South Carolina and Higher Education: Ending the Running Joke

South Carolina education is a running joke. As a student of SC's higher educational system, I have heard jokes referencing poor educations in SC for years. Even now, according to the Anderson Independent Mail, another four percent of has been cut from the budget, making a poor educational system even poorer. How can SC ever hope to catch up to the rest of America when education is targeted for cuts?

As a graduate of California's K-12 system when it was one of the best in the nation, I remember what it felt like to have pride in my educational system. Faith in the schools was a given, probably taken for granted, but people were confident in a good education most places. As a contrast, The Voice For School Choice, a school choice advocate on whose website reprints education news from SC stated that "Michele McNeil of Education Week reports on the 46-state adoption of common academic standards in math and English language arts: The four states not on board, as of Friday, were Alaska, Missouri, South Carolina, and Texas..." This article was posted in June.

If the state government is not willing to publically step up and declare support for the common welfare of American students, I no longer have to wonder why Jim Rex, superintendent of education, faces an uphill battle to improve our "Corridor of Shame". The same website has information from a John Hopkins study that shows SC as one of only 17 states that account for over 70 percent of America's high school dropouts. Our graduation rates are only one way SC has failed its students. The Miss Teen America incident was widely viewed as only bringing to a national awareness the disaster that is the SC Educational system.

So, what can be done to pull SC out of its educational crisis? The Voice For School Choice suggests that giving parents a larger role in making the educational decisions of their children is one way to improve the educations of children. Allowing parents to decide where and what type of education a child receives seems at first a good prospect. If a school is performing well, send your child there. In my opinion this is damaging in the long run. Schools get money based on the number of students they have. Underperforming schools that lose current and future students due to school choice would thus lose money, making the chances of improvement small and the probability of increasing problems much larger.

This seems to me to be the defining flaw in privatizing education: the elite get better while the poor get poorer. The SC Education Oversight Committee states a goal on its website: "By the year 2010, South Carolina's student achievement will be ranked in the top half of states nationally. " The website states that SC is one of the top five fastest improving states in education, yet as of 2008 we were still 48^th ranked according to SAT/ACT scores. How the SCEOC expects to make their goal is a concern to me. At this point, I think it is simply a pipe dream.

My own idea for improving education starts with improving the skills of the teachers and schools at the bottom. Let the schools at the top deal with a year or two on the bottom half of the budget, while the underachievers get a chance at improving their facilities and obtaining new school materials. Spend some money to re-train the educators in the worst performing schools, and begin offering contractual employment with incentives at our underperforming schools to lure new teachers and to keep the new teachers there for long enough to make a difference. Perhaps then children and schools in lower income areas have a fighting chance at showing some real improvement and rediscovering the pride in education that SC has lost.

Dr. J. Beck of USC Upstate said this in response to my query on how to improve SC's educational system, "It comes down to resources and the best utilization of such. When SC gives more to poorer schools, improvement will be inevitable, if someone properly directs the schools in the use of the resources. It can be done." I hope her words will someday come to fruition. The children of SC deserve the chance to be great. I hope someday we'll turn to the rest of America and say "the joke is on you. SC has the best educational system in America."

Work Cited

Anonymous, "The 2010 Goal" SC Education Oversight Committee, www.eoc.sc.gov

Anonymous, "Johns Hopkins Releases Study: SC in Educational Crisis". The Voice For School Choice. www.thevoiceforschoolchoice.com.Carey, Liz "Budget and Control Board cuts 4 percent from S.C. state budget". Anderson Independent Mail, Sept 3^rd, 2009 edition.