Band-Aid Solutions

One of the concepts touted as a cure for South Carolina's lousy educational system is "universal parental choice", meaning parents can pick which school to send their kids and - if there is a charge for tuition - get tax breaks to pay for it.

The thought process in this is with fewer students and less funding, public schools will have to reinvent themselves in order to attract the best and the brightest. In a nutshell, they will be forced to "compete" with each other and with private schools for dollars.

There are a few problems with this thought process, which unfortunately doesn't come close to getting at the root causes of why South Carolina schools are collectively abysmal:

• Public schools must accept any student within their "zone". Private schools do not.
• Public schools must make accommodations for students with learning disabilities. Private schools do not unless they take public funds.
• Private schools can set their tuition rates at whatever levels they deem appropriate, whether affordable for the average family or not. Public schools are free for all.

My fiancee is a teacher as are many of our friends. They teach in good schools, great schools, and awful schools. They teach in schools that are diverse and schools that are predominantly white or black. They teach foreign languages, social studies, English, mathematics, and music. They teach 8th-graders who read at a college level and high school juniors who read at a 6th grade level. They teach 19-year-olds who went to school because it was good for their drug business, 13-year-old gang-bangers, 14-year-old mothers, 16-year-old fathers, and 17-year-olds whose parents bought them BMW’s for getting their driver’s licenses. Ask them what makes for a successful student, and their answers will invariably be the same:

• The kids who do best in school are the ones whose parents are directly involved in their children’s education, regardless of the school’s reputation or overall performance. They make frequent contact with the teachers and stay current on the assignments their children are working on.
• The kids who thirst for knowledge are the ones whose parents are open-minded about the world and its multiplicity of religions, ethnicities, and cultures and convey that perspective to their children.
• The schools whose kids do best are the ones where the administration gives its teachers the flexibility to adapt their lessons to the students’ needs, supports the teachers when they report disciplinary problems to the parents, and take active steps to get poor-performing teachers out of the schools entirely.

Unfortunately what it takes to fix the schools is a lot more complicated and difficult than simply throwing money at parents who can already afford private school tuition. It requires effort on the part of parents, teachers, administrators, and politicians that collectively does not exist today. Even worse, what is required is so unpalatable to one or more of these constituencies that we are unlikely to ever see them all come to fruition.

• Schools need to be adequately funded so teachers do not have to spend out of their own pockets for basic supplies for students to use.
• Schools need to be adequately funded so there are enough textbooks for every student, and so they can be replaced when the content is out of date.
• School districts need to be consolidated - no more than one district per county - to eliminate duplication of services.
• School districts need to ensure the textbooks they purchase are in alignment with subject matter standards. It would shock you to see how often this doesn't happen.
• School principals need the flexibility to select their teachers and administrators, and discipline or terminate those who fail to get results.
• School districts need to pay teachers like the professionals they are.
• Politicians need to ensure public funds for schools are used solely for the classroom, for supplementary activities directly related to the classroom, and administration. Athletic programs should be funded privately.

I will guarantee those who read this will find some, not all, of these concepts appealing, and therein lies the problem. Partial solutions will not work, and no one will stick their neck out for the complete solution. So our children who want to learn will try, and they will not achieve all they can because we, the adults, are more interested in our wallets and our job security than their future.

Does that bother you yet?