Here is a great article about Georgia’s “tax credit scholarship” program by Myra Blackmon of the Athens Banner-Herald.
Blackmon writes:
“I’m just sick about all this. My beloved Georgia has gone from being a shining beacon of educational innovation in the 1990s to a “me and my kid first” basis for decision-making and funding. We are resegregating our schools by race and class, making the quality of a child’s education dependent on his ZIP code or his parent’s income.
“Don’t talk to me about choice. That’s a euphemism for “just us.” Don’t talk to me about failing schools; talk to me about a failing legislature and corporate “reformers” who understand everything about education except teaching and learning. Don’t talk to me about “bloated budgets.” Since 2008, Georgia’s public schools have gained 37,000 students and lost 5,000 teachers.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
When I taught public school in Rome, Georgia (1993-98), there was no sense of “every man for himself.” The state lottery did what it said it would do: put money into education. I received a 6% raise for five years in a row. I felt valued as a teacher. I am sorry to hear of how hard hit Georgia now is by corporate reform.
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see also some other very good pieces on HB 140, which would increase the Tax Credit Scholarship program from $50+,000,000 to $80+,000,000 per year in diverted funds while we constantly hear we are in grim budget times for our ever-struggling public schools:
from North Georgia, coverage including the Rome GA systems’s brutal cuts:
http://bit.ly/15cKbYv
from South Georgia, an Op Ed from a writer who has had enough of this nonsense:
http://bit.ly/15B12VX
from Atlanta, another voice in the chorus:
bit.ly/YbdoNQ
and yet the bill is very unlikely to be derailed– the right people in the legislature are puching this Chaos Theory in running public schools (into the ground) and the right people seem to have the votes in the legislature, the schools of their constituents be damned.
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see also some other very good pieces on HB 140, which would increase the Tax Credit Scholarship program from $50+,000,000 to $80+,000,000 per year in diverted funds while we constantly hear we are in grim budget times for our ever-struggling public schools:
from North Georgia, coverage including the Rome GA systems’s brutal cuts:
http://bit.ly/15cKbYv
from South Georgia, an Op Ed from a writer who has had enough of this nonsense:
http://bit.ly/15B12VX
from Atlanta, another voice in the chorus:
bit.ly/YbdoNQ
and yet the bill is very unlikely to be derailed– the right people in the legislature are puching this Chaos Theory in running public schools (into the ground) and the right people seem to have the votes in the legislature, the schools of their constituents be damned.
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