Tom Ervin: “Something Must Change”
SOUTH CAROLINA’S FUTURE GENERATIONS NEED “LEADERSHIP, NOT PROMISES” By Tom Ervin ÂYou must Subscribe or log in to read the rest of this content.
SOUTH CAROLINA’S FUTURE GENERATIONS NEED “LEADERSHIP, NOT PROMISES” By Tom Ervin ÂYou must Subscribe or log in to read the rest of this content.
13 comments
Pre-K for Everyone: It’d be nice, but good luck getting it paid for.
School Choice: Please elaborate more. People already have the choice between public school, paying for private school, or home schooling. How are you going to facilitate this extra “choice”? Will parents really have the power of “choice” here? Please don’t give us any voucher clown nonsense.
No Common Core: Great! Since SC is pretty much bottom of the barrel education-wise, please explain how you would go about improving curriculum in public schools. Otherwise, this “I’m against Common Core” thing doesn’t just sound like, but actually is, bullshit political posturing.
Locking Tuition: Not a bad proposal at first glance, however universities will up tuition in a manner to counter that. What you need is better funding for public universities, coupled with someone who can and will slap the university’s hand every time they reach into the cookie jar until their spending has come down considerably. Locked tuition doesn’t mean shit if it’s still exorbitantly high tuition.
I think your ideas need more work, as they don’t properly address the issues here.
For about half the students in SC public schools, more than 300,000, school choice is a moot point. They ride the school bus. Can’t have school choice it they do not have transportation the school of choice.
The Legislature would have to appropriate money to pay for a few thousand more school buses, hire a few thousand more bus drivers and additional support staff, and burn a few more million gallons of bus fuel every school year so that every bus rider has their choice of school. If not, then who does school choice really benefit?
Not the case that a bus ride precludes choice – many private schools have buses and then there’s that age old thing known as a car pool.
“…Ranked 10th in the United States for incarceration, our state sends more people to prison than the other 40 states… Wow, really more “than the other 40 states”? Do you mean that we send more criminals to prison than 40 of the 50 states? I’m trying to figure out:
a. your grammar challenged assertion
and
b. why that is necessarily a bad thing seeing as how we also lead the nation in “male on female domestic violence murders”. The national average cost per prisoner is close to $30,000 so $16,500 or so seems like a bargain to me.
Do we have issues with education – absolutely but the correlation between education spending and incarcerations are far more complex than you allude to. Oklahoma spends far less per pupil, incarcerates far more citizens per 100,000 and has a drop out rate of 3% and ranks far higher than SC in educational achievement. Texas on the other hand has an identical incarceration rate to Oklahoma, spends about the same ($7,300 per pupil) yet has a 12% drop out rate (4 times Oklahoma’s) but no corresponding jump in incarcerations. Maine (the lowest incarceration rate) only spends $200 more than we do per pupil in the “loosey gooseiest” education system in the country, routinely mixing public monies with private schools in joint ventures.
South Carolina spends more on education than the national average per pupil (Nat average is $9,389), has fewer citizens incarcerated per 100,000 than the national average (716) and we’re next to worst on HS graduation (61%) and frankly one doesn’t drive the other except in your overly simplistic world view.
Yep. Gotta love Republicans cheer leading for more money into a failing system by calling such systems “fundamental rights”…it’s not a big ideological bridge between them and the Dems that they’d have you believe.
“What can we do to repress the violence? ”
Expression, not repression, is the answer. Do with prisoners what that do in the Philippines: Let them dance.
Philippine Prison – Dancing Inmates 2010 Tribute to Michael Jackson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6U52eFyJFQs
Psy’s Gangnam Style performed by Filipino prisoners
http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2012/oct/04/psy-gangnam-style-filipino-prisoners-video
First off, we need a leader with intelligence, morals and integrity…something we haven’t had in many years. Nikki had 4 years to do something right and she disappointed. Vote and vote smart…Ervin, Sheheen, or French.
You go Tom. You go. I’m siding with TOm and T-Rav – the two T’s, the Rumbe and the Thunder. The one two punch. The new GOP for South Carolina. Hey, where’s Sandi on this one?
Vote for Tom Ervin and you are voting for pre_k children being brainwashed with the radical homosexual/lesbian agenda.
Ervin supports state sanctioned gay marriage.
Teach those who are incarcerated a trade. Let the prison system give back to the taxpayers who support the system.
First Steps directors Susan DeVenny and Dan Wuori are a big part of the problem: one of many recent audits found after more than ten years with DeVenny as director they have not helped kids get ready for school, reported “questionable statistics” to the public, board members don’t show for meetings, DeVenny owes thousands to SC for unreported leaves and they screwed up the funding allocations for all 46 local offices
http://lac.sc.gov/LAC_Reports/2013/Documents/First_Steps_Summary.pdf
First steps has a private prek program but it is FUBAR . Can’t enroll students or get reimbursement in time to keep the program in business.
A wise friend once said there are two things every SC citizen is gifted with from birth: coaching the USC football team & running the SC Dept. of Corrections. Now it seems that includes how to fix the sorry state of our public schools. There’s enough blame to be shared by the school system, community, churches, Obama’s Common Core, teaching-the-test, gang presence, peer pressure, no tax credit for tuition etc., etc.; but it seems no politician is willing to go where the underlying truth lies: irresponsible, uninterested, absentee parents who are not held accountable for their minor children’s behavior. And another thing, there are as many people in SC’s prisons as a result of overindulgent parents as from neglect or abuse. A white high school kid with his new BMW on Clemson Rd. is as much at risk as a black one wearing a red rag on Broad River Rd..