NEWS & OPINIONS
10/16/14 EVENT: Hope for Failing Schools
Imagine taking schools performing in the bottom 5 percent of all schools in a district, where reading proficiency is 22 percent and math proficiency is less than 3 percent (no, that's not a typo!), and doubling and tripling those numbers in just two years time. That...
The State of Corrections in Georgia
Every Georgian is affected by the criminal justice system in some way. Whether it is paying taxes to fund the more than a billion dollars spent on prisons each year or knowing a loved one who has spent time behind bars, the justice system is becoming an increasingly...
The Gifted Education Foundation
Georgia Center for Opportunity (GCO) desires to see students flourish. As a way of realizing this vision, GCO supports organizations that have a similar heartbeat to see students succeed. One such organization is the Gifted Education Foundation (Gifted). This summer,...
Recommendations for Expanding Access to Quality Healthcare
This is the sixth entry in a series of posts highlighting GCO’s new report - Increasing Access to Quality Healthcare for Low-Income Uninsured Georgians. The first entry provided an overview of the report, the second looked at Georgia’s healthcare safety net, the third...
Fellowship Friday: Relationships Open the Door to Educational Attainment
Hidden beneath academic benchmarks, league tables, and other measures of success in education, are the relationships and personal traits that fuel positive and negative outcomes for students.
State Politics DO Matter
By Jacob Stubbs, GCO Legislative Intern While I was a government major as an undergraduate, I had never really encountered anything close to actual politics. This is not necessarily a bad thing, for I was quite interested in the philosophical systems that underlie the...
Georgia Considers Privatization of Child Welfare System
A bill to privatize most of the state's child welfare services was introduced this week by Senator Unterman (R-Buford). The legislation, Senate Bill 350, would require the Department of Family and Children Services (DFCS) to develop a plan by January of 2015 by which...
School Choice – All Options Aren’t Created Equal
In a recent article addressing school choice alternatives – particularly the Georgia Tax Credit Scholarship program and its $58 million annual cap – some integral details regarding the execution of various school choice alternatives were somewhat blended together. We...
Capitol Update – February 7th, 2014
Roads Cleared, News Coverage Still Encountering Snow Related Congestion While last week’s winter weather is in the rear view mirror, the postmortem evaluation of the government’s response continues to receive considerable coverage. The General Assembly, however, has...
State Leaders Push for Employers to Hire Ex-Offenders
Georgia Center for Opportunity (GCO) is pleased to see Governor Nathan Deal and U.S. Attorney Sally Yates (Northern District of Georgia) exercise their influence to encourage business leaders across the state to hire ex-offenders. They are urging employers to give...
Snow Can’t Stop This Crowd for School Choice
By Dr. Danielle LeSure, GCO's Director of Education Policy Amazingly, over 600 students, parents, teachers, and school leaders crowded the Capitol in the middle of a snow storm to cheer for school choice options—charter schools, public school transfers, special needs...
Demand for Choice High: Education Tax Credit Cap Reached in Record 22 Days
Just this past week, Georgia's Tax Credit Scholarship program reached its cap of allowable donation commitments (currently, $58 million) in well under a month. That's the earliest the cap has been reached in the program's history, three and a half months earlier than...
MEDIA MENTIONS
Georgia Senate committee votes to maintain felon rights restrictions
The Senate Study Committee on Revising Voting Rights for Nonviolent Felony Offenders decided Wednesday to keep Georgia’s constitution as it is. The members voted 3-2 in favor of continuing to restrict nearly 250,000 convicted Georgia felons from voting. According to...
Creating healthy relationships, one man at a time
Strengthening the role men have in creating healthy relationships is what No Longer Bound is all about. We are proud to partner to support these efforts.
The Little Things: Keeping Perspective On Thanksgiving
Like many of you, this Thanksgiving our family will sit around a large table filled with decorations, turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, that odd jello that your distant aunt insists on bringing, and those that we love. At some point, someone will clang a glass to...
Georgia’s unemployment rate continues to drop, set records
Georgia’s unemployment rate hit a record low last month, according to the Georgia Department of Labor. The unemployment rate dipped from 3.5 percent to 3.4 percent in October. It has not been that low for 20 years. The state also saw high job numbers amid a growing...
A Vision For Poverty Transformation In Columbus Through Hiring Well Doing Good
Q&A: Norman Hardman on Hiring Well, Doing Good in Columbus Norman Hardman is a lifelong resident of Columbus, Georgia. After starting his career in the world of finance, he’s now taken his passion and skillset and applied them to one purpose: helping the...
Support GCO With Amazon Smiles This Holiday Season (and all year long)
Like you, we love family and giving during the holidays. Well, we have a new way you can support Georgia Center for Opportunity (GCO) and give during the season of giving: It’s called Amazon Smile, and it’s a chance to give back a small percentage of each purchase at...
Q&A: Kristin Barker on Hiring Well, Doing Good in Columbus
Georgia Center for Opportunity’s Hiring Well, Doing Good (HWDG) initiative is quickly gaining ground in Columbus, Georgia. Here’s a brief Q&A from the front lines with HWDG Program Manager Kristin Barker. Q: What's the goal of HWDG in Columbus? Kristin: The...
From prisoner to influencer: Tony’s story
The day that Tony Kitchens was released from prison in 1985, he did an unusual thing: He got down on the ground and created a fake “snow angel” on the grass. “I was elated, but nervous. Free, but I didn’t know anything. The sun was very bright. Red was very red, green...
