Email
Print
Text Size02/02/2004 Georgia Association of Educational Leaders
Prepared Remarks of Governor Sonny Perdue
Georgia Association of Educational Leaders
(NOTE: The Governor Sometimes Deviates From Prepared Remarks)
Thank you, Orval. I appreciate the invitation to be with GAEL this morning.
It is good to see you and GAEL President Mary Lou Jordan and all the members of this great organization.
I've had the pleasure of speaking with this group several times now as Governor. I guess it has been six months now since we were at Jekyll Island .
The weather has gotten a little cooler since then, but we've heated up our efforts to inspire and empower students, parents, and educators alike.
As you know, last week we introduced in the General Assembly the components of my Georgia Learns education package.
These bills will raise education standards and lead to greater student achievement across Georgia .
Between the federal standards of No Child Left Behind and the increased expectations of Georgians for more accountability and higher achievement, we've all got some tough assignments.
My assignment is to help you, Georgia 's frontline education leaders, do your jobs better by giving you the tools you need.
That means, first, providing you with flexibility. It means new tools to improve discipline and improve the classroom learning environment.
It means a new emphasis on early learning, so that we give our youngest students a bright start for learning success.
And it means taking a long overdue look at how we fund education in Georgia .
We are in a new era of education accountability. We must align Georgia with the federal No Child Left Behind law.
But the way to do that, I believe, is not with a top-down, one-size-fits-all bureaucracy trying to micro-manage every decision you make.
You know the needs of your system and your school better than anyone at the State Capitol, or those Twin Towers , down the street from here.
We should set high accountability standards together and then trust you to meet them in the way that works best for your system and your school.
They way I see it, if we already trust you with the kids, we ought to trust you with local flexibility.
Accountability without flexibility just doesn't make sense.
So I want to make local flexibility provisions permanent.
We'll permanently remove all site-based expenditure controls and position tests.
And as individual schools show improvement they will be granted even greater flexibility to continue their success.
The purpose of setting high standards of accountability is to inspire and empower, not to play "gotcha."
Well, I don't see how it inspires or empowers anyone to label a struggling school with a "D" or "F".
So my plan replaces also demoralizing letter grades with numerical scores for schools so that continuous improvement can be measured.
Accountability needs to apply everyone in our educational system, not just educators. My plan supports schools in creating a positive learning environment by giving our discipline laws real teeth.
We've got to make it clear to disruptive students once and for all that they must respect their teachers and their fellow students.
To help get that message across, we'll use one of the things students value the most -- their driver's license.
Students need to know they can lose their driving privileges if they disrupt the learning process.
So students who are suspended from school for 10 days for any reason will lose their license for 6 months.
Students under 18 who are suspended for violent or drug related criminal offenses, will lose their license for 6 months or until their suspension ends, whichever is longer.
And students with ten or more unexcused absences in any semester will not be permitted to have a driver's license or permit until they resume regular school studies.
These discipline provisions will help get disruptive students on the right track or be held accountable.
But we also want to get our children on the fast track for learning at an early age.
A child's earliest years are critical for laying a foundation for learning. We want our kids to get that bright start.
So we'll refocus the current Office of School Readiness as "Bright from the Start, Georgia 's Office of Early Care and Education."
The Bright from the Start office will ensure that every child enters kindergarten ready for school success.
It will improve coordination among Georgia 's several early childhood programs, including the pre-K program, Smart Start and Even Start.
By eliminating duplication and bureaucracy, we'll ensure that more money goes directly to benefit children's early learning.
And by infusing early childcare centers with a greater culture of education we will get Georgia 's children on the path to greater learning from day one.
Those are some of the policy changes I'm proposing. Some are new. Some are familiar, because we fought for them together last year.
Now let's talk about what is probably uppermost on your minds - funding, the state budget and your local budgets.
Education counts for more than half of our state budget. Our school enrollments and needs have grown over the last couple of years.
Our revenues have not. We've experienced a tough national recession. State revenues aren't even back to where they were in 2000.
You don't have to be math scholar to know what those facts add up to. In tough times, leaders are called on to make tough decisions. And that's what we've done.
We have not made cuts thoughtlessly or blindly. And I am well aware that while hard times have reduced state resources, they have reduced local resources too.
I can't relieve you of having to make tough choices locally.
But I can give you some short-term relief through steps like delaying the class size reduction.
And like putting an additional $62 million into equalization funding.
The tight budget is also one reason I support local spending flexibility.
It may not be easy, but we'll get through these tough times together.
And, with a hoped for recovery coming and our economy getting stronger, we can look optimistically to the future.
More than that, we can plan for how we will better meet our education funding needs in the future.
Much has changed in Georgia since the QBE funding formula was put in place.
QBE was written long before No Child Left Behind became law and changed the education landscape.
And we're a much bigger state than we were in the 1980s.
You may have missed it, but a few months ago Georgia officially became the 9 th largest state in the nation, with a population of almost 9 million people. And we're still growing.
Our growth places demands on our education system that we didn't have before. Our student population is more diverse. We have more foreign-born students.
Some communities have absorbed rapid population growth. Others have seen decline.
We all recognize the changes and we all feel the consequences.
Later this week I will announce a task force to study our QBE funding formula.
The task force will help us figure out how we need to modernize our QBE funding formula for this new era of accountability and growth.
It will help us prioritize our student's needs and help us make sure that all Georgians, no matter where they live, are offered a quality public education.
As long we're talking about modernizing, I want to direct your attention to a couple of modern communications tools.
At the website GeorgiaLearns.com you can learn more details about my education package. Again, that's GeorgiaLearns.com.
And while I don't know when I'll see all of you next, I know I've got an appointment with a few of you when your schools win the Governor's Cup for the biggest improvement in SAT scores.
I'm doing all I can to get Georgia out of 50 th place in SAT scores so I look forward to congratulating our first Governor's Cup winners next fall.
You can learn more about the Governor's Cup and our other plans for raising SAT scores at SATRocks.com.
Folks, we've got some big challenges before us.
The funding picture is tough right now but it will improve eventually. And we will find ways to modernize our funding formulas.
On the policy side, I need your help. I need you to help me give you greater flexibility, improved discipline, and better coordination of resources.
I want to give you those tools to do your jobs better. As you've done before, you can help me send that message to the Legislature.
You are Georgia 's frontline education leaders. Georgia looks to you to lead the way toward higher standards, higher achievement and greater learning.
I will continue to support education as the best and most certain way to improve our state.
And I will continue to support the leaders who make up GAEL as Georgia 's best hope for reaching those goals.