For Immediate Release Additional Information:

Senate Democratic Leader Robert Brown

January 31, 2006 404-656-5035

House Democratic Leader Dubose Porter

404-656-5058

Democrats to Allow Top High School Graduates  Admission to College of Choice
  Rural Students would Reap Benefits and Stay in State
 
Atlanta – Senate and House Democratic Leaders introduced a bill entitled “Georgia’s Promise” today. The legislation ensures students from rural Georgia who graduate in the top 10% of their class will be automatically admitted to the state school of their choosing. Similar legislation was adopted in Texas and Florida and has proven very successful in guaranteeing spots for rural students at the flagship institutions and keeping them from going out of state to receive their degree. 

Under the legislation, admission is automatically granted to students in the top 10% of their high school graduating class without regard to wealth of the school district or the high school they attended. In 1997 in Texas around 1,000 high schools, well more than half the high schools in the state, did not send a single student to the University of Texas at Austin’s freshman class. After the enactment of their “Ten Percent Plan”, endorsed by then Governor George Bush, every one of these 1,000 schools sent at least one student in each graduating class to the flagship university in the state. The University of Texas’s own admission policies have also demonstrated that students who are under the 10% law have superior SAT scores and G.P.A.’s than those who fall outside of the top 10%.

“This legislation, which was passed by then Governor George Bush, has been held up as model by Rod Paige, the former United State’s Secretary of Education under President Bush,” said Senator Kasim Reed (D-Atlanta), sponsor of “Georgia’s Promise.” “It is a simple and clear promise to the young people of Georgia, if you work hard and are in the top ten percent of your high school class then you will get to go to your choice of state universities. I am asking the Governor and the leadership in the House and Senate to join Democrats and pass this legislation that will help thousands of students all across Georgia.”

According to House Democratic Leader DuBose Porter (D-Dublin), “If there is one piece of legislation that deserves passage it is this one. I hear from parents back home whose children have been exceptional students and have worked hard throughout high school but have been rejected from the university of their choosing. They then go to college out of state and find careers in places like Florida or Texas. The hope is that with more rural students attending the state's flagship institutions they will return back home after graduation, and contribute to their local communities.”

“Our universities should be reflective of our state with students coming from all over Georgia, not just from suburban Atlanta. It is important that regardless of where you're from, if you are in the top 10% of your high school, you receive the same quality education that anyone else would receive,” said Senate Democratic Leader Robert Brown (D-Macon).

House Democratic Caucus Chairman Calvin Smyre (D-Columbus) concluded, “Rural students would reap the benefits of this legislation. I sincerely hope our Governor and legislative leaders would consider this legislation that has the potential to touch all of Georgia by helping students from every corner of the state.”

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