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THE JACKSON HERALD
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2010
Named the best weekly editorial page in the nation for 2007, 2008
Opinions
“Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent. ”
- Henry Ward Beecher ~
Mike Buffington, editor • Email: Mike@mainstreetnews.com
our views
What makes a
great teacher?
L AST week, this newspaper
featured a number of local
teachers of the year from
Jackson County. But what makes
these men and women special?
How are they able to rise above
their peers to be recognized for
their teaching ability?
That question was at the heart
of a fascinating article in this
month’s Atlantic magazine. The
article examined data from Teach
for America, a nonprofit program
that recruits college graduates to
teach for two years at low-income
schools. For over 20 years, the
program has collected data on its
teachers and has evaluated what
makes a great teacher from a medi
ocre one.
Among the key findings:
-Perseverance: Great teach
ers have a history of overcoming
challenges in their own lives and
of providing strong leadership to
others. “Gritty” people tend to stick
with their goals longer and work
harder, according to the article.
-Past performance: People
who make great teachers tend
to have a history of measurable
past performance in college, both
in their grades and in leadership
achievements in extracurricular
activities. The past is the most
accurate predictor of the future.
-Life satisfaction: People who
are mostly satisfied with their own
lives tend to be better teachers
than their peers.
So how do great teachers per
form this in the classroom? The
article suggests the following:
-Great teachers set big goals for
students.
-Great teachers constantly re
evaluate what they are doing, what
works and doesn’t work, and adapt
and change their methods.
-Great teachers recruit both stu
dents and parents into the pro
gram.
-Great teachers maintain their
focus on student learning.
-Great teachers plan, plan, plan.
-Great teachers refuse to bend
to the negatives of poverty bureau
cracy and budget cuts.
According to the Atlantic article,
the best teachers are not neces
sarily those with the most degrees,
or the most bubbly personality or
even with the longest tenure. The
best teachers are those who are
determined to succeed in spite of
obstacles in their path.
Every teacher and administrator
should get a copy of this article
and see in more detail what makes
great teachers.
The Jackson Herald
Founded 1875 • The Official Legal
Organ of Jackson County, Ga.
Mike Buffington Co-Publisher & Editor
Scott Buffington Co-Publisher &
Advertising Manager
News Department
Angela Gary Associate Editor
Jana Adams Mitcham Features Editor
Brandon Reed Sports Editor
Kerri Testement Reporter
Sharon Hogan Reporter
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letters
Disagrees with letter on citizen rights
Dear Editor:
So once again we are at a point of deciding that
some citizens do not have certain rights. Or, better
put, they have these rights, but may only use them
in a pre-ordained fashion.
Last week, a citizen wrote a letter to the editor
describing his dismay at certain people having the
freedom of speech. In defense of the Constitution
I offer this response.
The issue at question is the January ruling by the
Supreme Court to allow corporations to contribute
to political campaigns without pre-set limits. This
decision to once again allow freedom of speech
has been decried by the President and other stat
ists. Remember that the current President, during
his campaign, stated that he would like to appoint
Justices to the court who would decide rulings
based not on the Constitution, but rather on fair
ness. As I firmly believe that the Constitution of the
United States is one of the greatest documents ever
produced by the mind of man, I take exception to
the idea of scrapping it in favor of someone’s sub
jective idea of “fairness.” The statist will insist on
using fairness (favorable to them), but will scream
to have applied my fairness; objective rationality
based on the Constitution. And so to the debate at
hand.
The current administration has shown themselves
to have a bias against businesses in general and
people who are financially successful beyond a
pre-set dollar amount. They know that this means
in future elections that businesses will fight back to
the best of their abilities. This the administration
does not want. It is better to squelch the voice of
business. On the other hand, they love the contribu
tions from unions. The bottom line appears to be:
Self serving, yes; Constitution, no.
To understand why this ruling is more equi
table to all we have to see Amendment 1 of the
Constitution. This says the” Congress shall make
no law...abridging the freedom of speech.” This
does not say it is okay to remove this right from
some people. If two people are together they retain
this right. Two hundred together retain this right.
If all of these people own shares of stock in the
same corporation, their rights remain intact. If they
decide to speak in one voice, using the name of the
corporation, you would have them suddenly lose
their rights? The writer states that corporations
being able to use their money as they see fit is “a
setback for ordinary Americans.” Since when is
one person’s exercising of their rights a setback to
anyone else? In what way are the rights of anyone
hindered by another in their use of freedom of
expression?
Additionally, the writer states that a corporation
“lacks the social conscience of a responsible citi
zen.” I know that statists like to throw out baseless
charges that they hope will not be refuted, but this
one is too easy. First, a corporation is made up
of shareholders, each of which the writer would
(presumably) term ordinary, responsible citizens.
If a “responsible citizen” has a moral conscience,
it seems that must go away if the person is a
shareholder of a corporation that makes campaign
contributions.
As I read it was apparent that the writer of last
week’s letter is not a fan of other people having
freedom of expression, but I wasn’t clear as to
why he disliked businesses. Then I came to; “So
why is corporate influence a problem? Large cor
porations (now it is the size of the corporation that
matters).. ..do not have a social conscience because
1) they are comprised of many individuals with
conflicting interests (how do you know what their
interest are? They are obviously all shareholders in
the same corporation, which would indicate some
commonality) and 2) because the foremost desire
of any business is to make a profit.” You state this
as an accusation.
You sir, presuming that you do not live on tax
payer’s money, work for a living. Do you work
for a profit? If you have one penny left of your
paycheck after paying bills for food, clothing and
shelter, you have no social conscience, according to
your theory. The very core of being an American is
to work hard and to enjoy the fruits of your work.
A corporation must earn a profit to pay sharehold
ers. No profit, no shareholders, no corporation,
and, follow along, no jobs.
Lastly, the writer has insulted voters all across
America. “The average American worker...should
be protected from corporate influence and allowed
to have their voice heard.” Before we get to
the obvious, I have to ask; what is an “average
American worker?” Is this assigned by profession,
number of hours worked, degree of difficulty or
what? Are above average or below average work
ers not to be protected? The key to this statement
is that Americans will not be allowed to have their
voice heard if corporations are allowed unlimited
campaign contributions. This pre-supposes that
the voters are not bright enough to see through a
politician ignoring them in favor of a contributor.
Responsible citizens take the time to learn about
candidates and vote for those whose actions are the
closest to the voter’s personal philosophy.
As to your gilded age of corruption and back
room deals where personal interest rules the day
— I hope you understand that this is what we
have now in the current administration. The people
perpetrating this certainly do not want anyone to be
able to speak against them, and will generate any
rule they can to prevent it.
Sincerely,
Michael A. Carroll, Hoschton
Lawmakers should go where the money is
Little by little, the money keeps disappearing from the
state budget.
Georgia legislators have had to delete $1.2 billion
from the current year’s budget because the reces
sion has killed tax revenues. Lawmakers will have
to reduce the budget for next fiscal year by a similar
amount because the recession
still shows few signs of ending
anytime soon.
Who suffers the most when
state spending is cut by such
large amounts? Public edu
cation has consistently taken
the biggest hit. At the urg
ing of Gov. Sonny Perdue, the
Legislature has cut more than
$2 billion in state funding to
local school systems for grades
K-12 since 2003.
Those reductions continued
in the revised state budget that
the House approved last week.
The amended budget cuts another $281 million in
Quality Basic Education (QBE) funds that the state
would normally send to local schools.
If the state’s public school system is to be kept intact,
this cutting cannot go on much longer. Is there a way,
short of passing a tax increase, to raise the money
needed for education?
As it turns out, there is a solution staring legislators
right in the face.
Georgia loses buckets of tax dollars every year
because of retailers who charge the sales tax on their
customers but keep the money rather than send it to the
revenue department. This problem is well known to
lawmakers and revenue officials, but they haven’t done
much to deal with it.
A pilot program in Hall County uncovered the fact
that nearly 1,000 businesses in that county do not have
sales tax numbers, which means they are not reporting
their sales tax collections to the state. There are several
hundred businesses that do not have a business license
from their local government.
House Minority Leader DuBose Porter (D-Dublin)
and his Democratic colleagues have been trying in vain
for more than a year to pass legislation that would crack
down on these renegade businesses who are cheating
the state of sales tax proceeds.
“Our bill will stop the tax cheaters and get the money
where it ought to go,” Porter said.
Based on the results of the Hall County program,
Porter estimates that unreported sales taxes for the
whole state could amount to as much as $1 billion.
This is not a tax increase: this is money that the busi
nesses are already required to collect and send to the
state.
Revenue Commissioner Bart Graham gets irritated
whenever his agency is criticized and claims that the
estimate of $1 billion in uncollected taxes is much too
high. But even Graham concedes that somewhere
between 5 percent and 10 percent of Georgia’s sales
tax proceeds are being evaded. That conservative
estimate would still amount to $250 million to $500
million a year.
That amount of money could make up for the major
cuts in state funding to local school systems, and then
some.
There have been indications in recent weeks that
legislative Republicans could be ready to join their
Democratic colleagues and take action to collect these
delinquent taxes. Bills have been introduced by law
makers from both parties to set up a system that would
cross-check sales tax and business license data to
identify retailers who are not turning over tax proceeds
as the law requires.
Legislators have also come to the realization that you
have to have tax collectors before you can actually col
lect taxes. The revised state budget includes money for
the revenue department to hire six investigative agents
and four financial analysts for its fraud detection group,
which means there will be more people to go after tax
cheats.
That’s a good start. The next step is for lawmakers
to get moving and adopt this legislation so that Georgia
can start collecting taxes that are long past due.
The General Assembly can move fast when it comes
to legislation that has no relevance for its constituents.
The Senate has already adopted a bill that would make
it illegal to implant microchips in people, even though
the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Chip Pearson (R-Dawsonville),
could not cite a single instance where any person in
Georgia was ever forced to undergo such an implanta
tion.
If legislators would only move that quickly to go after
tax cheats, the state and its school systems would be in
much better shape.
Tom Crawford is the editor of The Georgia Report.
He can be reached at tcrawford@capitoIimpact.net.
Schools cheating
on standardized
CRCT tests?
I T WAS bound to come to this,
eventually. A recent audit by the
state Office
of Student
Achievement
of last spring’s
CRCT tests
across the state
show a suspi
cious number
of tests had
wrong answers
erased and cor
rect answers
filled in at
some schools.
Many of those
schools are in
Atlanta; none
were in Jackson
County.
While no formal investigation has
begun, the allegations have shaken the
state’s education system to the core. It
appears that cheating on the standard
ized test was much more common than
thought. And apparently it wasn’t students
doing the cheating, but teachers.
Standing at the center of this storm is
Atlanta superintendent Beverly Hall, who
had become a national hero for supposed
ly turning around Atlanta Public Schools. It
may now turn out the gain in that system’s
test scores was based on cheating, not
some magic formula conjured up by Hall.
High-stakes testing was bound to eventu
ally lead to such a scandal. The intense
pressure on schools and teachers to
produce better test scores was eventu
ally going to cause the weak links in the
system to crack. Unethical school leaders
and unethical teachers were bound to give
in to the urge to cheat, especially in areas
where test scores have been historically
low.
But proving that cheating took place will
be a difficult task. Unless someone who
participated in this mess comes forward,
proving that a teacher changed test results
is just statistical conjecture. And even if fur
ther investigations do prove some teachers
cheated, that’s apparently not illegal in
Georgia.
While this scandal is limited to just a
handful of school systems, it will have an
impact on every school and every teacher
in the state. In addition, it may become
a huge factor in this year’s state school
superintendent election as Kathy Cox
comes under increasing pressure to do
something besides spin bad news into PR.
So far, Cox has been reluctant to speak out
about the cheating reports.
This scandal will also put a lot of pres
sure on the state’s two teacher organiza
tions, PAGE and GAE. Will those organiza
tions go to bat for teachers caught up in
this, or will they uphold ethical conduct?
This issue has a lot more impact to
come.
mike
buffington
■kick
Speaking of scandals, the church of
man-made global warming is coming
under increasing pressure after a record
number of snow storms have slammed
the U.S. With Washington DC under sever
al feet of snow and the town virtually shut
down, it’s a little difficult to argue about
global warming.
But that’s just the surface argument.
More importantly, skeptics of the global
warming religion are finally finding real
faults with some of the data that had been
used to justify global warming dogma.
Some of that came from stolen emails
that showed some leading proponents of
global warming had acted to stifle dissent
ing opinions from peer review journals.
Nobody really knows how much cli
mate change is taking place on earth. Our
frame of reference is in mere years, not
the millions of years it would take to see
what kinds of climate shifts are natural and
what kinds are manmade.
What is clear, however, is that a small
number of scientists and political leaders
are attempting to make global warming
into a religion so that they can bend public
opinion into accepting greater government
control of our everyday lives. Anyone who
questions manmade global warming is
considered an outcast.
Count me as one of the outliners.
Mike Buffington is editor of The Jackson
Herald. He can be reached at mike@main-
streetnews.com.