Educrats Accused Of Diverting Federal Tax Dollars
In a revelation that’s sadly much less shocking than it should be, a member of the South Carolina Advisory Board to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights says his group is investigating a “massive failure in South Carolina to to provide supplemental tutoring services and public school choice as required by the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).”
Advisory Board member Daniel J. Cassidy broke the news of the investigation on the conservative blog Sunlit Uplands, which he writes.
Cassidy says that under NCLB regulations, 64,219 South Carolina students (mostly low-income, minority students) are eligible for federally-funded, individualized tutoring this year, yet only 8,835 are receiving the service, according to state data.
Additionally, Cassidy writes that under NCLB, 103,053 South Carolina students (again, most of them low-income, minority students) are eligible for school transfers this year yet only 2,487 students – or roughly 2% – have actually been able to seek out a better school.
From Cassidy’s blog post:
Under the federal law, 15% of funds provided may be set aside for administrative expenses, while unclaimed funds for choice and tutoring may be used by the districts as they see fit.
With South Carolina achievement levels, graduation rates, and SAT scores among the lowest in the nation, one wonders why school district superintendents, principals and teachers would not do more to ensure that students who need help with basic math and reading skills get the help they need.
As usual, most explanations provided by education bureaucrats as to why only 13% of the state’s students are getting the help provided for them tend to center around indifferent parents. However, a federal law that provides districts a slush fund of millions of taxpayer dollars without requiring that they be used for the intended purpose, is like so much else in our state’s educational system, likely to benefit those who work for the system, and not those who depend on it for an education. No child left behind? In South Carolina that remains an empty slogan for a majority of our students.
Assuming federal funds designated for these purposes have indeed been misappropriated, black lawmakers in South Carolina should be up in arms.
South Carolina’s achievement gap between white and black students continues to grow, which is only exacerbated by the fact that our top white students are falling further behind their peers in other states.
And Palmetto State educrats certainly can’t blame a lack of state funding in the event they used “unclaimed” tutoring and public school choice funds provided by the feds for “other purposes” … not after the state has upped public school funding by $900 million over the previous four years.
In spite of these massive taxpayer investments, it’s been another year of big scandals, zero progress and fresh excuses from South Carolina’s worst-in-the-nation public education system, and the only plan offered by Superintendent Jim Rex is that we fork over “Mo’ Money” to the same people responsible for the disaster.
Hopefully, this will be the year that the scales fall from lawmakers’ eyes as it relates to this failed approach – particularly among African-American lawmakers, whose districts are bearing the brunt of this ongoing scam.
Comments
By baker on September 28th, 2008 at 11:10 pm
This is a fascinating issue. First of all, many conservative (and liberals) can’t stand the fundamentals of No Child Left behind — largely that the law tells local and state school systems what they have to do. Seems that the conservative position is generally that the federal government ought to stay pretty much out of the way. At the same time — and understandably — districts that defy NCLB regulations and requirements to create more choice and offer additional services to poor kids come under fire. It demonstrates just how complex the debate over education really is.
A few other observations —
1. “The State” newspaper reports this: “In Clarendon 1 (Summerton) – where 30 percent of students live in single-parent households and 25 percent of parents never finished high school – (there were) several letters sent home in ‘parent-friendly language,’ follow-up phone calls, home visits and churches spreading the word. Still, fewer than five parents attended each of the district’s information fairs. Last school year, 35 of its middle school students received tutoring, said assistant superintendent Barbara Ragin.”
Is Ms. Ragin telling the truth or not? If she’s being truthful, it seems that that school district did a pretty solid job of trying to make sure people knew about services offered. Maybe more should have been done. But while “blaming the parents” isn’t a true solution to anything, it’s nonetheless a fact that some parents do very little to help get their kids’ education on track.
2. In the same article (http://www.thestate.com/statewire/story/532775.html), there is a report that very few parents are choosing the transfer option. My sense is that the school districts aren’t wild about that option. They don’t like too much movement within the system, they don’t like creating numerical imbalances between schools, they don’t like bad publicity for particular school. I’m not condemning or defending any of this….it’s just my take on things. But this does not mean the transfer option isn’t being properly offered (at least in the majority of districts).
What appears to be the case is that a lot of parents don’t really want to move their child all that much, or there may be other issues at play:
**Maybe they like their neighborhood school despite its problems — that’s pretty interesting to consider, in my opinion. Indeed, I’ve talked to parents before whose kids go to ‘rough’ schools, and the parents have mostly positive things to say. They praise the teachers, and think the educators are doing a good job. I’ve talked to dissatisfied parents, too. But the idea that all parents “want out” of struggling schools isn’t necessarily correct.
**Maybe transportation is a problem in some cases. That would obviously be a hurdle to making private school choice work.
**In rural counties, there may literally not be choices within a school district. There may only be one or two elementary schools, just one middle school, just one high school.
**Mr. Cassidy (and Will Folks) are talking about the small numbers of students transferring to another school. Again, maybe not that many parents were interested, and maybe there were a range of barriers. But Cassidy’s concern about choice (or supposed lack of it) within the system would seem to lend support to the open-enrollment plan Jim Rex pushed and that Mark Sanford opposed.
3. The state article quotes a fed guy as saying that SC tutoring participation rates are lower than the national average but “nothing extreme.” So what’s going on here may not be all that uncommon.
In any case, it does raise interesting issues about what strategies might work best for reaching struggling students. It also raises questions about where NCLB money is going — where does it go if local districts aren’t (for whatever reason) signing up kids for tutoring or for transfers? I’m not among those who assumes corruption or whatever, but there’s obviously a question of waste and accounting for massive NCLB spending.