“While I breathe, I hope.”
It’s one of South Carolina’s mottos, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. Like parents everywhere, I join South Carolina’s parents in wanting the best for our children. We pin our hopes on God, on hard work, on belief in the goodness of America and South Carolina. And we hold out hope, hope against hope, for our political figures.
The most promising hope begins with a sound childhood education. That’s why so many parents are now saying the Republican candidate for governor has let them down. They’re disappointed that our candidate removed what is a key piece of the GOP’s official platform. Instead she now says parental choice of schools – the freedom to choose schools – is not her focus.
Certainly the other pieces are there, and they are the right pieces – streamlining the bureaucracy, emphasizing vocational training, reforming our needlessly complex and wasteful funding formulas. But for thousands of parents the freedom to choose a different school means the freedom to at last see their children’s best hopes embodied.
We can meet many of our most urgent social, political and economic challenges by first meeting our students’ needs. A wonderful education not only promises opportunity, but can bring true freedom. Quality education opens minds. It’s inherently liberating. It affords possibility, invites opportunity, equalizes playing fields and forever pays dividends.
There are far-reaching problems in our education system. Some blame a lack of money, but we spend $11,372 per child, per year on public education. Some say we need more management, but our state has 85 school districts with entrenched administrative bureaucracies. Still others point to inefficiencies, and here they have a point. Only 44 cents of each education dollar manage to reach the classroom for instruction.
There is even more disagreement about solutions, but our shortfalls are not for lack of trying. We’ve had the Education Finance Act (1977), the Education Improvement Act (1984), the Charter School Act (1996), the Education Accountability Act (1998), the Education Lottery Act (2001) and the Education and Economic Development Act (2005). All provided more money and more programming, as if growing the bureaucracy would solve things. And still, the gap between prosperous and poor, between urban and rural, between South Carolina’s children and those in competing states, continues and grows.
Let’s stop tinkering around the edges. Let’s stop throwing money at the problem. Let us instead finally bring real relief, real reform, lasting and meaningful change.
School choice helps families afford independent and home school expenses and is a catalyst for serious reform. It saves public school money, reduces public school class size and directly addresses inequality by giving low- and middle-income families the choice that others already have. It also can let children into a great classroom where the curriculum and style match the learning style best suited for them.
Choice for parents doesn’t depend on school districts to fix themselves. Parents’ rightful voice in their children’s education – in effect their children’s freedom – is restored. Families, not bureaucrats, choose the best school for their sons and daughters.
If we’re serious about quality in education, and equality in education, if we want schools that truly serve families and communities, then we must ensure that our leaders bring the only reform that is driven by families.
Rep. Nikki Haley has been an outspoken and eloquent advocate of meaningful education reform, and having worked with her, I know she’s sincere. We’re on the same team, and I want her to win. That’s why I ask her to reconsider her education plan and restore parental choice to her platform.
Let us free parents to choose and free children to learn. Let us free teachers from bureaucracies and free them to teach. In doing so, we liberate a new generation and give them the best freedom of all – the freedom to succeed.
The writer, a Republican, represents State Senate District 37, which includes portions of Berkeley, Charleston, Colleton and Dorchester counties. A small businessman, he and his wife have three sons who attend public schools.
By Sons August 31, 2010 at 6:27 pm
Don’t forget how mandatory universal public education began – those “dangerous” and “disloyal” catholic immigrants needed to be normalized into mainstream protestant society.
Funny thing is, now, the government schools are normalizing kids with a whole different set of values.
Look at the homework your kids are getting, what their books are saying, what is on (and missing from) their reading lists… and ask yourself, are these values and agendas consistent with how I want to raise my kids, or what I want my tax money to bankroll?
Only when parents have choices will government schools be responsive to the wants of local parents and the real learning needs of the students they claim to serve.
By jbv August 31, 2010 at 6:52 pm
Why don’t we have the private schools run the whole public education system so everyone will have the benefit?
By Old Bike Dude August 31, 2010 at 8:26 pm
If I’ve said it once I’ve said it twice. Ya gotta have private schools cause our public school athletes love them some white girls after a hard evening’s practice. How else you explaining all those BA cars in the BHS parking lot after dark. jus sayin
By baker August 31, 2010 at 8:47 pm
Larry Grooms’ problem here — as with Mark Sanford and others — is that no one has put forth a decent school “choice” plan.
The plans presented so far — particularly the totally absurd “Educational Opportunity Act” — have balanced the scales in favor of the middle class or even wealthy, rather than getting serious about helping the poor.
How about just creating a voucher fund for poor kids? Wouldn’t that make more sense — if this is all about improving test scores and access to high quality education for needy students — than creating legislation that would give money back to parents who already have their kids in private school? It would seem so…..but, then, who really think that helping the poorest, most struggling students in the state is really the agenda of SCRG and the politicians they and Club for Growth and Howard Rich have in their pockets?
By Dear Goodness August 31, 2010 at 11:53 pm
I am too hard headed, I still just don’t get how having the government essentially funding both the current public school AS WELL AS the private school system doesn’t expand government.
Also, all the school choice advocates apparently feel having the goverment fund their private choices is conservative how exactly?
By Joe September 1, 2010 at 7:03 am
“Only when parents have choices will government schools be responsive to the wants of local parents and the real learning needs of the students they claim to serve.”
EXACTLY. And that’s precisely why leftist politicians, professional educrats and teachers unions fight with their very lives to deny parents’ choice. The last thing they want is competition for money or the inability to indoct…er instruct their agenda to our children.
By OhNoNotAgain September 1, 2010 at 12:22 pm
Tell me how the mother of a five kids in Allendale County with no job or who has to get up at 4 a.m. to ride a bus to Hilton Head to work in the hotels for near minimum wage can get her kid into a GOOD private school with a voucher plan, and I’ll support it.
Otherwise, shut up about “school choice.”
It’s just a disguised plan to put money in the pockets of people already sending their kids to the white flight private schools.
If the private sector could make money off educating students, why doesn’t it do it? Why does it need a government handout?
By sick of your sikh denial September 1, 2010 at 1:09 pm
Haley really does not have a clue about education. I am not quite sure that she even finished Clemson. If Haley wins, we all lose!
By reasonable September 1, 2010 at 3:19 pm
Thank you Ohnonotagain! I’ve said it before and I will say it again. I have put three children through private school. My very expensive choice but my choice. The politicians pushing this use it as a carrot to attract votes. The folks who would benefit from this are already able to make the choice. In truth, there are not hundreds of private schools out there offering a sound curriculum being taught by certified teachers. Most of the ones that do offer exceptional education are so expensive that the voucher amount would be great enough to allow the neediest kids to attend. Even if they did, the best schools have very limited enrollment and have high admission standards.
In all the years this has been an agenda item, I’ve not heard one proponent of this explain how this will benefit anyone other than those who can already afford private school.
By /b/ September 1, 2010 at 10:02 pm
“Tell me how the mother of a five kids in Allendale County with no job or who has to get up at 4 a.m. to ride a bus to Hilton Head to work in the hotels for near minimum wage can get her kid into a GOOD private school with a voucher plan, and I’ll support it.”
Tell her she made five mistakes, and not to breed what you can’t feed.
Teach BIRTH CONTROL in schools and we’d have fewer accidental trailer trash/hood rats overtaxing the system.
By Gene Simmons September 2, 2010 at 10:38 pm
Baker: I may be wrong but go back and read Tracy Edge’s bill again. He devotes more toward kids in poverty or with special needs than anyone.
By Gene Simmons September 2, 2010 at 10:45 pm
I though Robert Ford was the godfather SenATOR OF SCHOOL CHOICE?
By baker September 5, 2010 at 3:26 pm
Gene Simmons:
The “Educational Opportunity Act,” of which Tracy Edge was a co-sponsor, says this:
TO ALLOW A TAX CREDIT FOR A PERSON WHO PAID TUITION FOR A QUALIFYING STUDENT TO ATTEND AN INDEPENDENT OR PUBLIC SCHOOL UPON CERTAIN CONDITIONS DURING THE FIRST THREE FISCAL YEARS AFTER THE ENACTMENT OF THIS ACT, TO ALLOW A TAX CREDIT FOR A PERSON WHO PAID TUITION FOR ANY STUDENT WHO IS ENROLLED IN GRADES TWO THROUGH FOUR IN AN INDEPENDENT OR PUBLIC SCHOOL FOR THE FOURTH YEAR AFTER THE ENACTMENT OF THIS ACT, AND TO ALLOW A TAX CREDIT FOR A PERSON WHO PAID TUITION FOR ANY STUDENT ENROLLED IN ANY GRADE IN AN INDEPENDENT OR PUBLIC SCHOOL FOR EVERY FISCAL YEAR THEREAFTER;
As I understand it, this means that people who already have their children in private school would get a tax break. That would mean all the wealthy people in the state with their kids in private school would get a break. So, if very wealthy people with their kids at Porter Gaud create such a high tuition and high admission standards that very few poor children will have the chance to go there….then, they can essentially keep the poor kids out while they (the rich) get a tax break.
Moreover, how any fiscal conservative can be for such a plan is beyond me. If there are 40,000 or so kids in private school and the state gives something like a $2,500 per kid tax break, that’s a TON of money out of the public school system or out of the state budget or whatever. A HUGE public expense.