Does Opportunity School District ignore impact of poverty on students?
As the vote over the Opportunity School Districts nears, more Georgians are speaking out, including Coweta County teacher Melissa Ladd.
Melissa Ladd is a parent of three and teaches fifth grade at Poplar Road Elementary in Coweta County. Dr. Ladd has a doctorate in the field of school improvement and is a finalist for the prestigious national Horace Mann Teaching Award. She is also one of three named plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit over the language in the Amendment 1 “Opportunity School District” ballot question that voters will decide on Nov. 8. The suit contends the ballot language is “so misleading and deceptive that it violates the due process and voting rights of all Georgia voters.”
Worse, says Ladd in the AJC Get Schooled blog, the OSD runs roughshod over the role of poverty in low-performing schools.
"Who exactly are these children whose future will be bought and sold by the state takeover plan? According to the non-profit, nonpartisan research organization Georgia Budget & Policy Institute, the overwhelming majority are minority (88 percent are black) and low-income (92 percent participate in the federal free-and reduced-lunch program)," she writes.
"The children in these so-called 'failing' schools are suffering from unimaginable chronic stress as result of systemic poverty. As a recent Children's Defense Fund study showed, chronic stress actually changes a child's brain chemistry. It severely inhibits higher order thinking skills — the kind tested by the Georgia Milestones Assessment System," she writes.
To read more of Ladd's essay, go to the Get Schooled blog.
