The Daily Tribune News has recently published several recent articles on Banks and their financial situation. In addition you recently published an article on a teacher being reprimanded because of the way material was presented to the respective students. It seems the presentation approach used by the teacher was inappropriate as determine by the school board. The above articles were of good interest and informative especially for persons dealing with specific banks but disconcerting for families with students in the public schools. The school article did raise a question for me in that only one teacher was identified using this approach. Although I think perhaps the question more appropriately should be what could the teachers be doing so that student scores reflect increased learning.
By now you have seen, I hope, the AJC article of Sept. 14th on the CY2010 Georgia state wide SAT scores. I have only lived in Bartow County about a dozen years but have always heard how the Cartersville School System was so much better than other school systems including the Bartow School System. If anyone looks at the article and goes to the web site provided by the AJC, they will be disappointed. The Cartersville 2010 SAT number of 1466 is 39 points below the 2008 number of 1505. While Cartersville was the leader of all schools in Bartow County in 2008, Cass High School (HS) which was behind Cartersville by 107 points in 2008 now leads Cartersville by 41 points with a score of 1507. Additionally both Adairsville and Woodland are within 12 and 29 points respectively of Cartersville. Furthermore, if you look at the adjacent counties of Cherokee and Floyd you will see even more concerns. The five HS in Cherokee was higher by between 60 and 120 points over Cartersville. The point spread for Floyd, including Rome City, for five HS was higher than Cartersville by about the same numbers. While Cartersville was higher than all of the Paulding schools and one school in Polk, it looks like eight schools in Cobb were higher, some significantly, than Cartersville.
For families and companies that have a choice in terms of where to locate, SAT scores, can be a significant determining factor. It would seem the Cartersville City & Bartow County School Systems needs to see what can be done to make sure that all of our schools are in the top one hundred in the state with the goal of working to get in the top fifty. Friday night football can be exciting in both Bartow and Cartersville. But if our children are going to be effective for the rest of their lives, that can only be determined by how well we have taught them in their primary and secondary school years. Are we doing a good job of teaching them what they need to know? Based on the SAT scores, we need to do better.
R.H. Wilcox
Cartersville