Educators: Zais 'cutting off our nose to spite our face'

Having failed to convince Superintendent Mick Zais and Governor Nikki Haley of the most appropriate course of action, leaders of the state's school boards association and school administrators association are taking their argument to South Carolina's opinion leaders and citizens.

Paul Krohne and Molly Spearman, executive directors of the School Boards Association (SCSBA) and Association of School Administrators (SCASA), respectively, have published a joint opinion-editorial in at least two newspapers today, The State and the Myrtle Beach Sun-News, to argue that Zais should try, at least, to compete for up to $50 million in federal "Race to the Top" funds.

"Race to the Top" is an Obama administration initiative, administered by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, to target federal resources to states that agree to various education reforms. The recipe of reforms favored by the Obama administration would suggest that South Carolina is an ideal candidate for the funding, if only the superintendent would apply for it. But Zais isn't interested.

The effective result is that federal taxes being paid by South Carolinians will be used by states that do apply for, and win, the funding.

Krohne and Spearman write,

South Carolinians, in the tradition of the late Senator Strom Thurmond, have always recognized the folly in sending our own tax dollars to the federal government only to have them forwarded to other states. The baffling tendencies of today's state leaders to stand rigidly on their ideology, even when federal money can be used for the good of our people, is cutting off our nose to spite our face.

We understood the illogic of this approach two years ago when Gov. Mark Sanford protested the federal stimulus by attempting to leave South Carolina's share on the table, even though our taxpayers would pay the cost.

Unfortunately, our current leaders are following exactly in his footsteps.

I think Ralph Waldo Emerson captured this pattern best when he wrote, in "Self-Reliance," "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines."

The announcement by State Superintendent of Education Mick Zais that he will not pursue up to $50 million in funding under the federal Race to the Top program, quickly noted and celebrated in the eight other states invited to apply, will hamper educational progress here and fuel it elsewhere, for no good reason.

His excuse - that federal money means federal dictates - has little relevance in this case. Unlike many federal initiatives, Race to the Top was designed specifically to encourage state-level ingenuity, and is remarkably hands-off and state-driven.

Our state's application in fact reflects our state's own longstanding needs, priorities identified and wished for long before federal funding made them a possibility. Several of the innovations we have proposed are exactly the kinds of reforms Zais supports, including improving the quality and transparency of education data, encouraging our best teachers to work in schools that need them most, and creating a system of teacher pay that is based less on credentials and more on performance. Many of our priorities are infrastructure needs suitable for one-time funding, not new bureaucracies that impose ongoing costs.

Message: Some people just can't take 'yes' for an answer. To collaborate with educators -- which certainly would be interpreted by Zais's base as buckling to the status quo -- would only encourage educators to expect future collaboration. This defies the command-and-control manner to which Zais is accustomed. (Word from Newberry seems to support this view...)

And it gets worse. If there is little sense in opposing the Race to the Top initiative, there is none at all in rejecting direct assistance to schools to retain teaching positions. South Carolina has the distinct title of being the only state in the nation to leave on the table millions of dollars designed specifically to preserve teaching jobs in the leanest economy any of us can recall, preventing the devastating layoffs and furlough days nearly every district has experienced in recent years.

The $144 million allocated under federal "Edujobs" legislation is enough to save more than 2,500 teaching jobs, or two thirds of the positions lost over the course of the recession. Thanks to last year's massive cuts in higher education spending, South Carolina can't access that badly needed funding without a congressional waiver, sought by our delegation last year at Superintendent Jim Rex's request. Zais has abandoned any such effort, which his staff has described as "a dead issue."

Every point made by Krohne and Spearman here is valid because they are rooted in logic and reason. But we do not function in a system governed by logic and reason; Haley, Zais and their sycophants operate in a parallel, Bizarro universe where the goal is to reduce the number of teachers teaching in public school classrooms, not to increase them; to raise the teacher-student ratio, not to lower it; to weaken the public education system they swore to support, not to strengthen it.

Unfortunately, South Carolina is not our world -- it's theirs. We only live in it.

Of course, until they change the Constitution to exclude us, we get to vote in it.

It's clear that Krohne and Spearman understand this. Their message isn't to the saved but to the uncommitted:

And yet, like Gov. Sanford before him, Zais apparently leaves significant wiggle room in his ideology to support the projects he favors. He has been quick to applaud the millions of dollars in federal funding awarded to South Carolina to establish charter schools, with no talk of bureaucracy, Washington footprints, or "pieces of silver" exchanged for federal "strings."

At best, there is an alarming confusion in the priorities of an administration that won't take federal assistance to sustain the teachers and schools we already have, but is happy to accept it to support a political agenda.

It's an undisputed fact that few states have educational needs as pressing as South Carolina's. Poverty rates, high at the beginning of the recession, are rising every year, creating new challenges for schools even as state funding has declined. We are losing teachers, increasing class sizes, and cutting academic programs, at a time when we urgently need to improve achievement.

Our state and national leaders need to recognize that South Carolina's resources are far too limited and our needs far too great to help fund schools in other places at the expense of our own. There is no acceptable reason not to give our schools and students our strongest support.

Indeed. Educators, unite.

Educators praise voucher defeat (2011 edition)

Everybody's heard Einstein's famous quote about insanity: it's defined as doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. To my knowledge, Einstein never came to South Carolina, where our legislature could have schooled the fella.

Hasn't it been the case for the past decade?

We have, in Columbia, a Legislative Homeowners Association. What most of the neighbors have in common is shared wariness and a shared commitment to maintaining some minimum standards -- by minimum, I certainly mean "minimally adequate."

And in our neighborhood, we have a small gang of elected malcontents who aren't satisfied that South Carolina is already trapped in the Wayback Machine with the controls broken off at "Eisenhower."

By the front entrance to our neighborhood is a monstrosity on cinderblocks: our rusty, antiquated system of funding our public schools. Everyone sees it, with its dented 1977 license plate, its yellowed diamond-in-the-back, surrounded by patchy poke salad. It's a blot that gives the whole neighborhood a bad name. People from other neighborhoods -- yonder in Georgia and North Carolina and beyond -- see it and feel smug, superior, better than us.

Our Legislative HOA could fix matters altogether, of course. Raise HOA dues a little, based on property value, and have the decayed monster removed and replaced with something nice and functional. But nobody wants their dues increased, especially not based on property value.

Yes, to some degree, the HOA majority is ashamed of the decayed and neglected school-funding structure in their front yard, but they take so much pride in their live-and-let-live by-laws and covenants that they're loathe to take action, to change the rules, to rewrite the budget, to replace that rusted monstrosity with a school-funding system that works for all kids and their parents.

So the HOA does what it normally does: It pays to have more cinderblocks propped up beneath the chassis, so it doesn't completely fall down.

This, of course, angers the little gang of malcontents, who introduce bills year after year to eliminate the cinderblocks and pay parents to send their children to private schools.

And how does the HOA leaders handle the gang and its bills? They wait until the last minute, give the malcontents time to air out their year's-worth of wingnut angst, then drop the boom on the plan -- usually without a lot of fanfare.

And what happened last week at the State House? Seanna Adcox of The State reports it:

The latest plan to use tax credits to help parents send their children to private school died by slim margins Wednesday in the South Carolina House.

With no debate, representatives voted 60-59 to reject the measure. In a subsequent vote of 61-59, the House refused to reconsider - officially killing the bill. It was a stunningly swift vote on the contentious issue that keeps popping up in the Legislature.

The same bill was rejected a month ago by the Senate Education Committee, also with very little discussion. Senate Education Chairman John Courson said then that lawmakers knew where they stood philosophically on the issue.

And what did the malcontents say to this -- yet one more -- defeat at the hands of the bipartisan majority?

Despite the rejection in both chambers, the group pushing the effort pledges to return for another round.

"We're excited it got that close. We've always seen this as a long-term pursuit," said Neil Mellen, spokesman for South Carolinians for Responsible Government.

See what I mean about schooling Einstein on insanity?

Educators roundly praised the move. Jackie Hicks, president of the state's largest association of education professionals, The SCEA, credited educators themselves with pressing their lawmakers with facts and figures:

These victories in both houses of the Legislature, are the culmination of months of work by the members, leadership, and staff calling the disastrous consequences of this legislation to the attention of lawmakers, policy makers, the media and voters. This is a victorious end to an historic campaign. We spared no effort.

The SCEA campaign began by developing and leading a statewide coalition of civic, educational, and religious groups that were committed to quality public education. The SCEA then commissioned an independent poll of SC residents and learned that a whopping 64% of residents opposed sending millions of dollars to private schools at taxpayer expense.

Armed with this support, The SCEA president, vice-president and other members testified before both houses of the legislature. The SCEA submitted letters to the editor and op-ed articles to the state’s newspapers, noting that the bill would be too expensive and that South Carolina schools need reforms that are proven to work and will prepare our students for the jobs of the future.

Likewise, leaders of the state's association of school boards pointed to the influence of citizens who pressured lawmakers to face facts.

"The bipartisan vote sends a very clear and resounding message that the citizens of South Carolina are not interested in abandoning our public school students," Paul Krohne, executive director of the state School Boards Association, said in a statement. "If nothing else, this issue has galvanized those of us in South Carolina - and there are thousands - who reject the abandonment philosophy."

"The abandonment philosophy." We've come a long way, haven't we, from the same Eisenhower era that malcontents among us recall so fondly, when neighbor cared for neighbor? Today, it's every man for himself, and the most successful among are the ones who collect the most toys -- and who abandon the rest.

The State rightly pointed out the influence of "out-of-state money" fueling this issue. If NCLB has proven anything to the business community, it's that there's billions of dollars to be made in education, if education can be yanked out of the public domain and planted squarely in private enterprise. Privatizing school buses? That's child's play, a piker's game. Wait until public education is shut down and parents are forced into the private market for their children's education -- and the profits begin to roll like mighty waters. Pay attention: There's a reason that Australian billionaire and Fox News Channel owner Rupert Murdoch just purchased 90 percent of an education software company -- and vowed to use his News Corporation to make public education a high-priority issue in the 2012 presidential election.

It's hard not to remain a little skeptical about the timing of this entire ordeal.

At the end of 2010, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp paid almost $400m in cash to purchase 90% of Wireless Generation, a company that bills itself as "the leading provider of innovative education software, data systems, and assessment tools for reading, writing and math,"

On Tuesday, News Corp announced "The Future of American Education: A Presidential Primary Forum."

And lest we forget, voucher bills have always been about money -- not education.

The basics of the latest plan were the same as previous ones: The bill would give tax breaks to parents who can afford to pay tuition up front, while parents could apply for scholarships. The people and businesses that donate money for those scholarships could take the tax break.

The key differences were that the amount of tax credit or scholarship would vary by district, and that parents with children already in private school would get no break for several years, and then a reduced amount. The tax credit or scholarship would be tied to half of whatever the state spends on a public school student there. Next school year, the statewide average would be $2,417.

Tuition at the state's elite private schools can top $18,000 per student. Opponents have said the proposal is geared to well-off parents, since tuition would remain out of reach for poor students, even with a scholarship. But advocates said the average cost of tuition across more than 300 private schools statewide is $4,400.

And so long as the Legislative Homeowners Association honors its laissez-faire by-laws and covenants more than its commitment to funding a good education for every child, the malcontents will keep coming back. After seven years of trying, they've gotten a taste for it now.

“We’re gaining ground every year,” said state Rep. Bill Herbkersman, R-Beaufort, a tax credit supporter. “This was the closest vote yet.”

Krohne: Public funds for private schools an "irresponsible proposal"

Taking advantage of Governor Nikki Haley's new "waste and fraud tipline," I tried to leave a tip for Inspector General George Schroeder about the plan to divert potentially millions -- ultimately hundreds of millions -- of dollars from the general treasury to benefit private and religious schools without any oversight, regulation or accountability, but Dr. Paul Krohne of the South Carolina School Boards Association had already beat me to it.

"South Carolina’s public schools, charged with educating more than 700,000 of this state’s future employees and citizens, have never confronted challenges greater than the ones they face today," Krohne writes in the Anderson Independent Mail. "Budgets are being cut for the fourth straight year, reducing resources by nearly $1 billion. At the same time, student poverty, which makes the job of education significantly more difficult, has grown over the course of the recession, rising from 64 percent in 2006 to 76 percent today. Six out of every ten South Carolina schools now serve a student population in which 70 percent or more live in poverty."

Agreed. Add to this the asinine proposal to pay teachers according to student test scores on standardized tests, and you begin to get the feeling that there's a real, organized plan to dismantle public education entirely. But pay-for-test-scores is, on the surface, a separate issue. Krohne goes on:

Educators are being asked to do significantly more with dramatically less, but we are not alone. Budgets for all vital public functions — Medicaid, unemployment, mental health services, prisons and a host of others — have been stretched to breaking by the perfect storm of rapidly decreasing resources and rapidly increasing needs.

This year’s legislative proposal to supplement private education with public funds, dubbed the South Carolina Educational Opportunity Act, has been modified and renamed many times over the years, but none of the flaws that have made it unsupportable in the past have been resolved.

Its promoters maintain the pretense that the goal is to help poor students in what they refer to as “failing” public schools. That claim is as transparently misleading as ever. Private schools are still not required to accept the students they don’t want. There are still few to no private schools in the poorest rural areas of our state. There is still no transportation, the equivalent of no choice for the children of parents who lack the luxury of providing it themselves.

This is not, nor has it ever been, an education bill. It is a tax-credit bill to benefit families already wealthy enough to pay thousands of dollars in state taxes (less than 20 percent of families in South Carolina) and comfortable enough to pay tuition up front and wait until tax time for reimbursement.

Public accountability is still a problem. Private schools, not required to follow the same financial transparency and academic accountability measures mandated for public schools, would leave taxpayers with no information about how public money is being spent and no basis to compare their performance with public schools.

There is no better evidence today than seven years ago, when proposals were first offered, that vouchers are anything other than an expensive experiment. According to test scores released March 29 by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, students who received vouchers to attend private or religious schools in Milwaukee performed worse on statewide reading and math tests than their counterparts in public schools. Other recent education studies of voucher programs in Washington, D.C., and Cleveland found no significant difference in the academic performance of students in voucher schools compared with public schools.

All of those flaws and more make this year’s version of private school choice legislation exactly what its predecessors have been: an attempt to subsidize private education for a privileged few at the expense of the majority who depend on public schools.

No fiscal impact statement has been developed for this year’s bill, but estimates of the cost of tax credit bills in the past have ranged from $84 million to $560 million.

Claims that tax credit legislation would save the state money have never passed the truth test. But any remaining doubt about the fiscal impact of this bill should have been dispelled by the recent testimony from the president of BB&T of South Carolina, who pledged up to $2 million in contributions for private-school scholarships during public hearings before House and Senate subcommittees. BB&T’s tax obligations, and the taxes of any individual or organization contributing to the scholarship funds, would be reduced on a dollar-for-dollar basis, draining millions from the state general fund.

Nothing now prevents any individual or organization from contributing money for any child to attend a private school. But at a time when South Carolina cannot begin to meet its existing obligations, funding private education at the expense of all state functions is an irresponsible proposal.

We cannot afford the huge expense of bailing out private schools or exempting parents who choose to use them from helping to fund the schools that serve us all.

We can’t afford more years of debate over a plan with no promise to help the vast majority of our children and no potential to contribute to a more prosperous future for our state.