Disparities among schools are dispiriting and destructive

When the HOPE Scholarship first began, I thought qualified kids who can’t afford college will get a chance to go — how cool. I had no clue how naive that thought was. I now realize HOPE is basically a middle-class entitlement that helps fund Georgia colleges, and, to a large extent, underwrites students who were going to go to college anyway.

Yes, HOPE also funds prek, but we have a flawed system now where poor children attend quality pre-k and then go onto kindergarten and elementary school in failing schools. Many capable students fall by the wayside academically early on, and have little “hope” of graduating high school — much less going to college.

I once naively thought there were not big differences in the resources of Atlanta-area elementary schools. I learned that was not true after participating in a volunteer program, where I worked with kids at one of the worst elementary schools in the city.

I was stunned when I asked the librarian for a globe to show something to a student I was working with, and she answered they didn’t have any — they had all disappeared.

I was shocked when I heard teachers yelling, drill sergeant-style, at their very young students as they walked to the cafeteria. I was appalled to learn that the school had a large percentage of students who were homeless.

I did what I could to rally colleagues where I worked when the PTA launched a coat drive to try to ensure that students had warm coats for the winter. I shook my head in disbelief when I learned that discipline issues were severe enough that teachers were instructed to keep students in the classroom during lunch, and lunch would be brought to them rather than going to the cafeteria.

Later, when teachers learned the school would be closed and they would have to re-apply for teaching jobs, they became so dispirited that many just checked out — basically stopped teaching; had sick-outs and gave up on the kids since their own futures were in jeopardy.

In the Atlanta schools — and unfortunately elsewhere in the United States — if a kid is lucky enough to have been born into a family with a good income, that income level all but guarantees the kid will experience the best public schools can offer. But the kid with the bad luck to be born in a family with a low income will most likely experience the worst public schools offer. This is partly due to schools still being funded to a considerable degree by local property taxes. What could be more unfair? If I could, I would re-tool HOPE to ensure poor schools could have the leadership, teacher training, clean and well-maintained physical plants, and the social workers needed to help poor kids succeed. Better to pay for social workers in the schools than pay high costs associated with adults who don’t have the literacy to get good jobs, and worse scenarios, where discouraged, unsupported, angry kids become adults who turn to drugs and crime.

HOPE is basically a middle-class entitlement.