Schools

need the help of the community and businesses

working together to grow better and stronger.

That

was the message delivered by state school

superintendent Linda Schrenko to an early Friday

morning crowd gathered for the monthly Fayette

County Chamber of Commerce breakfast at

Whitewater Country Club.

"We

all know we need reform; what kind of

reform?" said Schrenko. Referring to Gov.

Roy Barnes' reform bill and other programs

outlining ways to make improvements, Schrenko

said one has to ask how these plans will help to

produce good citizens, a better quality of life,

more literate and better prepared students.

She

admitted that education doesn't start in

elementary school. "It starts at home,"

she told the audience of school board members,

school staff and business people. "We get

them when they are 5 years old. Our job is to

teach them how to read, how to write, how to do

math and how to use a computer."

Schrenko

said that fads in education, such as the whole

language approach to teaching reading and writing

introduced in the 1980s, left "drastic

holes" in children's language skills.

"We thought if we printed words on the wall

that kids would learn to read by osmosis... they

didn't." To remedy the situation, Schrenko

has pushed a program called Reading First for the

past four years in an attempt to turn the tide.

In

math, Schrenko pointed out that calculators have

to be reinforced with the basics.

"We

think everybody needs to learn the basics of

adding and subtracting, and multiplication and

division and percentage..." Writing programs

in the schools now emphasize spelling, grammar

and punctuation.

Schrenko

pointed out that Georgia students have made gains

in math, based on ITBS (Iowa Test of Basic

Skills) scores and modest scores in reading. The

drop seen in 1996 reading scores is a direct

correlation to the years when those students were

taught whole language, she said. "Undoing

that harm is taking time," she conceded.

Extra

reading sessions and after school tutorials for

middle grade students are attempts at remedying

the situation. "Third grade is showing real

movement in Georgia's achievement tests,"

she said.

Schrenko

encouraged business owners to "tell us what

you need from students."

She

advocates apprenticeships with businesses, done

on a local level.

Commenting

on Barnes' proposed education reform bill,

Schrenko said, "There are some good points

to the bill, but it's not complete." The

recommendation made in the proposal to cut class

size to 17 was commended by Schrenko, but she

said the students have to be housed somewhere,

and there's no money in state appropriations for

building more classrooms. She said the response

was to put two teachers and 34 students in a

classroom, and divide the room with a vinyl

partition.

Schrenko

also was critical of the idea of having school

councils in place in every school. She explained

that the councils would usurp the power of the

local elected school boards. Losing control of

the $7 billion needed to run 180 state school

systems also worried her.

The

reform bill is currently in the state house of

representatives and has not yet been voted upon.

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