Assessing Georgia’s education future
The fewer people who can afford postsecondary education, the less will be their earning potential. Which means still fewer people will be able to afford postsecondary education. And so on.
The pattern doesn’t make for encouraging trend lines, for the people directly affected or for the population at large.
That’s hardly a dynamic limited to Georgia. But it’s one of the topics addressed at a recent Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education symposium in Atlanta, as reported by staff writer Mark Rice.
GPEE policy and research director Dana Rickman, who led the symposium, alluded to a “talent gap” in Georgia, where employer job postings have outpaced the national growth rate. Not so, unfortunately, with the skills needed to fill those jobs: While 60 percent of the postings require an associate’s degree or higher, only 38 percent of adult Georgians meet that requirement.
“Kids are falling out of that pipeline at an accelerated rate,” Rickman said. “We’re one of the few states that do not have a statewide, need-based aid program, so it’s time we look at that again.”
The HOPE Scholarship, of course, is a strictly merit-based program. Meanwhile, tuition rates at University System of Georgia schools have increased by an inflation-adjusted average of 99 percent over the last decade; in the Technical College System of Georgia the increase was 147 percent from 2009-2015.
Obviously the “accelerated rate” Rickman alludes to is no exaggeration, and it demands action to make postsecondary education more accessible to more Georgians — for the sake of the whole state’s economic health.
Teacher burnout is another serious challenge: Fewer than half the teachers hired in 2010 were still in the classroom just five years later, and there aren’t enough new teachers coming in to replace the ones leaving.
Advisory groups appointed by Gov. Nathan Deal in 2015 have recommended, among other remedies, “intense” mentoring for new teachers (and support for the mentors); a year-long internship for future teachers; student loan forgiveness as a teacher recruiting and retention incentive; and ensuring adequate teacher planning and instructional time.
Certainly a support system, especially for new teachers, in such a tough, often thankless and very stressful job is essential. (New teacher mentoring and support has been part of Columbus State University’s education program for years now.)
Student mental health is also an increasing focus, as detailed in a recent story by Alva James-Johnson. According to National Alliance on Mental Illness statistics cited in that story, about one-fifth of young people 13-18 will experience a severe mental disorder in their lives, and half of all chronic mental problems begin in the teen years.
Those are scary numbers. Yet Voices for Georgia’s Children reports that fewer than half of Georgia’s 159 counties have a licensed psychologist, and the state’s supply of social workers is one for every 2,742 students. Those numbers are even scarier.
Project AWARE, launched in Muscogee and two other school systems, is a kind of mental health “first aid” program. As with almost everything else in education, early intervention can make all the difference.
And, as always, the perpetual challenge of educating poor children confronts a chronically poor state. Educators can’t eradicate poverty, but poverty seems inseparable from achievement gaps in public education. Of course, better education means less poverty … and less poverty means better education. It’s the same dynamic at the front end of the education process, which brings us back to where we started. Which led Rickman to conclude that “Georgia has a long way to go.”
This story was originally published January 21, 2017 at 3:58 PM with the headline "Assessing Georgia’s education future."