State Board of Education members debate whether to hack down grade weights for year-end test scores to zero in Georgia at a meeting on Nov. 19, 2020. (Georgia Department of Education video)
Year-end standardized tests for Georgia public schools are poised to count for zero this school year after state education officials moved Thursday to lower the weight those scores have on students’ final grades from 20% to 0.01%.
The 0.01% grade weight is the most the annual Georgia Milestones tests can be watered down without running afoul of federal rules requiring schools to administer the tests. Normally, the tests count 20% toward final grades in Georgia.
On Thursday, members of the State Board of Education voted 10-3 to weight the test scores as essentially zero at a minimum, citing the disruptions to education in Georgia resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. School districts could still decide individually whether to increase the grade weights above zero for their students.
The change needs another vote from the state board before it can take effect. It also requires a 30-day public comment period before that vote.
Last month, the board balked at lowering the test scores to zero, choosing instead to set the grade weights at 10% during the virus-impacted school year. But a survey of about 90,000 parents, teachers, students and others in Georgia found around 86% supported the 0.01% mark.
The push to water down the tests came in September after the U.S. Department of Education denied Georgia’s request to scrap the Milestones tests this year, citing the need for schools to keep up data on student performance during the pandemic through the test scores.
Furious over that decision, State School Superintendent Richard Woods proposed reducing the test grades to the 0.01% weight in order to ease pressure on students and teachers already struggling to keep up coursework with online classes and overhauled in-person learning environments.
Woods praised the state board’s decision Thursday to support his proposal, reiterating his belief that students and teachers deserve a break from the test’s influence this school year.
“My position on this has not changed: it is logistically, pedagogically and morally unreasonable to administer high-stakes standardized tests in the middle of a pandemic,” Woods said. “If the federal government is going to continue insisting on the administration of these exams, it is incumbent on us at the state level to ensure they are not high-stakes and do not penalize students and teachers for circumstances beyond their control.”
Many parents, teachers and concerned Georgians turned out to public meetings and sent emails backing Woods’ proposal, arguing some students in high school could risk losing scholarship or college enrollment opportunities without relief from the test grades.
“Our students’ futures are riding on these test scores,” said Teresa Nichols, a 7th-grade math teacher at Northeast Middle School in Tifton. “It could be the difference between a scholarship for college and not going to college at all. I am afraid if we penalize our students this year, the high school dropout rate will increase.”
Several board members said local school administrators should be given trust and leeway to make sure their students take the tests seriously, despite the absence of grade weight.
“We are giving the ultimate flexibility tied to accountability to the school systems if we adopt this,” said board member Martha Zoller.
Others, however, argued gutting the grade weights would render the tests meaningless, eliminating the benefits of measuring performance data this year and incentivizing students to abandon taking the tests entirely.
“We can’t make this a meaningless exercise,” said board member Trey Allen. “I really think our kids deserve better.”
Some board members also questioned whether students who take the tests before a final decision is made in December would be stuck with the original 20% grade weights, though state officials indicated those weights would be changed if the board ultimately adopts the 0.01% amount.
Former Georgia Supreme Court Justice Keith R. Blackwell
ATLANTA – Georgia Supreme Court Justice Keith R. Blackwell has left the bench to rejoin his former law firm.
Blackwell, who retired from the court on Wednesday, will join Atlanta-based Alston & Bird LLP in January as senior counsel of the firm’s Litigation & Trial Practice Group. He began his career there in 2000.
“Justice Blackwell is a judge’s judge,” said Richard Hays, Alston & Bird’s chairman and managing partner. “He is a superbly talented and devoted jurist whose consummate high standards, impartiality and judicial temperament left a lasting mark on the court and the state. He will be a strong voice and advocate for our clients.”
Blackwell was appointed to the state Supreme Court by then-Gov. Nathan Deal in 2012. Before that, he served for two years on the Georgia Court of Appeals.
Before becoming a judge, Blackwell worked as an assistant district attorney in Cobb County and as a deputy special attorney general.
Blackwell wrote more than 400 published opinion during his time on the bench. He also served as the Supreme Court’s liaison to the State Bar of Georgia, the Board of Bar Examiners and the Board to Determine the Fitness of Bar Applicants.
“Justice Blackwell brings a remarkably broad and distinguished body of judicial experience to our firm and our clients,” said Jim Grant, co-leader of Alston & Bird’s Litigation Practice. “His 10 years on the bench handling thousands of appeals, plus his experience as a former prosecutor and attorney in private practice, make him an extraordinary resource and advocate for our clients in complex appellate and litigation matters in state courts around the country.”
Blackwell is a graduate of the University of Georgia School of Law, graduating summa cum laude as first honor graduate.
Lines were sparse outside the Cobb County Regional Library voter precinct through noon on Election Day, Nov. 3, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Election officials in Georgia are poised to wrap up a statewide hand recount of the 2020 presidential election Wednesday night after days of fending off unfounded fraud allegations and wrangling in some counties that located previously uncounted ballots.
County election workers across the state have hustled since last Friday to re-tally more than 5 million ballots all by hand in an unprecedented effort to audit results from the first presidential contest in nearly three decades to be won by a Democratic candidate in Georgia.
By late Wednesday, President-elect Joe Biden held a lead in Georgia over President Donald Trump by 12,781 votes, a margin that had shrunk by 1,375 votes over the past week as uncounted ballots were found in Floyd, Fayette, Douglas and Walton counties through the recount.
With the recount underway, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his top deputies have batted down unproven claims of election irregularities brandished by Trump and his allies, ranging from ballot harvesting and dead voters to unverified signatures and late-arriving absentee ballots.
Raffensperger has been caught in the crossfire within his own political party as Trump and many of his supporters blasted the state’s Republican elections chief, who in turn claimed a top U.S. senator allegedly pushed him to trash lawful mail-in ballots.
Raffensperger’s office set a deadline for counties to wrap up the recount by midnight ahead of a separate deadline Friday for the state to certify the election results, marking the next step in a process to have Georgia’s 16 electoral votes likely cast for Biden on Jan. 6.
“We feel good about where we stand right now,” said Gabriel Sterling, voting system manager for the secretary of state’s office. “I’m prayerful that we can get through this and we can find a way to have everybody at the end of the day … have faith in the outcome of the election regardless of how it came out.”
Nearly all of the state’s 159 counties either had no difference between their ballot counts on election night and after the audit, or their counts differed by only a few ballots due to small human-error mistakes during the hand recount, Sterling said in a news conference Wednesday.
Twenty-one counties still needed to finish counting and complete quality-control procedures Wednesday including several larger counties like Fulton, Gwinnett and Chatham, as well as the four counties where officials located around 5,800 previously uncounted ballots.
Of those, Walton and Douglas counties each turned up just below 300 additional ballots after workers did not initially upload memory cards to store the vote counts. Walton’s added votes went for Trump by a 176-vote margin, while Douglas’ ballots increased Biden’s lead by 28 votes.
Fayette County, which located 2,755 ballots, also did not initially upload a memory card. Those ballots trimmed Biden’s lead by 449 votes in favor of Trump.
In Floyd County, 2,524 early-voting ballots could not be scanned late last month due to a technical issue and went unnoticed at the county elections office until the recount, cutting Biden’s lead by another 778 votes. Raffensperger has called for Floyd’s elections director to resign.
In all, adding the uncounted ballots to the 5 million-vote pile trimmed Biden’s original lead from 14,156 votes to 12,781 votes, giving the former vice president a close but comfortable advantage as state officials work to certify the final results by Friday.
“The process worked,” Sterling said. “We were able to find those votes and get them in the mix. People should have even better faith in the process.”
Even so, Trump allies including Georgia Republican Party leaders, Atlanta attorney Lin Wood and outgoing U.S. Rep. Doug Collins of Gainesville have slammed Georgia’s election system and cast doubt on the recount’s accuracy in recent days.
In particular, Wood sued Raffensperger and the State Election Board last Friday to have a federal judge block Georgia’s election results from being certified, alleging state officials improperly signed an agreement in March to change rules for verifying voter signatures on mail-in ballots.
Raffensperger has called the lawsuit’s claims “basically nonsense,” noting the same rate of absentee ballots were rejected due to invalid signatures in the Nov. 3 general election as during the 2018 midterms. He argued his office had tightened rules on signature verification since 2018, not watered them down.
In interviews with several media outlets this week, Raffensperger has also alleged U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. – a top Trump ally – suggested he throw out all mail-in ballots in counties with high amounts of invalid signatures. Graham has denied making that suggestion.
“In this state, voters cast their ballots in secret so that no political party or candidate can ever intimidate or threaten a voter into changing his or her vote,” Raffensperger said. “We will continue to protect the integrity of the vote.”
ATLANTA – The Georgia Water Coalition’s annual Dirty Dozen report highlights a combination of broad concerns over pollution of the state’s rivers, streams and groundwater and threats posed by specific projects.
The report, released Tuesday, also includes items that have appeared previously on the list and remain unaddressed as well as newly identified issues.
Topping the seven returning concerns are a coal ash pond at Georgia Power’s Plant Scherer that residents of nearby Juliette say is polluting their drinking water, pollution of the Altamaha River from the Rayonier Advanced Materials chemical pulp mill in Jesup, a proposed titanium mine adjacent to the Okefenokee Swamp and Spaceport Camden, a proposed rocket launching facility in Camden County opposed by property owners on nearby Little Cumberland Island as a safety hazard.
Another issue back on the coalition’s list not tied to a specific project is the Right to Farm Act, which drew opposition in the General Assembly this year from environmental advocates who argued it would make it easier for large animal-waste generating livestock operations to locate in Georgia. While the bill failed to make it through the legislature this year, supporters are vowing to reintroduce it in 2021.
New items that made the list include the discharge of untreated sewage in the Chattahoochee River in Columbus within a popular whitewater paddling run, a proposed landfill that has drawn opposition in Brantley County and a proposed $20 million development within the floodplain of Little Lotts Creek near downtown Statesboro.
One past item from the list was addressed this month when Georgia voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment prohibiting the diversion of tax money from environmental trust funds that are supposed to be used to clean up hazardous waste sites and illegal tire dumps.
“That amendment is the first step in keeping millions of dollars dedicated to their intended purposes, and we hope we never spend ink on that issue in this report again,” said Jesse Demonbreun-Chapman, executive director of the Coosa River Basin Initiative in Rome.
“This is our tenth annual report, and the goal each year is to correct these issues so that they’ll never be considered for the Dirty Dozen again.”
Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock (left) and Republican U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler (right) are campaigning to win a runoff election on Jan. 5, 2020. (Photos by Beau Evans)
U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler and her runoff opponent Rev. Raphael Warnock are squaring off over how to bolster health care and insurance coverage amid a bruising stretch of campaign attack ads in Georgia.
Warnock, the Democratic senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, has fixed health care as the hallmark issue of his campaign to unseat Loeffler, who until recently gave few insights on the campaign trail about her health-care stances beyond opposition to the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
Loeffler’s office unveiled a broad plan last Friday calling for passage of several bills including incentives for telehealth options, expanding short-term health plans pushed by the Trump administration and creating a new federal official tasked with lowering prescription drug prices through trade negotiations with other countries.
The plan by Loeffler, a Republican Atlanta businesswoman, also pledges to protect insurance coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, a central part of the Obama-era ACA health-care bill. On that point, Warnock and several health-care advocates on Monday said Loeffler’s plan falls flat.
Warnock supporters, including a former acting chief of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, on Monday argued a bill Loeffler sponsored on short-term health insurance contains loopholes potentially allowing insurers to avoid paying treatment costs for patients with pre-existing conditions.
“These so-called plans that are being laid out by the Republicans are no plan at all,” Warnock said in one of two virtual news conferences Monday. “Simply announcing that you’re going to cover pre-existing conditions does not answer the question.”
Loeffler’s campaign dismissed the criticism from Warnock Tuesday and went on the offensive, calling his plan too extreme for Georgians who favor less government involvement in their health insurance. Loeffler spokesman Stephen Lawson sought to assure the senator’s plan would be less costly and include coverage of pre-existing conditions.
“Warnock wants a government takeover which would eliminate your private insurance, skyrocket costs and turn your doctor’s office into the DMV,” Lawson said.
Warnock, who was joined in a virtual conference Monday by U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., has advocated expanding Medicaid in states like Georgia and empowering the federal government to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies. He also favors adding a public option to the Affordable Care Act.
Clashes between Loeffler and Warnock look to ramp up in the coming weeks ahead of the Jan. 5 runoff election, as both campaigns pour millions of dollars into television ads and the two contenders meet for a face-to-face debate on Dec. 6.
A pivot by Loeffler to focus more on health care in the race could signal her push to compete with Warnock on an issue he dominated in the months before the Nov. 3 special election, when Loeffler was forced to fend off a fierce challenge from fellow Republican U.S. Rep. Doug Collins of Gainesville.
GOP Sen. David Perdue has also faced broadsides from his Democratic opponent, investigative journalist Jon Ossoff, over health care and insurance coverage in Georgia’s other heated runoff race, which together with the Loeffler-Warnock contest could decide the balance of power in the Senate.
Perdue, like Loeffler, has said he supports protecting coverage for patients with pre-existing conditions, while Ossoff, like Warnock, has argued Republican-backed legislation contains loopholes allowing insurers to deny paying for treatment.
Ossoff also slammed Perdue on Tuesday for declining to participate in a Dec. 6 debate, saying the senator “shouldn’t run for re-election” if he shirks public debate. Perdue’s campaign accused Ossoff of having “lied repeatedly” in two debates before the Nov. 3 election as the reason for not participating next month.
Wins for both Ossoff and Warnock would likely tip the Senate in Democrats’ favor along with control of the U.S. House and the presidency, clearing the way for President-elect Joe Biden and Democratic lawmakers to enact their priorities with little resistance for at least the next two years.
Top national Republican officials have rushed to Perdue’s and Loeffler’s sides at rallies over the past week in a bid to block Democrats from controlling the Senate. Vice President Mike Pence is scheduled to join the Republican duo at two rallies on Friday.
Early voting for the Senate runoff elections starts Dec. 14. The deadline for Georgia voters to register for the runoffs is Dec. 7.
