HOW’S Georgia doing in science education? You may recall the 2005 case of Selman v. Cobb County School District, about a Georgia county’s bone-headed decision to put a warning sticker on biology textbooks. Have things improved since then?
Well, we’ve found a bit of news from that state. It’s an editorial by Tom Crawford, published in the Charlton County Herald, a weekly newspaper serving Folkston, Homeland, St. George and all of Charlton County, Georgia, circulation of approximately 3,000. Their website banner proudly proclaims: “Gateway to the Okefenokee.” In that paper we read: Our school leadership “needs improvement”.
The editorial begins by discussing some old campaign promises made by Georgia’s Republican Governor Sonny Perdue. Back when Georgia ranked last in national SAT scores, he promised to improve the state’s education. Here are some excerpts, with bold added by us:
Perdue and state school Supt. Kathy Cox are now in their seventh year in office as the persons responsible for the state’s direction in education. How is Georgia faring, as measured by Perdue’s “gold standard” of SAT scores?
Okay, let’s find out:
Unfortunately for the state, our schools are not doing very well. In 2003, during the first year of the Perdue-Cox reign, Georgia again ranked 50th in average SAT score. In 2004, the state skyrocketed all the way to 49th (thank goodness for South Carolina). But by 2005, Georgia had slipped back into a tie with South Carolina for last place.
That ranking has since improved slightly, with Georgia currently in 47th place. The state’s average SAT score still ranks below the national average, however, and that score has been declining in recent years.
What’s the problem in Georgia? We continue:
During the same period when the state’s SAT scores were steadily declining, Perdue and the General Assembly were cutting a total of nearly $2 billion in state formula funding to local school systems. Do you think there’s a connection there?
We express no opinion. Here’s more:
Perdue cannot run for another term as governor so there will be a new chief executive in 2011. Whether that governor does any better than Perdue at addressing the education issue, of course, remains to be seen.
Cox, on the other hand, can legally run for a third term as school superintendent and, as far as I can tell, plans to do just that. Does she deserve another term as the head of public education?
Well, does she? Moving along:
It’s hard to argue in her favor, in part because she never raised any public objections or protests to Perdue’s continued cutbacks in spending on schools. She could not have stopped those spending cutbacks, but she at least could have sent the signal that she would stand up for Georgia’s public school students. She chose not to do that.
Maybe she was just being polite. Is there anything else we should know about this person? Here’s another excerpt:
It was also Cox who caused much embarrassment for the state by attempting to remove from the science curriculum all references to evolution, the “Big Bang” and other scientific theories that upset the Christian fundamentalist wing of her Republican Party.
Ah yes, Nixon’s Southern strategy is the gift that keeps on giving. On with the article:
One of Cox’s top aides at the Department of Education, while being questioned in a school funding lawsuit, testified that high school students didn’t really need to take any science or social studies courses to get an “adequate” education. “I think you can do without science,” the Cox aide said.
We can’t think of anything to add to that. And now we come to the end:
Cox and her husband have also filed for personal bankruptcy and were faced with having their home foreclosed. Should a person with that kind of financial record be running a state agency with a $5.5 billion budget?
[…]
Perdue and Cox would appear to be two names that belong on [the “Needs Improvement”] list.
We’re not sure. It may be that Georgia has exactly what it wants. Hey, some state needs to be on the bottom — why shouldn’t it be Georgia? Well, there’s always Louisiana, but that’s a story for another day.
Copyright © 2009. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
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The Sensuous Curmudgeon 
Just for trivia’s sake, Wikipedia’s article on Kathy Cox ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Cox ) notes, “On September 5, 2008, Cox became the first million-dollar winner on the American television game show Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?”
Was Cox the resident 5th grader?
While I agree with the point of the article that Cox should not be elected to a 3rd term as school superintendent, I think the reference to her bankruptcy is unfair and unwarranted. A little research shows that the bankruptcy is due to losses sustained by her husband’s home building company. It is hardly his (or her) fault that the market for new homes has tanked. It has nothing to do with her qualifications for office. Instead, it show a bias on the author’s part that he is including anything that might appear as a negative.
Holy s***! It is the first decade of the 21st century and there is a state Department of Education “aide” who thinks science education in high school is superflous*?
Great Leaping Horny Toads! We have digital TV, broad band and wireless internet, WiFi networking, PC and laptop computers that would run circles around the biggest mainframes of 30 years ago, spacecraft exploring the solar system, and telescopes and scientific instruments revealing the earliest moments and most distant parts of the Universe, and some blithering moron in the Georgia Department of Education thinks high school students don’t need to study science?
How does this buffoon think all those wonderful gadgets like PCs and cell phones and digital TVs work? FM? (F*%@ing Magic?)
Who is going to hire the graduate of a high school in which students do not study science? Good jobs at good wages to be had by all applying to fast-food restaurants and lumber mills?
What college would want such science-ignorant students to matriculate** to their institution?
Hamilton “University”?
East Podunk Community College & Beauticians School?
Ron Bailey’s School of Broadcasting?
Billy-Bob’s School of Ice Chest Repair?
A science-free education is just what the doctor ordered…. if his objective were to prepare a generation of people perfect for living in the Dark Ages, fearful of the night and complicated things and ideas not explained by their scriptures or blessed by their priests.
* for the benefit of Georgia Department of Ed employees, “superfluous” in this context means “unnecessary.”
** contrary to widespread belief in Georgia, “matriculating” does not make you go blind.
Longie asks: “Who is going to hire the graduate of a high school in which students do not study science?”
Creation science is the answer! All else is blasphemy! Nothing more is needed.
longshadow wrote: “It is the first decade of the 21st century and there is a state Department of Education “aide” who thinks science education in high school is superflous*?”
Thinks it and publicly admits. Imagine how many must just think it and know better than to appear that idiotic. Even the DI says “science is good,” then pretends that its pseudoscience is the “real” science.
I’ve asked it before, and I’ll continue to ask it.
Why are the most religious parts of the country the parts with the highest teenage pregnancy, lowest literacy, highest infant mortality, least educated, lowest family income, highest crime rates, highest infant mortality . . . . . . . . . . . ?
Because the numbers from the other parts of the country are all lies?
Try inner city numbers, I think you will find your conclusions require some, er, adjustment.