The Opportunity of School Choice

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.

WSJ: SC Senator Robert Ford right to push School Choice

“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.

Herald-Journal Editorial Embraces Myths about School Choice

What do all these things have in common? They are all myths.

Tax credits won’t help families. Scholarships won’t help families. Public schools will be cast aside and underfunded. Private schools will quickly become quasi-government institutions.

This is what The Spartanburg Herald Journal predicts will happen if South Carolina lawmakers adopt the SC Education Opportunity Act. The only disasters left out of the Spartanburg paper’s apocalyptic, post-school choice scenario are outright Communist invasion and the Thunderdome.

A quick glance at the thriving school choice programs in other states show these panicked speculations to be just as ludicrous as they sound.
Let’s consider a few of the Herald-Journal’s claims:

Senator Ford Ready to Rumble

According to this article from The State, Senator Robert Ford is mincing no words when it comes to his support for school choice options.  The Democrat from Charleston says he is no longer willing to stand by and watch the white/black academic achievement gap grow larger.

“All of us have been defending the system. It’s time to stop. I’m not pussyfooting with this anymore.”

This should come as a major relief to the tens of thousands of students in South Carolina who are trapped in persistently failing public schools.

South Carolina School Updates

Parents in South Carolina support choice

From the Letters section of the Charleston Post and Courier, Monday, March 16, 2009:

Major kudos to Sen. Robert Ford and Rep. Eric Bedingfield for the win/win nature of school choice. During my 14-year stint as a guidance counselor in Charleston County schools, I had the pleasure of working at schools at both ends of the bell curve — those with high ratings and those considered failing.

Contrary to what Jon Butzon and the Rev. Joe Darby believe, those schools with lower socioeconomic student bodies are loaded with extras: personnel, tutors, mentors, coaches, after-school programs, etc. I see this today as I volunteer in a school downtown.

It is high time we quit punishing parents simply because they can’t afford more expensive real estate.

KATIE LINK
Planters Loop
Mount Pleasant

Sunshine on Public Schools in South Carolina

The Associated Press is reporting details of a new 50-state review of online government transparency and ease of public access to state records.

The study was conducted jointly by the Sunshine Week Initiative, the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ Freedom of Information Committee, and the Society of Professional Journalists’ FOI Committee. According to the rankings, based on the ease of access to a list of various documents and publications, South Carolina is ranked 25th of the 50 states. But that number hides the real story.

Public School funding plan for South Carolina

South Carolina’s 2009-10 budget bill is moving through the legislative sausage factory.

After receiving third reading in the House, H. 3560, the appropriations bill for 2009-2010, received first reading in the Senate on March 11th and was referred to the Senate Finance Committee.

The single largest item in this budget is K-12 public education.

According to H. 3560, the “base student cost” for the current fiscal year has been determined to be $2,342 (down from $2,578 last year). The total statewide pupil count is projected to be 691,816 (up from 690,363 last year).

This “base student cost” is the basis of a complicated formula that dictates the district-specific calculations for state and local government spending on public education in South Carolina. It gets a lot of press but only covers only a small fraction of the total public funding of education.

South Carolina Education Opportunity Act (S.520)

School Choice means the best classroom for each child.

Any parent with more than one child knows: every child is different and each is blessed with their own unique strengths and challenges.

It is past time South Carolina had a public education system that recognized this fundamental truth.

Part of that recognition is getting honest about traditional public schools. Their one-size-fits-all curriculum and instruction don’t always match the needs of each child. South Carolina is home to a huge array of charter, magnet, private, independent and homeschool options that have grown to serve the children of parents who have, for one reason of another, decided their local public school was not the best match for their child.

Equal access to these schools needs to be expanded. At the college level, this has happened through the H.O.P.E. and L.I.F.E. scholarship programs. The “Education Opportunity Act” (Senate Bill 520) will do the same for grades Kindergarten through twelve. Here’s how: