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The Fayette Citizen-Opinion Page
Friday, February 11, 2000
Schools headed in the wrong way

The Coweta County schools are headed in the opposite direction as the predominantly white north DeKalb schools.

The Dekalb Kittredge Magnet School for high achievers does not have enough room to accomodate the 8,500 students that scored above 70 percent on their IOWAs, so they are bringing the Kittredge model to the neighborhood schools with the majority of these children.

The children will then attend the high achievers class in their home schools. A teacher of one class with four different reading and math group levels can instruct about 15 minutes to each group while the rest of the class works noisily and wildly. Once you group the students according to their achievement levels, like we had it in the `60s and `70s, a reading group can have an hour of instruction.

Amazing how much more you can learn in an hour. Mixing students together based on achievement just screams out to the less competent child, “You are so incompetent!” That child will never volunteer in class, it's too embarassing to be slow and the smart kids are much quicker in sharing. Newnan is preparing to waste the education of a generation of students. They will realize it in a few years when everyone's test scores drop. What do you bet, the high achievers will start attending private schools.

Longer school days and year-around schooling is insane for people who like their children. I gave birth so that I could parent my kids, not the government schools. If parents don't want to spend time with their children, give them up for adoption. Democrats have children and want the government to care for them; Republicans have children and want to spend time with them.

Women should not give birth if they do not want to have children in their lives. Who are they having them for? I vote for 1/2-day school programs. I would love for my kids to leave at lunch and come home, but then so many kids would be out their free lunch and their parents might have to take on the responsibility of feeding their own children. Can you imagine parents influencing their own children? How old-fashioned!

What we need is a “It's OK to be childless” revolution. If you don't want to take care of all of your child's needs, don't have children. They are your responsibility, not the government's. The government is just a body that takes money by force from the high achievers and gives it to the low achievers.

Make note, document the Newnan test scores of 2000 and those of 2010; I promise you they will drop. Newnan Crossing should just charter itself as a government-funded orphanage/boarding school. If your kids are awake 14 hours a day and spend 10 of them at school, just let them do their homework and eat supper there too. It's not like the parents will have much time to influence them anyway.

The governor and the Newnan school board are so misguided.

The real problem in Georgia's education is the parents. The governor will not state this publicly, however, because the majority of underachievers are minorities. Minorities generally vote Democratic. I do not know why, but minorities do not value education like whites. This is a fact — it is a cultural problem but it is not politically correct to state this publically.

I welcome you to any school function at my Dekalb elementary school... remember Dekalb schools are 13 percent white, 76 percent black. You will see few if any minority parents in attendance. You will find many white neighborhood parents. Why is that?

The problem in our schools is the value that different cultures put on education. Until people stop having children that they don't want to spend time with, and start valuing education, this will be a problem.

Name Withheld By Request


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