{"id":1784,"date":"2011-07-09T21:11:42","date_gmt":"2011-07-10T01:11:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/07\/tinkering-with-number-of-schools-doesnt-improve-education-john-s-quarterman.html"},"modified":"2011-07-09T21:11:42","modified_gmt":"2011-07-10T01:11:42","slug":"tinkering-with-number-of-schools-doesnt-improve-education-john-s-quarterman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/07\/tinkering-with-number-of-schools-doesnt-improve-education-john-s-quarterman.html","title":{"rendered":"Tinkering with number of schools doesn’t improve education —John S. Quarterman"},"content":{"rendered":"

While I agree with most of
\nKaren Noll’s post,<\/a>
\nespecially the part about CUEE should come clean about why it’s spending
\nso much money on something about which it knows little,
\nI don’t agree that consolidating high schools would help.<\/p>\n

\nI remember when Lowndes County consolidated two high schools into one, and the rationale was cost saving and more resources for science classes. What it was really about was football.
\nAnd it worked: Lowndes High School now often wins the state championship,
\nand Valdosta hasn’t in a decade.
\nWhile education lags behind.<\/p>\n

\nI think the Lowndes County Board of Education is doing the right<\/p>\n


\nthing
\nby aiming at splitting the current too-large county high school into two.
\nBut that’s a logistical thing that has little to do with improving
\neducation.<\/p>\n

\nTinkering with the number of schools doesn’t improve education.<\/p>\n

\nConsolidation to save money is not a worthwhile goal because
\na. CUEE’s own research and CUEE’s expert consultant says it won’t
\nand b. the purpose of public education is not efficiency.
\nIf we want to save tax money, let’s stop locking so many people up!
\nEven Gov. Nathan Deal points out we spend more per prisoner
\nthat than we do per student, and we can’t afford that anymore.<\/p>\n

\nI think Karen Noll could be on to something about coordinating with
\nWiregrass Technical College.
\nYou don’t need to change the number of high schools to do that.
\nHas anybody looked at places that have tried that and seen how
\nwell it worked or not?<\/p>\n

\nYou know, study the problem and come up with a plan that has a chance
\nof working before spending a hundred grand to put it on a ballot….<\/p>\n

\n-jsq<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While I agree with most of Karen Noll’s post, especially the part about CUEE should come clean about why it’s spending so much money on something about which it knows little, I don’t agree that consolidating high schools would help. I remember when Lowndes County consolidated two high schools into one, and the rationale was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97,40,1376,15,3305,1105,501],"tags":[1636,8829,8705,8869,8701,3562,7,6,4139],"class_list":["post-1784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-community","category-cuee","category-education","category-fvcs","category-lcboe","category-wiregrass-tech","tag-consolidation","tag-cuee","tag-education","tag-fvcs","tag-georgia","tag-lhs","tag-lowndes-county","tag-valdosta","tag-wiregrass-technical-college"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1784\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}