Get Schooled Why the South looks stupid to the rest of America (AJC)

[struggle4progress]

11:41 am October 16, 2009, by Maureen Downey

... I cannot tell you how many highly educated people have told me over the years that they hesitated to take jobs in Georgia or South Carolina or Mississippi because of concern over the quality of education. The first question I get from people considering a move here is, “What are the schools like in Georgia?”

And idiots like Bardwell contribute to the myth that we are all wearing plastic bags on our feet and eating red clay. In reading the story about Bardwell denying a marriage license to an interracial couple for concern over any future children they may have, I turned to my co-workers and asked, “Why do all these lunatics have to come from the South?” ...

... Richard Anderson, the chief executive of Delta Air Lines, was quoted in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution earlier this year explaining why many of the Northwest Airlines employees relocating to Georgia from Minnesota will look for private schools for their children:

“I think the high school graduation rates and the quality of the graduates that we have coming out of the schools in Georgia need to be a lot higher” ...

http://blogs.ajc.com/get-schooled-blog/2009/10/16/why-the-south-looks-stupid-to-the-rest-of-america/?cxntfid=blogs_get_schooled_blog

[ProgressiveProfessor]

1. Was certainly the case in Southern MD

Our daughters were so far ahead of grade level it was scary.

[wilt the stilt]

2. More to this than meets the eye

Atlanta and the south has a long tradition of private schools. Many of the Delta pilots and I presume the Northwest people live in Fayetteville which has had a reputation for bad schools.

On the other hand on the Northside the schools have been working very hard at improving and I believe they are good. My niece was valedictorian at Milton high(public) and she is at MIT. My daughter is at UGA and she went to Norcross(public). She had early acceptance and beat out kids who went to Marist(private) who were deferred.

We have friends who were educated in schools on Long Island were salutatorians and matriculated at BU and became doctors. Their kids are at the public high schools.

At the honors dinner 25 kids in my daughters class had 800's on their SAT's. We weren't even as good as Northview.

These kids are now in college and UGA has`stated that they want to rival Berkeley in premed. This year it has been very hard for these very good students.

Georgia Tech is also very hard.

I know we all hate Zell Miller but he did do one great thing. Any kid who has a B average in high school and maintains a B average in college gets to go school tuition free.

We used to lose 80% of our top grads to out of state. We now keep 85% of our top grads. I was recently talking to a guy whose son got into Harvard and Duke and he ended up going to UGA with a complete ride and he studies all over the world.

I am paying $10,000 a year to send my daughter to school. My son is also working hard at going to UGA. Needless to say it is tough to get into UGA and GT and they both score high on the U.S. news and world report for colleges. UGA`only accepted 25% of it's applicants

My point is where you live depends on what kind of education you get.

[RubyDuby in GA]

3. "where you live depends on what kind of education you get."

Truer words never spoken because those areas tend to be a bit more affluent, so they tend to get a bit more money via property taxes and with parents that can afford to send extra boxes of kleenex to school so teachers don't have to buy them.

In poorer areas of the state, you will get nothing near the quality that you get in North Fulton because there is no money to be found. And they tend to move factories into poorer areas of this state because they know they can get a cheap work force.

It's not a reflection on the teachers who do the very best with what they have. They just don't have the latest textbooks or money for supplies.

Thanks a lot idiot Republicans and asshole Sonny Perdue for cutting more than a billion dollars from education in the last 6 years.

[wilt the stilt]

4. Ruby, It's all about the parents

My wife is from Chicago and I am from NY. My wife drives my kids to good grades. We never yell at them for bad grades as long as the give it an honest effort. They actually always work hard. My daughter was always good and when my son saw my daughter go to UGA it supercharged him. She has been a great influence. He wakes up at 5:45 and is in school at 6:30 getting extra tutoring. He has the highest grade in AP physics in his class.

I am very proud of my kids and they don't do drugs. This is a shocker. My kids listen to us(parents)

Remember the asshole Neil Boortz talking about kids with ADD being bad kids. My son hasADHD. his IQ is 127. he just needs more time to finish a test. He will probably score about a 680 in math and he couldn't be a better kid. Boortz is such an asshole.

[era veteran]

5. Looking Stupid

I went to school in three southern states; Georgia,South Carolina,& Kentucky. South Carolina in '66 at N.Augusta Junior High by far the worse. The tax base wasn't too good and integration had not happened. Georgia and were Kentucky about the same though. My KY H.S. was integrated. I was lucky in High School as it was a good one. All the better to see the rest of the schools in the old KY 5th, which had the lowest graduation rate in the nation. They were dirt poor and the schools suffered for it. Lots of things have affected education in the south, money to be sure, but also generations of underfunded schools have caused a dearth of educated people to lead and inspire. These are old problems and now we have the modern problems too; Consolidated schools, where students ride for hours and the societal pressure of neighborhood schools is gone. No discipline in schools, sleeping in class, not respecting teachers, & etc. We need to work on this.