On the same day South Carolina’s government-run schools received more dismal results on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) – particularly among its black students – a parental choice expert testified on the need to expand academic freedom in the Palmetto State.
Matthew Ladner – senior policy and research advisor for Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education – addressed a S.C. Senate panel chaired by longtime choice opponent Wes Hayes (RINO-York).
Specifically, Ladner refuted the fiction touted by the state’s government-run monopoly that choice programs – like Florida’s McKay scholarships for special needs children – are somehow harmful to government-run schools.
“We can say with absolute certainty the McKay scholarship program didn’t hurt the public school system,” Ladner told the panel.
South Carolina recently adopted a limited special needs scholarship – for one year. However liberal lawmakers and educrats are already looking to dismantle it – even though Ladner pointed out the Palmetto State program has “one of the most comprehensive testing and oversight regimes of any state.”
FITS wrote recently on one of the innovative special needs schools in South Carolina serving special needs students – whose families would have expanded options under a broad-based special needs program.
To read that report, click here …
5 comments
3 more uses of “government-run”. The money just keeps on rolling in!
Until “choice” legislation requires that all private schools that accept public money abide by all the rules and regulations promulgated by the SC Dept of Ed for public schools this legislation should be vetoed.
If choice advocates don’t like the rules perhaps we need to change them for all schools.
Ladner is just another Voucher Clown. Everyone knows that vouchers are a scam because all they would do is leave those who need help the most even further behind.
Anyone who claims that a voucher scam would help all students is just not telling the truth. It’s easy to tell when a Voucher Clown is not welling the truth about vouchers and about public education: their lips are moving.
So are Heathwood and Hammond preparing for a flood of Lower Richland County students?
Some fool promoting voucher schemes hardly qualifies as a “choice expert”. And I can only imagine what Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education is All About. Usually all this nonsense boils down to is that they want to pray in the schools and they want to make everyone pray along with them.