Kathy Cox | |
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Member of the GeorgiaHouseofRepresentatives from the 105th district | |
In office January 3, 1999 –January 3, 2003 | |
Preceded by | Dan Lakly |
Succeeded by | David E. Lucas,Sr. |
Georgia Superintendent of Schools | |
In office January 13,2003 –June 30,2010 | |
Governor | Sonny Perdue |
Preceded by | Linda Schrenko |
Succeeded by | Brad Bryant |
Personal details | |
Born | Plainfield,New Jersey,U.S. | August 10,1964
Political party | Republican |
Occupation | Educator,politician |
Kathy Cox (born August 10,1964) is a former superintendent of public schools for the U.S. state of Georgia,and is a Republican. A high school teacher by occupation,Cox also served two terms,from 1998 to 2002,in the Georgia House of Representatives,representing Peachtree City,Georgia,prior to her election as superintendent in 2002. Cox sought re-election in 2006,defeating Democratic challenger Denise Majette (a former U.S. representative),earning almost 60 percent of the vote. [1]
Cox is not related to Cathy Cox,a Democrat who was Georgia's elected secretary of state from 1999 until 2007. The similarity in names became the subject of mostly humorous news stories in 2002,when Kathy Cox's defeated opponent,Barbara Christmas,complained that she had lost because of voter confusion between the two Coxes.
On September 5,2008,Cox made history for an American television game show Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? to win the $1,000,000 top prize (and the first to win according to the sequence in which the shows were broadcast). Cox was given the final question:"Who was the longest reigning British monarch?",in which she correctly answered Queen Victoria. [lower-alpha 1] Cox intended to donate all her winnings to three schools in Georgia:Georgia Academy for the Blind in Macon,Atlanta Area School for the Deaf in Clarkston,and Georgia School for the Deaf in Cave Spring. All three schools are under the auspices of the Georgia Board of Education. [2] These plans were affected by her personal bankruptcy in late 2008. [3]
In May 2010,she announced her resignation effective July 1,2010 in order to take a position as CEO of a new non-profit U.S. Education Delivery Institute in Washington D.C. [4] She will no longer seek a third term in office. Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue appointed Brad Bryant as the interim State School Superintendent until a replacement (John Barge,a Republican) was elected in November 2010.
In 2018,Cox resumed her teaching career,teaching U.S. History at Eagle's Landing High School in Henry County,Georgia. [5]
In 2004,Cox proposed striking the word "evolution" from Georgia textbooks and replacing it with the phrase "biological changes over time." In justifying her decision,she claimed evolution was a buzzword that created problems for teachers in conservative and rural areas,and that she had not been attempting to water down the subject matter. [6] Among those criticizing the proposal were former President Jimmy Carter–a Georgia resident,a Democrat and a well-known Baptist–saying he was "..embarrassed by Superintendent Kathy Cox's attempt to censor and distort the education of Georgia's students... there can be no incompatibility between Christian faith and proven facts concerning geology,biology,and astronomy." [7]
On November 17,2008,Cox and her husband declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy due to the failure of her husband's home construction business,listing $3.5 million in debt and $650,000 in assets. [8] The bankruptcy also affected the money won for the schools on Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader? . Fidelity Investments,the investor charged in creating a fund for the donor schools,donated the winnings back to Fox in December 2008 from the schools,placing the prize in a limbo that would not benefit anyone. [3]
On August 19,2009,protesters representing deaf and blind children picketed the office of bankruptcy attorney Gary W. Brown in Newnan,over his efforts to take control of the winnings. According to Brown,the winnings belong to the bankruptcy estate,and should be used to pay back creditors. [9]
In October 2010,U.S. Bankruptcy Judge W. Homer Drake signed off on an agreement to split the $1 million winnings into two equal parts:one half for creditors and the other half for the three state-run schools for the blind and deaf. [10]
Denise Lorraine Majette is an American politician from the state of Georgia. A Democrat, she represented Georgia's 4th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives from 2003 to 2005.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is the only major daily newspaper in the metropolitan area of Atlanta, Georgia. It is the flagship publication of Cox Enterprises. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is the result of the merger between The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution. The two staffs were combined in 1982. Separate publication of the morning Constitution and the afternoon Journal ended in 2001 in favor of a single morning paper under the Journal-Constitution name.
Lera Catharine "Cathy" Cox is an American academic administrator and former lawyer, politician, and journalist. She is President of Georgia College & State University. Cox, a member of the Democratic Party, previously served as Secretary of State of Georgia, a candidate for Governor of Georgia in 2006, Dean of Walter F. George School of Law at Mercer University, and as the 21st president of Young Harris College.
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Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader? is an American quiz game show. It originally aired on Fox where it was hosted by Jeff Foxworthy. It is produced by Mark Burnett. The show premiered as a three-day special which began on February 27, 2007, with the first two shows each a half-hour in length. Regular one-hour episodes began airing Thursdays from March 1 through May 10, and the first season continued with new episodes beginning May 31. Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? was picked up for the 2007–08 season, which began on September 6, 2007, and aired in the same timeslot. Following the end of the original run of the primetime version on September 18, 2009, a first-run syndicated version of the show ran from September 2009 to May 2011, with Foxworthy returning as host. On May 26, 2015, the program returned to Fox for a new, 4th season, with Foxworthy, again, returning as host. On February 14, 2019, it was announced that the program would be revived on Nickelodeon with new host John Cena, airing from June 10 to November 3, 2019.
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Georgia School for the Deaf (GSD) is a public residential school for the deaf. GSD provides comprehensive education and services to deaf and hard-of-hearing students between the ages of three and twenty-two. Located in Cave Spring, Georgia, United States, the school offers day and residential programs which meet the academic, social and physical needs of students in a bilingual environment. It was established in 1846 and is one of three public state schools operated by the Georgia Department of Education.
Several teachers and principals in the Atlanta Public Schools (APS) district cheated on state-administered standardized tests in 2009. The scandal was exposed and the subsequent trial in 2014–2015 saw national attention.
Atlanta Area School for the Deaf (AASD) is a state-operated K-12 public school in Clarkston, Georgia. It provides full-day instructional services to infants, children, and youth who are deaf, including persons with multiple handicaps. The classroom programs range from preschool through twelfth grade. Students experience a range of academic, vocational, and social opportunities.
Samantha Mohr is an American meteorologist and television personality from Columbus, Georgia. Mohr was crowned Miss Georgia 1985 and competed for the Miss America 1986 title. She is currently on-air talent at The Weather Channel.
Julia Lester Dillon (1871–1959) was an American teacher from Georgia, who because of the death of her husband and her hearing loss, trained in landscape architecture. She was one of the first women to write extensively about gardening in the south and ran a regularly featured column which appeared in several newspapers and magazines. She designed spaces to enhance post offices for the U.S. Department of the Treasury and created the Memorial Park in Sumter, South Carolina. Based on her experience, she then served as Sumter Superintendent of Parks and Trees for twenty years. Dillon remained in Sumter after retiring. She continued writing until 1954, despite losing both her hearing and her sight. Julia Lester Dillon died in Sumter on March 24, 1959. She is buried in Magnolia Cemetery in Augusta, Georgia. She was inscribed upon the Georgia Women of Achievement roster in 2003.
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