New York Times’ columnist David Brooks knows that this November’s election will likely be dominated by discussion of rising gas prices and a fledgling U.S. economy. Despite this, he believes it’s not the biggest issue facing the United States in the years to come.
Citing the research of James Heckman, Nobel Laureate in Economics, Brooks underscores the point that the home environment of a child in his or her first five years is a major factor in determining that child’s future: “By 5, it is possible, with depressing accuracy, to predict who will complete high school and college and who won’t.”
Brooks understands that investing in children early leads to better outcomes later. Hopefully, his ”biggest issue” will become a salient one during these final months leading up to November.
Why did the United States become the leading economic power of the 20th century? The best short answer is that a ferocious belief that people have the power to transform their own lives gave Americans an unparalleled commitment to education, hard work and economic freedom.
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What will early education look like after President George W. Bush leaves office? The New America Foundation decided to try and find out. Hosting a forum with education advisers to both Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain, the nearly hour and a half discussion revealed much about how the two candidates might approach education for our youngest children.
Read about the discussion and watch the forum here
Georgia does not have the Pre-K slots needed to serve all the state’s four-year-olds. However, the actions of people like Dr. Donnell Carley, director of Mu-Dear Pre-School in Thomas County, are worth noting. He’s making sure all the spots out there are used.
Like many counties across the state, Grady County doesn’t have enough lottery-funded Pre-K spots to serve all its four-year-olds. Neighboring Thomas County, on the other hand, has too many slots. Fortunately, instead of letting county lines stand in the way of education for Georgia’s four-year-olds, the two counties have joined hands. Carley has offered up the remaining spots at his center to Thomas County kids. He truly understands the importance of strong foundations for Georgia’s kids.
THOMASVILLE, GA (WALB) – Its a program growing in popularity all over the state. So much so, in Grady county, they don’t have room for the 40 children on the waiting list. “We did request 2 expansion classes from Bright from the Start and as of this date we have not received them and I don’t think we will,” says Sandy Mudra, Grady County Pre-K Director.
Some of the pre-k programs in Thomas County on the other hand, have been struggling to fill their classes. At Mu-Dear Pre-School in Thomasville, Administrative Director, Dr. Donnell Carley says pre-k is popular, but isn’t growing quite as fast. “We’ve had a low rate of children. It was told to us a few years ago that its due to a low birth rate in Thomas County.”
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State School Superintendent Kathy Cox is painting a rosy picture on academic achievement, with high school graduation rates inching upward the past two years. The most recent statistics are due today. The public has been highly critical of the public school system but the simple truth is that we just can’t give up.
Georgia’s top educator remains optimistic about increasing the state’s graduation rate despite the recent increase in graduation requirements.
Speaking to the LaGrange Rotary Club and about 20 guests from the Troup County school system Wednesday, Kathy Cox admitted many doubt that the graduation rate can continue to rise in the wake of the newly raised standards, but she remains confident.
“Research shows that if you tell kids what is expected of them, they will rise to the challenge,” she said.
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Annual salaries for a family physician after years of study and thousands of tuition dollars is less than what a plumber makes in most parts of the country. Overhead costs and frustrating health insurance reimbursement policies are making it almost impossible for a family practitioner to survive.
This spring, 385 students graduated from Georgia’s medical schools, but only two of them chose to remain in the state to pursue a family medicine residency. Overall, 20 students, or 5 percent, chose to go into family medicine — half the number that it was just five years ago.
“The decline in the percentage of medical school graduates entering family medicine is cause for concern,” said Kelly McNamara, research and analysis manager at the Georgia Board for Physician Workforce.
“Family medicine physicians often serve as the primary health-care providers in their communities because of their ability to care for patients of all ages and to treat a variety of medical conditions,” McNamara said.
More than one-third, or 58 of 159 counties in the state, many of them rural, are officially designated as primary-care health professional shortage areas. This designation, from the Health Resources and Services Administration, means that, on average, there is less than 1 doctor for 3,500 people. About 1.5 million people in the state are affected by the shortage of doctors.
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While expensive, most of us normally associate U.S. health care as the world’s best in terms of innovation. This report by the Commonwealth Fund states otherwise, but also reveals some important steps that the U.S. can take to get better control of its systems for providing health care.
American medical care may be the most expensive in the world, but that does not mean it is worth every penny. A study to be released Thursday highlights the stark contrast between what the United States spends on its health system and the quality of care it delivers, especially when compared with many other industrialized nations.
The report, the second national scorecard from this influential health policy research group, shows that the United States spends more than twice as much on each person for health care as most other industrialized countries. But it has fallen to last place among those countries in preventing deaths through use of timely and effective medical care, according to the report by the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit research group in New York.
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The Georgia Lottery Commission held a press conference Tuesday, July 15 to hand Gov. Perdue a symbolic check for $10 billion, representing the amount raised for education since the lottery was instituted 15 years ago.
That’s certainly good news for public education, and maybe the point of the press conference was more to make lottery employees feel good. But it was disappointing that four TV news cameras recorded the event but no journalists were there to ask questions. One question specifically: With lottery funds achieving revenue increases for 15 straight years and a very large reserve fund of over $500 million, why aren’t there enough pre-K slots as were originally promised?
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Today’s Rome News-Tribune comments on Georgia’s once vaunted pre-K program based on the Southern Educations Foundation’s report issued two weeks ago. With an abundant funding source in the state lottery, it’s hard to accept the lack of enrollment slots and decrease in per student spending.
GEORGIA’S government has gotten quite talented at using the “poor mouth” excuse for all that ails the state. It goes this way:
“We just don’t have the money to do that without raising your taxes. We love you too much to do that and, besides, we think we’re taxing you too much already.”
OK, let’s grant that there are some citizens who prefer keeping the jingle in their pockets to having good schools, smooth roads, sufficient water, adequate health care and so on. But how does Georgia explain the decay of a program that doesn’t involve any tax money at all and whose bank accounts are as flush as those of King Midas?
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After developing the national model for early education, Georgia is now playing catch-up with other states that have surpassed it in pre-K enrollment. One thousand new slots have been added for the coming school year, but it’s not known how many kids are on waiting lists. There’s no accurate tracking of waiting lists and they vary from county to county. There is plenty of money, as the state lottery reserve fund has ballooned. The issue appears to be a matter of physical space.
Georgia has changed the criteria for deciding where to add pre-kindergarten classes, and Barrow and Clarke counties will be at the top of the list this year as officials prepare to divvy up money for 1,000 new seats for 4-year-olds.
State administrators will use enrollment figures, the number of students on waiting lists for filled classes and the graduation rates of high school seniors to decide what parts of the state most need additional pre-K seats.
Pre-K administrators used to dole out funding based only on enrollment figures – also referred to as the saturation rate – said Mary Mazarky, an assistant commissioner of Bright From the Start, the state agency in charge of childhood education.
Registration for pre-K, which is intended to help 4-year-olds learn the skills they need to know before kindergarten, started at Clarke County’s 13 public elementary schools and private child care centers in March and should continue until the first day of school in August.
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What happens when parents don’t parent? Chicago schoolteacher Will Okun knows. Writing for the New York Times’ blog, Okun explains how urban education is in shambles and offers solutions to fix it.
…After years of often dishonest statistical manipulation, our shameful secret has been revealed: urban education in America is in shambles. A recent report by America’s Promise Alliance documents that our nation’s 50 largest cities graduate only 50% of their high school students. In low-income communities, where there is no safety net and opportunities for success already are scarce, dropping out is the death knell of hope. By age 17, urban dropouts are relegated to a life on the fringes: higher rates of poverty, incarceration, unemployment, government assistance, health problems, etc. As the basketball coach at our school concludes, “In ten years, they will be dead, in jail or still in their momma’s basement.” In a country that brags of its level playing field and claims to value our children and their education above all else, how have we allowed such a massive failure to fester amongst our own?
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