Georgia’s Two Year Colleges May Become a Thing of the Past

Georgia’s two year-colleges may become a thing of the past under a proposal from a group studying the state’s education system.

The proposal would close Georgia’s eight community colleges and put their academic programs under the Technical College System.

The group says that would let the University System of Georgia focus on research, four year-degree programs, and graduate degree programs.

Thousands of Georgia students go to two year colleges like East Georgia College each year. Many will transfer to one of the state’s four-year schools to continue their education. 

“Coming from a small school, I wanted to start in a small atmosphere. At my two year college, it’s more like a family atmosphere. The professors are able to help, you have more one on one time,“ says Jessica Best, a sophomore.

“A lot of people would probably be scared to leave home to go to a university, whereas here, you may drive 30 minutes to an hour, but you’re still at home,“ says sophomore Denise Mosley.

“Our primary job is to bring them up to par, so that when they leave a two year school in the USG, the University System of Georgia, they can go to the University of Georgia.  They can go to Georgia Tech. They can go to MIT. They can go to any school in the U.S. and succeed,“ says Dr. Glenn Stracher, a professor of geology and physics in the University System of Georgia for more than 17 years.

But that opportunity might be lost, under a draft report from a group appointed by Governor Sonny Perdue.

According to a draft of recommendations from the Tough Choices or Tough Times Working Group, the academic programs currently administered by two year colleges would be put under the umbrella of the Technical College System. Some are afraid would deter students from going to school.

“Some of the programs offered in two year colleges might be cut, and that means there a whole bunch of students that would be denied the opportunity to pursue a particular career interest or program of study at a two year school. In rural communities, that may mean that students take a look at the technical college, and say ‘Well, that school doesn’t have anything I’m interested in, so the heck with it, i just won’t go to college at all,‘“ worries Stracher.

Dr. Dee McKinney hopes the state will study the potential effects carefully before acting.

“I think there’s lots of different ways to get a good education in Georgia. Let’s take a look at what the effect of the proposal would do in the long term to the students, maybe not today, not tomorrow, but 15-20 years,“ she says.

Stracher and McKinney also point out the economic contribution of ECG and its students to the Swainsboro economy.

Below is the draft of recommendations from the Tough Choices or Tough Times Working Group.

Georgia’s Tough Choices or Tough Times Working Group
DRAFT Outline of Recommendations
December 15, 2008

In the Summer of 2008, Governor Sonny Perdue formed the Tough Choices or Tough Times working group and charged those members with a specific task: use the Tough Choices or Tough Times report of the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce as a framework to examine structural elements of Georgia’s education system and develop short and long-term recommendations to prepare for the Georgia of 2023.

Therefore, Georgia’s Tough Choices or Tough Times working group intends to submit the following proposed recommendations to Governor Sonny Perdue for his consideration. There are a number of recommendations which, if adopted, will require the formation of implementation task forces. Such task forces would take direction from Governor Perdue in terms of what needs to be done and would outline how to accomplish those particular goals.

A. Move on when Ready

Having high expectations for students, engaging students in a college or career pathway of personal interest, and giving students an early introduction to college level work will produce better student achievement results, higher graduation rates, and most importantly, help prepare Georgia students to be competitive in the global economy. Also, as Tough Choices or Tough Times points out, there will be significant long run cost savings from not having students waste time and resources on school work that is not productive.

To optimize students’ achievement, we envision:

Georgia high school students will have an educational structure that will enable them to “move on when ready”, and they will be encouraged to do so. The number of students who will be “ready” by the 11th grade will increase over time as other educational improvements are implemented.

When students are “ready” they will have three options for completing high school and starting post-secondary work. The options include: 1) taking a rigorous curriculum of Advanced Placement courses and/or an International Baccalaureate program to earn credits towards college; 2) dually enroll in high school and college; or 3) leaving high school and moving on to a post-secondary institution.

“Ready” to move on will be defined as not needing remediation in the next phase of the student’s academic career and/or needing to utilize a different academic setting to move forward in their studies.
To achieve this vision we recommend the following actions:

Short-term

a. Adopt a statewide definition of “ready” as no remediation needed for college or work entry and prohibit students from moving on until they are “ready.” This will further the work already well underway by GaDOE, USG, and TCSG, which aligns high school graduation requirements with college entry and placement, thereby reducing the need for remediation upon entering college. This will also reduce the need for remediation of skills upon entering the workforce as studies have shown that the skills needed for today’s workforce and college entry are similar.

b. Identify an appropriate assessment or method to determine students’ readiness to move on to the next level of education.

c. Ensure that all students in Georgia have access to all three options listed above, either through on-site enrollment opportunities or virtual enrollment opportunities.

d. Clarify the missions of Georgia’s post-secondary institutions by (a) charging the current Technical College System to administer all technical and 2-year academic programs offered in Georgia, thus building a Technical and Academic College System of Georgia (TACSG); b) charging the University System of Georgia to focus exclusively on research, 4-year degree programs, and graduate degree programs; and c) creating and enforcing pathways for student transfer between institutions and systems by forming comprehensive articulation agreements that clearly establish procedures governing the transfer of credits from one institution or system to another.

e. Determine an appropriate funding mechanism for dual enrollment that allows the funding to follow the students.

f. Explore public/private partnerships to fund several demonstration sites around the state to determine practical implications of allowing all students the three options described above. The sites should ideally include cooperating secondary schools as well as TCSG and USG institutions. The objective would be to use the implementation lessons learned and outcome data to then implement this proposal statewide.

B. Getting and Keeping World Class Teachers

Teacher quality is the most important determinant of student achievement. In Georgia we must therefore find ways to attract and retain high performance teachers in adequate numbers and in the right subject areas.

To accomplish this, we envision a system in which:

The brightest and most passionate students as well as top-of-their-field professionals choose education as a career.

School leaders are adept at creating the right culture to attract quality teachers and foster optimal levels of student achievement.

K-12 education is seen as a professional career option in a manner similar to higher education, law, and medicine.
To achieve these objectives we recommend:

a. Secondary school teachers should first be prepared in a core subject area (e.g. biology, history). Pedagogy skills can then be taught by traditional Colleges of Education, technical colleges, or private providers. The Professional Standards Commission would develop criteria for accrediting such providers with a bias towards ensuring the curriculum is concise, targeted, and relevant. Generally, more competition should be introduced at all levels among providers of teacher training and the success of program graduates in raising student achievement should be tracked.

b. Continuing to encourage and support the PSC’s current work to make alternative routes to teaching more accessible including establishing and/or expanding already successful programs such as Teach for America and Troops to Teachers.

c. Establishing an evaluation system that measures a teacher’s impact on students’ academic achievement. While instructional techniques and other factors are important to the success of the teacher, the ultimate outcome measure is whether the students learned. There are several ways in which student achievement can be demonstrated: absolute achievement to a standard, growth over time, and growth compared to peers are some examples. Along those lines, principal and local school superintendent evaluations should also focus on student achievement. Rather than continuing an incentive-based system for coaxing student achievement results, we must hold each other accountable for our main mission.

d. Restructuring the teacher compensation system by:

i. Encouraging and supporting the Alliance’s proposal for differentiated pay for qualified math and science teachers.

ii. Revamping the existing teacher salary schedule so that 1) performance in increasing student achievement is rewarded, 2) increased salary for higher degrees is relegated solely to relevant subject area(s) for that teacher, and incentives are introduced to encourage the best and brightest students to enter teaching.

iii. Moving the Teachers Retirement System from a defined benefit plan to a defined contribution plan.

e. Endorsing the recommendations of the HR1103 Joint Study Committee on Teacher Training and Certification.

C. Development of students’ analytical and creative problem-solving skills

Tough Choices or Tough Times makes the case that the primary competitive advantage for the U.S. in the flat, global labor market will be if our workers at all skill levels have superior analytical and problem-solving capabilities..To illustrate this point, at a recent keynote address to state-level education leaders, Intel Chairman Craig Barrett noted that 90 percent of Intel’s December revenues come from products that were not yet developed in January of that same year. Therefore, 90 percent of Intel’s annual revenue is based on imagination and creativity. We would be gravely mistaken to assume that Intel is an anomaly among corporations.

Therefore, we offer the following vision for teaching and learning in Georgia:

Beginning in Pre-Kindergarten, there will be continuous and consistent efforts to teach literacy and numeracy so that students not only memorize information, but learn how to interpret and synthesize on their own.

Teachers will view themselves as “thinking coaches” or “learning facilitators” whereby creativity, conceptualization, and engagement of teacher and student will be the primary standard of quality teaching.

Teachers will be highly skilled in content and utilizing technology to transfer knowledge. While this may include the use of instructional tools such as “smart boards”, it will more importantly include the use of technology to add and integrate additional information resources into the students’ learning.

Recognizing that a global economy means greater interaction between cultures and diverse language skills are increasingly vital to success, all students will be fluent in a second language when they leave Georgia’s public schooling system.

All public school students will have the opportunity to develop creative capacity through a multitude of options including, but not limited to, the visual arts, music, writing, theatre, leadership, and tactical skills.

Georgia’s students will be known worldwide as well-rounded and hard-working.
To achieve this objective we recommend:

a. Supporting, encouraging, and accelerating the efforts of the Georgia Department of Education to implement and refine a rigorous curriculum in Georgia schools that emphasizes problem solving and critical thinking skills.

b. Reforming the state’s accountability system and testing system so that a) assessment response items require problem-solving and critical thinking skills, and b) there is vertical alignment between all K-12 assessments.

c. Engaging in a full review of instructional best practices that yield stronger problem solving and critical thinking skills, and developing a mechanism to disseminate those practices to be used by teachers throughout Georgia.