By FITSNews || Despite record funding increases for “education,” South Carolina’s high school dropout rate continues to climb – a trend that is particularly pronounced among minority and low income students.
According to the latest “Diplomas Count” report – released on Wednesday by Education Week – just 55 percent of South Carolina high school students graduate on time. That’s the third-lowest rate in the nation – and well below the national average of 69 percent. Also, only 45 percent of African-American students and 39 percent of Hispanic students in South Carolina graduate on time, according to the report.
The “Diplomas Count” study tracked the progress of the class of 2006-07, the most recent year for which complete data is available. Total funding for public schools totaled $8.9 billion that year – a figure that jumped to $9.5 billion last year.
“The system is obviously broken,” said Randy Page, President of South Carolinians for Responsible Government (SCRG), a group pushing universal parental choice and other education reforms. “Public schools in South Carolina spend $9 billion a year and do little more than replicate the shameful black/white, poor/rich, and rural/urban divides that already plague our state.”
Page is right.
South Carolina’s overall graduation rate remains among the worst in the nation – which is consistent with our state’s declining SAT and ACT scores. Also, South Carolina’s rural graduation rate ranks dead last in the country.
Sadly, with the exception of pouring more money down the sinkhole, the only solution policymakers have come up with to turn things around is to dumb down our state-administered test scores to make it look like more students are passing.
No wonder S.C. Superintendent of Education Jim Rex – the most recent architect of this failure – was so thoroughly throttled in his bid to become governor earlier this week.
Clearly South Carolina’s approach of more money and government-driven “accountability” isn’t working. It’s frankly past time to implement real reforms – like universal choice, streamlined funding, merit-based pay raises for teachers and diagnostic testing that gives them the tools they need to better do their jobs.
Also, we need an online checkbook for our public schools that allows taxpayers to track every expense right down to the last dime.
That way our educators will spend less on swanky getaways and golf courses and more on educating our children …
WEB EXTRA
Diplomas Count
By SICK OF LIES!!!! June 11, 2010 at 12:28 am
Someone posted a list of 10 reasons why Bill Connor should be elected and 10 reasons why Ken Ard should not to Ard’s Facebook wall. And, Connor condoned the whole thing. He thanked the man for doing what he did. That is about as sleazy as it gets. And then I read that Palin is now going to endorse a Haley/Connor ticket? WHAT?!? The only thing they have in common is that they have cheated on their spouses and lied about it. Will has put the truth out, and I know there is proof of Connor’s affair in law school. Even if the details and proof came out about Connor, he would have an angle for it to help his campaign. These people will stop at nothing to be elected. Why are these liars getting away with this and then they get endorsed by Palin?!?! People, if they will lie to their spouses and lie when asked about their affairs, they are not fit to serve this state!
By George June 11, 2010 at 1:01 am
It’s because the people in the State education department and school districts are incompetent. They fear competition and innovation, so would rather stick with the status quo.
By The Colonel June 11, 2010 at 4:10 am
Rex ran as a stepping stone to higher office, his incompetence is amazing. Tenenbaum ran for exactly the same thing, she’s crazy, but crazy like a fox. Zais is to old to be starting a career in politics so he’ll stay focused on the job at hand and we won’t see “Zais for something else” signs all over the place like we did shortly after Rex got elected.
Holleman is the single biggest danger to progress for our schools in this upcoming election cycle; he is an educrat of the Riley/Tenenbaum mold – in fact he worked for Riley and with Tenebaum. If you liked Rex, you’ll love Holleman…
By JC June 11, 2010 at 7:00 am
That a school system STILL based on an agarian foundation continues to operate at all in the information age is astounding. A serious overhall of “school” from 8th to 12th grade is clearly overdue…
By Stupid is as Stupid does June 11, 2010 at 7:42 am
There are many problems with education in SC. But one of the problems with these statistics are the numbers that are used. Graduation numbers are gathered from how many students started in 9th grade and finished in 4 years. If you move, you are counted as a drop out (if the school does not track you at your new school). If you go to summer school after your Senior year and finish in the summer…Drop out. If you finish early, Drop out. If you take the GED.. Drop out.
Several people that I know have for different reasons not finished high school in exactly 4 years, they have gone to college and are productive tax paying citizens. We need to evaluate how we evaluate
By You Know Better... June 11, 2010 at 8:00 am
This is another classic example of misrepresentation by FITSNews. The commentary decries the increase in education spending, claiming that it is not working. But the data are from THREE YEARS AGO. A real reporter would get the 2009-10 data from the school districts and report facts. But facts don’t matter on this site. The FITSNews model: Find anything that supports your opinion and report it out of context to support your opinions. No wonder the state is in such bad shape…
By eggaday June 11, 2010 at 8:24 am
throwing money at it isn’t going to help.
privatizing education isn’t going to help anything either.
By Paris Sailin June 11, 2010 at 9:17 am
Hey, The Colonel,
I see you’re on this thread. I answered your post to me in the most respectful, non-sanctimonious way that I could over on the “Meet the Top of SC’s Democratic Ticket” comment thread.
Just wanted to let you know before article archives.
By Toyota Kawaski June 11, 2010 at 9:24 am
wish the house would support Rep. Tom Youngs bill and take these dropouts license
By R June 11, 2010 at 11:11 am
“You Know Better” needs to face the facts that public education is a FAILURE. Its a failure because of liberal colleges of education who focus more on making sure future teachers are politically liberal enough to teach rather than competent enough in their subjects. Its a failure because public education is controlled by left-wind educrats who are scared stiff by innovation, creativity, and accountability. Its a failure because the liberal educrats only answer to failing schools is “more money” which has been their mantra for decades. And yet the more money we poor into schools the worse outcomes are. Funny how educrats cannot show any correlation between money and results because there are none. Yet, private schools and home schooled students continue to outperform public school students in every testable category.
Its common sense and logical if parents had the choice of where to spend their per-child education dollars, schools would be forced to improve or die. Public educators are terrified at the idea of having to compete because they can’t. They know they would have to have administrators and teachers that were competent and well-versed in subject matter rather than just occupying space.
As long as the SCEA/NEA Marxist teachers unions control public education, the colleges of education, and the State Department of Education and their answer to everything is simply “more money” South Carolina public schools will get worse and worse. That’s the facts.
By The Colonel June 11, 2010 at 11:24 am
Paris – I answered you back over there. One of the problems with being here is the only politics I feel free to get involved in are in the blogosphere. Legally, I cannot engage in partisan politics at any level and political discussion can generate unwanted attention for someone in
my position – not that that really worries me.
In reality, only a few of my Soldier are interested in politics and even fewer, SC politics though Alvin Greene (“US Army Retired” to quote one of our candidates) has generated a lot of interesting comments.
Now back to the subject at hand – “You know better” is right but you can’t report on numbers that don’t exist yet, we are generally 2 years behind at a minimum in any discussion of academic achievement, simply because of inherent delays in reporting or in tracking of results. Every state follows a similar model (at least the three that I’m familiar with).
Fact is our academic achievement sucks this year, last year and the year before, and the year before… When I’m not playing Army, I recruit for a major university in SC. I spend 2-3 days a week in our high schools.
Boys and girls, we are getting taken for a ride.
SC spends (all sources) about $11,800 a student. Utah spends $7,500 and they wear us out in achievement so money ain’t the issue (in fact Boston spends about $16,000 and their drop our rate is higher).
At some schools in the “corridor of shame”, I have trouble finding more than 1 or 2 juniors and seniors who have even the most basic entry requirements for the university. Meanwhile out at Spring Valley High, we have students competing and winning on the world stage in Science Fairs. Lake Marion High and Dillon High are as nice a buildings as Spring Valley – so facilities ain’t it. (yes I know we do have some severe facility issues, trust me, I know)
What we need is some real leadership from someone who understands how to make an educational organization function, who isn’t afraid to “kick some asses” (to paraphrase the President), who has a proven track record of success. That man is Mick Zais. Doubled the endowment, doubled enrollment, cut costs, revitalized the staff at Newberry – made some enemies as well, mostly among those he got rid of.
Holleman is an educrat who served at the knee of our Greatest South Carolina Educrat”, former Governor and US Secretary of Education, Dick Riley.
If you dont’t want 4 more years of Tenenbaum and Rex and then want to see “Holleman for the next office” signs three years from now, “…well, you’ll know what to do…” In case you don’t vote for Zais, if I’m wrong you can blame me. (I’m not)
By Billy Bob June 11, 2010 at 12:06 pm
The system is broken, no doubt, but your fixes are totally STUPID. What we need is discipline in the classroom, interesting classes in place of the totally inept crap they teach and serious consequences for students that don’t follow the rules and stay in school. We need to teach people how tho think rather than rote crap. We also need to teach science and not voodoo.
By vicupstate June 11, 2010 at 12:34 pm
The amount of money spent does not predict success or failure. Poverty does. The correlation between poverty and low test scores is far, far stronger than money spent.
By Huhhh??? June 11, 2010 at 1:14 pm
The problem is in the Colleges of Education, some of which are not teaching teachers how to teach.
I know this from my days in college in a few of these courses and a recent incident I read about in Clarendon County. A teacher at the K and 1st grade school put a young child in a classroom closet for several hours of time out. That means the college didn’t bother to teach her the most basic fact about classroom management and time out – 1 minute per year of age. This child should not have been in time out for more than 6 minutes, much less in the closet.
We need to do what Arne Duncan is suggesting. Take each child’s test score back to the teacher and back to their college to identify the education programs that are not working and make them work.
There is no real accountability, based on its products/graduates, for any college in this country. They take the money and run. That’s where the problem is in a lot of disciplines.
By The Colonel June 11, 2010 at 1:16 pm
Bily Bob – I’d love to know what “teach science, not voodoo” means; I suspect it is a reference to creationism and evolution?
That asked, I totally agree with the assertion that we need to add improving discipline to the discussion. I’m 6 feet tall and weigh about 220. I’m trained to kill people and break things, but there are some high schools in this state where I tread lightly – not for fear of personal safety but out of concern over what my snapping a smart assed junior in half would do to my career.
Stupid is (not calling names Paris, that’s his choice of name not mine), I’ll conceded that there are a few students who chose to leave early and later get a GED but my experience tells me that the number who do as you suggest is statistically insignificant. Most drop out and go to work or to jail. I can prove the jail assertion simply by citing the percentage of inmates without high school diplomas. According to the census bureau 40 percent of inmates are dropouts (don’t ask me why the Census Bureau tracks it, interestingly enough, 50% of death row inmates are drop outs). The average dropout earns $9,000 less than his classmate who stuck it out for the diploma.
As to vouchers, allowing a $4-5,000 tax credit (not a voucher, a tax credit) has the potential to save schools a significant amount of money in three ways: it reduces the need for additional facilities, reduces the need for additional teachers and it eases the burden on resources. The savings is only realized when 10-15% of students in the public schools opt out. Beyond 20% you rapidly reach diminishing returns and then quickly go into a draw on the budget. The contention that there are a finite number of quality private schools is stupid (the idea, not the person that said it Paris). You create a source of funding (a tax credit) and there will be schools popping up overnight that will by necessity do a better job educating than our public schools are doing now – and oh by the way, the state does have some over sight of private schools now. That can easily be increased. All three of my kids are in public schools here but when we lived in Charlotte the two older ones cost me $8,900 a year for both to attend a US News and World Report “100 Best Private School”.
By The Colonel June 11, 2010 at 1:18 pm
Vicupstate – Spot on – Poverty and parental involvement are the two biggest factors in academic success.
By Florida Watching June 11, 2010 at 3:19 pm
Hey Gary…..you still out there?
Sic Willie won’t let us down. He’s got some evidence.
Besides, there are a couple thousand Clemon graduates who may also have evidence.
Sorry Gary…….I know you have faith…..but she was alittle too wild.
Peace.
By EasleyJack June 11, 2010 at 4:51 pm
Colonel, the new MAP testing gives results of the students tests by the end of the next 9 weeks. It shows the current results vs the students past test, district and nations average. So, we are 2 yrs behind in reporting progress. This is info that we can use to judge right away.
By EasleyJack June 11, 2010 at 4:52 pm
Sorry, meant to say “aren’t 2 yrs behind”. Maybe I need some testing..
By Ttiger June 11, 2010 at 10:20 pm
Show of hands…how many of the bloggers with answers actually teach in a public school classroom? Colonel you are right, Dillon has just as nice a school as Chapin or Spring Valley. Why are their test scores not as high? Very little parental involvement and very low parental expectations in regards to the value of education. I teach in Columbia and my son teaches in a rural area of our state. My son was educated in Columbia and he says that his students don’t seem to care about education and the teachers get very little parental involvement or support. So parental involvement is key.
To “R” this is also why private schools and homeschoolers tend to score higher on tests…parental involvment. Parents are teaching their values to their children. I teach 6th grade. Every class I teach begins with a question to help connect my lesson with their personal lives. When I teach about early writings and stories such as Gilgamesh, I ask my students to tell me their favorite stories growing up. In my honors classes, they tell me about their dads or moms reading them many different stories. My lower students can’t answer the question because they have never had someone read to them.
I also teach GED and Work Keys in prison 4 nights a week to help suppliment my income but also because I believe that education can help these men have hope when they get out and possibly stay out of prison. But I notice that the majority of my GED students have children under the age of 5. So we have High School prison drop outs having children. This is the cyclical type of problems that our state has to deal with in order to solve the problem of poor education in our rural areas.
The main point of my post is that it is real easy to say “if they (the schools) would just do this ______ then our schools would succeed.” What would help would be if all the bloggers would actually come volunteer in their schools and help at risk kids. We had a lady work with a student who was failing all four core courses at the beginning of the year and by the end of the year, the student passed all the courses with a B. I know it is not popular to quote this person on this blog, but it does “take a village.”
By The Colonel June 12, 2010 at 3:11 am
EaslyJack, MAP Testing might be a good indicator of achievement except for three things:
1 – PASS is the state standard for testing (we only test grades 3-8). PASS has been around for almost 2 years and we still haven’t figured out what a passing/failing score is yet.
2 – MAP is a progress indicator not a measure of overall subject competence – that’s why they test multiple times during the year. Because of the stress that goes with that testing modality, students tend to memory dump “non tested material” after the test in order to focus on the “next 9 weeks”. In order to test subject competence, we need to focus on an EOCT (end of course test). MAP lacks a writing component – writing skill is measured on PASS.
3 – According to a MOO U study, MAP is NOT a good way to prepare for the PASS test (PASS is an EOCT). We pay about $50 a student, a year (about $17,000,000 state wide) to use MAP tests but the evidence is that it is not helping us in the “achievement arena”.
http://www.slideshare.net/tberkli/hrd845-project-mappactpass-presentation
PASS is the state standard by law; my question is why do we stop testing in eighth grade? PASS replaced PACT which was not much more than a “teach to the test” feel good program that didn’t make us feel too good. There is no national equivalent to the PASS test so we’re comparing “oranges to oranges” on the same branch rather than measuring our performance against a norm. SATs / ACTs are about the only national measure of success “tree to tree”. By the time we get the roll up and analysis of national SAT performance, we are generally well into the academic year 12-18 months later.
By BIN News Editorial Staff June 12, 2010 at 2:45 pm
This is just more of Howie’s voucher scam rhetoric.
Come on, (xic) willie, ‘It’s the poverty, stupid!’
And the brazillion other social ills that go along.
You know! Like racism and screwed up funding. (xic) willie and the other voucher clowns know the real issues. They just don’t care.
Actually, the only reason the voucher scam is still (barely) around in SC is because of Howie the Voucher Clown’s ongoing attempt to buy the SC Legislature one politician at a time.
Read about it here:
http://scbarbecue.blogspot.com/2008/05/thursday-thrash-award-sc-club-for.html
And here,
http://scbarbecue.blogspot.com/2008/08/barbecue-politics-spotlight-shamlapper.html
And here,
http://scbarbecue.blogspot.com/2008/08/kyle-boyd-comes-clean-55-of-funds-from.html
And here,
http://scbarbecue.blogspot.com/2007/07/list.html
Vouchers are dead in SC. Particularly in this economy.
Just ask a Midlands’ Elected Official.
BIN News Editorial Staff
Flair and Balanced
By Jerry June 13, 2010 at 3:38 pm
Why is increasing funding for education called “throwing money at it”? It makes it sound like Sanford throwing money at his paid “blowing off steam” women. All of you that think that should be tickled now with all of the education cuts our current leadership has enacted. Thanks BIN for your words on the school choice crew
By BIN News June 14, 2010 at 12:13 am
Jerry,
Thanks back to you. It’s loyal and responsible readers like you and our many friends who encourage our Funding Editor to keep a stiff upper lip (so to speak) in the face of voucher wackos like Howie the Voucher Clown, (xic) willie, randy Randy and the Voice for Voucher Scams.
Vouchers are dead in SC. Period.
BIN News Editorial Staff
Flare and Balance :)
By malik sherrod February 2, 2011 at 9:56 am
We at the ask malik show found this article to be very informative.
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By senji63 November 17, 2011 at 11:00 am
What does SC need to turn our drop out rate around…?
It needs for all the people who complain about our public schools to come in and volunteer 1 hour a day, during academic teaching hours, at middle and high schools.
See what the teachers are doing or not doing. See the students in the classroom enough times that they become comfortable with the added observation.
Most who try this run out of the school when they have a 16-year old 6th grader physically assault them. (Yes, it does happen in other grades and with other ages of students. Unfortunately, our school has had this situation 4 times in the last 6 years.)
When you have to come in to talk to the parent about the assault, the parents do not show up…or tell you their child did not do that and you have them ‘targeted’ for one reason or another.
Come before class time and see how many teachers show up early to give extra help to students. Stay late to see how many sacrifice family time to spend time helping students…and giving rides home because Mom or Dad or Grandma can’t be bothered to come get their child. Of course, this opens other danger areas for teachers.
Let me put it this way…Before you complain… Come and do several observations. Come up with realistic ideas for change. Help bring these changes to take place.
If you cannot come up with ideas for changes after seeing what is truly going on in the classroom…just help the teacher. I have never known a teacher not willing to try something new if it shows potential. I have never known a teacher to turn down help in the classroom.
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