Perry Rettig
Over the previous 11 months, I have outlined the challenges for education as described by the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education with its Top Ten Issues for 2021. A number of recurring themes emerged in this column. Each theme pointed to making success for all members of our community as our shared goal of developing productive and good citizens.
The ten topics have been vast. We began with a status check on equity and funding and then on to early learning and delivery of instruction. The next months covered the topics of teacher pay and preparation, accountability and assessment, parent engagement, and post-secondary completion. The final two months delved into the areas of Georgia’s workforce pipeline and requisite leadership for all these endeavors.
From these expansive topics, however, several themes emerged and now become the imperative for our community. The imperative will help us to prepare our children to be productive citizens in our democratic republic and for us to re-consider a healthy and robust economic workforce for all and by all in the years to come.
Equity, access, infrastructure, partnerships, and accountability are those themes that have continued to percolate over these many months. They can only be adequately addressed by our community working collectively. Our democratic republic was founded with the understanding that in order to survive and to thrive, our nation collectively needed an educated electorate.
The degree to which we have been successful in achieving the demands of these themes, however, has been variable.
Each would take a separate column to cover, yet some general thoughts might suffice for now. But first, we need to consider each of our roles.
Let’s be frank. Elected officials represent the citizens. Our governance system works best when the politicians confine themselves to work with the government and school officials in creating “descriptive” expectations and goals for our educators, to provide the financial support necessary to reach these goals and expectations, and to work in collaboration with the educators to provide measures of accountability. They must not overreach into a “prescriptive” posture by telling the educators how to get there.
Professional educators, on the other hand, are responsible for implementing the goals and expectations so established. Of course, they must be involved in collaborative efforts to set these expectations and standards. It is their responsibility to create the curriculum, to provide the pedagogy, and to assess the students’ and their own performance. In turn, they must collaborate with their communities in order to maintain parent and citizen involvement in the schools and to provide the necessary two-way communications vital to our students’ success.
In my estimation, the State of Georgia and our local community have done a great deal in funding education through the LOST – Local Option Sales Tax – program and state taxes. State funding has not always been perfect, but it has been significant and works best when it supports our targeted goals.
It will be worthwhile for us to revisit the original intent of the LOST funding, to examine our successes, and to consider how we best move forward supporting our schools.
People may argue the degree to which we have sufficiently funded our PK-12 schools using state tax dollars. There can be little debate, however, that funding of our early childhood system has been insufficient. In 2019, the average Georgia family paid $8,700 per child for preschool care. This has exacerbated an already significant equity gap for too many of our families. I am encouraged by new state and federal legislation for childcare subsidies for low-income families. This legislation will also increase pay for childcare providers as they can barely afford to provide the services we need.
We can be proud of the work Georgia has done to build its education infrastructure. However, equity in infrastructure and opportunity for all of our citizens remains elusive.
Such variability in our technology infrastructure and funding to our poorer communities must be corrected. I hurt to learn of how many families in our county don’t have access to the internet.
Poorer families have less access to technology at home, their schools receive less realized funding, and the children fall further behind. In turn, our workforce pipeline is weakened, and employers feel it. Our HOPE college scholarships have been a boon for many families who can already better afford higher education. We must act on providing not only such merit-based scholarship aid but need-based aid, as well.
These will be our moral and economic imperatives for 2022.
Dr. Perry Rettig is a community contributor for The Northeast Georgian. He is a former vice president at Piedmont University and is now a distinguished university professor at Piedmont.