Race for governor: HOPE skirmish detracts from more critical education differences in Deal, Carter

“Put simply, rather than destroy HOPE for everyone, we would restore the full HOPE scholarship for the maximum number of students every year. In addition to the current academic requirements, we would reinstitute HOPE's original income cap," he wrote at the time for the AJC. "The cap will be set as high as possible each year based on lottery revenues, so that we maximize the number of students who get a full scholarship. This year, if the cap is set at a family income of $140,000, then about 94 percent of Georgia families would be eligible for full HOPE. In many communities this would protect virtually all current HOPE scholars.”

The issue came up Monday when both Carter and Deal attended the Georgia Early Education Alliance for Ready Students summit. Asked about the cap, Carter said, “I think we do need to consider, at some point, need. Because you cannot pay for everybody. We want to maximize the number of people. I don’t think anyone is talking anymore about a solid cap. It’s probably too blunt an instrument. We want to make sure what we’re doing is maximizing the number of people, and finding ways to make sure we consider need without a full-fledged cap.”

For those of you unfamiliar with the downgrading of HOPE three years ago, here is my quick summary:

HOPE was one of the few college scholarships that could be distilled into one sentence: Earn a B average in high school, keep it in college and Georgia will pay your college costs. The simplicity and generosity of HOPE made it such a major success that the funding source, the Georgia Lottery, could not keep pace. With the lottery unable to fully underwrite HOPE or the state's universal pre-k program, limits had to be imposed.

Under the HOPE Lite plan, the scholarship amount each year depends on available lottery dollars. At UGA, for example, 2014-015 tuition is $8,600. The HOPE award is $6,780. The Legislature erased the $300 book allotment and money for mandatory fees, which provided $62 to $435 a semester depending on the college.

A sliver of students -- super achievers with a 3.7 high school GPA and at least 1200 on the 1600-scale SAT – still get full HOPE and are called Zell Miller Scholars. The program has benefited metro students most. In 2012, schools in the five most populous metro Atlanta counties --- Cobb, DeKalb, Fayette, Fulton and Gwinnett --- graduated almost half of the students eligible for the Zell Miller award. All of the 15 high schools graduating the most Zell Miller scholars are within about 45 miles of Atlanta.

Historically, HOPE has had more of an impact on where Georgia students went to college rather than whether they went. Bright students who would have gone out of state as Tar Heels or Gators ended up Bulldogs.

Studies have found 4 percent of the money spent on HOPE went to students who might not otherwise have gone to college.

Some of you contend keeping bright middle- and upper middle-class Georgia students in the state is an important accomplishment. Others counter it would have been wiser to target HOPE to poor kids for whom the scholarship would have played a more decisive role in their college attendance.

That debate is pretty much over as middle-class voters value HOPE, and no sane politician is going to charge willingly into that morass.

No matter who wins the governor’s race, HOPE is safe.

The more pressing question in the race for governor is who has a better vision for education.

And that depends on whether you believe state involvement and leadership helps or hinders schools.

I have written about education in three states and never saw a governor more focused on it than former Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes. Most governors have policy advisers who read the latest education research and share snippets with their bosses or insert a snappy line or two in a speech. Barnes read it all. When a new charter school program called KIPP reported high achievement gains in Houston and New York, Barnes invited the founders to Atlanta and funded a KIPP school here. When Kentucky saw more parental engagement through its innovative school councils, Barnes embraced the idea for Georgia.

He talked to other like-minded governors about what they were doing and whether it might work in Georgia. Barnes believed in the transformative power of education, not only for the individual, but the state as a whole. Many in the profession during the Barnes era would argue his intensity did not help schools, put teachers on the firing line and created accountability pressures never before felt in Georgia classrooms. (Few foresaw the accountability pressures yet to come.)

Like Gov. Sonny Perdue, Deal has been more focused on improving the business climate in Georgia than the schools. He cares about education, but it’s never been his passion and he's never offered a cohesive plan. Deal doesn't have Education Week tucked one arm and the latest Stanford charter school study under the other.

Deal appears more authoritative on business development than education reform. Deal’s also more hands-off. While he supports charter schools and has floated the concept of state-controlled schools, I suspect he would personally prefer to see education treated as a local issue.

Carter has a greater interest in and intensity about education, likely from a Barnes-like conviction the future belongs to states with highly educated citizens and premiere schools. I am not saying Deal doesn’t want those things, too.

Of course, he does. But the difference between Deal and Carter is the degree to which they see the state’s role in attaining those goals and how far they are willing to commit state resources to reach them.

There is a legitimate debate whether state leadership benefits education and what form that leadership should take in Georgia. That is the debate we ought to be having.