The chains may be gone, but generations of blacks in South Carolina remain enslaved … trapped by a government-run education system that’s condemning them (and growing numbers of their lower and middle class white peers) to second class status.
According to the latest “Diplomas Count” graduation rate report, only 54.3 percent of black students graduate from high school in the Palmetto State – which is below the state total (61.5 percent), the national total (74.7 percent) and the national black total (61.7 percent).
Meanwhile black South Carolina students scored a combined 1,221 on the latest SAT exam – again, well below the state total (1,436), the national total (1,498) and the national black total (1,278).
So … you’d think that black leaders in South Carolina would be open to the sort of parental choice programs implemented over a decade ago in Florida, where low-income, mostly minority children are now outperforming the average score of all South Carolina students.
“In 1998, Black students in South Carolina significantly outscored those in Florida in reading,” the report found. ”In 2011, Florida’s Black fourth graders were reading a full grade level ahead of their South Carolina peers.”
Those are real, positive results which are having a material impact in the lives of Florida children … yet unfortunately children in South Carolina fall further behind.
Why?
Because South Carolina’s “Republican-controlled” legislative and executive branches have refused to engage market-based academic reforms. In fact they have aggressively opposed such reforms – along with the monolithic opposition of the Palmetto State’s “black leaders.”
Just this week one of those “leaders” – the “Reverend” Joe Darby of the Charleston, S.C. NAACP – compared expanded parental choices to the “Jim Crow” segregation laws of the late nineteenth/ early twentieth centuries.
Really dude? Really?
If anything that’s been the result of the public system – particularly in the rural regions of the state.
Darby’s comments prompted this website’s founding editor Will Folks (a.k.a. Sic Willie) to challenge him to a debate – “anytime, any place” – and label him a “slave trader.”
We’ll see if Darby accepts … but we doubt it.
South Carolina’s government-run schools are spending nearly $12,000 per child on the worst public education system in America (one that’s sitting on $1 billion in cash reserves, by the way). That system is failing generations of blacks (and whites) – and it is past time state government did something about it.
That “something?” Getting the hell out of the way and letting citizens keep more of their own money to invest in private, parochial and community options …
Unfortunately Republicans, Democrats and the South Carolina mainstream media outlets who cover this debate are united in their opposition to choice.
Until that changes … nothing changes.
UPDATE: Joseph Darby passed on our founding editor’s offer to debate.
52 comments
As if Fits cares about the “black” test scores in SC’s education system in the least. You and your backers fool no one.
No Sic we will never allow taxpayer dollars to fund private schools so racists can segregate their kids. No matter how much the corporate whores drool over the billions involved they will never succeed.
Get used to it LOSERS!
So you prefer using taxpayer dollars to fund FAILING schools, trapping minority students in institutions proven to keep them further behind their peers in other states?
Why not let minority parents CHOOSE where to send their own children? Because then might choose to send them to YOUR kid’s school.
Yeah, buddy. We know who the REAL segregationists are.
Everyone is free to send their child to any school they want. They have 100% school choice.
If you are talking about the state giving money to people to help them pay to go to private school, there is no significant proposal to do that for poor and lower middle income children. The proposals are designed to give money to parents of children who are already in private school.
I thought grandparents paid private school tuition. Works for me.
Parents (especially minority parents) wouldn’t simply “choose” which school their kid could go to. They would still be inhibited by whatever school they could afford with whatever voucher or tax credit they got. The most important part, however, is that the real “choice” belongs to the private schools themselves. Private schools will simply pick and choose the pick of the litter and let the dregs sink back into the public schools, which have not changed one little iota, but now have less funding.
For the millions upon millions of dollars that various groups pay to get “school choice” adopted, they could be funding scholarships for these very children they profess to want to help. They don’t want to help these kids, they want to fundamentally change the system into one that benefits them and theirs.
Hopefully one day you will see that.
Do you send your children to the best school you can or the one that fits your social model? Do you send your kid to USC where they’re graded on their work, or do you send your kid to Benedict College where they get at minimum a C in the course just for attending class? Which situation sets them up for a better education and for life outside of school?
Where are the parents in all this? When I went to school we had things like PTA, school board meetings, etc… If something negative was going on at school the community got involved.
The LOSERS are the ones who haven’t improved their lot in America in 150 years. Are you betting the breakthrough is just around the corner? 15,000 years to the contrary.
They may not be able to show you a diploma, but they can show you a state championship ring.
It’s easier to blame someone else for your kids failures.
These people are so church devoted, why isn’t there an after school study hall for the black kids to attend? It’s because school is little more than government provided daycare for most of these people. And if you’re black and smart, you’re picked on for acting white. The parents don’t give a damn about school, so why should their kids. Having babies and getting on welfare at 16 is the norm for these people.
I think you state the beliefs of the Tax Credit/Voucher crowd far more honestly and succinctly than Mr. Folks.
Not one single proposal by the voucher/tax credit crowed is designed to help the average black student in SC. They are all an attempt to give upper middle income parents, access to state money to help pay for the private schools their kids are already in. Further, to the extent these programs encourage even a few upper middle income families to abandon public education or take funds from public education, they will increase segregation and hurt minorities who are on the average poor or lower middle class, and who would get nothing from any of the proposals. Not to mention the fact there would be no private schools to take them.
These folks are correct in their assessment of the voucher/tax credit proposals. School segregation laws are an appropriate analogy. The Voucher/Tax Credit proposals will increase segregation, by funding already existing white flight academies, with state money at the expense of those dependent on public schools for education.
Further there is absolutely not one shred of evidence, voucher/tax credit programs have anything to do with student improvement in Florida public schools or anywhere. This is a total red herring.
Finally, it is not about keeping money. All of the proposals would give private school parents more state money than they are paying into the public education system. In short they will be forcing people with children in public school and people with no children in school to help them pay for private school for their children, at the expense of children in public school and in schools those public school children may not even be welcome to attention.
Finally we should put no money into South Carolina’s worst in the nation private schools, unless they are willing to put out the records to show they can do better than public schools and are willing to take all student who wish to attend.
The legislation is written up by corporate lobbying groups and rich out-of-state donors, and is supported and voted for by the legislators they bankroll. Of course it isn’t to help the minorities. The people who think large chunks of taxpayer dollars should go to private learning institutions are the same people who think that bumming a dollar from you every year on your property taxes to pay for libraries is an egregious offense and waste of tax dollars. It isn’t much difference from the rest of the shit they do, complaining about food stamps but making sure their farm subsidies aren’t touched, complaining about green energy subsidies but making sure the highly profitable oil industry doesn’t lose their multi-billion subsidies, etc.
The Tea Party loves welfare, absolutely loves it, they just want to make sure the tax breaks and subsidies go to them instead of anyone who could actually use a leg up.
And, did you see where the public utility in Arizona is PAYING Koch front groups to run ads against the net metering of solar?
You do realize that food stamp recipients receive benefits for just waking up everyday and breeding. Farm subsidies are paid to people who actually work to earn them, and pays for things such as fuel which continues to go up even if the price of crops do not. That food you buy with your EBT card comes from somewhere and doesn’t grow itself.
How many stay at home moms will want a tax credit or voucher to help pay for their children’s private school. You realize we will be giving them money for just waking up and breeding every day.
We see how well that “leg up” has worked since it was first rolled out as the “Great Society” under Ol’LBJ.
The Tea Party loves welfare, absolutely loves it, they just want to make sure the tax breaks and subsidies go to them instead of anyone who could actually use a leg up.
Dude,
Everybody loves welfare when they are on the receiving end.
Everybody.
Farmers and Social Security beneficiaries are likely to protest more violently than the stereotypical welfare moms, if they perceive their benefits to be threatened.
Only a fraction of public school students in SC benefit from going to school past 6th grade. Recognizing that would greatly improve public education for the rest, and save tax dollars. Simple. It’s a win, win deal.
We’re supposed to believe that the voucher crowd is ok with giving tax credits/subsidies to poor black parents to send their kids to private schools? Parents who likely don’t own property and don’t pay property tax(at least not directly)?
Yet these are the same people who can’t stand those same poor people might get a subsidy to buy health insurance?
We’re supposed to believe that private schools will maintain their same quality with an influx of poor voucher students? Is not one of the main reasons for private school success the very selectivity brought about by the extra cost?
Public school = free education.
Private school = high cost education
Students have the right to an education, it’s the parents decision on where they want to send them. Sometimes you get what you pay for. Private schools will not tolerate student vouchers for students who bring the academic standings of the school down.
Private schools are private businesses. Private school education will not equal high cost education for the attendees if I am forced to pay a part of their bill. I do not want to help private school parents pay for their children to go to their private schools unless I have a say in what they are taught and who can go the school.
Where did I say you should foot the bill? That’s what pubic schools are for. If you have kids in private school or don’t have kids, you shouldn’t have to pay for public schools either.
I have no problem paying my share of public school, because I believe everyone needs some level of education. I pay very little for the public school system.
I am not in favor of giving you tax money or cutting your tax bill, so that I have to pay more so you can send your kid to private school. That is your choice, and your cost. Private means private.
You obviously haven’t had children in the public school system. There are students there who are there just because they have to be, they sleep in class, disrupt classes, slow the learning of the rest of the class down because they refuse to cooperate with the teachers, etc… If the schools can’t get these students moved or taken out of the classroom then parents will continue to move their own children out and into schools where these disruptions are not tolerated.
That’s fine. Move them, but on your dime, not mine. Why should I be forced to help you pay to send your kid to private school?
Two things.
1) How many of the minority children face different living situations than white children? Whether it be poverty, single parents, living in a rough neighborhood, etc., how many minority children face academic challenges that exist outside of the classroom, how well they are taught, and what curriculum they are taught?
2) How many of the most prestigious private schools will accept the troubled, at-risk, or failing minority students? How many decent ones have room for the number of minority students that supposedly require this private education?
The “throw money at it” crowd that just advocates more and more funding without profound changes to the system itself truly believe that their solution is some magical pill that will suddenly alleviate all of our problems, but I don’t see how this bullshit is any different. These two issues alone would quite possibly derail a HUGE chunk of any beneficial outcomes for minority children under a “school choice” system.
No need going into yet another long-winded rant about how “school choice” is a piss poor idea and that the last thing the private school system needs is taxpayer dollars and corrupt state government meddling.
1) Aren’t churches a large part of their lives? Where are the churches involved in helping students? Many of these minority children don’t have trouble spending time on the basketball court or football field, maybe if they spent that time in study hall they’d do better academically.
2) If they want to preserve their academic history, they won’t accept anyone who’s going to affect that. The last thing private schools need to do is take the Section 8 housing approach to their business model. And yes, private schools are a business.
The problem with public schools can not and will not be solved by scrambling the method(s) of financing them. I have a number of concerns that I have not even seen brought up that would in no way be addressed by choice/voucher funding method(s). There is an awful lot of work to be done to straighten out public schools and NO one has yet put forward to do that work. They want quick little band aids, tout educational experiments that have absolutely no hope of scaling up to have the impact that they claim choice/vouchers will have. NO one wants to get out of their easy chair and out from in front of their TVs to improve public schools and yet when a “Joe Clarke” or “George McKenna” does surface they are battered mercilessly by many of the same people they are trying to help because they make the school too “tough”.
My momma didn’t raise a fool.
She sent me to the Wal-Mart School.
I learned math among the Grey Poupons,
Paid for gym class with half-off coupons.
And as for bees? We had a bunch.
I won by spelling Cap’n Crunch.
Art classes? They gave us pads
And had us copy Pepsi ads.
The world’s wisdom through a child’s eyes:
Directed by free enterprise.
Blacks cannot learn to stand on their own and make their own decisions. This would cause the likes of Jessie and Al to get a real job!
You started correctly, “Blacks cannot learn”
Many will see that as racist, even more will see it as being true.
It would be hard to dispute.
It never takes very long . . . all it takes is a photo of a black person on this site . . . or the mention of the NAACP on this site . . . and in short order comes the racists and bigots showing their ignorance.
You say “ignorance”, I say “conclusions through years of experience”.
It’s the typical liberal response once the race card has been played.
I find it interesting that you hate the comments on this website, yet you pretty much a regular around here. I bet you are into S&M.
I find it interesting that those denigrating minorities here would never say so publicly. How about you bigots go out on the street and start spouting the N word? Let’s see how long you stay standing.
The truth is even in SC you fucking idiots have to hide your racism. The reason is because people won’t stand for it anymore. As with anything South Carolina will be last eradicate you assholes but eradicate we will.
South Carolina has suffered for generations thanks to you backwards thinking morons. Your day is coming asshole!
FUCK YOU!!
That sounds like the typical mouth breather response. Now go buy a Red Bull with your EBT card.
Now go buy a Red Bull with your EBT card.
“Now go buy a tall boy with your EBT card.”
Your street cred is on “double secret probation” until further notice.
Racists are typically cowards. That is why the school choice people hide behind a “We are doing this for all the children” banner. Instead of the “We don’t like black people” banner, they would have used in the 1950s
Why can’t white people want the best for their kids too? It’s not that we “don’t like black people” per se. The fact is, as a percentage, Black students ALWAYS bring standards down, kindergarten through college. Elite liberals are delighted.
“It takes a village”… in other words Democrats telling people that not only do they have to take care of their own kids, they have to take care of the kids who’s parents don’t feel it’s their responsibility to take care of them.
As with anything South Carolina will be last eradicate you assholes but eradicate we will.
Is it just TBG, or has anyone else noticed that with the nice, leftist, anti-hate, anti-racism, pro social engineering, pro-“equality” crowd…it always comes down to the “ERADICATION” of those with differing viewpoints?
If you truly think that taking everyone’s tax dollars and building substandard schools where kids do as much fighting and drugs as they do learning is the best you can do, you have to live with the knowledge that you are an accomplice to child abuse.
It’s strange how hypocritical people can be. They know politicians are morally bankrupt, but they still trust them with their children. Wake the fuck up and take your child out of school. Even if it’s only for a day, it’ll be the best day of his or her year.
Children are children regardless if their parents are rich, poor, married, single, working, on welfare, whatever children are still children who go to school to learn so maybe its time schools just do that……..it doesn’t matter if one child lives in a big fancy house or a trailer as children go to school to learn not be judged by what their parents may or may not have. If classes are geared towards making it interesting instead of boring children will take an interest. If a child wants to learn he or she will regardless of how much money is involved…..,,,NAACP needs to get busy encouraging not always finding fault.
Tell me again what was wrong with separate but equal? At least in those days the white kids were doing ok. Since then, the rank and file black student hasn’t benefitted one whit. They are still at the bottom of the barrel, and always will be. Why martyr generations of white kids to further a totally unworkable progressive fantasy?
Tell me again what was wrong with separate but equal?
It wasn’t.
Nothing will ever change as long as most black people are products of dysfunctional homes.
But who would dare say such a thing?
Jan and Nit,
Y’all have made clear your opposition to vouchers, Pretend that you are “dictator for a day”. What would you do to improve SC’s school system?
Note: TBG ain’t going anywhere near any cattle cars, no matter what you say…..