New Campaign Art for Obama!

Do You Plan to See “W”?

 

Hey John McCain Listen To This!

The voters of Bartow County had a few ballot questions we answered on Tuesday. Maybe John McCain will take a few of our answers and run with them. Here are the results!

Bartow County Republican Party Ballot Questions

The two top countries that import oil to the United State are Mexico and Canada. Seven foreign companies have signed exploration agreements with Cuba to drill in the Gulf of Mexico. Drilling for oil in Alaska could reduce American oil imports by about 15%. Should Congress allow drilling in the National Refuge in Alaska and off the coast of Florida?

Yes 7561 ( 90.89%)

No 758 ( 9.11%)

Currently 1% of the Georgia Tax on fuel goes to the general fund. Georgia has over a $1,000,000,000 in surplus. Rather than raising taxes through a T-SPLOST or something similar, do you support sending all the fuel tax to transportation?

Yes 6409 ( 78.56%)

No 1749 (21.44%)

Should the United States secure its borders and enforce its current immigration laws?

Yes 8229 ( 97.55%)

No 207 ( 2.45%)

From July 2007 to January 2008, Cobb County’s Sheriff’s office booked 3,495 foreign-born people into his jail. ICE placed an immigration “hold” on 1,357 of those and has picked up more than 750 illegal aliens for possible deportation proceedings. Would you support hiring three additional deputies for Bartow County to be able to hold illegal aliens for deportation by ICE?

Yes 7335 ( 88.25%)

No 977 (11.75%)

Would you support a government run, rationed health care system similar to that in Europe and Canada?

Yes 1990 ( 24.29%)

No 6204 ( 75.71%)

Do you support eliminating the Georgia income tax?

Yes 6464 (78.25%)

No 1797 (21.75%)

Do you support eliminating the Federal income tax?

Yes 6158 (75.35%)

No 2014 (24.65%)

Voter Apathy the Real Winner!

Tonight there were a number of races that were decided in Bartow County and around the state of Georgia. Primary elections are always hard because good people see their dreams of elective office come to an end. As messy as this process can be I still believe that our system is the best in the world.

Every four years (two in some cases) we have the opportunity in this country to peaceably reshape the direction of our country with a shot ever being fired. We fight the war of ideas and the electorate decides (with the exception of President…see Bush v. Gore) who should lead or communities and our country.

The problem is that someone forgot to tell the American people how precious this right really is. We have become so spoiled and apathetic in this country that voting has fallen to an all time low and a small sample of communities are actually determining the outcome of political races. The voter turnout in Bartow County was an embarrassing, pathetic 21%. For those of you who voted I salute you because you wielded more electoral power than you could have ever imagined.

If you did not vote yesterday you should be ashamed and let me encourage you to please steer clear of any active duty military and veterans (especially those from WWII). You are not worthy to be in their presence. Why you ask?…..Because they did something that you seemingly are unwilling to do which is to care about the future of this nation.

Go ahead and watch your reality T.V and text message your vote on your favorite Idol singer….just stay away from the countries heroes. We need patriots in this country and would I prefer they not be infected with your ambivalence and apathy.

If reading this makes you angry and you want to get even try going to the polls in November. The price of admission is free unless you count the blood that has been spilled over the past 232 years to keep your lazy carcass FREE.

Remembering Tony Snow….Christian, Husband, Father, Newsman

(Thanks Kansas Bob for putting me onto this article)

The conservative movement lost one of its warriors with the passing of Tony Snow. He most recently served as the Press Secretary for President Bush(prior to that he worked at FoxNews hosting FoxNews Sunday). By all accounts he changed the dynamic of the job and may have been one of the most successful Press Secretaries in this generation.

I had the opportunity to see a retrospective on his life and career and it was amazing to see the love and adoration that was being bestowed upon this man from people across the political spectrum. The words that kept coming up were authenticity, humility, decency, and his genuine love for other people. In a profession that is dominated by people with huge egos it was rare to find a man whose intellect was only rivaled by his compassion.

Even while fighting his own cancer he would reach out to others who were sick and dealing with illnesses of their own. Although I did not know him I am proud that he embodied what I believe the Christian faith to be about. Tony Snow never lost sight of the continuing journey “From Where He was to Where God Wanted Him To Be”. July 12th 2008 God wanted Tony to Join him where he could bring his own unique commentary on the splendor of Heaven.

Excerpt from an article Tony Snow wrote in Christianity Today:

Blessings arrive in unexpected packages—in my case, cancer.

Those of us with potentially fatal diseases—and there are millions in America today—find ourselves in the odd position of coping with our mortality while trying to fathom God’s will. Although it would be the height of presumption to declare with confidence What It All Means, Scripture provides powerful hints and consolations.

The first is that we shouldn’t spend too much time trying to answer the why questions: Why me? Why must people suffer? Why can’t someone else get sick? We can’t answer such things, and the questions themselves often are designed more to express our anguish than to solicit an answer.

I don’t know why I have cancer, and I don’t much care. It is what it is—a plain and indisputable fact. Yet even while staring into a mirror darkly, great and stunning truths begin to take shape. Our maladies define a central feature of our existence: We are fallen. We are imperfect. Our bodies give out.

But despite this—because of it—God offers the possibility of salvation and grace. We don’t know how the narrative of our lives will end, but we get to choose how to use the interval between now and the moment we meet our Creator face-to-face.

Click Here for the full Christianity Today article

What I Learned…..

Tonight I had the opportunity to attend the “Meet The Candidates” event at the Bartow County Republican Party headquarters. They had 8 candidates in attendance to make “stump” speeches and to answer questions that had been sent in to the local party. Here are some observations that I made while I was there:

• We have some great people running this year and it is a shame that some of them will not be successful in their respective campaigns.
• Every candidate was in favor of eliminating Federal and State income Tax
• Each one of them wanted us to secure our borders and enforce U.S. law as it relates to immigration
• The Tax Commissioner has to work with to many numbers (Not for Me)
• Christian Coomer impresses me more every time I hear him speak
• Education was again a major focus of the questions
• State House members need to leave education alone and let that be a locally controlled issue

I wanted to take a minute to respond to a couple of the education questions that were asked at the event:

1. Do you support vouchers?

I actually do support vouchers for education because I believe so strongly in public education’s ability to rise to meet new challenges and adding this new element of competition would make our public schools stronger. The Bartow County School System and the City of Cartersville school system do such a good job especially in the early grades that I do not think that vouchers would significantly impact our student enrollment.

2. Do you think the Federal Department of Education should be abolished?

The Department of Education was created under President Carter in 1979 and has probably done more to hurt public education than any single action in our history. It is not by accident that there is no mention of education in the Constitution. The framers never intended for education to be part of the centralized federal government. Education would fall under the 10th amendment which is the Reserved Powers clause. This means it was left to the individual states to create, run, and regulate education in each state. Abolish the DOE and return the money to each of the 50 states in the form of block grants. Let the state legislatures and local school boards determine what is best for each student in the respective states.

When Should The School Year Begin?

There has been a lot of talk recently about a proposal that was made by Superintendent Kathy Cox to begin the school year later.  At the summer meeting of the GSBA in Savannah she laid out a few reasons why starting school around the 3rd week of August could make sense for Georgia schools.

One of the issues has to do with meeting the AYP (adequate yearly progress) provision of the NCLB (No Child Left Behind) Act.  As a result of the various start times of Georgia schools the state DOE has to have most of its CRCT results work reported back to the schools very quickly in order to know who passed and who must go to summer school.  When the students retake the test their progress does not count into that school years AYP progress numbers.

Her suggestion would make it possible for us to capture those retakes into the same school year that they were originally captured.  This would be beneficial to get a better picture of a school systems true progress but I am not sure that it is enough of a reason to change a system calendar by 3 weeks.

There is another movement in Georgia currently that might make this proposal more feasible.  There are a number of systems looking into moving away from block scheduling and if you move back to the traditional 6 or 7 period day the a late August start date works better.  As school systems we are required to try and balance our 180 instructional calendar as much as possible.  There would be no way to end the semester prior to Christmas break which is one of the primary benefits of the current block scheduling format. 

There will have to be a lot of questions answered before the majority of the state shifts its school calendar so dramatically.   Having said that, it would be an error for the legislature to try and impose this on school systems statewide.

My personal view on the school calendar is that we should partner with Cartersville City schools, North Metro, and Georgia Highlands where possible and come up with a calander that makes sense for the entire community.  I am open to looking at a change in our calendar and our scheduling provided that those changes are well thought out and done keeping each other in mind.

How Do You Pray?

We had a great service at Oakleaf Church today! We finished up the series called “Crossing Over” on the book of Joshua. Today Michael talked about pray BIG, AUDACIOUS, and SPECIFIC prayers.

In the 10th chapter of Joshua, as the Israelites are fighting the Amorites on behalf of the Gibeonites, Joshua does a pretty amazing thing. He prays publicly to God to stop the Sun and moon in the sky so that they can continue to rout the opposing army.

He did not ask as so many Christian’s do (including myself) to please help me through this or to intervene/supersede on his behalf.

He asked for the Sun to stop and even more amazing God answered that prayer. We need to stop treating God like he is so small and start praying to God big things that only he can work out in a supernatural way!

Michael said: Our goals should be attainable, but our prayers should be impossible!

How Do You Pray? Try praying Big, Specific prayers and see if God honors what you are asking for!

What Do The Latest CRCT Results Really Mean?

In Savannah, at the annual GSBA summer conference we had the opportunity to hear from Superintendent of Schools Kathy Cox. There was a lot of anticipation in the room for what she would say based on a lot of media reports that had been in the news lately. I have to say that I was really impressed with the fact that Katy Cox did not shy away from the “elephant in the room” issues. She took on directly the critics of this years CRCT results and her idea to push back the start time of Georgia schools.

Superintendent Cox first made the point (rightly so) that success is not always defined by higher scores. In Georgia we are in the process of completely overhauling our K12 curriculum and there are going to be some issues along the way. The two areas that received the most criticism this year were 8th grade social studies and math. The social studies problems were multi-fa-citied and it looks like there was a disconnect between what was taught and what was written into the test. Results from around the state all indicated a systemic problem and the DOE through out the social studies results. They are working to make it right and I am confident that next year this problem will be corrected.

There were a number of factors that went into the issues with the 8th grade math scores. The first issue is that this was the first year that the 8th grade teachers were teaching the new GPS curriculum. Superintendent Cox made sure to point out that there has always been a “drop” in scores in which we have converted from the old QCC based curriculum to the new GPS curriculum. The following year the GPS—->GPS scores have improved dramatically. If this pattern holds true then we would expect to see improvement with 8th grade math scores next year.

There have been many benefits to the increased rigor and increased cut scores that have been written in to the CRCT tests. Statewide when two years of GPS have been taught the gap between minority students and white students has significantly narrowed. Georgia has been recognized nationally for what we are doing to strengthen our curriculum and the National Council for Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) says that higher level math is needed for every child.

Finally if you look at 8th grade math CRCT results and the over 60% pass rate that we saw statewide there is some good news in those raw numbers. For the past few years at the high school level the pass rate on the Algebra I and Geometry End of Course Tests (EOCT) has been in the 60% range. The new 8th grade GPS curriculum pushes those subject areas down to middle school as an integrated program. It should not be surprising that we would see similar pass rates when this material is taught in the middle school. Algebra I and Geometry according to Superintendent Cox are two of the primary reasons students fail and ultimately drop out of high school. By attacking this problem earlier we should be able to reduce the impact of these courses on our dropout rate and better prepare our students for high school and post secondary education.

No one wants to see their student “fail” but I believe we are headed in the right direction in Georgia and I would just encourage everyone to be patient and allow these changes to really take hold before we render out decision on how successful we have been.

Redefining Literacy in 21st Century Schools

Recently I had the opportunity to attend the Georgia School Board Association’s summer meeting in Savannah, Georgia. One of our sessions was on how the education community needs to be doing a better job ingraining technology into the lives of our students. The speaker was David Warlick and it is his contention that if we do nor redefine what literacy mean in ours schools we are going to see education be passed by the technology wave that is upon us.

He made the point that as educators we for the first time in history are preparing students for an unknown future. At the rate that technology is advancing it is very difficult to plan and prepare how to adequately instruct a student over a 13 year span in K-12th grade. The student will most certainly see numerous changes in how we access, retain, and process information. Mr. Warlick indicated that consequently as a result of the pace of change we need to be teaching students how to more efficiently and effectively teach themselves.

He gave numerous examples on techniques and strategies that could be employed to give students the ability to become technology “detectives” and ensure that the resources that they are using are credible. Because of the TV/Gamer paradigm that kids are growing up into today they can process change in information much faster than their adult counterparts.

Mr Warlick stated that “We see technology and kids see streams of information”.

As educators we need to make sure that we do not do technology for technologies sake. This conversion that is taking place in our classrooms needs to meet the students where they are and have a real, tangible impact on their learning experience. In the public education sector we are never going to be able to keep pace with the expense and speed of technology changes but we can equip our students so that they have the skills to compete when they have access to all of these information resources in the future.

For more information on these topics please visit the following web-sites:

http://www.landmark-project.com

http://www.davidwarlick.com/wordpress/