John Hood’s Daily Journal assessment of the first year of the Perdue administration is right on target.
Let me touch on the K-12 education issue because that is how I roll.
Governor Perdue announced that she would unveil a new education initiative called Ready Set Go. She has yet to describe exactly what the program is or how it will increase the graduation rate. Those details will be announced in early 2010, and I will reserve judgment (more or less) until then.
My hope is that Perdue’s initiative does not ignore the fact that we do not know why kids in North Carolina drop out of school. For the last three years or so, I have called upon the state to conduct a comprehensive study of dropouts. One cannot solve a problem until the problem itself is understood.
I also hope that it does not simply perpetuate the General Assembly’s ineffective but expensive Dropout Prevention Grant program. The implementation of the program has been shoddy and evaluation of the grant recipients has been superficial. Again, let’s start with a study of the dropout problem and then look at innovative ways to address it.
