Editorial: Can Dalton/Whitfield be the educational leader for rural Georgia counties?

Published 6:31 pm Tuesday, August 22, 2017

Georgia Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Chris Clark has been giving a stump speech focused on the economic future of rural counties throughout the state that are not growing and prospering like Atlanta. Last week he spoke to the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education and said different strategies are needed to lure 21st century businesses to rural areas — with an educated workforce the primary strategic component.

This is not news to us in Whitfield County. Earlier this year our chamber president and CEO, Rob Bradham, shared data from a comprehensive community assessment that clarified the economic/education link with this warning: “Greater Dalton’s very low educational attainment rates represent a serious threat to the community’s long-term prosperity and vibrancy.” Can we boost our educational attainment in time?

There is good news on our educational front and we’re proud of it. Dalton State College’s student population and four-year degree offerings continue to grow along with state-of-the-art educational facilities and an on-campus dormitory. Georgia Northwestern Technical College has just begun a multimillion dollar expansion that will further bridge the workforce skills gap hampering our local industries while providing high school students the opportunity to gain college credit at no cost.

Our tougher challenge is on the K-12 educational front. Clark focuses on third-grade reading proficiency as a key measure of whether a community is building a skilled workforce, and notes that only 33 counties have more than 40 percent of their third-graders reading proficiently. Whitfield County is in that group with 44 percent but Dalton lags with 37 percent.

High school graduates who are college ready provide another snapshot of academic success. Graduates can meet this standard in several ways — either achieving minimum scores on nationally normed AP, ACT or SAT tests or entering the state technical or college systems without requiring remediation. Only 48 percent of Whitfield County grads and 43 percent of Dalton grads are college ready.

Whitfield and Dalton school systems suffer from high poverty rates that provide K-12 educators a tough challenge. Students from middle and upper middle class families generally do very well in our schools, but the majority of students struggle academically.

Acknowledging that we need a K-12 game changer is the critical first step. Incremental improvement is necessary but not sufficient.

Hopefully our entire community will engage in making the hard calls necessary to transform our K-12 educational system. We’ll have to think more like entrepreneurs, innovate and take some risks.

This community was built thanks to entrepreneurs, and enjoys an industrial base the envy of other rural counties. Have we still got what it takes?