Talk:HOPE Scholarship

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[edit] Weasel Words

Can someone help clean up the section on "common" criticisms?

HOPE has largely been blamed for increased levels of grade inflation in Georgia schools, with instructors feeling pressured to give their students higher grades to maintain the necessary GPA for the scholarship.

Some critics have claimed that the HOPE scholarship disproportionately benefits students from wealthy school districts, because they tend to do better academically. The HOPE scholarship is funded primarily through income from lottery ticket sales, and people who buy lottery tickets tend to be from lower economic classes. For these reasons, critics claim that the scholarship represents a type of "welfare" for wealthy citizens, paid for by the poor.

HOPE's existence has been cited as a factor in the state of Georgia consistently having the lowest SAT scores in the nation, based on the idea that students who would not normally attempt to go to college decide to do so based on the affordibility factor provided by HOPE. These students usually have to take the SAT to apply for college. However, the validity of this concept has not been concluded.

Also, this article is badly in need of sources. I know from personal knowledge that most (save that last bit) is verifiably true; Wikipedia does not. I'll try to do this myself, but if someone else can, I'd be much obliged. --SuperNova |T|C| 05:38, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Found Source for two of the claims. As for the "Weasel Words", I left those unchanged for someone who could do a better job changing them.

Fruit Blender (talk) 21:41, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] 1975 proposal

Hello,

The original Zell Miller HOPE Scholarship Program proposal was placed on file at the Georgia archives building. The Zell Miller HOPE Scholarship Proposal was actually the first record received by the state archives sent by the new Lt. Governor's office. Another original copy of the HOPE program proposal was placed in the National Archives in Washington, D.C. and each co-signer (everyone employed by the Lt. Governor's office in January of 1975) was given a copy for their personal files. Check press reports, Zell Miller press interviews to verify my authenticity and my authority. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.100.124.20 (talk • contribs) 16:45, June 13, 2006 Note: The subheading was added by SuperNova on 04:07, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your input. I'm not sure, but are you claiming to be postmaster Bubba Nicholson, the purported creator of the HOPE concept in 1975? I have checked press reports through LexisNexis, searched both Google and the State Archives website, and have found no mention of this person or any concept of HOPE preceding Miller's 1990 campaign for Governor. If you can provide a path to these sources, other than "look in the state archive, I promise", I would be glad to make sure this information is in the article; however, if Nicholson's role was as important or as well-reported as you claim, I should have had no trouble tracking it down.

1975 was before the age of computers. You can telephone Zell Miller in Young Harris, Georgia, where he is a prominent private citizen and ask him about me. You may contact the Secretary of the Senate of Georgia to verify my employment and office in 1975. Tom Houck was Zell's chief of staff his first year in office. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia, you can telephone him. The Howell's are no longer with us, we had an African American attorney, she may be on the Georgia Supreme Court now. Senator Julian Bond was also given a copy of the HOPE proposal in 1975, if I remember rightly. He is now the chairman of the board at the NAACP. I actually recommended him to his work on "Eyes on the Prize" and to seek that leadership post in Washington. I am sure he can verify what I have told you. The list of those employed in the Lt. Governor's office should be available in the archives as well as for the asking of the Secretary of the Senate. I live in Tampa, Florida, myself. —Preceding unsigned comment added by TogetherinParis (talk • contribs) 03:12, June 15, 2006

Additionally, I reverted all your edits (not just the 1975 thing) because of clear violations of Wikipedia policy. For example, sentences like "HOPE admits the disproportionality, however, nearly all of Georgia's taxes are regressive anyway" clearly lack a netural point of view, not to mention a citation of just where "HOPE" (whoever that refers to -- the finance commission? the program administrators?) says anything of the sort.

I am the person who devised the HOPE Scholarship Program, it is my original work. Copies are in the archives, each person in the then Lt. Governor's office in 1975 (Zell Miller) co-signed it with me and they each got copies, as did the Lt. Governor who did not sign it. Just what else would you have had me do for you to find it out? Your article as written contains absurd suppositions, like that preposterous remark that HOPE had the goal of stopping some sort of "brain drain" on Georgia! What a loathsome thing to say. Georgia's population had been growing not declining, nothing of the sort was ever suggested. Another slander is that regressive taxation crack, as if that were relevant. The regressive nature of virtually all state and local taxes (except income tax) is common knowledge, lottery tickets sales are not taxes, not part of the HOPE program in the beginning, and any revenue source would have done as well. I'm trying to be non-combative, but outright lies and distortions should be corrected. I set the goals for HOPE, HOPE has improved the lives of millions of people in nearly half the states of this union. Shouldn't the creator know what goals were set for HOPE better than anyone? I wrote every word and typed it up myself. —Preceding unsigned comment added by TogetherinParis (talk • contribs) 03:12, June 15, 2006

Please consider a less-combative, more neutral editing style, and remember that nothing belongs in this encyclopedia without a clearly-cited, easily-accessible source. Thanks so much for your contributions to this project, and I hope they will continue to improve in the future. --SuperNova |T|C| 04:17, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

TogetherinParis: I appreciate your contributions and I really want to work with you to ensure that the truth gets out. However, on Wikipedia, we have to hold editors to the standard that all work must be verifiable and have citations. I know that 1975 was before the Internet and most home computers; that doesn't mean events and documents from then aren't online. I know how important HOPE is -- I'm on it now and expect that by 2008, I'll have saved twenty grand from it. So if it was your idea, thanks! But because HOPE is so important to so many people, it is completely unbelievable that the blueprint for creating it, composed nearly 20 years before it became a reality, has not once been mentioned by any media or Internet outlet anywhere.

Much as I might like to contact such noteworthy figures as Miller, Bond, et. al., I don't believe that's feasible nor worth my time; the burden is on you, the editor, to show you have your facts right. Sorry to say that listing political staff from the 1970s does not establish your bona fides.

Finally, as I would very much like to get to the facts in this situation, I have to wonder... are you the same Bubba Nicholson who's noted by the St. Pete Times for being a "longtime South Tampa resident" who also claims to be the inspiration for E.T.? I can see that your contributions to the pheromones article here have been questioned, too. So while I might like to believe that you're a peer-reviewed scientist, capitol postmaster/visionary, AND Hollywood legend, it's not easy. Find a reliable source to prove it and get back to me.

Thanks for your thoughts. I appreciate your efforts and hope we can reach a satisfactory conclusion. --SuperNova |T|C| 06:00, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tennessee connection

It is common knowledge in Tennessee that our lottery was set up to copy yours, but I was wondering if anyone had access to good sites for documents to this effect, because it belongs in the article IMO once it is documented. (The consitutional amendment mentions Georgia as only one of several state which our lottery was to be kept comparable to, but everyone knows that Georgia was the ideal, we call our scholarships "HOPE scholarships", and we even "stole" your director.) Rlquall 02:36, 17 August 2006 (UTC)