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| Education potpourri |
| Monday, May 09, 2005 |
| Say what?
Congratulations to Republican Rep. Bob Walker of Spartanburg County. He is this week's winner of the Palmetto Memorial Brain Award for notable deceased brain activity. After Wednesday's defeat of the Put Parents in Charge bill, which was tabled without discussion by a vote of 60-53, Walker said he knew all along that the bill would die in the House.
Then he said, "It was a tax credit, it didn't have anything to do with education."
What? Nothing to do with education? Giving parents the power and resources necessary to choose an alternative to their state-assigned government school has nothing to do with education? That's a brain-dead statement if I ever heard one. Someone, most likely an operative from the NEA, must have slipped the honorable gentleman from Landrum a Mickey. No one with functioning cerebral matter actually thinks that school choice, whether it be through tax credits, vouchers or other methods, has nothing to do with education.
Walker continued, "Education issues come through the Education Committee and funding issues come through Ways and Means. This bill never came to the Education Committee." That, I must marvel, is a rather simpleton test to determine whether something is applicable to education.
I don't know if there is any truth to the rumor that Walker and like-minded Republican Ronnie Townsend of Anderson are planning to start a new group, Republicans Against Choice in Education (RACE), but I hope they do. It will be easier for Republican voters who believe in the positive benefits of free-market influences to recognize them on Election Day.
Another year, another tax increase
Greenville School Superintendent Dr. Phinnize J. "Penny" Fisher has unveiled her proposed new budget, seven percent larger than last year. Most of the new money would go to reducing class size and giving teachers a larger raise, the NEA's two top priorities. She doesn't know if it will take a tax increase, but the school board has increased taxes every year since 1998.
I suppose it would be silly, or at least futile, of me to ask Dr. Fisher what measurable improvement in education we are going to see from the smaller classes and higher pay that the higher taxes will provide.
Not that again
I don't know whether to condemn Ray Williams of Greenville or pity him. It depends on whether he is part of the NEA misinformation campaign, or simply one of its victims. Williams authored a letter to the editor in the Greenville News, stating that claims about South Carolina's poor SAT ranking is misleading because South Carolina's performance is compared to states in which very few students take the SAT. He concluded, "South Carolina could probably leap into the top 15 states nationwide if we tested fewer than 10 percent of our high school seniors and, apparently, no one would be the wiser."
This bit of misinformation has reached urban legend status in South Carolina. Here are the facts. There are 23 SAT states in the U.S. and 27 ACT states. That is, there are 23 states that primarily use the SAT for college entrance and 27 that primarily use the ACT. Naturally, the 27 ACT states have low SAT participation rates, and it is, of course, unfair to compare their SAT scores to ours.
South Carolina is one of the 23 SAT states. Among those states, South Carolina has a below average SAT participation rate, but we still ranked dead last until Georgia came along and rescued us from the cellar.
No matter how Inez and her buddies try to shine up South Carolina's public education performance data, it doesn't compare well to the rest of the nation. If any state is in need of a major shakeup in education policy - not just a deeper NEA money pit - it is South Carolina.
Ralph Bristol |
posted by Jack Mercer @ 5/09/2005 05:17:00 AM   |
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| 1 Comments: |
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Brain dead. That is sad. Hate to see people like that:) Did he go to school? Hey thanks for stopping and commenting on my forest post. See you around,
-CT
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Brain dead. That is sad. Hate to see people like that:) Did he go to school? Hey thanks for stopping and commenting on my forest post. See you around,
-CT