GA Focus - GPEE

Georgia's Top Ten in Education by the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education

Episode Transcript

(00:11):
Welcome to Georgia Focus. I'm JohnClark on the Georgia News Network. Twenty
three to three was a year bestdefined by the Georgia Partnership for Exits and
Education doing what it does best,conveniing stakeholders, policymakers, nonprofit and community
leaders, and corporate partners to identifyways to improve Georgia's public education system.
They're going to continue that today withGeorgia Partnerships Top Ten Issues to Watch in

(00:34):
twenty twenty four and today our gueststar Matt Smith, director of Policy Research,
and Dana Rickman, President of theGeorgia Partnership. It's good to have
you guys back in. It's greatto be here. It's good to be
here. Had your last year,but we didn't I wasn't here, but
but you were here and we hadyou both in last year to do this
and I'm excited about this. Whowill get this this year? You know,

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this is the twentieth edition of ourTop ten Issues to Watch, and
so we're really excited. And overthe past twenty years, the audience for
it has just exploded, and Ithink that it wouldn't be you know,
incorrect to say everybody anyone who's interestedin education, but also economic development,
workforce development. But our targets thatwe really look at obviously our legislative leadership,

(01:22):
our state elected leaders as they makedecisions around important policy implications, but
also other advocates, friends of ours, advocate friends of ours who are advocating
for policies around these issues, butalso just you know, local parents,
local leaders that really want to lookat how do they engage in their school
systems to really understand the issues ina real way and not in a way

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that's sort of full of hyperbole.But you're the facts and here are your
options. And so it's really writtento a lay person audience to understand what's
going on and how to engage andmake stuff better. Well, you know,
education is so important, especially nowin Georgia. It's very important,
and it's important that you that youmake these are issues and we get some

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of these issues right every year,and so it's very important that people read
it. Mom and dad's you know, they should read this too. Everybody
should read this, and certainly thelegislatures too. And the session is going
to be going soon and we hopesomeone will here. Here's some of this
that's our hope. That's certainly ourgoal. That's it. Well, let's

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go, let's go right into it, because we had ten of them to
get to. Yeah. So firstof all, indications of success. Where
is Georgia today? Where are youtoday? Yeah, So we've highlighted about
ten different data metrics, ranging fromaccess to preschool all the way to post

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secondary attainment. And so we haveadded a couple new ones to align with
our new ed Quest Georgia initiative thatwe relaunched in August of twenty twenty three,
and so that'll look a little bitdifferent to the readers that have been
looking at the publication year over year, but we're really excited about tracking progress

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along those different metrics as we moveforward. And what's important about the ed
Quest Georgia initiative is that we wroteabout it last year and we launched it
for the twenty twenty three Top ten. We wrote about it, and then
we launched the initiative during twenty twentythree, and it really sets a stake
in the ground of our north Stargoal that for Georgia to continue on the
really robust economic development pathway that wehave, we need sixty five percent of

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our adult population to have a postsecondary credential. Okay, if we don't
make that, we will not continueto grow and sustain the economic growth that
we have. And so we've laidout a ten year plan of how to
get there, and so you'll seea lot of of in this current top
ten sort of those first steps ofwhat we need to do to get to
that sixty five percent, because currentlymet we're at what D three, Yeah,

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it's f actually, and so wekind of kick off the top ten
by saying, Okay, well,then what is kind of seen in the
way, what are the barriers orobstacles And one that we identified was rhetoric
and political division, and that reallyprevents communities from adopting meaningful solutions that kind
of look at our perennial education,workforce challenges and a comprehensive frame. And

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so really what we're trying to dois urge people to adopt a new paradigm
looking for conferhensive solutions these challenges throughcivil discourse and collective action. And so
we're hoping through the first issue thatwe can have district school district leaders model
that paradigm shift and kind of empowerstudents and parents and community leaders to adopt

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a shared vision and for public education. And so that's how we kick off
on the top ten this year,and each one of the issues that follows
we're kind of thinking about how wecan integrate this kind of collective action mindset.
Right, Dana, what about thebuilding a strong foundation? What about
the what do you have on that? Yeah? The second issue literacy building

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a strong foundation. Issues two throughfour really look at the big policy agendas
for the state, and this firstone is literacy and so for that one,
we really review the current most recentlegislation required around getting school districts to
implement certain literacy materials and professional developmentand things like that. But it's really

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how do we prioritize implementing all ofthat, but supporting districts and doing so
there's a lot of sort of unseenconsequences there that we need to make sure
that we do it right. Sothe third issue is student mental health,
opting a whole community approach. Iknow mental health is very important these days,
we find more mental health problems.Why are you addressing it? Yeah,

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so we've actually addressed to some pasticiansthe top ten, but in this
one, in issue three, we'vekind of described how districts have used their
federal pandemic relief funds over the lastthree years to administer mental health screeners and
contract with mental health practitioners to conductinterventions, hire more school social workers and
psychologists to deliver support to students.What's really crucial in this particular brief is

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that we also highlight some state Departmentof Education efforts to sustain and expand some
of that work, and so we'rereally excited about the idea of expanding these
behavioral health services. What's crucial though, is figuring out what the right mixture
is, the right recipe, ifyou will, between what a school can

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provide and also understanding limitations and whatmay be a commune unity health audience can
actually provide as well to supplement that. And so really the key in this
issue is just figuring out how schoolleaders can prioritize partnerships outside the schoolhouse to
really expand access to mental health services. And the next issue you issued number

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four is access to quality childcare.Moving workforce barriers? How are we going
to do that? Yeah, we'removing workforce barriers. We hear a lot
right now from our employers about theskills gap that there's way more jobs available
than people to fill them. Andone of the big barriers to employment is

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lack of quality childcare and so we'reseeing that for families with young children,
especially through the pandemic, and afterthe pandemic that issue has gotten even harder.
So there's lack of available options,the high cost of care right now,
it's basically the same price, ifnot more so to get infant toddler
care then send a kid to college. Current options don't accommodate a lot of

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evening or overnight shift work, anda lot of the growth in our economy
is in shift work, overnight's weekends, even like hospitals and things like that.
The expiring federal pandemic relief funds isgoing to be an issue, and
an overall shortage of early care educatorsable to teach and take care of the
children. And so this issue reallylooks at how can we come together to

(08:24):
really remove that barrier, allow peopleto get back to work while the kids
are in a high quality environment.And so it's really a two to address
this issue. Yeah, yeah,yeah, I would expand on what Dana
said. I think we also onthat issue are thinking about how we can
kind of leverage already existing state levelpolicies and employer contributions that can make childcare

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more affordable for parents. Issue numberfive is career pathways a demand driven approach.
Yeah, so what we're uncovering thisissue is how important it is for
school districts to provide a career intechnical options for their high school students that
align with workforce needs. One thingthat we uncovered is that one hundred and

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thirty thousand Georgia high school students havecompleted a three course sequence in a career
in technical area in twenty twenty two, and that's a great increase over the
last ten years. But we alsofound that only two out of five of
those students participated in a work basedlearning opportunity, and that means working as

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an intern or working as an apprenticeor something like that in a workplace.
What we also found is that onlyabout a third of those students actually earned
what we call a credential value,meaning a credential that would produce some kind
of livable wage for that person.And so really in this issue, we're
championing the idea that districts can workwith their workforce partners to adopt an approach

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where it provides students with greater realworld experiences and allow them to earn these
credentials while they're still enrolled in highschool. Yeah, Dana, Yeah,
and we're really talking about helping communities, local communities, local regions align their
education policies, like what kind ofcareer pathways do they offer, what kind

(10:18):
of dual enrollment or partnerships they havewith their local technical colleges in particular in
the rural areas, and how dothose alignments lead to sort of credentials of
value, and so looking at localcommunities and local regions really growing and sustaining
their own workforce. Yeah, thesethese students now are doing this workforce and
they do dual enrollment and that helpsthem, That helps them immediately and when

(10:43):
they're in college. Love, Iwish we'd had that when when I was
in school, especially if the dualenrollment is aligned to something that actually gets
you to and you're not taking extraclasses just to take extra classes, but
really taking one that will align toa credential or get you down the path
to a degree quicker and cheaper,and then help everybody ache thing We demystify,

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and that brief is that doing ROMAis not just that first English composition
class or that first college ogebra class. In many cases, dual enrollment also
encompasses career and technical opportunities as well. The next issue is educator recruitment,
a new paradigm for districts. Yeah, and so I'll take this one.
What we've uncovered too in issue sixis that they're emerging models. We highlight

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three internships, residencies, and apprenticeshipsthat prepare individuals to enter the teaching profession.
One thing that we kind of advocatefor in this particular brief is the
idea of remodeling preparation and recruitment experiencesso that we bring in these candidates earlier
in the process, they understand what'sexpected of them in the classroom and provide

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them with more robust preparation. Andso the idea is that we can kind
of highlight what is happening with thesemodels while they're promising, while they're effective,
and hopefully integrating those elements into ourexisting programs to make sure that our
candidates are ready for a classroom onday one. Yeah, and this issue

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really gets at addressing the teacher shortageproblem that we've been talking about. But
again I think it's more of atwofer because we're looking at how we recruit
and train new teachers. But alsothe models that Matt's talking about and what
we're talking about here in terms ofapprenticeships and internships really help retention of teachers
as well, and so we're lesslikely to lose teachers in their second,

(12:39):
third, fourth, fifth year andreally looking at how do you retain and
keep teachers longer, and so theseare some exciting opportunities. So instead of
a student you traditionally you go tocollege, you spend your last semester in
a classroom. But what happens alot of times is once teachers get hired
and really into a classroom, they'relike, oh, I don't like this,
and they're out of there. Andso to give them the longer exposure,

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more residencies like doctors do, sothat they're really committed and understand what
they're getting into before they graduate withthis teaching certificate that they may not end
up using, so they get theycan go in and participate in it in
less in the last few years,for like a full year for a lot
of it for folks in the undergradand then there's other models of internships and

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residencies where you're getting a master's degreeand you're sort of doing the work and
getting your degree at the same time. And so there's some really interesting innovative
models that ultimately save the district's moneyand lead to better retention rates of teachers,
and so we're encouraging more investment inthere. The next issue is the
superintendent struggle. Supporting district leaders throughunprecedented times. Yes, and in this

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issue we really dig into the localdistrict superintendent. We've been doing a lot
of research and working with a lotof districts through this COVID relief pandemic times.
And since twenty twenty, we've hadmore than a fifty percent turnover in
superintendents, and that's just a hugenumber, and I think anybody has so

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many implications for that, you know, long term strategic planning. If you
have a leader that's turning over everytwo years, you don't get anywhere right
anywhere. And traditionally when you geta new leader, it's usually somebody with
less experience, and so that hasall sorts of downstream consequences to supporting these
great teachers that we're trying to retainall sorts of things around just the importance

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of strong leadership in that district position. And so there are examples in Georgia
of great superintendent trainings and you know, we have the GLISSY, the Georgia
Leadership Institute for School Improvement. TheGeorgia School Superintendent's Association does great cohort training
of district superintendents. Gwinnett County hasa great leadership pathway. But when we're

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talking sort of statewide, especially districtsthat don't have that kind of capacity,
we really need a statewide approach tolift up and support these leaders as they
transition into these really difficult positions anda position that has changed. I mean,
these four superintendents, there was nota manual in twenty twenty of how

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to navigate a pandemic. Oh right, there was not a manual and you
know to mask pro or con like, there's no guidance here. And so
they're dealing with the normal stuff,which was pressure already, and now all
of these other sort of societal thingsthey need support and help. It's a
rough job. Wow, that's it. The next one is the funding cliff.

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I like that I like the titleof this moving forward after the money
runs out. Yeah, I thinkeverybody you know listening to this news program,
you know, is aware of allthe federal dollars that have gone in
and we had sort of billions gointo our K twelve's system since twenty twenty

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with the intention of recovering from thepandemic and helping school systems recover. All
of that money has to be expendedby this September September of twenty twenty four,
and districts have done an amazing jobof all kinds of things of investing
to make sure that students you recoverany lost learning time. Mental health educator

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supports all the things we've been doing. But you know, we're not recovered
from the pandemic, and the money'srunning out, and so it's not a
question of how do we maintain everythingwe've done, because I think it's completely
you can't replace that level of moneylike that just won't happen. So the
question is how do we really prioritizeand understand what was really working. How

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do we maintain that, you know, how do we share best practices learnings?
How do we move forward with asmaller budget, but hopefully not a
completely reduced budget and really capitalize onwhat was working and maintained that. Yeah,
yep, yeah. I think onething we highlight too with the funding
cliff discussion is how important it isfor state level leaders to be involved in

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the process of increasing district capacity tobecause they can't go it alone. You
can't take a ten percent cut inyour budget and figure out how to stem
that. You have to figure outways to identify promising practices and leverage that
state capacity to help districts move alongin a positive way. Issue nine Corporate

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connections reimagining delivery of post secondary training. Yeah, this one is particularly exciting
for us at the Georgia Partnership.You know, John, you know our
work, and for years we havebeen working on how to get the corporate
community more engaged in education and workforcedevelopment policy. And a lot of times
the business leaders in the state arelike, well, we don't know what

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to do. And there's a particularmoment in time right now where what they're
doing is pretty obvious because we knowa couple of things are coming together.
We have the sort of the grainpopulation where we have an unprecedented number of
people retiring, fewer people are cominginto the workforce, they're not trained in

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the same way, and so companiesright now are really understanding that, for
better or for worse, they actuallyhave a particular role to play other than
just hiring qualified workers, and alot of them are doing that. And
so there's been a real sort ofsystemic change on a lot of levels of
how corporations are really partnering with andcollaborating with, particularly the technical colleges,

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but some USG systems as well,thinking about how to deliver post secondary instruction
so that everybody gets what they need. The corporations get the people train the
way that they need to, thepeople in Georgia get through quicker with less
debts, and come out with degreesof value. And so there's been a

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real structural shift on how corporations andpublic education are coming together to deliver these
services. And so we raise upsome examples of different ways folks are getting
the credentials that they need relatively quicklyfor some well paying jobs, and it
makes me rethink my own career choicessometimes, what did I do? And

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that's true data. One thing thatwe've kind of looked at with the data
is how much of an economic valuethere is for some of these short term
credentials where you might spend a coupleof semesters in a program, it might
not even be credit bearing, whereyou have kind of a lyning workforce opportunities,
things that are really needed immediately inthe workforce that produce a labor market

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return that might be as high orgreater than a Boucher's degree. And so
that's really something we're championing at theGeorgia Partnership. It's not just thinking about
four your degree as a passport toeconomic prosperity, that it could be also
some of these other programs that areshorter in duration. And then number ten
one point two five million more credentials. How do we reach the north star?

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How do we reach it? Yeah, so Dana had mentioned that our
north star, and really the northstar for the next ten years by twenty
thirty three, is to increase thenumber of Georgian adults, Georgia's adults that
have attained a college or excuse me, a post second in credential. So
we mean anything from a degree toan apprenticeship, an occupational license, a

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certificate, a certification. But reallyat the end of the day. It's
a numbers game. How do wereach that? And so when we did
the math, we saw that weneed about a one point twenty five million
more of these credentials, about onehundred and twenty five thousand per year.
Roughly fifty one percent of Georgians haveearned a post secretary credential, and so

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we have fourteen percent more to go. One thing we highlight our research and
our brief too, though, isthat we can do it in one or
two ways. We can produce morecredentials, but we can also continue to
maintain robust economic development policies that alsobring in talented and well credentialed individuals to

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the state too. And we're seeingthat happening as well in terms of more
talent coming into the state and movingthose numbers upward. And I think one
of the important things that comes outof this issue is for Georgia not to
forget about the potential talent that alreadylives here. If you just look at
the number of kids in the Ktwelve system and we just get one hundred

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percent of them coming through got adegree, that doesn't get us one point
two five There's not that many people, but there are a ton of people
already living in Georgia, adults whocould you know, And so thinking about
how do we look at adult learnersthat currently don't have a high school credential,
how do we get them back?Adult learners with some post secondary but
haven't completed you know, they gota couple of credits to a couple credits

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short. And then the adults thatright now are really on the cusp a
risk of unemployment or underemployment due toall these really fast changes in automation.
So a job you have today maygo away tomorrow. Do you have the
skills to get that next job?And so this issue really looks at sort
of a collection of strategies that getsat all of those and really thinking holistically

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about raising up the population that's hereand be inviting to the population that we
would like to attract. And thatshit got us to the one point twenty
five. Yeah, data kind oftouched on it. It's almost kind of
like a stairway where we're kind ofmoving people that have no high school diploma
to get a diploma or equivalency.Those that have a diploma but no college

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training or supposed to grey training.We want to get them a credential,
and those that might have a shortterm credential, we're looking for them to
get degrees of value. So theidea is moving Georgian's forward to that next
milestone and beyond. Well, youknow, I think, I think,
you know, you've been talking aboutall these issues, and I think about

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how when I went to school,it was boring, you know, it
was just we were like, Ijust want to get out of school,
I want to go to school.But now it's exciting. It seems like
they're really doing some exciting things inschool. It is really cool. I
think in my recommendation for anybody,even if you don't have kids in the
public school system, like check out, like what's going on in your public

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school system. We've visited like somescience labs in high schools that put college
labs to shame. Yeah, wewere out. Oh I don't want to
misname it, but there was avery prominent one where he was a senior
in high school and had turned downfull rides to big universities because they said,
you know, their lab just isn'tup to snuff for me. And

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so they had their choice of whereto go, and so there's a ton
of really cool stuff happening in Georgiathat I don't think people know about,
but it's in pockets, right,And so I think for us and what
we're recommending and you know, puttingforth in this is how do we raise
up really cool stuff and realign structuresand state policies so that all everybody,

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like all kids in Georgia could havethe opportunity to say, you know what,
that lab's just not good enough forme, because that's an isolated story.
Let's be honest. And so thisthis will help get us there.
Where is the report now available?Can you go online? Yes, it's
available on our website www dot gpEE dot org Georgia Partnership gp EE dot

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org and you can download it.You can call our office and we'll nail
you one for free. If youwant more than two, you got to
pay for postage. But other thanthat it's free. And our excellent author
here, Matt Smith, also dida great job with some one page summaries,
and so if you don't want toread the entire excellent uh book,
you can read one page summaries.Those are also available on our website.

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Matt and Dana I appreciate it.A B said, you guys coming intoday.
Good to see you again. Yeah, Happy New Year, thank you.
Happy New Year. That's right,Happy new year. We know in
the new year's off to a goodstart. That's Matt Smith, Director of
Policy and Research, and Dana Rickman, President of the Georgia Partnership for the
Excellency Education. You can find outmore at gp EE dot org. For

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questions and comments about today's program,you can email me, John Clark at
Georgiannewsnetwork dot com. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you next week right
here on your local radio station onGeorgia Focus.