Sign Up For Our Newsletter

South Carolina is poised to become a national model for school choice.  We have changed the debate, demanded reform and proposed a plan that would provide the only kind of school choice that will change our state – universal choice for all parents.

South Carolina’s debate is fairly black and white – it comes down to letting the government choose schools through political shell games such as public school choice, or giving parents real opportunities in schools they choose themselves.  

Frankly, for members of the education establishment to support even a flawed plan such as open enrollment represents progress in South Carolina.  For years, even that would have been resisted by every single lobbyist on the education payroll, and is still resisted by some.  The debate in our state is not whether we provide choice, but what kind and how much.  Right now, there are two approaches to choice.  One is for genuine reform that provides universal opportunity.  The other, supported by the education establishment, would only allow children to choose another public school.

School choice opponents in South Carolina are well organized.  Professional lobbyists for the education system are well compensated to fight reform, and they use public dollars to do it.  By advocating public school choice, they seek not to provide real opportunities, but to provide the appearance of supporting choice.  In truth, as research from the South Carolina Policy Council makes clear, public school choice is no choice at all for our children.  There are So few slots exist at the “successful” schools that only about three percent of children in the districts surveyed could take advantage of open enrollment.  The rest still have no choice.  Furthermore, our state’s public school system as a whole is simply not high performing – there is only one high school in South Carolina with an average SAT equal to that of our two major universities.  In addition, No Child Left Behind already mandates public school choice for failing schools, and there has been no clear improvement in student achievement as a result.     

South Carolina falls last in the nation for SAT scores and graduation rates despite ranking 9th among states in how quickly it increased K-12 expenditures in the 1990’s.  South Carolina also ranks 11th on share of total taxable resources devoted to education, and while our state is among the lowest in the nation for per capita income, we are close to the national average for per pupil spending.

South Carolina schools suffer from the same problems as those in other states – they are not competitive with schools in other developed nations.  As a result, the United States is losing ground quickly, and our state is even farther behind.  An examination of South Carolina schools by Cato Fellow and former Microsoft engineer Andrew Coulson reveals why our state must implement universal school choice.  The reason we are last in the nation is not because our low-income children are performing worse than their peers, but because our high income children are.  Our most successful children from the highest income, best educated families (this is awkward – how about “from families with the highest income and best educations”) are farther below their national peers than our lower achieving children from less advantaged families.

All of South Carolina’s schools need to be challenged, and all of our children need opportunities.  Research is leaves no room for doubt – the more competitive an education system, the better the system will be.  No state in the nation needs to improve educational opportunities for all children more than South Carolina.  To simply provide choice for a few students from some families is to ensure continued failure.

Opponents of choice in South Carolina have relied on fear and uncertainty to thwart reform.  They talk about the destruction of public education and how choice benefits rich families and private schools.  They argue that dollars leave public schools under choice plans.  What they never talk about is substantive research to prove their case, because of course there is none.  In fact, the research proves otherwise.  

When crafting a choice proposal, South Carolina looked to studies from experts such as Harvard economist Caroline Hoxby and Jay Greene of the Manhattan Institute.  That research showed that competition has a direct and positive impact on the achievement in public schools.  Research has also shown that students in school choice programs perform at higher levels, and in programs such as Milwaukee the graduation rates are higher for choice students than non-choice students.  The conclusion is obvious – all students benefit from school choice, whether they choose different schools or remain in public schools.

South Carolina is the nation’s weakest link in the education chain.  Only a broad and substantive choice proposal will pull our state up from the bottom, where it has been for decades.  Fortunately, forward-thinking policy leaders recognize what our citizens overwhelmingly understand – our state is too far behind to move slowly, and our children deserve better.

E. Ashley Landess is vice president of public affairs for the South Carolina Policy Council.