By Michael Mumper
As many of you know, the state lottery-funded HOPE scholarship program is not doing so well financially. Last year Governor Deal tried to amend the program, but implemented a particular scholarship program where more students qualified than
anticipated (which is great in and of itself), and this is eating up HOPE reserves even faster than before. This endangers the likelihood that our teenagers will get HOPE scholarship money that signifi
cantly takes a bite out of college costs. Ouch!
There are many thoughts and plans on the table to fix this problem. Here are three:
(1) Reimplement the original HOPE qualification that did consider family income, so that we can continue to keep college affordable for families that couldn’t otherwise afford college for their kids. However, be sure to send some kids to college
from each Georgia community regardless of family income. http://bit.ly/yKohpz (Senator Jason Carter, D)
(2) Continue to ignore family income when granting HOPE scholarships. The purpose of HOPE is to keep the “best and brightest” in our state during and after college. Don’t consider family income; retain our state’s best http://bit.ly/AFqHEr (Sen John Albers, R)
(3) Study other states’ and countries’ models for improving education (not just scholarships). For example, Finland, which is significantly professionalizing teaching: http://bit.ly/x9LOey (via @ajc)
See Michael Mumper’s bio in the About Us section above.
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