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As a parent of five children, I have a vested interest in South Carolina public education, but it’s no secret that South Carolina is notorious for having some of the worst schools in the nation and the highest high school drop out rate. As I recently posted over at my blog Parentalcation, even our “elite” children are far behind the national average in SAT scores. However, nothing compares to the sheer failure in our notorious rural schools that run along I-95, aptly called the corridor of shame.

 

For example, on Allendale-Fairfax Middle School’s 2005 school report card it shows that only 12% of students scored above basic in the math section of the Palmetto Achievement Challenge Test (PACT). In English language arts it was even worse: only 9% scored proficient and not a single child scored advanced.  No amount of poverty could explain such dismal scores.  There is no doubt that the current system is broken beyond repair.

Even Cindy Scoppe, a public school defender and an opponent of vouchers, acknowledges that fixing the current system is next to impossible. She writes:

But the pieces begin to fall into place when you understand that Mr. Cotty sees local school boards and administrations as the main stumbling block in some of our poorest schools. Like a growing number of politicians and policy experts across the political spectrum, he is convinced that some local officials are simply incapable of improving those schools.

In a rational world, that wouldn’t be a problem: The state, which has the primary responsibility for educating the children of South Carolina, would provide some extra training or send in experts to help them do a better job; if that didn’t work, the local officials would be replaced.

In the real world of South Carolina, though — where lawmakers won’t even talk about merging three school districts that serve just 5,800 students in the same county, for fear of angering the school officials and alienating their supporters — that was simply not possible.

This is exactly why South Carolina schools are failing, despite South Carolina having a strong state accountability program and decent curriculum standards.

Of course there are the usual ideas are floating around about how to fix our education system. We have become a national battleground between the school reformers who want to implement Governor Sanford’s “Put Parents In Charge” bill and the usual defenders of the status quo. Governor Sanford had to recently table the PPIC bill, which would have provided up to 80% of the tuition of private schools or cost of homeschooling for low- to middle-class parents. Yet school choice is still a prominent issue in the campaign for South Carolina Superintendent of Education between Jim Rex (D) and Karen Floyd (R).

Quite frankly, while I would jump at the chance to use vouchers if they were available, I have doubts about whether a voucher system would make enough impact to encourage change on a large enough scale.  Parts of rural South Carolina are so mired in poverty that they resemble Third World countries. There simply aren’t enough private schools in these areas to absorb enough students to make a significant difference. While private schools would inevitably pop up to take advantage of any voucher system, charter schools have always struck me as a quicker and more efficient way of providing true school choice to South Carolina parents.

Even though South Carolina has had a system to approve charter schools for some time, there are only 29 operating charter schools. Until this year’s change in the South Carolina Charter School Act, charter schools trying to provide a choice to public schools had to be approved and sponsored by the very districts they were competing against.

Under the new South Carolina Charter School Act, we became the first state in the nation to create a statewide charter school district. Called the South Carolina Public Charter School District, the SCPCSD provides an alternate route for charter schools to gain approval. It’s this change that gave South Carolina House Representative Bill Cotty one of the most unique ideas that I have seen come from any of our legislators. Cindy explains it:

Under a new law passed this year, would-be charter schools no longer have to seek approval from local school boards. Instead, organizers can apply directly to the state for approval. The law was designed to let local groups bypass school boards that were hostile to what some perceive as a challenge to their authority. But as Mr. Cotty realized early on, there’s nothing to stop the state itself from starting a charter school — in effect replacing local officials who aren’t up to the job. Think of it as a less confrontational version of a state takeover of a local district or school.

You know your state education system has serious problems when a state legislator suggests creating an entirely separate state run school system to compete with the local schools.

Truthfully, I had always thought of the South Carolina Department of Education and the local school districts as part of the same problem, so to imagine the two organizations competing against each other was quite a stretch. One of the first questions that came to mind: How can we trust the state to fix the same problems that they had a hand in creating? Ignoring that, let’s take a closer look at what Mr. Cotty proposes.

Mr. Cotty envisions bringing in experienced principals and teachers from around the state to run the new schools, which would explore such innovative ideas as longer school days, year-round classes, merit pay and strict attendance and discipline policies. He also would require a parent or other adult to take responsibility for working with each student as a condition for enrollment.

At least he is on the right track. I myself have been a proponent of many of these ideas, but I already see one weakness in his proposal. I have to question the idea of bringing in the same “experienced” educators that are already part of the system that they are trying to reform. Why doesn’t he suggest contracting with some of the more established charter school operators with proven results such as KIPP Academies? Of course, there may be benefits to the state starting from scratch with its own system. Since it would be a state sponsored system, there may be less resistance from the teachers unions, and the idea might be a bit more palatable to charter school opponents.

Ironically Mr. Cotty, who has been at the forefront of the fight against school vouchers, recognizes the benefits of school choice.

Mr. Cotty says his plan would help students in and out of the charter schools because it “says to local districts there’s a new dog on the block and you need to clean up your own house.” This is the theory behind charter schools and vouchers. Truthfully, I doubt that some local school districts would even get the message to reform. Instead I suspect that any successfully run state charter school system would eventually outright replace the local public school system. This would not necessarily be a bad thing.

Of course Cindy has to make one of the same tired arguments against school choice.

And the plan is susceptible to one of the same criticisms he and I and others have of the private school plans: It would trap kids who don’t have active, involved parents in failing schools that might become even worse once the best students with the most motivated parents move out.

Ryan has already covered much of Cindy’s anti-voucher rhetoric. I would like to add one thing. When I hear this argument, I wonder what the people making it would do if they came across several kids drowning in a river. Would they let everyone drown instead of trying to save some of the kids if they could not save everyone?

Despite this, Cindy recognizes the strongest argument that we school reform advocates have made over the years.

Moreover, his plan addresses what he calls the one legitimate point made by those pushing for vouchers or tax credits — that kids in poor-performing schools don’t have time to wait for those schools to get better.

This is why many of us are desperate for change, any sort of change. Education reform is not like the debate over Social Security funding, which will only affect our retirees in future decades. Even Cindy recognizes that our state’s children need help now.

Unlike the voucher plan, the Cotty plan keeps public money in a system that is accountable to the public for its results. And best of all, it has the potential to actually fulfill the entirely unrealistic promise of vouchers and tax credits — that is, to provide a good education to children who attend those schools that are mired in poverty and thus far highly resistant to improvement.

Let’s ignore the fact that most good voucher programs actually include provisions for accountability. The greatest challenge to creating a statewide charter school system would be funding. It’s not as simple as moving money from one pot to another. As the Center for Education Reform reports, South Carolina only gets a “C” in education law even after creation of the SCPCSD, because of the way state sponsored charter schools are funded. As the report says:

Charter schools approved by the South Carolina Public Charter School District will receive only state and a portion of federal aid, and not the local funding that is fundamental to solvent, successful charter schools.

For example, the Center for Education Reform links to an independent financial analysis conducted for the Connections Academy, which determines that:

With 422.75 pupils (Figure 8, K-High) in the hypothetical charter, Connections Academy could generate $4,016 per pupil through current state and federal funding streams. The $4,016 represents all identified funding streams that flow through the state as of the FY 2006 school year.

Though they also acknowledge that some additional funding might be available due the sheer scale of the SCPCSD and from independent sources, adequate funding for a school system of the magnitude proposed by Rep. Cotty would need to be addressed. Our General Assembly still hasn’t provided the funding to finish the campus for the South Carolina Governor’s School for Science and Mathematics, even though the school has been recognized as “one of the nation’s top public elite schools” by Newsweek.

One thing is certain: this plan recognizes the desperation that many South Carolinian parents feel regarding public education. While there are many issues to be worked out, this proposed plan has the potential to put South Carolina at the forefront of education reform, on a scale exceeding that of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s recent takeover of the Los Angeles Unified School District.

While this plan is intriguing, realistically it’s a long shot. However, any debate on school reform is good. Perhaps my greatest complaint about this proposed program is it’s targeted at the very worst schools of the state, and not at merely mediocre school districts such as mine. Until I have true choice, I will continue to spend several hours a day tutoring my kids, supplementing their public school education, and praying for the day when our state and nation have the schools that our children deserve.

Rory Hester is a Master Sergeant in the U.S. Air Force, father to five children, and presently lives in South Carolina.  He blogs at Parentalcation.