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Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Action now can improve education
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A key test of whether the New Day in Georgia can frame and pass the Big Ideas that make a difference will come later this week under the Gold Dome.
Two bills that represent the most innovative potential reforms of public education in decades are expected to hit the floor of the Georgia House of Representatives, probably on Friday, which is now slated to be the final day of this year’s session. The two bills are Senate Bill 10, the Georgia Special Needs Scholarship Act, and legislation initiated by Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle in the Senate and state Rep. Ed Setzler (R-Acworth) in the House that would aid the expansion of charter schools and, in Cagle’s proposal, charter districts.
Both ideas, along with legislation authored by state Rep. Earl Ehrhart (R-Powder Springs) to offer educational tax credits to individuals and corporations, are precisely the kind of initiatives that conservatives should be using their majorities to pursue. Ehrhart may wait until next year; bills don’t die at the end of this year, as they do when legislators’ two-year terms end.
The Special Needs Scholarship Act would allow parents of special needs children to get a portion of the money spent to educate them — not including the local share generated from property taxes. They could then purchase education services from another school district or from the private sector.
The scholarship, or voucher, depending on how one describes programs like HOPE for 218,000 college students and state-paid pre-kindergarten offerings for 76,600 children, is expected to average about $9,000. Georgia’s proposal, sponsored by Senate President Pro Tem Eric Johnson (R-Savannah) is based on a Florida scholarship/voucher plan that provides sums ranging from $4,800 to $20,700 for about 17,000 special needs children.
The floor vote, when it comes, may be closer than should be expected for Big Idea conservative legislation that gives choice to parents without harming public education. Schools, in fact, should be better off, since they keep the local funding share and lose the obligation to educate a special needs child. Parents, too, are winners. They can elect to keep their child in public school, if they’re happy with the results, or they can take charge — something special education parents are well accustomed to doing.
The fact is, though, that the alphabet-soup organizations that stalk the halls of the General Assembly neutralizing or killing anything suspected of posing competition are arrayed against Johnson’s bill. Give them another year to work and the weak-kneed among the legislators are as likely to cave as not. Anything new or different and anything that smells of competition can be skillfully twisted to represent the death of public education as we know it.
And the weak-kneed do exist among Republicans. House Speaker Glenn Richardson (R-Hiram) and Speaker Pro Tem Mark Burkhalter (R-Alpharetta), both supporters of education reform, showed up last week at a House Education Committee to witness SB 10’s passage out of committee.
The crumblers really shouldn’t be so frightened. A poll of 1,200 likely Georgia voters, sponsored by the Milton & Rose D. Friedman Foundation and others, found that 59 percent favored special needs vouchers, while only 20 percent opposed. When asked about vouchers in general, the numbers changed little: 58 percent support, 22 opposed. A majority, 53-29, agreed that vouchers improve k-12 education. What’s more — and this is crucial — 54 percent of those polled by Strategic Vision during March 20-22, said they would be more likely to vote for a legislator who supports school choice, while only 13 percent said they would be less likely. Support is highest among those who are between 36 and 45, the age incidentally where parents would have a fuller experience with public education.
Georgia is not rushing to the forefront of the school choice movement in approving SB 10 and other education reforms. There’s nothing radical here — but there is something important.
Conservatives should not simply maintain the status quo in government. They should use it to grow personal responsibility and self-reliance. Giving parents information and choice will make the public schools stronger and will reward caring parents for taking an active interest in their child’s education. Now, unless they can move or afford private schooling, they’re stuck wherever and however government wants to serve them.
That’s the Old Day in Georgia.
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