PALMETTO STATE LEAPFROGGED BY COMPETITORS …
South Carolina’s government maintained – but failed to expand – a modest special needs academic scholarship program this year, missing a golden opportunity to open its education marketplace (and apply additional market-based pressure on the state’s failing government-run system).
As a result, our state becomes less competitive at a time we need to be doing everything within our power to attract jobs and investment … you know, as opposed to bribing companies to come here with tax dollars.
Anyway, while South Carolina leaders sat around with their thumbs up their butts and not-so-bright looks on their faces, leaders in other states moved to expand their successful parental choice programs.
States like Florida – where studies have shown the average low-income student is outperforming the average student here in the Palmetto State (thanks to a decade-and-a-half of successful school choice advances in the Sunshine State).
Florida expanded its successful scholarship tax credit program this year … removing restrictions on eligibility and expanding availability to more middle income families. In Oklahoma and Arizona lawmakers also took steps to expand their successful programs. Meanwhile in Kansas, Gov. Sam Brownback signed legislation creating a scholarship tax credit for students trapped in failing government-run schools.
Across the country, state leaders moved to establish and expand choice programs that have proven successful when it comes to raising academic achievement.
Why is this not happening in the Palmetto State?
Because our “conservative” governor wants more top-down planning and government spending – precisely the same “solutions” that have produced our current “one size fits none” debacle.
For shame …
South Carolina had a chance to make up some ground on the choice issue this year … and failed to do so. It’s going to be a costly failure, too, because while we did nothing – other states moved to expand their competitive advantages over us.
Don’t get us wrong: The Palmetto State’s special needs program has been a rousing success. It’s just not enough, especially when other states are leapfrogging over our baby steps.
22 comments
If Spearman is our next Supt. of Ed. you can kiss parental choice good by.
EXACTLY.
That does it, I’ll have to vote for Spearman.
All Dumb@$$ liberals will vote for her. What’s new? That’s not news.
I have never met a liberal that is NOT a Dumbass. Never.
Well I’m neither a liberal, nor a dumbass. It’s not like the choices are between two outstanding candidates. One’s just a little less bat chit crazier than the other.
After all, it’s our sterling legislature that makes the rules around here. Nearly everyone else is just a figurehead. Still waiting on legislation forcing schools to teach the earth is flat or banning the teaching of science outright. Paging Senator Fair….
If that is your start, middle, and end point it’s no wonder why not.
You must get along great with liberals then, since you are a dumbass yourself. :)
thats idiotic. the superintendent of education has zero authority to act in this area. maybe she’ll take all our guns away too? and legalize bigamy?
Big Story: Lexington County Sheriff’s Department RAIDED!!!..
Read: http://scdigest.blogspot.com/2014/06/lexinton-county-sheriffs-office-raided.html
Just more voucher scam rhetoric from Howie the Voucher Clown via his chief voucher pimp, sic(k) willie. Vouchers are a scam regardless of what you call them.
The voucher scam would do nothing to help those who need help the most except leave them even further behind.
And using special needs kids to further the voucher scam is reprehensible!.
Read about this latest reprehensible twist on the voucher scam here:
http://www.thestate.com/2014/05/12/3442237/exclusive-sc-parents-pressured.html
From The State:
“COLUMBIA, SC — The leader of a West Columbia private school says her students’ parents are being pressured to donate to the new private-school choice program, created to help parents of children with disabilities afford private school.
The pressure, said Susan Thomas, head of Glenforest School, is coming from Jeff Davis with Palmetto Kids First – one of five nonprofits set up this year to grant private-school scholarships made possible through a new state tax credit.
Emails to parents leave the impression – without directly offering a quid pro quo – that if the parents donate to Palmetto Kids, it will grant them a scholarship, Thomas said.
That quid-pro-quo arrangement is illegal, under the new S.C. private-school choice law, which says donors to scholarship-granting organizations cannot designate the students or schools that will benefit from their contributions. That controversial one-year law is up for renewal this spring before the Legislature.”
Read the full story about this scam here:
http://www.thestate.com/2014/05/10/3439435/exclusive-sc-parents-pressured.html
The point of school vouchers never was, is not, and never will be to improve education for others, it is completely and entirely designed for the benefit of private schools and people already sending their kids to private schools.
I would not trust too much anything Glenforest says. I would go into it more, but I’d just as soon let others tell you what type of institution that is. I see that whining as just jealousy because Glenforest got beaten out on merit.
So not all private schools are bastions of integrity, steadily pumping out potential Rhodes Scholars?
Do you any F*#king Idea what Glenforest is, and who controls it???…or are you an Ignorant F*#k???
Lighten up Francis…I could care less if it was run by the Scientologists.
Let’s review. “Free market” schools get tax money which the owners then funnel to “friends” to help keep the influx of tax money flowing in order to help the school owners make more money. Just like oil, gas, big Pharma and big Farm….you name the industry and the lobby. The only thing “free” about all this is the freedom/license/sanction to keep business as usual
Florida’s doing better than SC? Woah! Everyone knows we are a bastion of quality public education! Great comparison!
Think of the poor disabled kids! Unless you are the Feds requesting data on disabled kids in private schools in Louisiana or Wisconsin, amirite?
So you are now for more public funded charter schools?
great communities have great schools. lousy communities have lousy schools. south carolina doesn’t have a school problem. it has a surfeit of really shitty communities. stop paying people to live in towns with no future. kingstree, estill, union, barnwell. marlboro, jasper, etc etc etc. would drain like swamps. and the schools would improve. those who left would end up some place that promises more than a monthly welfare check and would end up doing better for themselves and their children. i totally dig feeding the hungry, but paying people to live in bad communities make those places worse.
The voucher plan is nothing more than Obamacare in reverse for education. Force the public to pay for private schools for the rich. No way to opt out.
Oh, and before you crow about Cardinal Newman again, remember it’s a Catholic School supported by the diocese, which keeps tuition lower. It isn’t “private” in the sense of the “private sector”.
Spearman was just elected. Any possibilities of school choice are now over in SC.