We opposed the appointment of Arne Duncan as U.S. Secretary of Education … although he’s occasionally been useful to us in making our points about South Carolina’s worst-in-the-nation education system.
Like last spring, for example, when Duncan said that South Carolina’s public school system was producing “heartbreaking results.”
No argument here …
One area where we have been pleasantly surprised by Duncan, however, is in his support of merit pay for teachers. While this is obviously not a substitute for bigger reforms like universal parental choice and across-the-board funding reform, doing whatever we can do to incentivize results (not more failure) should be a no-brainer.
Unfortunately, here in South Carolina teachers get paid extra for obtaining national certification, not for the results they produce in the classroom … which is one of many reasons why our classroom results are so painfully lacking.
Another area where we’ve been pleasantly surprised by Duncan is his support for greater transparency with respect to the information that government schools give parents – which is also a major problem here in South Carolina.
“The truth is always hard to swallow, but it can only make us better, stronger and smarter,” Duncan said in Little Rock, Arkansas on Wednesday. “That’s what accountability is all about — facing the truth and taking responsibility.”
Indeed it is.
Unfortunately in South Carolina it’s all about moving the goalposts – not moving the numbers.
And far from facing the truth, our state is doing its best to keep it buried. For example, while data is published from outside sources about the state’s achievement gap (which grows larger each year even as white students are falling further behind their peers), South Carolina remains the only state in the nation that refuses to publish its African-American graduation rate.
Amazing, isn’t it?
Taxpayers pay to collect this information, but State Superintendent of Education Jim Rex refuses to release it because he knows it would conclusively prove what everybody in this state already knows – that generations of black students are being relegated to second-class status by a failed system that does nothing but suck up record amounts of funding each year.
It’s past time that this “veil of failure” be lifted.
As Duncan says, the truth will “only make us better, stronger and smarter.”
By um August 26, 2010 at 10:09 am
Merit Pay? how do u decide how well the teachers are teaching? by the scores the kids get on tests? what if the teacher gets the dumb/lazy kids? what if they get the kids whose parents do crack and can’t get the kids to school until 11am? how will YOU measure the teachers effectiveness?
By Anonymous August 26, 2010 at 11:08 am
Measure by testing. Tough luck if the teacher gets loser students.
Run the schools like Basic military training, and don’t hesitate to kick out the disruptive student who want to be losers. You can either save a fair number of motivated students, or let the worthless ones drag the rest down.
The education system in SC needs discipline. The reason military discipline works is that it’s designed to instill self-discipline, and because it’s structured to work with simple people as well as sophisticated folks and weld them into a team.
The local culture of slacness, illiteracy, and pride in ignorance (not everybody, but those who are not like that damn well know that most ARE that way) is a huge obstacle.
School choice is one way to allow parents who care about their kids to not only rescue them from the school system, but from toxic kids they shouldn’t associate with.
By No Name August 26, 2010 at 11:52 am
Arne will resign soon to begin the process of preparing the money shed for Barry in Chicago after this term.
Just like Boners comment on firing Timmy was relatedto the fact that Timmy wants out so when Boner found out about it he jumped on it so he could claim some strength from it in his Speakers campaign.
By um August 26, 2010 at 12:55 pm
annon,
You are describing Private School. Public schools have a hard time throwing out kids. In fact they are a glorified babysitter for some kids up to age 21. Public schools also house delinquents..have their own school and if they can’t make it there, they get to try online.
By Just think.... August 26, 2010 at 9:30 pm
If all gov’t employees were paid on some type of merit system they would all be living at the poverty level.
By Mike at the beach August 27, 2010 at 1:32 am
You’re right in that public school systems find it difficult (from a regulatory / administrative standpoint) “throwing kids out.” Here’s a workaround for that- don’t kick them out, just segregate them. It’s already done to a certain extent with sanctions such as in-school suspension and alternative schools. Just expand upon those concepts and start knocking hell out of the thugs, stoners, and general nitwits who make life so difficult for public school teachers in the vast majority of districts in this state. If a kid violates the rules (either on the basis of a set number of occurrences, severity of the infraction, or some combination thereof) then out of the mainstream classroom he or she goes. Not for an hour; not for a week. Out. Will their education suffer? Certainly. Will it improve the learning environment for the remaining students? I would think so. It may hurt some feelings, though, because it’s not based upon hand-holding, “empowerment,” or improving self esteem. Therefore, it stands no chance of happening under Rex and his feel-good crew.
Like any rational person, I support adequate funding for our public school systems, but my kids attend private school because I believe that their education is one of my most important responsibilities as a parent. Our wasteful layers of bureaucracy, wacky funding model, and entrenched educrat status quo result in a crapshoot in regard to the quality of the schools in your home county. Where I live, we’re losing the crapshoot (although we are, by far, not the worst in the state). The big unsaid in the school choice debate is that the primary advantages enjoyed by private institutions are threefold: Parental involvement, the lack of expensive bureaucracy, and the ability to discriminate (usually instantly) among those who conform to the rules and those who don’t.