IF YOU GO:
‘Race to Nowhere’ screening
4 to 6 p.m. today
Milton Center, 86 School Drive, Alpharetta.
Georgia Department of Education Meeting
8 a.m. Thursday
205 Jesse Hill Drive/2070 Twin Towers East
Students are often at the mercy of school reform, but stakes are higher in today’s competitive world. While authorities vacillate on defining best educational methods and outcomes, some students struggle through the system.
“My house is a living nightmare, and my kids are defeated trying to do their math”, one frustrated mom told Fulton County School authorities at a recent meeting. Other parents invest thousands of dollars in tutoring to save grades and test scores.
The Milton Community Alliance for Mental Wellness was formed out of concern for students’ psyches. This group, available on Facebook, is sponsoring a screening of the film “Race to Nowhere,” which demonstrates that pressure to achieve creates an “unreasonable, unmanageable and unhealthy” workload for kids.
While the community worries, however, other groups push for progress.
Fulton County School superintendent, Dr. Robert Avossa, represents one group. His “Strategic Plan 2017” (www.fultonschools.org), expects schools to increase graduation rates and ensure that students are college and career ready. The county is now a “charter system” meant to drive student achievement by utilizing a governance board of elected teachers, parents and community leaders working with school principals.
Another group, the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education (www.gpee.org), which includes business leaders, warns without school improvement, Georgia’s economy will languish. Every year it evaluates educational progress with a comprehensive “Top Ten Issues to Watch” report. It posits that poorly educated graduates who used to find work now face employers with higher expectations. With the widening gap between rich and poor, the need to prepare underprivileged kids is more imperative than ever.
Technical and highly skilled workers are in demand, especially in the science, technology, engineering and math fields, according to the report. The current educational system is not producing the skilled workers that employers need.
This thinking also informs proponents of the Common Core (www.corestandards.org), such as the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, who advocate for the same expectations in math and literacy education for all American kids. Gov. Nathan Deal signed up for Common Core, but faces critics who say the standards intrude on local control (georgia.stopcommoncore.com).
Politicians, meanwhile, play all sides of issues, while the Georgia Department of Education (www.gadoe.org) waits for legislative guidance. Perhaps surprisingly, Fulton County School leaders are appealing to the GADOE to return to traditional math from the “integrated” approach ushered in eight years ago, demonstrating lingering confusion around best methods for preparing and testing kids in math.
What to teach, how to teach it, and which methods most affordably yet accurately measure student knowledge are complicated questions. Students stuck in crosscurrents of reform deserve workable solutions soon.
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