Parents head to Columbia, demand School Choice

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.

Parents Pack Senate Building to Demand “Students over System”

One of the two over-flow rooms packed with supporters of School Choice during the K-12 Education Subcommittee public hearing on S.520.

Today over 200 parents, educators, children and activists packed the halls of the state senate offices. Their mission was to urge state senators sitting on the K-12 Education Subcommittee to vote for real school choice options in South Carolina.

Despite the fact that halls in the Gressette Building are regularly crowded with paid lobbyists, security personnel refused to allow parents to stand in the hall outside where the hearing was taking place.  Even though many of these individuals had traveled long distances to be seen by their elected officials, scores of parents, children and educators were made to move to other empty hearing rooms, some of which were on a different floor from where the hearing was taking place.

Even these attempts to diminish the impact of the voters and taxpayers supporting school choice could not lessen the appeal of the parents’ testimonies.

South Carolina can learn from FL schools

Anyone with even a casual interest in public schools public education in South Carolina should read this article from the Washington Times.

Public schools in South Carolina continue to disappoint parents with consistently low SAT scores, a still widening achievement gap, and a massive dropout rate that ranks among the nation’s worst. All this bad news despite per-student spending over $11,000 per public school student.

The situation in Florida is very different.

Case Study: Special Needs Scholarships

Great video from the Institute for Justice about parents fighting for their children’s right to quality education.

While public schools are choosing to send special needs children to private schools in order to save money, when parents make such decisions they are seen as a threat.

Feds Blast Rex for failing special ed kids

South Carolina’s public schools aren’t properly serving the needs of special education students.

That’s according to officials at the United States Department of Education (DOE).

A letter sent to State Superintendent Jim Rex from DOE’s Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) cites the state’s ongoing failure to comply with the federal Individuals with Disabilities Acts (IDEA).

Specifically the state “needs assistance” to meet the requirements of “Part B”, the portion of the law ensuring that children with disabilities, from age 3 to 21, are provided a free appropriate public education.

Among the complaints made by the feds of the State Department of Education:

- South Carolina failed to report the number of special-ed students who graduate or drop out
- The state won’t give DOE information on how (or if) special-ed students are tested
- The state won’t correct arbitrary and inconsistent suspension and expulsion practices in the 85 school districts
- The Education Department refuses to conduct a federally mandated special needs student parent survey
- The state won’t correct instances of low-income and minority children over-classification as “special-needs”
- Details of parents’ appeals and the timeliness of resolution have been withheld

Rex and bureaucrats pressured to offer so-called “choices”

The spin-masters at South Carolina’s State Department of Education are busy using their 54 cents per dollar of education spending on another vain attempt to disguise the wide spread failure of public schools in the Palmetto State.

As reported by the Associated Press and the Charleston Post and Courier, Politician Jim Rex is proud of his recent attempt to silence middle class voters with more faux-choices.

This time, he is talking about single gender classes. From the P&C story:

…”[support for single gender classes] verifies that parents have not just overwhelmingly responded to this option in the public schools … but that at least the initial experience for parents, students and teachers has been overwhelmingly positive,” said state Schools Superintendent Jim Rex.

Rex framed the results as an illustration of the potential results when parents are given a choice within the public school system, which is accountable and accessible, he said. He plans to further study students’ test scores in upcoming months to see whether single-gender classes have a positive effect on achievement. Preliminary scores show that they do…

But wait! If politicians and administrators in the public education establishment have come to recognize that parents expect and deserve a diverse range of instructional settings and methodologies that is a first step in the right direction. However, by design, a command and control style state department of education, staffed by bureaucrats in Columbia, will never be able to provide the wide and responsive range of educational services that families in South Carolina need and deserve.

If public school officials and lawmakers are conceding that variety and competition (in the form of single gender, Montessori, classical instruction, arts specialization, etc…) are both beneficial and highly desired, then the natural next step is to provide parents with a student based funding system that allows them to send their children to the school (public, private, charter, magnet or home) that they select.

The fact is, Jim Rex can’t have it both ways. When parents realize that education is a public good and that a state monopoly on instruction can’t provide the innovation and accountability that will make South Carolina competitive, they will look to real school choice as the obvious solution.

For more perspective on the questionable motives of this so-called “choice” program check out the Charleston City Paper’s “Sterotyping for Education’s Sake” by Greg Hambrick

…But, after hearing Bragg’s [single gender] pitch, I was a little troubled by the generalizations assumed in launching these all-boys and all-girls classrooms. Things like “boys like non-fiction and girls like fiction.” Boys respond to a teacher who moves through the classroom, while girls like direct instruction. It all turned my stomach, being one of those students who often stood in the margins beyond what most boys liked. Who am I to argue with success, but this across-the-board instruction style would seem to me to leave some students in the gap…

News: Special Ed, Inez and DC Vouchers

The Fort Mill Times reports that a mother whose handicapped child was denied services is suing the Fort Mill / Rock Hill School District. Lawmakers in the SC House had the opportunity to provide special needs children with scholarships last session (which promised more effective services and cost savings for public districts) but they choose not to.

A mother who contends the Fort Mill school district denied her son a “free appropriate public education” under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act has filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking financial compensation…. The complaint alleges the school district failed to provide counseling or “meaningful services or instruction” at the elementary or middle school levels and claims he regressed in the eighth grade. District intervention that began at the high school level helped but did not compensate for lost progress, the complaint claims.

The State Newspaper announced that former State Superintendent of Education Inez Tenenbaum has taken a job with Columbia-based McNair Law Firm. Tenenbaum has a long history with the legal community, taking in more than $70,000 in political contributions from lawyers and lobbyists in 1998 alone. During her eight year tenure at the Education Department the state saw negligible gains in test scores and an increase in wealth and racially correlated performance gaps.

Tenenbaum, elected state education superintendent in 1998 and 2002, will handle financial matters, such as bond referendums for new construction or renovation projects, for client school districts. She will work with two of the firm’s attorneys who specialize in that area — Frannie Heizer, a former Columbia city councilwoman, and Daniel McLeod.

The Washington Post published a letter by US Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings calling for a renewal of the successful Washington DC school voucher program.

Better schools. Higher scores. And satisfied parents. That’s the record of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. It is helping us keep our promise to leave no child behind in America. If Congress is thinking of breaking this promise, the nation deserves to know the story.

Signed into law by President Bush four years ago, the program is the first to provide federally funded education vouchers to students. It awards up to $7,500 per child for tuition, transportation and fees; in 2007-08 it enabled 1,900 students from the underperforming Washington public school system — the highest total yet — to attend the private or religious schools of their choice.

For many, this was their first opportunity to receive a high-quality education. “They not only educate them, but they are teaching them to be young men and young women as well,” Sheila Jackson, the mother of a 12-year-old scholarship recipient, told a reporter.

Special Needs Scholarships: School Choice Par Excellence

Special education is very complicated. Time intensive and specialized instruction, facility modification, specially tailored curriculum and assessment, specialized transportation and a virtual minefield of state and nation regulation make special needs education an expensive and frustrating endeavor. Sadly, lawmakers in South Carolina don’t seem very interested in improving the situation.

But classroom instruction for uniquely challenged students is vitally important. It can help to foster individual autonomy, practical reasoning skills, a sense of self worth, and provides for meaningful socialization.

Recognizing these important benefits, federal lawmakers passed the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA) which specifically guarantees a Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) for all disabled students. In practice, this means that parents work with public educators to develop and implement an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) tailored to the specific needs of each child.

Because traditional public school classrooms and curriculum are designed as a one-size-fits-all approach to instruction, children with unique needs often require extensive supplementary instruction. The need for student assistants, separate curriculum, and classroom modifications often lead public school officials to place special needs students in private schools. These children attend independent schools, focused on special needs instruction, but are classified as public school students because the state pays their tuition. Not only do the children enjoy better and more specialized instruction, school districts also save thousands of dollars by contracting services to those who are more uniquely qualified to provide them.

Though federal law requires disabled children receive a publicly financed education, and allows children to attend private schools to meet this goal, this is not a decision left to parents. This important decision is made by public school employees and education bureaucrats. Sometimes parents luck out and have the chance to place their children in effective and dedicated special needs private schools. More often they don’t. Like all government policies that depend on the whims of bureaucrats, identifying any type of logical pattern to these decisions is difficult.

However, five states have taken the highly acclaimed model of special needs private school placement, and extended the decision making process to include parents of the disabled children. Rather than having to accept the mandates of bureaucrats, parents can apply for support directly from the state in the form of scholarships or tax credits. Not only do the children receive access to uniquely appropriate instruction, the state and local district saves thousands of tax dollars because federal and local funding streams are rarely tied directly to the individual student.

Successful examples of statewide special needs scholarship programs include:

Florida: “McKay” Scholarships
Ohio: “Autism Scholarship” Program
Utah: “Carson Smith” Special Needs Scholarships
Arizona: “Pupils with Disabilities” Scholarship Program
Georgia: “Special Needs” Scholarships

These programs continue to receive glowing reviews. Research indicates that participating parents are more satisfied than parents of children who remain in traditional public schools. Additionally, parents report being offered higher quality services outside the public school system when using the scholarships. There are also measurable achievement gains among the participating students in private schools when compared with their peers in traditional public school setting.

As usual, certain politicians in South Carolina seem oblivious (or simply indifferent) to the success of these scholarships. In April, a committee of state lawmakers narrowly rejected sending a scholarship proposal for an up-or-down vote in General Assembly. Representatives Denny Woodall Neilson, Herb Kirsh Brian White would not allow the bill to receive the open floor discussion that such a education improving and money saving plan certainly deserves.

Contact your lawmaker. Let them know that denying choices to parents of special needs children is unjust. It wastes tax dollars and stifles opportunity for some our state’s most underprivileged students. South Carolina can, and should, do better.

Heartless Lawmakers Block Scholarships for Handicapped Children

Last week, three callous members of the House quietly killed Bill 3101, a proposal that would have provided scholarships to children with disabilities attending independent and private schools.

The “Special Needs Scholarship Program” was designed for parents with handicapped children who felt their local public school was unable to sufficiently provide for the child’s unique educational requirements. HB 3101 created a process to request and authorize a transfer of the student to a neighboring district or to a private school. The proposal was similar to (but financially smaller than) the popular McKay Scholarship in Florida.

The bill would have used the individual education plans (IEPs) created by local school districts to help determine the best educational options for the handicapped students. These IEPs are already required by the Federal Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA) and work to ensure that every student -regardless of their abilities- receives a free and appropriate education.

Many special needs students already attend private schools (with state and federal support) under their IEP. Because of the high cost of educating students with certain types of disabilities, public school districts often choose to send these kids to private schools during the process of developing an IEP. In these cases local, state, and federal money follows the child to that private school.

But HB 3101 was much more narrow in scope. It merely sought to provide parents with a scholarship that amounted to a fraction of the state spending. It further promised that pupils who transfered out would still be counted on the public school rolls for state and local appropriations. In other words – local public schools would not incur the costs of educating the child, but would receive all the local, state, and federal spending on that child anyway.

Those who opposed the bill:
Denny Woodall Neilson
Herb Kirsh
Brian White

Those who voted in favor of HB 3101:
Harry B. “Chip” Limehouse, III
James H. “Jay” Lucas

Neilson, Kirsh, and White are heartless. Their vote to deny benefits to the parents of handicap children once again makes it clear: “defenders” of public schools who blindly reject school choice proposals are not working for the interests of their constituents.