ATLANTA (January 15, 2009)— The Education and Youth Committee held a joint session today to outline this year’s goals to improve Georgia’s school systems. Georgia State Senator Dan Weber (R-Dunwoody) co-chaired the meeting and is prepared to support the committee in this session’s production of constructive legislation.
“Georgia’s education system, while more than likely expecting to receive about a 3% budget decrease, will take on ‘ambitious plans,’ as Gov. Perdue explained in his address,” said Sen. Weber. “Education is vital to the success of our children, our community, our country and our economy. Improvements in education cascade into improvements in other areas.”
The committee listened as State Superintendent of Schools, Kathy Cox, led them through detailed goals made in accordance with the pressing needs of Georgia’s students. The six goals covered were increasing high school graduation rates, strengthening teacher quality, improving students’ workforce readiness skills, developing strong educational leaders, improving test scores, and creating policies that ensure the maximum academic and financial accountability.
To accomplish these goals, Cox plans to provide a positive career ladder to incentivize teachers with financial rewards and increased responsibilities. More students will have access to agricultural and technical classes to improve their workforce readiness for industries contributing to Georgia’s economy. Cox also wants to implement a risk ratio system which would better track student progress from an earlier age to prevent student failure before it’s too late.
School systems have already seen a steady increase in improvement. Eighty nine percent of 2003’s original Needs Improvement (NI) schools have achieved removal from the list, reducing the number of NI schools from 533 to 59 schools by 2008. With the increased benchmarks for adequate yearly progress (AYP) in 2004-2005, the percentage of schools making AYP has increased by 2.4% since 2003.
Sen. Dan Weber serves as Chairman of the Education and Youth Committee. He represents the 40th Senate District which includes portions of DeKalb and Gwinnett counties. He may be reached at 404.463.2260 or by email at dan.weber@senate.ga.gov
PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release:
January 15, 2009
For Information Contact:
Raegan Weber, Director
Hayley Howell, Senate Press Office Aide
hayley.howell@senate.ga.gov
404.656.0029