools.
In metro Atlanta, we are trying to provide an education to literally thousands of students under one roof.
We used to have high schools that served 300 to 600 students. Today’s megacampuses have that many kids in a single grade. And entire schools sometimes exceed 4,000 students — at least in Gwinnett County.
When I was growing up, we actually learned, often in classes with more than 30 students. But our schools overall were small.
Why can’t we start building smaller, more manageable schools again? Aren’t the potential benefits worth any cost?
Today’s guest blogger, a Buford father and businessman, is a regular contributor to Get Schooled. If you would like to be a guest blogger here, please send an entry to bgutierrez@ajc.com. Include the words “guest blog” in the e-mail’s subject field.
Teachers: How Motivated Are You?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
State Rep. Jan Jones (R-Alpharetta) penned a guest editorial in today’s InsiderAdvantage political newsletter calling for “real change” in public education. (Another version of her column ran in Monday’s AJC.)
“To fix education, Georgia has to venture off the soft sofa of an entrenched public education system and into the uncomfortable,” Jones wrote.
So Jones offered a “to-do” list for her fellow lawmakers, presumably for the coming session, including creating policies that put more emphasis on finding and keeping quality teachers.
For starters, she suggests offering “generous” merit pay for educators who can show their worth and ending across-the-board “Soviet-style” pay raises.
Jones also wants to do away with stipends for teachers who earn advanced degrees (master’s degrees or doctorates) that have nothing to do with their classroom work and use the budget savings to provide higher pay to lure teachers to tough-to-fill jobs (in math and science, in particular).
Certainly, a debate on the merits of merit pay would provide for an interesting legislative session. But I’m skeptical whether that would happen in an election year.
If it does, there’s one niggling question that needs to be answered. That is, whether basing salaries on students’ test scores will really motivate teachers to teach.
UPDATE: Coincidentally, AJC editorial writer Maureen Downey had a similarly themed piece in today’s Opinion section. Downey also wants to see state legislators focus on creating a better teaching force partly by using merit pay: “Georgia must abandon its one-size-fits-all raises that assure the lackluster teachers are overpaid and inspiring ones underpaid.”
‘Tis Better To Give…
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Remember when Ralphie from “A Christmas Story” brought in a huge basket of fruit for his teacher, Miss Shields, just before his “What I Want For Christmas” essay was due?
Well, the gift-giving didn’t exactly work out for Ralphie. If memory serves, he got a C or D on that assignment.
But, if you’re still in the mood to give a little this holiday season, consider sending a guest blog to Get Schooled. The more, the merrier!
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Are You Smarter Than A 12th-Grader?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
For a while now, I’ve been curious about just how difficult the state’s End of Course Tests are — and how I personally might score on them.
You may recall that these are the exams the State Board of Education is considering using as the new high school diploma tests.
Currently, the standardized assessments are given at the end of eight high school courses (hence, the name) and the results count as 15 percent of a student’s final grade.
Teenagers generally fare far worse on the EOCTs than on the Georgia High School Graduation Tests. And they do particularly poorly in economics, which has among the lowest passing rates of all the end-of-course exams. This past spring, 33 percent of Georgia public school students who took the exam (many of them 12th graders) flunked.
So I decided to go ahead and take the economics test to see what all the fuss was about. (One caveat: The only practice exam available to the public is from 2004.)
Now, I haven’t taken economics since college (many, many moons ago), and that was only an introductory course. So I think it’s safe to say that I didn’t have an unfair advantage — especially because economics is not my strong suit.
How did I do?
I got a whopping 75 percent correct! And I took the exam in exactly 57 minutes, even though students would have gotten two hours. Not bad, if I do say so myself.
OK, now you try. Then, while you’re gloating over your own score, ask yourself: How come so many kids fail this test? Or any of the other subject tests for that matter.
I mean, is the state really asking students to do too much?
Got Yo’ Posse?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A well-established — not to mention unusual — education foundation has come to Atlanta to find promising high school seniors other college recruiters typically overlook.
The Posse Foundation, which began in New York in 1989 and now operates in five other cities, seeks out kids who may not have the highest GPAs or SAT scores, but who have oodles of potential. Posse staffers match the teenagers with some of the country’s best colleges and universities, which are looking to diversify their traditional applicant pools.
Last week, I attended the awards ceremony for Atlanta’s first 24 Posse scholars (chosen from nearly 500 applicants), who will go to either Boston University or The College of Wooster next year on full, four-year tuition scholarships.
To say there wasn’t a dry eye in the house would be an understatement. One single mother compared the scholarship to winning the Lottery. Another parent, a widower, choked up as he talked about what it meant for his son.
“I told his mother that I would do everything to make sure he was a success,” he said. “Posse came along and made it so easy.”
Not only do the lucky teens get a nearly free college education (and any extra financial aid needed), they’ll also have personal mentors and career counselors to work with them during the next four years.
Posse gets its name from a simple concept that founder Deborah Bial developed years ago after she saw too many bright, inner-city students drop out of college. At the time, she was working in a youth leadership program in New York city. One day, one of her students confided that he wouldn’t have left school if he had had his “posse” with him.
Bial thought: Wouldn’t it be great to send groups of these kids to school together so they had more support and a better chance of graduating? Nineteen years later, she claims a 90 percent graduation rate for her scholars — compared to fewer than 50 percent for Georgia’s college freshmen.
Certainly, it’s hard to argue with statistics like that. But there actually are some critics of the program. Both Rice and Lehigh universities previously were partner schools, according to an Education Week article from March 22, 2000, that I read. But they later pulled out, saying the kids weren’t prepared academically.
Boston University’s vice president for enrollment and student affairs assured me that she was confident the kids could do the work — even if she had made allowances for less-than-stellar SAT scores.
Only time will tell, of course, how many of them succeed.
UPDATE: I just got an e-mail from a local gentleman who said he first learned of Posse through Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, where he was a trustee. This is what he had to say about the program:
“The other side of the Posse story is what happens when these kids get to campus. The eight months of training that they go through leaves them as well prepared for college life as any entering freshman and really better prepared than the majority. So far, 100 percent of our Posse Scholars have graduated in four years. While there, these kids start things and become leaders of established campus activities. The annual Posse Plus retreat has become a significant event in the intellectual life of the campus. All this from kids Lafayette never would have reached without Posse.”
Another Math Moment
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I know we’ve talked about the state’s new, controversial math program quite a lot this school year, but I would be remiss if I did not point out the latest effort of the Georgia Department of Education to win over skeptical parents.
Over the past several weeks, department officials have been “populating” (their word) the state Web site with all manner of things related to the math implementation. They’ve even created a new URL — www.georgiamath.org — so parents can easily find the new, one-stop mathematics shop.
So what’s there?
Well, can you listen to State Superintendent of Schools Kathy Cox explain why the math curriculum had to be revamped; read a testimonial from the chancellor of the university system extolling the importance of more rigorous classes; and view a rainbow-colored chart comparing the new and old academic standards, among other brochures and PowerPoint presentations.
Will you learn anything new?
Probably not. But let me know if you do.
ITBS: What’s It Good For?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A DeKalb County mother e-mailed me the other day about the latest Iowa Tests of Basic Skills scores for her public school system.
She was interested in them — particularly for eighth-graders — because she’s concerned Georgia’s new math curriculum is hurting kids’ skills.
Turns out, DeKalb’s eighth-grade math scores on the ITBS dropped in about half of the county’s middle schools this year. In the other half, the scores held steady or improved.
So what does this tell us?
The mother took this as evidence that the curriculum was having a negative effect on her sons’ math ability, and she worried that it might be hurting other kids academically, too.
“My sons cannot add and subtract fractions and decimals, which are skills they should have learned in fifth and sixth grades,” she wrote. “And, yes, these skills are required for the SAT.”
Coincidentally, the ITBS came up during a committee meeting for the State Board of Education last week. Glynn County schools officials had asked for a reprieve from giving eighth-graders the science and social studies portions of the tests this year because they needed more instructional days.
This led to a discussion about whether the requirement that systems give the ITBS annually (in third, fifth and eighth grades) should be done away with altogether.
One member said teachers don’t use the data anyway — that it’s worthless in identifying what skills students need to work on; another noted that it doesn’t give parents much information, either.
“Almost every system out there feels the same way,” said board member Mary Sue Murray, a retired teacher. “It’s a waste of five days.”
Now, as I understand it, the ITBS is a test that shows how students stack up against one another across the United States. But, because of the way the test is designed, 50 percent of the students will always score below the average and 50 percent will always score above.
That’s because ITBS simply looks at how your child scored compared to the other scores at that time — not against a set national standard.
So the test isn’t showing how well your kid knows math. It’s showing how well your kid knows math when compared to all the other kids. They all could have done poorly on the exam. But if your son or daughter did slightly better than the rest, he or she would rise to the top percentiles.
So, if that’s true, then why do we need the ITBS?
Fulton Overpaid Teachers, Seeks Repayment
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Talk about the Grinch who stole Christmas.
Just days before the holiday break, Fulton County Schools officials are informing some teachers they’ve been overpaid by accident and that the extra money must be returned.
According to education reporter Michelle Shaw’s story about the mixup, Fulton officials say that only about 1 percent or 77 of the county’s public school teachers were involved. Still, some of them are expected to fork over as much as $17,000 — over time, of course.
So tell me what’s more amazing: That the payroll mistake, which apparently occurred five years ago, hadn’t been discovered until now or that some teachers didn’t notice they were making more than they should have?
Private School Parents Want Vouchers Too
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Some private school parents are pushing for an expansion of the eligibility criteria for the state’s months-old voucher program.
Special education students must have attended public school last year for the entire academic year to be eligible for the Georgia Special Needs Scholarship. So those who transferred to private schools before the end of the school year couldn’t qualify for the government-backed, private school tuition grants.
Many families who tried public school but then opted for a private education say that’s unfair. Still, it’s doubtful there will be any changes to the program anytime soon.
While reporting my latest article, I spoke with the Legislature’s leading voucher proponents about the possibility of opening eligibility to families who barely missed qualifying this year.
Neither state Sen. Eric Johnson (R-Savannah) nor state Rep. David Casas (R-Lilburn) believed there would be enough money in the state budget next year to accommodate those requests.
Private school parents frequently complain about paying school taxes and not having their own children benefit from those dollars. This, I think, is at the heart of the debate on school vouchers.
Some people think their tax dollars should be spent for their own good. Others believe tax dollars are meant to pay for the so-called greater good.
Who’s right?
Clayton’s Accreditation Woes Intensify
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Officials at the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools are appointing a “special review team” to conduct an on-site investigation of Clayton County Public Schools.
According to a letter from SACS, which was sent to system officials today and obtained by Clayton government reporter Megan Matteucci, the investigative team will make recommendations about whether the system can keep its accreditation.
SACS officials have received complaints from four board members as well as members of the community in recent weeks that have raised serious questions about the school board’s ability to lead the 52,717-student system.
I’m beginning to wonder whether the state — either the governor, Legislature or State Superintendent of Schools Kathy Cox — will intervene before it’s too late.
UPDATE: For more on Clayton’s ongoing saga, check out Megan’s latest stories from this weekend, including one article explaining the SACS investigation and another about the reasons SACS is stepping in.
Audit: Out-Of-Staters Get Too Much In-State Tuition
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A recent review by the state’s Department of Audits and Accounts found that out-of-state students attending Georgia’s public colleges and universities are getting in-state tuition rates more often than they should.
According to the report released last Friday, “vague policies” and “poor practices” by higher education officials are costing Georgia taxpayers at least $2 million each term.
Auditors determined that more than a quarter (28.1 percent) of the out-of-state students, who were re-classified as in-state students for tuition purposes, shouldn’t have been because there was no proof that they had established residency here.
What’s more, about a quarter (24 percent) of these out-of-staters were receiving the HOPE scholarship — which adds another $73,216 to the state’s tab every term.
According to our story about the review, Chancellor Erroll B. Davis Jr., who oversees Georgia’s 35 public colleges and universities, has promised to ensure that out-of-state tuition waivers are applied only in limited circumstances.
With the next legislative session just weeks away, anyone want to venture a guess as to whether state lawmakers will try to do that for him?
Tutoring Firms: Worth The Cost?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Another private tutoring firm has been kicked off the state’s list of approved providers, potentially sending hundreds of families scrambling to find new tutors in the midst of a school year.
Members of the State Board of Education removed Stone-Mountain based Fabric of America from the program Thursday morning, saying the company had not conducted a criminal background check on one employee.
Representatives of the tutoring firm, which was working with roughly 700 students (they say) in seven school systems — including Atlanta, Cobb, Clayton, DeKalb and Fulton — said it was all a misunderstanding. The employee in question wasn’t an employee at all, Vice President Domonique Scott told me, but rather a job candidate who was never hired.
State officials paid the company a surprise visit last month after receiving numerous complaints from school system administrators and parents. Investigators said they found one employee working at the site who did not have a criminal background check in his personnel file — a state requirement.
Since 2002, the Supplemental Educational Services program has provided extra, private, free tutoring for kids attending public schools that fail to meet academic standards under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Last school year, more than $9.2 million in federal funds went to private tutoring companies working in the program here in Georgia.
The question: Is that money being spent wisely?
Student Brings Loaded Gun To Middle School
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A Cobb County seventh-grader was caught with a loaded handgun on campus yesterday.
The boy, who has not been named, attended Garrett Middle School in Austell. According to Diane Stepp’s story today, he will be expelled for violating the school system’s zero-tolerance weapons policy.
Every school year we have incidents of students bringing guns to campus. Although we don’t hear about it every day, in recent years there’s been almost as many handguns and rifles confiscated at public schools in Georgia (150 or more) as there are school days (180).
The question: Is anyone doing anything to stop it?
What Makes A School Work?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Several years ago, The Dallas Morning News published a series of articles called, “Schools That Work.” In an age of accountability, where we so often hear about what’s wrong with schools, the articles sought to put a spotlight on those that got it right.
I started thinking about this after reading Maureen Downey’s editorial yesterday, which argued that what makes some public schools work is the principals and teachers inside of them.
Last week, I visited F.L. Stanton Elementary School in Atlanta to find out why that campus performs so well when compared with other inner-city schools — which serve equally high levels (near 100 percent) of poverty-stricken students.
Principal Marlo Barber told me it’s a result of dedicated, creative teachers, who go the proverbial extra mile for students, as well as the children themselves, who come to school disciplined and ready to learn.
As I write this, I can’t help wondering whether a school’s success actually depends on whether a multitude of factors — a strong principal, committed teachers, willing pupils, for example — align. So tell me: What makes your school work? And would it still be successful if you took one of those elements away?
16,480 Lose HOPE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The number of HOPE-eligible public high school graduates has fallen 35.7 percent this year because of tougher grade point average requirements.
According to final figures from the Georgia Student Finance Commission, which I obtained this week, the number of scholarship-eligible students plummeted from 46,107 in the class of 2006 to 29,627 in the class of 2007.
That’s 16,480 students who might have qualified under the old rules that didn’t this year.
The proportion of HOPE scholars (compared to the overall size of the graduating class) also fell substantially — just 39.4 percent of 75,223 seniors pulled high enough grades to meet the new, stringent 3.0 standard this year. In 2006, when the scholarship was still based on a ‘B’ average and fewer classes, nearly 62 percent were deemed HOPE eligible.
In metro Atlanta, the percentages of HOPE students varied widely by school system. Most had fewer than half of their students qualify:
Fayette County: 60 percent
Forsyth County: 55 percent
Buford City: 52 percent
Decatur City: 49 percent
Fulton County: 48 percent
Cobb County: 47 percent
Gwinnett County: 42 percent
Coweta County: 41 percent
Rockdale County: 39 percent
DeKalb County: 36 percent
Marietta City: 35 percent
Douglas County: 35 percent
Clayton County: 35 percent
Cherokee County: 33 percent
Henry County: 32 percent
Atlanta City: 32 percent
It’s The Community, Stupid
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Last week, Jamie Vollmer — a former Iowa businessman who says he once sold the “Best Ice Cream in America” — spoke to Georgia school board members and superintendents about how to fix their public schools.
Vollmer, who gave up the ice cream scoops and now makes a living as a professional speaker, admits he used to be a harsh critic of the nation’s school systems. But, after working with the Iowa Business and Education Roundtable in the late 1980s and early 1990s, he became one of their biggest allies.
His bottom line: That the main problem with America’s public schools is not teachers or administrators, but rather the lack of community trust and support.
His solution: Build a better relationship with the community — not just parents, but all neighbors — so that reforms can happen and schools can improve.
“After doing this for 18 years … I’ve learned one thing for sure: You cannot do this by yourself,” he said. “The folks in Georgia have no idea how hard this job is. This is the most challenging group of students ever to walk through those classroom doors. …
“So you need community understanding. You need community trust. … You need community commitment … [And] you need community permission to do things differently.”
Honestly, I think this is the first time I’ve ever heard someone blame the public as a whole for the failings of public schools. But Vollmer — who has the delivery of a well-honed stand-up comic — presented a persuasive argument.
Most educators are trying to do what’s best for the kids, he said, but parents, politicians and others keep getting in the way. If those naysayers only got closer to the schools and better understood the challenges public campuses face, they’d be more willing to give their support to make necessary changes — including possibly implementing year-round school (oh my!).
The question: How do you engage the larger community in a conversation about improving public schools, when that community doesn’t want to be involved?
Dress Codes: What’s The Point?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Saggy pants are under attack again — this time from the Atlanta Board of Education, which is expected next week to ban the popular, underwear-baring style from the city’s public schools.
Board member Brenda Muhammad brought the issue to the school board after working with the so-called Saggy Pants Task Force, started by Atlanta City Councilman C.T. Martin earlier this year.
“A lot of people have different opinions about it,” Muhammad acknowledged in an interview last night. “But in the school system … we’re trying to get kids ready for the work world.”
Atlanta’s student dress code policy already outlaws “baggy oversize clothing.” Now, the rules for acceptable dress also will bar “sagging shorts or trousers” to crack down on teens who favor ill-fitting jeans.
“In support of student success,” the policy states, “the Atlanta Board of Education sets expectations for student dress and grooming to avoid disruption of the instructional process, violation of health and safety standards, and offense of common standards of decency.”
So tell me: If you want a teenager to learn and grow and become more mature, why take away one of the few areas where they can express their individuality? After all, don’t teachers and parents still teach kids it’s not appearance that matters, but rather the character within?
School Taxes In Speaker’s Cross Hairs
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I was told every time state House Speaker Glenn Richardson talks about his GREAT plan — for eliminating property taxes in Georgia — something changes. His latest speech, at the education conference I attended Friday, didn’t disappoint.
Now, instead of eliminating all property taxes in one fell swoop and replacing them with increases in sales taxes, Richardson announced he’s scaling down by suggesting the elimination of only school system-imposed property taxes (and only those paid by homeowners) as well as taxes on personal vehicles.
“It is not a total elimination of property taxes,” he said. “It is to give everybody an idea that this will work.”
Not surprisingly, many superintendents and school board members were less than impressed with Richardson’s newest proposal, which they had opposed in its other forms. Some that I talked to were downright incredulous the speaker would suggest partially eliminating school property taxes as a way of testing his idea.
“Why start with us?” asked Jim Simms, superintendent of the Clarke County School District, which includes Athens.
Others view Richardson’s ideas as an attempt to negate Georgia’s 181 local boards of education, which have increasingly relied on property taxes to raise funds since the governor and Legislature instituted so-called austerity cuts.
“When you’ve eliminated the school boards,” Emmett Johnson, vice chairman of the Atlanta Board of Education, told me, “you’ve done what you set out to do.”
Richardson’s remarks were perhaps the most anticipated of the conference. But many of the 900 attendees left with more questions than answers — including, how would state officials determine how much sales tax revenue each school system should receive?
Jack Parish, the outgoing superintendent in Henry County and current president of the Georgia School Superintendents Association, was more diplomatic than most:
“If there is a better way of funding education, we’re all willing to look at it,” Parish said. “But I think … before you make a major change in the way services are funded, you have to take a very, very comprehensive look.”
Lottery Part II: Bonuses Vs. Scholarships
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
When we talked about the Georgia Lottery Corp.’s spending a couple weeks ago, some of you wondered about salary bonuses for Lottery executives.
Well, our capitol reporter, James Salzer, reported yesterday that Lottery President Margaret DeFrancisco took home a whopping $236,500 bonus check this year — on top of her $286,000 annual salary. All told, DeFrancisco and her employees collected nearly $3 million in bonuses.
According to the article, that’s equivalent to 515 state-funded scholarships for high school seniors hoping to attend the University of Georgia.
Of course, DeFrancisco defended the bonus structure, saying the Lottery wouldn’t be nearly as successful if workers didn’t have an incentive to increase ticket sales.
Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but that sounds an awful lot like the argument they used for not sending a higher percentage of revenues to the state’s HOPE scholarship and Pre-K programs.
So, is the explanation — that you have to spend more on prizes and bonuses to make more money — valid?
You decide.
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