Today’s moderator: Maureen Downey

Maureen Downey has written about local, state and federal education policy at the AJC for 12 years. She’s also taught college classes in mass communications and journalism. However, she’s learned more about schools from having four children in them.

»Join the discussion online today: Share your opinions and ideas at blogs.ajc.com/get-schooled-blog.

Today’s page features a higher education focus. I write about why talented low-income high school students aren’t applying to top colleges, tied to a new study and a new documentary. In a guest column, a community college professor talks about the challenges of teaching students who arrive with inflated high school grade-point averages. And readers sound off about last week’s guest column by a young math teacher who wondered why his high-achieving students in Clayton County weren’t being recruited by Emory or Georgia Tech.

How to get more poor kids into college by Maureen Downey

Guest column:

Inflated grades, inferior college skills by Rick Diguette

About the Author

Featured

Fulton DA Fani Willis (center) with Nathan J. Wade (right), the special prosecutor she hired to manage the Trump case and had a romantic relationship with, at a news conference announcing charges against President-elect Donald Trump and others in Atlanta, Aug. 14, 2023. Georgia’s Supreme Court on Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2025, upheld an appeals court's decision to disqualify Willis from the election interference case against Trump and his allies. (Kenny Holston/New York Times)

Credit: NYT