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Tuesday, August 5, 2008
A Vernon Jones show tonight? Nope.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Update/9:13 p.m.:
I’ve seen enough. Jim Martin has the nomination.
Mr. CEO’s voters stayed home. In counties where Jones was a runway winner in July, he either lost tonight or won by margins insufficient to overcome Martin’s gains elsewhere. And do they love him even in his home county of DeKalb? Apparently not. With 164 of 195 precincts reporting, Jones is losing by more than 14,000 votes.
It’s over.
Update/9:05 p.m.:
It’s beginning to look awfully much like it won’t be a Vernon Jones show tonight. He’s coming nowhere near the margins he had three weeks ago in the large counties. He was a no-show from Cobb County northward. He’s losing Cobb by 3-1.
I don’t see where he can make up the margins. It’s not over yet, but the loss of support for Jones between the primary and today is remarkable.
The Democratic Party establishment supported Martin. And it’s beginning to look that the party has some reach.
Update/8:40 p.m.:
I’m certainly not ready yet to abandon my assertion that it’ll be a Vernon Jones night, but he’s getting clobbered in North Georgia. Jim Martin is rolling up huge margins there.
And with partial returns just beginning to filter in from Douglas and Clayton, Jones is not getting the margins expected. Fulton and DeKalb are still out, though neither of those is a real gap-closer for either candidate.
Posted earlier:
Polls close shortly in the U.S. Senate Democratic primary runoff between DeKalb CEO Vernon Jones and former State Rep. Jim Martin of Atlanta.
My guess is that about 200,00 votes will have been cast today. In the primary three weeks ago, 493,243 Democrats voted for a Senate nominee.
I’m betting that Vernon Jones ends up being the nominee. Why? Fulton, DeKalb and Clayton count for about a third of the Democratic vote statewide. In DeKalb, Jones pulled about 30,000 votes in the primary to 23,000 for Martin. In Fulton, Jones got about 19,500 to 19,000 for Martin. In Clayton, Jones got 12,000 to 6,000 for Martin.
Fulton and Clayton Democrats have sheriff’s races that should help turnout, as does Newton County, where Jones ran well last month. There he took 2,300 votes to fewer than a thousand for Martin.
We will know soon. My bet before the polls close is that it’s a Vernon Jones show tonight.I’d be surprised if he continues writing much longer.
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School needs bold blueprint, not formula fiddling
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Governors one after another have tinkered with public education inputs and funding formulas, promising all the while to succeed where their predecessors had failed. Had those approaches worked —- more inputs and revised formulas recommended by blue ribbon commissions —- schools would be fixed by now.
They aren’t.
It’s the model that’s broken, not the funding formulas.
Across the country industries beset by new marketplace dynamics —- industries that include newspapers, health care providers and all others, automobiles among them, that compete globally —- are frantically at work reinventing their business models.
Education’s marketplace changed decades ago. The best hope now is to stop fighting the marketplace and, instead, let competition work. Give parents choice —- and the means to exercise it. Improve public schools, yes. But don’t keep children prisoners until the system is perfected.
The realization is dawning across Georgia that the parents who determine where children get medical care, what they eat, wear and watch on TV, should be able to determine how they are educated, too. Two separate polls released last week, one of voters in metro Atlanta and the other of voters throughout Georgia, unsurprisingly reflect a developing consensus. The metro Atlanta poll of 600 voters, conducted in late June by Public Opinion Strategies, found that 69 percent of those surveyed favor vouchers for children in failing public schools.
A statewide poll of 400 voters, conducted about the same time by Majority Opinion Research, reveals 66 percent support for vouchers for the parents of those children and 68 percent support for parents of all children. An important consideration for those who responded, no doubt, is that there be no new costs to taxpayers.
Support is strong among all groups: male, female, black, white, Democrat, Republican, Independent.
The most interesting aspect of last week’s school choice conference sponsored by the Atlanta-based Georgia Public Policy Foundation in celebration of the 96th birthday of Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, father of the choice movement, was actually not the poll. It merely confirmed what has been obvious in recent years: Support grows for parental choice.
The interesting aspect was a policy speech by state Sen. Eric Johnson (R-Savannah), a likely candidate for lieutenant governor in 2010, when the current occupant of that office, Casey Cagle, departs to run for governor. The speech reflects a vision of a vital government function: assisting parents in educating their children.
The speech is important because it spells out in unusual detail a plan for revamping public education. The blueprint has these seven elements:
Full funding. Determine what it should cost to produce an educated child and how that cost should be shared by parents and state and local governments. “It should be a simple formula,” he said. “There should be no excuses.”
Let the money follow the child. Public or private.
Entice more people into teaching. Use alternative certification to attract second-career professionals. “And pay them based on degrees, experience and placement, with significant bonuses for improved outcomes.”
Maintain discipline. Let teachers remove those who disrupt learning for others. Back them in court, if necessary.
Measure outcomes. “Design a reasonable and transparent method to measure success.”
Provide public school choice. Children are assigned to neighborhood schools, but parents can move them to any other school “so long as they provide transportation and the student and parent sign a contract agreeing to attend class, study hard and behave.” Violate the contract and the student goes back to the neighborhood school. Local systems either buy trailers or fix bad schools.
Vouchers equal to the taxes spent on education should be given to every child to attend any private school that will accept them.
Dramatic. Bold. Visionary.
Not more of the same old inputs or formula-tinkering. A new model.
It’s the kind of marketplace thinking Georgia needs.
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