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Furloughs and Failing Schools: Audio from the Governor’s Race in Georgia

By Andrew Ujifusa — September 19, 2014 1 min read
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Atlanta

If you’re interested in hearing a bit more about education in the Georgia governors’ race, you can check out the audio from remarks the two candidates, Democratic state Sen. Jason Carter and Republican Gov. Nathan Deal, made to the Professional Association of Georgia Educators earlier this week.

As I indicated in reports from earlier this week, Carter is hitting Deal hard on a very simple issue: The number of days schools are in session. Why? According to an analysis by the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute from last year, 75 percent of districts cut the number of instructional days below the standard 180 days. Listen to Carter touch on that issue below:

Deal, however, retorted that Carter, after deciding to run for governor, voted against a fiscal 2015 budget that included a $535 million funding increase for public schools in the state this year:

Then there’s the issue of creating a state-run district and boosting the growth of charter schools that I touched on a week ago. I mentioned that Deal has subsequently tried to downplay his enthusiasm for the Louisiana model. In the remarks below, the governor seems to indicate that if anything, Louisiana’s plan isn’t pro-active enough when it comes to helping students:

But Carter says that the solution for so-called failing schools isn’t to have the state take them over, but to focus on why those schools see so much teacher turnover and to stop constantly changing instructional practices:

A version of this news article first appeared in the State EdWatch blog.