According to a press release sent out by the SC Dept of Education, the SC Governor’s School for Science and Mathematics (SCGSSM) has been named by Newsweek to be among the “Top Twenty Elite Public High Schools” in the nation. This is the fourth year in a row that the South Carolina public school has been on the prestigious list.
Every year, hundreds of high school sophomores apply to the school, but only 64 of the best and brightest students are accepted.
For two years, students at the SCGSSM study in a rigorous, academics-focused environment. Needless to say, graduates are well prepared to enter the best colleges and universities. (more…)
Time has come to focus on the student, not the System.
Giving every family in South Carolina access to a quality education for their children is essential to our state’s future.
It also shows that we, as a state, understand that parents have a right –even a responsibility– to make important decisions about their children’s lives.
Through school choice South Carolina can move away from the antiquated, exclusive model of “public or private schools,” and embrace a broader system in which public AND private schools are made available to meet the learning needs of individual students. School Choice means real options for all parents: public and private and charter and magnet and virtual and home school. (more…)
As was the case in 2006 and 2007, Democrats were instrumental in the majority of school choice legislative victories in 2008.
• In Florida, the $30 million expansion of the Corporate Tax Credit Scholarship program was supported by a majority of African-American legislators, all Hispanic legislators, and one-third of the entire Democratic caucus.
• In Louisiana, the New Orleans voucher program passed through the Democratic House and Senate; the bill’s authors in each house were Democrats, and 28 Democratic legislators voted for the bill.
• With the support of Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty and other prominent Democrats, continued funding of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program was approved by Congress.
“School Choice Is the New Civil Rights Struggle” by Brendan Miniter of the Wallstreet Journal (5/30).
A word of support from the president could transform local politics on the issue.
Getting arrested doesn’t normally bolster a politician’s credibility. But when South Carolina state Sen. Robert Ford told me recently that he saw the inside of a jail cell 73 times, he did so to make a point. As a youth, Mr. Ford cut his political teeth in tumultuous 1960s civil-rights protests.
Today this black Democrat says the new civil-rights struggle is about the quality of instruction in public schools, and that to receive a decent education African-Americans need school choice. He wants the president’s help. “We need choice like Obama has. He can send his kids to any school he wants.”
Mr. Ford was once like many Democrats on education — a reliable vote against reforms that would upend the system. But over the past three and a half years he’s studied how school choice works and he’s now advocating tax credits and scholarships that parents can spend on public or private schools. (more…)
Parents, especially low-income parents, have a right to be confused about how President Obama really feels about education, especially when it comes to educational choices.
During the much-publicized hunt for a proper school for the Obama children, local public schools were clearly not even remotely considered to be adequate. Instead, an exclusive-and very costly-private school was selected to meet the educational needs of the first family. Subsequently, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan made sure his own children had the pick of the best schools, stating that their education was too important to jeopardize with a bad educational environment.
According to this article in USA Today, school choice is a reform measure that more black lawmakers are willing to publicly support.
Despite heated opposition from unions and status quo politicians, these officials have been willing to do whatever it takes to help children in failing public schools have access to a quality education. Prominent examples of this very necessary leadership are Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, Newark Mayor Cory Booker and former Washington, D.C., mayor Anthony Williams.
Putting children first- in the face of political pressure- puts these leaders in stark contrast to President Obama, who presided over the demise of the school choice program in Washington, D.C. that allowed low-income students to escape public schools so bad that US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan referred to them as “a national disgrace.”
Here in South Carolina, State Senator Robert Ford has been a strident voice for school choice options. Despite personal attacks and dismissive treatment by establishment hangers-on, Ford has continued pointing out the hypocrisy of lawmakers refusing parents choice, and demanding that low-income students in South Carolina have the same opportunities as those available to the children of more influential citizens. (more…)
Scholarships and choices are great (except for our K-12 schools)!
Politicians and bureaucrats at South Carolina’s State Department of Education seem to want it both ways.
Their taxpayer-funded publicists promote the importance of state scholarships for students attending colleges, universities, and vocational schools in South Carolina. They recently issued a press release (see photo) calling for greater awareness and utilization of the H.O.P.E., L.I.F.E and Palmetto Fellows Scholarships, which support students attending both public and private schools.
Similarly, State Superintendent Jim Rex has personally fundraised for non-profit scholarship granting organizations that serve low-income students making higher educational choices.
But, on the other hand, Jim Rex and his public school monopolist friends are adamantly opposed to providing similarly scholarship opportunities for students in grades K through 12 (even when the scholarships are privately funded) (more…)
Washington politicians kow-towing to powerful teacher unions may have successfully choked out school choice in Washington, D.C., but parents are not standing by without making their displeasure known.
Yesterday 1,000 parents and students rallied at Freedom Plaza in D.C. to protest the killing off of the choice program that gave many hundreds of children the chance to get out of dangerous, failing schools, and into private schools where they could excel.
Despite a recent study showing that children who participated in this program read at half a grade level better than students in public schools, unions and their sycophantic political puppets have smugly told parents that their dream of something better for their children is over. Now, students who have been able to get a taste of safe, high quality learning environments are left with no option but to return to some of the worst public schools in the nation; schools that President Obama and his administration have praised, and then avoided for their own families. (more…)
Melissa Melvin, a parent from York County, testifies before the SC Senate K-12 Education Subcommittee about her personal experiences dealing with the public school system in South Carolina. Like dozens of other parents, she wanted lawmakers to know that families across the State expect public policies which put students first.
Learn more about S.520, the Education Opportunity Act here.
“We’re losing our young men in this state. Some kids just need a different approach, a different environment to achieve.”- Col. Nathaniel Green, Eagle Military Academy
Eagle Military Academy is just one of the small, private schools around South Carolina serving low income students who could not make it in failing public schools. Last week’s Senate K-12 Education subcommittee meeting gave several representatives from these schools an opportunity to tell senators how much their schools are doing to help children who would otherwise have no hope for an education and a future.
The overwhelming message of these schools: “Give us the means to help more needy children.”
Senate Bill 520 provides an easy and accountable way for poor families to have access to private schools. Student Scholarship Organizations would receive contributions from individuals and corporations and disperse the money in the form of scholarships to families below 200% of the federal poverty level. For far less than the amount spent in public schools, privately donated scholarships can take a student out of a one-size-fits-all failing school, and into an environment truly geared toward helping them.
Senators have in their hands the opportunity to help schools like Eagle Military Academy continue to provide quality education and personal care for children who desperately need it. The other option is to ignore the pleas of desperate parents, children and educators, and take the easy route of caving in to education establishment bullying and fear mongering.
At issue is equality of opportunity. There is immense evidence that government monopoly schools perpetuate inequality of opportunity for the poor and marginalized. -Joseph Klesney, Education Policy Analyst
