This week marks the start of the 2016 Georgia legislative session, and with it, a big year for the intersection of politics and public education in our state. Elected officials at the state level have a growing influence on what happens in our K-12 schools (a trend that I don’t think is all together good, but that’s a blog post for another time), so it is important to become informed about key issues at the forefront this year. Here are some highlights:
State house district 59 election: While one seat at the statehouse might not seem like much, after this legislative session we will be losing a committed supporter of public education in Margaret Kaiser who will not be running for re-election this year. Margaret—a parent of ANCS alumni—has worked hard for many years in support of policies that are beneficial for students and teachers. You’ll hear more from me later this spring about our appreciation for Margaret, but for now, you should begin to familiarize yourself with the candidates running to fill Margaret’s seat for district 59, a district that includes the neighborhoods housing our two campuses. Declared as candidates so far are David Dreyer, Janine Brown, and Josh Noblitt.
Governor’s Education Reform Commission recommendations: Last year, Governor Nathan Deal created this commission to develop recommendations in key areas, like school funding, merit pay for teachers, early childhood learning, and school choice. The commission shared its recommendations in the late fall, and you can read a summary of these recommendations here. We will see if and how lawmakers decide to pursue these recommendations. In my opinion, there are some recommendations—like the proposed restructuring of the state K-12 funding formula—that are strong and will hopefully be adopted, while there are others—like merit pay—that may sound good politically but have not really had any significant positive impact on public education when tried elsewhere.
Vote on constitutional amendment to allow for school takeover: “Shall the Constitution of Georgia be amended to allow the state to intervene in chronically failing public schools in order to improve student performance?” That’s the question that will come before Georgia voters in November after the legislature passed Senate resolution 287 last spring. There’s bound to be lots of heated arguments on both sides of this question in the months leading up to the vote. To get you started, here is Governor Deal offering up why he is supportive of state intervention in “failing” public schools while another organization suggests a different approach to dealing with the challenges of such schools.
Responding to the “Every Student Succeeds Act”: In December, Congress passed and the President signed into law an overhaul of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that was most recently known as “No Child Left Behind” and now becomes the “Every Student Succeeds Act”. ESSA makes several changes to federal education policy (you can find a good summary of all the changes here), but the biggest change of all is moving power from the federal level back to states when it comes to determining a great deal about how students are tested and in what ways those test scores are used. It’ll be interesting to see how Georgia responds to this new old flexibility. State superintendent Richard Woods said last week that, in response to a teacher retention survey that showed “the number of required standardized tests” as one of the top reasons teachers are leaving the profession, he is dedicated to looking at ways to reduce the burden of testing so often in Georgia’s schools. I for one continue to hope more sensible testing policies will soon come about here in Georgia.
We’ll see where we end up in 12 months, but there are lots of big education issues confronting voters and legislators this year, so I encourage you to keep informed, to make your opinion known to your legislators, and to exercise that right to vote!