Because Spartanburg needs a Texas-based charter school

When I first scanned this note, I thought High Point University, way up in North Carolina, was trying to open a charter school in Spartanburg. Why, I thought, would someone in North Carolina want to entangle themselves in running a charter school down here?

I read it more closely and discovered that the people initiating this charter school in Spartanburg aren't from North Carolina, they're from Texas.

So I'll revise my question: Why does someone in Texas want to entangle themselves in running a charter school here?

In the absence of any sensible answer, I must conclude that it's the same as it always is when ideological individuals and organizations seek to dismantle and privatize public education: It has to be about the money.

An application for a new charter school in Spartanburg County was filed Tuesday with the South Carolina Department of Education.

Organizers behind High Point Academy aim to open doors to the new public school on the west side of the county by the fall of 2013. The school first must earn approval from both the state Charter School Advisory Committee (CSAC) and South Carolina Public Charter School District (SCPCSD).

High Point Co-Executive Director Lori Manning describes the proposed school as a nonreligious, nonprofit community educational charity. She said the school, backed by Faith in Action Fort Worth (FIAFW), will have a heavy emphasis on the arts, technology and hands-on, kinesthetic learning.

Okeydoke. This begs -- begs, pleads, demands -- a little scrutiny. Let's go slow with this: The proposal is "backed by Faith in Action Fort Worth," but it proposes to be a "nonreligious... community educational charity."

One Google search -- only one, folks, because this isn't difficult -- netted a fine 72-page document produced by the state of Texas in 1996, signed by then-Governor George W. Bush, and festooned liberally with quotes from the good governor, titled "Faith in Action: A New Vision for Church-State Cooperation in Texas."

Oh, you're going to love this part of it, found on page 12:

The Unique Status of Religious Providers: Religious-based caregivers face unique concerns. While Texas benefits from numerous faith-based providers who provide top-notch care, countless other would-be caregivers give in to “preemptive capitulation.” Why? Because they often perceive public agencies as less interested in serving children than in punishing those who don’t succumb to state control. Requirements have crept from health, fire, sanitation, and safety into sensitive areas like personnel, program, funding, etc. Many fear being turned into a quasi-government agency via excessive state regulation, and losing their religious distinctiveness in the bargain.

This view may seem exaggerated to some, but it nonetheless acts to discourage many religious agencies who fear government’s “fatal embrace” and believe they will have to sandpaper down their religious vitality for the pleasure of rendering service.

What's the alternative to sandpapering down one's religious vitality, succumbing to state control, being turned into a quasi-government agency via state regulation and losing your religious distinctiveness?

Opening a charter school, of course. Charters have all the benefits of public school funding, but none of the regulation that comes with being a traditional public school. All you have to do is get approved by the state charter school district -- you don't even have to face scrutiny from the local school board whose funding you'll be taking!

Helpfully, Faith in Action Fort Worth opened a Facebook page in February, where visitors can read such posts for organizers as "We sponsor charter schools and offer women's educational programming. Check out our page as we get things rolling...," "We never know when we may be entertaining angels unaware... God is present everywhere!" and "Our office seems to be a hub of faith-related conversation with many different folks from every walk of life. Everyone has a story... And every story has a lesson to be learned...."

I have nothing against parochial schools. Parochial schools are the best choice for some families, and it's good that church denominations offer that option to devout parents.

What feels a little squirrely about the application for High Point Academy is that it's sponsored by an entity that's clearly church-derived, but to satisfy the South Carolina Charter School District's paper-thin separation from parochial schools, this one claims it will be "nonreligious." Profits from public dollars are just that valuable.

Which makes the next sentence in the Herald-Journal's article somewhat discomfiting:

The school’s motto reads “honor, integrity, service.”

“We want to teach character. To have good citizens,” Manning said. “We want to be the high point of education.”

The submission from High Point Academy is one of 11 applications the CSAC will consider within the next 60 days. If the application is found to be in order, it will go to the sponsoring board — in High Point’s case, the SCPCSD. Local school districts also can act as sponsors for charter schools. Sponsors have 30 days to approve or deny an application.

If approved by the SCPCSD, High Point would become a free, public school open to all students in the state.

Manning said an application for High Point Academy Fort Worth also was filed by FIAFW in Texas. She said the model has the potential to be duplicated in other areas.
...
Spartanburg Charter School, which opened in 2009, is to date the only charter school in Spartanburg County.

Manning said she hopes High Point will change that and become yet another option for Spartanburg parents.

Manning, a certified teacher and former charter school principal, and the Rev. Katie Stellar, co-executive director, certified teacher and former administrator, are based in Texas. They have about 20 years of combined experience in charter schools.

Here we go again. The co-executive director of a proposed "nonreligious" school is identified as "the Reverend".

Walks like ducks, talks like ducks, swims like ducks, looks like ducks. Clearly, we're not talking about horses and cows, we're talking about ducks, but no one wants to call the duck the duck.

Manning said she wanted to bring their expertise in the charter school field to her hometown. Born in Union and a 1991 graduate of Dorman High School, Manning moved to Texas in 2003 with her husband and has since worked in several capacities with charter schools there.

“I love this city. Always have,” Manning said of Spartanburg. “This is home. It’s coming back to benefit the community I grew up in and love. It’s bringing the knowledge I have home.”

According to High Point’s application filed with the state Department of Education, the school plans to enroll 322 students in kindergarten through eighth grade in its first year, then expand by one grade level each subsequent year through the 12th grade for a total enrollment potential of about 700 students. Leaders also plan to eventually begin a preschool program.

The fine arts focus will provide opportunities for students to participate in piano, dance, theater, art, choir and graphic arts as part of daily electives. Community involvement and a hands-on, applied learning style will further shape the academy’s plan for students.

“The chance for Title 1 students and their families to receive piano, ballet and other fine arts opportunities at no cost to themselves is a tremendous equalizer for students of all races and backgrounds,” the application reads. “High Point is focused on educating and encouraging the leaders of tomorrow.”

Manning said school leaders have a goal of providing secondary students with tablets in lieu of some textbooks and to equip classrooms with the latest technology.

“We’re out there. It’s very cutting edge,” Manning said.

Texas is out there. Spartanburg is nearby.

Speaking of Spartanburg, it's home to seven school districts, each of which has at least one high school. Why not propose to convert at least one high school to a magnet school for arts? Another for sciences? Another for an international baccalaureate program? There's a public school choice bill pending in the Senate that would, for all intents and purposes, allow any student to cross district lines to attend public schools in the next district. Sounds tailor-made to meet the needs of Spartanburg's public schoolchildren.

“Our goal is for all our children to graduate and go on to secondary education.”

The application states that FIAFW has a reserve of $30,000 to contribute to its charter campus in Spartanburg, but additional funding is anticipated from grants and donations.

Once the school is further along in the application process, Manning said organizers — including an 11-member planning committee — will begin searching for a space, somewhere near the intersection of I-85 and I-26.

There's not even a location, but the plan is laid to enroll 322 children next fall, with $30,000 and the promise of grants and donations.

Maybe a church will undertake to sponsor them, too. The Lord works in mysterious ways.

Pro-voucher columns sound strikingly similar

As I read this column by Rep. Christopher Murphy in the Summerville Journal Scene, I thought it sounded an awful lot like the one that Karen Floyd published in the Mount Pleasant Patch a few days ago. Both praise the House for passing its voucher bill last week.

O, I know there's no voucher-on-paper in the bill adopted by the House last week; it's just a shell game that uses public dollars to give tax breaks to people who send their children to private schools. But as former Rep. Lewis Vaughn hinted back in 2004, it's still just a voucher scheme that uses tax breaks to accomplish the goal.

The similarities between Murphy's and Floyd's columns are spooky, as if they are revising a common document to add their own local place names and flavor.

For example, both declare they are products of public schools.

Floyd: "I am the product of public education: from Irmo Elementary School to a Juris Doctorate from the University of South Carolina School of Law."

Murphy: "As a product of Dorchester District 2 (Summerville High School ’86), I share in that pride."

Both praise their own local public schools.

Floyd: "Likewise our identical twin sons have received excellent educations in public schools from Pine Street Elementary School to the Freshman Academy at Spartanburg High School. I can point to seminal teachers and coaches that have impacted their lives in positive ways, and we are forever grateful to each one."

Murphy: "The district - among state’s highest achieving - is one of the reasons our county continues to attract new residents.
...
In other words, parents in Dorchester 2 already have some of the widest “school choices” in the state. And that’s a big part of why the public schools here are exceptional."

Both, however, pivot from praising the public schools in their own communities to citing the example of tax breaks for private school tuition in Florida.

Floyd: "Over 35,000 low-income students in Florida are now enrolled in the school of their parents’ choice through such a program this school year. State budget officials there calculate the tax credits save $1.49 for each dollar in revenues 'lost' through credits."

Murphy: "These state income tax credits pose no threat to state funding for public schools. That’s because public schools are funded with sales tax revenues, not income tax collections. More to the point these programs, which already support tens of thousands of low-income students in other states, keep money flowing to the public schools even if children transfer out, since most of state spending on K-12 education is not 'tied' to the child. Recent studies have determined that each dollar in school choice tax credits claimed saves taxpayers $1.49 in spending."

Is it coincidental that both Floyd and Murphy are intimately familiar with the fiscal impact statements of Florida's private-school tax break program, and that they cite precisely the same data in their opinion-editorials?

Strikingly, both took precisely the same notes of Rep. Rita Allison's remarks during last week's House debate on vouchers.

Floyd: "Representative Rita Allison’s passionate defense of the bill on Wednesday was particularly insightful. She explained how the school choice debate is not a zero-sum argument about choosing public 'or' private schools; it’s really about 'and.' To reduce inequality, to increase parental engagement and to raise student achievement, Allison insists every parent in the state deserves to have real choices for their own child’s education. That means public and charter and private and magnet and virtual and home school; whatever works for the specifics of that pupil’s learning needs."

Murphy: "The school choice debate is not a zero-sum argument about choosing public 'or' private schools; it’s really about 'and.' To reduce inequality, to increase parental engagement and to raise student achievement, every parent in the state deserves to have real choices for their child’s education. That means public and charter and private and magnet and virtual and homeschool and frankly, whatever works for the specifics of that pupil’s learning needs."

Wow -- even the sentence fragments are noted and punctuated identically, word-for-word.

That's some amazing note-taking. Either Floyd and Murphy shared their notes of Allison's remarks with one another, or Allison was speaking from the same document that Floyd and Murphy later revised to draft their columns.

I wonder if there are -- or will be -- other column clones floating around our state on this topic?

Floyd praises wealthfare, criticizes citizens' ignorance

In 2006, Karen Floyd of Spartanburg ran for state Superintendent of Education and tried diligently to avoid acknowledging her support for publicly-funded private school vouchers.

Now that the State House has approved such a measure for the first time, Floyd has published an opinion-editorial -- in Mount Pleasant, of all places -- praising that news and celebrating her long-time support for vouchers or, as she calls it, "school choice."

Of course, different people use different terms to describe the bill approved last week. One that has a particularly resonant ring is "wealthfare," defined as (1) the redistribution of wealth from the poor and working-class to the already-wealthy, by government policy, and (2) government subsidy of private preferences for purposes of social engineering, which may include re-segregation.

Where welfare is filthy, "wealthfare" is pretty. As welfare is ugly and dull, "wealthfare" glistens in iridescence.

In her opinion-editorial, Floyd never mentions the word "wealthfare," but she describes it as vividly as if she's always lived in its neighborhood.

I am the product of public education: from Irmo Elementary School to a Juris Doctorate from the University of South Carolina School of Law. Likewise our identical twin sons have received excellent educations in public schools from Pine Street Elementary School to the Freshman Academy at Spartanburg High School. I can point to seminal teachers and coaches that have impacted their lives in positive ways, and we are forever grateful to each one. In the ninth grade, however, we made a change – a choice. While one son was flourishing, the other son was not reaching his potential. No fault lies with any person, process or institution. Though it has always been apparent that our twin sons, despite being identical, learned differently, responded differently and were challenged differently, it was not until mid-way through the ninth grade that our family chose an educational option other than public education, for one son.

A good editor might have cut this paragraph down to size thusly: "A lawyer sent one of her sons to a private school."

Fine and dandy.

Today, one son continues to thrive in the diverse and rich tapestry at Spartanburg High School while the other son has found his place at the Christian Academy of Oakbrook Preparatory School. As I write today, both sons are turkey hunting on Youth Day with my husband, their proud father. Despite tremendous similarities, a snapshot of this past Friday demonstrates the environmental distinctions from which our boys thrive. One son left our home early Friday with the face paint remnants from the previous night’s Lacrosse game still on his face, the other son left with “work clothes” complete with heavy duty yard gloves and sun screen (knowing full well the probability of sun screen actually being used was limited, at best). Though Spartanburg High School varsity lacrosse lost to Dorman the night before, our son was excited for practice later that day to hear what the Coaches “take” on the game might be, and what lessons were learned from the defeat. Our other son headed off to a service day at Hatcher Gardens where he and other students from Oakbrook Academy fulfilled their community service by working in the garden for the entire school day. Both children’s needs were met and they were growing in distinctively different ways despite genetic and environmental links.

Again: Why this was published in Mount Pleasant, where life is "pleasanter," escapes me, as it's all about life in Spartanburg.

Again, using the editor's knife: "Her sons find that opportunities available in public schools and private schools are designed to be different."

Here, Floyd turns philosophical-ideological.

“School Choice” has been a buzzword, and a political litmus test for almost a decade in South Carolina. State Representatives first voted on the issue in 2004, but individual lawmakers, such as State Senator Lewis Vaughn, began sowing the seeds years before.

Odd that she chose to highlight former Rep. Vaughn, who told a press conference on February 26, 2004 that he has supported alternatives to public schools since 1957 because "I went to a school that didn't do very well by us kids."

Almost three months later on May 12, during House debate, Vaughn announced, "If you take enough of 'em (students) out (of public schools), you can close one."

And a year later, on April 18, 2005, Vaughn moved to table a voucher-bill amendment by Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter with these words: "I can't let you win this one. If you want to kill any change to school choice, you bring all these schools under regulation, and then you don't have a bill any more. Private schools aren't going to submit to regulation under state government."

But those were the days of accountability and transparency, so long ago. How things change.

Floyd continues, "During that decade of deliberation other states passed and aggressively expanded school choice plans." She notes a few examples of novelties adopted when radical majorities took control of government in some states, but she neglects to mention the instances of such novelties being declared unconstitutional, and others leading to criminal and civil litigation from fraud.

Then she explains that the primary reason for South Carolinians' refusal to spend public dollars on private schools is, literally, our ignorance. She puts lipstick on the word and rephrases it "lack of understanding," but lack of understanding is ignorance. Therefore, we've been ignorant all these years, and our ignorance has kept us from accepting the concept of wealthfare through private school subsidies.

The biggest obstacle to the parental choice movement in South Carolina has been the lack of understanding of what School Choice is and the rhetorical terms of the debate.

We're so unsophisticated, we working-class folk here in South Carolina. We lay in need of education -- what irony!

School Choice should be for every family. Independent education choices should also be available for every child, not the privilege of the economic elite.

On topics of independent education, I enjoy hearing the reminiscences of South Carolina's Tom Turnipseed, who helped to organize segregation academies into an association of independent schools back in the 1960s and 1970s before having a change of heart and exposing the motives behind the growth of those schools in the first place. As I understand it, those schools sprung up overnight as a reaction to Brown v Board of Education, and our aristocracy's insistence upon keeping everyone in their assigned place through continued segregation under other names.

So when I hear "independent education" praised, I think of the desire to keep the little children of the wealthy over here, and everyone else's children, black and white, over there. That seems to be the difference between public education and "independent education."

Floyd mentions the commentary of Rep. Rita Allison in last week's floor debate, as well as the thoughts of Rep. Eric Bedingfield. As I read her quote by Bedingfield, I am struck at the similarities between it and the comments made in the 1950s and 1960s in favor of keeping schools segregated:

He stressed that school choice was an issue of how lawmakers set the field for parents to make choices, rather than a micromanagement of specific school policies and programs. “Parents have the most information and best motivation to make decisions for their own children,” he insisted, noting that even the best classroom in an absolute sense might not be the most appropriate for each specific student seated in it.

Yes, the old arguments have so many applications, as Floyd herself comes close to acknowledging:

Just as the terms of debate evolved over time, so too have the specifics of the choice legislation considered.

Indeed. Private school wealthfare began as a classic voucher, but South Carolinians saw it for what it was and disapproved. So wealthfare was adapted -- former Governor Mark Sanford tried unsuccessfully to brand it "education passports," and "opportunity scholarships." But we unsophisticated South Carolinians caught onto those subterfuges, too, and disapproved.

The proponents of wealthfare turned the subsidies into tax credits. Sure enough, it was former Rep. Lewis Vaughn who declared in 2004, "It's a tax credit plan without the entanglement of the voucher system." But that smelled enough like trickery that we disapproved of that, too.

In fact, we unsophisticated South Carolinians, suffering in our "lack of understanding" of the "rhetorical terms of the debate," disapproved of every private-school wealthfare subsidy that has been offered, as public polling has consistently shown. It wasn't until several millions of dollars in out-of-state money rained down upon our legislative majority that wealthfare gained support -- and then, the support came from within the legislature, not from across the broad land.

But Floyd tries so hard to get the rest of us to swallow it, as if wealthfare helps us, too.

School Choice is NOT a dichotomy of public “or” private education. It should be an option for all families in South Carolina who have decided –for one reason or another– that their local traditional public school is not the best fit for their child.

My family had a choice, and so too should every family in South Carolina.

One nice thing about the internet age is that interested citizens can respond online to what they read in opinion-editorials. It's true at the Mount Pleasant Patch, too, where Floyd's column is published and where readers could offer their responses, like this one from Jonathan Edwards:

State budget officials there calculate the tax credits save $1.49 for each dollar in revenues “lost” through credits." Is Florida providing a tax credit (refund) to any low-income student who enrolls in a private school? If so, that is not what we're doing here. A poor person will not get a refund for sending their child to private school. They could get a deduction from their taxable income. But if you're already in the lowest income bracket that doesn't really mean anything. It does mean something for people in the higher income brackets who are looking for as many itemized deductions as possible, to minimize what they owe in income taxes every year.

I am happy that your family has a choice about your sons' schooling. However, your family probably has a lot of options that others don't have. Sentiments of personal gratitude and reflection do nothing to fund public education, or give poor people the "option" to longer be poor.

Excellent points, and good demonstration of knowledge of the rhetorical terms of the debate, too. Clearly, Edwards is not one of South Carolina's unwashed ignorant, who suffer with a "lack of understanding."

And reader John H offered this insight:

Did I miss something in H. 4894? http://www.scstatehouse.gov/sess119_2011-2012/bills/4894.htm I read it only as an amendment to the 1976 tax code to give tax credits to families who send their children to private school, home school, or a school in a different district. It also grants tax credits to those “taxpayers” who contribute to qualified scholarship funding organizations.

I could not find where the bill sets up an SFO or vouchers to help underprivileged or special needs children. Not unless the ambiguous language in Section 2 (A), 2 is the hitch, suggesting that the State will fund the SFO.

I may have overlooked something, but H. 4894 does little to improve education in SC. Show me the section I missed.

I'm beginning to understand now why Floyd published her column in Mount Pleasant, as far away as possible from home in Spartanburg...

Zais: Our job is to train employees for manufacturers

Less than two weeks ago, Governor Nikki Haley traveled to Greenville to make some solemn pronouncements about how important it is that South Carolina train its children to be ready for hire by manufacturing companies when they locate in our state.

South Carolina is at the heart of manufacturing in the U.S., Haley said. Companies are looking to invest in South Carolina because the state has great things to sell: the cost of doing business is low and South Carolina is a very business-friendly state, she said.

But the state must ensure it has a trained workforce for these manufacturers, and people looking for jobs need to know what certifications they need and how to get certified.

“Companies coming here need to know there is a trained workforce ready to go,” Haley said. “And we must ensure these companies have a trained workforce to help attract them to South Carolina.”

As I wrote then, I interpret these comments to mean that Haley lumps the children of South Carolina's working families together with monkeys, hair, pigeons, rose bushes, dogs, dolphins and even fleas: Things that can and should be trained.

According to our governor, it is, in fact, our responsibility as citizens to raise up and train our children to be prepared, compliant, obedient and sufficient workers for their corporate owners.

This week, Haley's act is followed up by our Superintendent of Education Mick Zais, who traveled to the same region to deliver the same talking points in a strange color-by-number message scheme. Listen to what he told the Spartanburg Herald-Journal:

“As I travel around the state and talk to businessmen and women who own companies, they are desperate to hire skilled technicians to work in manufacturing,” Zais said. “We have an enormous shortage of these people, and that’s why our career and technical centers and academies make such an enormous contribution to our work force and, frankly, the economy of South Carolina.”

Let's play a word game. I'll take Zais's comments and replace some of his words with some words of my own, okay? Like this:

“As I travel around the state and talk to PARENTS and EDUCATORS who EDUCATE CHILDREN, they are desperate to HAVE SUFFICIENT RESOURCES to TEACH in SCHOOLS,” Zais said. “We have an enormous shortage of POLITICAL WILL, and that’s why our PARENTS and HARD-WORKING TEACHERS and CHILDREN LOSE such an enormous AMOUNT OF TIME WHICH JEOPARDIZES, frankly, the FUTURE of South Carolina.”

See? My version doesn't compare children to trainable animals. My version addresses public education as a public good, not a training program for future employers. And my version pretends that our superintendent of education is the state's chief advocate for public education, not the state's chief future human resources director.

Here's why Zais was in the Upstate:

State Superintendent of Education Mick Zais visited all three of Spartanburg’s career and technology centers Friday as part of Career and Technical Education month.

Which begs a pertinent question: If we were to get the legislature to designate certain months as Public Education Months -- like, for example, all months whose names begin with a consonant or a vowel, just to be selective -- would the state superintendent of education use those special designations as a rationale to visit South Carolina's traditional public schools during those months? And would he talk about the importance of public education in South Carolina?

I have nothing against career and technology centers or schools. Students everywhere should be free to choose to attend them, once they determine that the services provided by these schools meet their needs best. I believe in making available a veritable smorgasbord of options within public schools for all of South Carolina's children.

I'm just curious about the habits of South Carolina's highest elected leaders, ones who avow a predisposition against traditional public education and who see their jobs as plant managers for corporate manufacturers, constantly demanding that the state provide more training! and better training! for their compliant employees.

Funny thing is, when Zais stops at any school -- traditional public or, in this case, career and technology center, he hears the same plea and answers with the same palaver:

After talking at length with administrators at R.D. Anderson, which serves students in Spartanburg districts 4, 5 and 6, Zais toured the school and was treated to a lunch prepared by culinary arts students. R.D. Anderson Director Sherri Yarborough said the school has grown about 200 percent in the past decade and offers more than 50 courses of study, several of which offer college credit.

Yarborough said some programs, such as the school’s popular machine tool courses, are not only at capacity but also turning away interested students. Asked by Zais how she would spend additional money, Yarborough said she would buy more equipment and build a wing on the school to serve more students.

Yarborough said career and technology educators are constantly in contact with area businesses and industry to keep up with trends. In many cases, she said centers are hindered because they can’t afford to pay for the courses, instructors and equipment needed.

“But we hear their cry,” she said.

Yarborough expressed that funding is an obstacle for the growing school, but she hopes an expansion will be possible in the next couple years.

What's the plea? More funding! More funding! We can't provide the necessary services on the meager pittances provided by our pretenders to leadership in Columbia!

And what's Zais's palaver?

Zais said the General Assembly must take a long look at the way education is funded in South Carolina.

“There are about 70 different pots of money that are earmarked and different sources of money,” he said. “It’s far too complicated.”

It's far too complicated, he says. You piteous people wouldn't understand. Just do what you're told, take what you're given and produce what is expected. We do not intend to graduate Einsteins here -- leave the educating to the private academies.

We only want you to take these little whelps, train them to read their instructional manuals and understand their numbers so employers will want them. The order is the same -- you should understand it by now -- as the order to train mill labor a century ago, and slave hands a century before that. Train them to do their tasks. Train them to comply. Train them to obey. Train them to do what they're told, when they're told, for as long as they're told, and to speak when they're spoken to.

As for yourselves, who are you? You have no standing to question your betters, and every last one of you can be replaced with cheaper help within a week, so you best be careful what you say aloud. Your job is not to educate, to administrate or facilitate; your job is to comply, and you'd better remember it.

Zais pointed out that the schools are educating an in-demand group of future workers. A news release from the state Department of Education, citing the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, states that nearly one-third of the fastest-growing occupations will require an associate’s degree or a postsecondary vocational certificate.

“The most important thing that I think I need to work on is to make sure that parents and teachers understand that there are lots of high-paying jobs that don’t require a 4-year degree,” Zais said. “Kids who can come to our career and technology centers and go on to get a high-level certification from our tech colleges can start off making 50 to 60 thousand dollars.”

And without any additional credentials and critical thinking skills to weigh you down with ambition, you'll learn more quickly to comply, so as to protect those wages.

Take heed. Your job is to comply. Look sharp now; your corporate owner approaches.

Part 2: FreedomWorks peddles vouchers in Spartanburg

The second half of Dennis S's first-hand account of last Thursday's FreedomWorks dog-and-pony show in Hub City.

After loading up with enough school choice propaganda to do Pravda proud, I surveyed the room for a table with a close-up view of both the speakers and an escape route.

I spotted a partially filled table about 10 feet from the speaker’s podium and 5 feet from the door. I surmised the table hadn’t been completely filled because it was occupied by 3 little kids, ages in the 5-8 range. Who would want to sit with three little kids at a school choice meeting? Also seated at the table were mom and I would guess, grandma. I put down my propaganda haul and sat down. Two other chairs remained empty. The adults at the table were nice enough during our exchange of maybe 10 words. The youngsters were well behaved and very quiet.

At the podium, the local Tea Party head gave a brief welcoming speech before giving way to the inevitable radical anti-public school rhetoric. The first speaker was America’s most conservative senator, Jim DeMint. He teleconferenced the group from Washington via a TV monitor.

DeMint threw out about 2 minutes of predictable red meat and then fled as if Sarah Palin was waiting just off camera in her running shorts.

After one other irrelevant TV public education basher, the meeting was finally treated to a live human being – too live for my taste. He was an overweight, twenty-something Dick Armey protege in the employ of FreedomWorks. His name was David Spielman and he was a campaign coordinator for school choice. He bragged about standing with Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker as he fought the unions. Though young, Spielman was the perfect mouthpiece for the subject of the night, ripping ‘government’ schools. The right-wingers call public schools ‘government’ schools in adopting a meaningless advertising agency name that’s supposed to evoke a fearsome image of jack-booted ‘government’ administrators.

Spielman informed the crowd that his wife was a teacher in Maryland. His mother, father and had also taught. Teaching in Maryland, his wife most likely belongs to either the American Federation of Teachers or the Maryland State Education Association. A fact not shared from the podium.

Young David said he didn’t remember the last time our schools were kid-focused. Has this ‘expert’ even set foot inside a classroom? How about the most recent school day being the last time our schools were kid-focused. Let’s check out the Winter edition of NEA Today, a quarterly from one of those teachers unions he castigates. In the magazine, President, Dennis Van Roekel’s column is about the union’s Priority Schools Campaign dedicated to accelerating student (kids) learning. There’s an article on the price children pay in the budget-cutting orgy initiated by state legislative Tea Party types. There was a story on the questionable efficacy of No Child Left Behind and how being forced to teach to the test impacts ‘kids’. The NEA is attacking that problem. There were at least a dozen more articles and columns that were “kid-focused”. The overwhelming majority of this union magazine is dedicated to kids.

Spielman knows this, of course, but he’s got a future to think about and borderline operatives like his boss can eventually lead him to millions as a lobbyist. That’s where Armey made most of his money after leaving Congress. Later, Spielman lamented that the Democrats were in bed with the unions to the clueless cheers of people who want their kids in schools where teachers are less educated, get paid less and the boss is in it for the money. For a guy who claims all those ties with teachers, his ignorance of the profession is staggering. I confess to a huge bias for public schools. My dear wife is a Special Ed teacher of the emotionally disabled. She holds a Masters degree. She and her colleagues are 100% kid-focused. She works at least 10 hours in the school setting, often longer. She sits in front of her home computer another couple of hours and puts in the equivalent of an 8-hour-day over the weekend.

Spielman was followed by Chad Connelly, the South Carolina Republican Party Chair, who may just be the most annoying man on the planet. He talked a mile a minute for way too many minutes and felt constrained to tell us his first wife committed suicide (no comment).

He insisted his education enmity was not about the teachers who he described as scared to death of the system and the union working against them. In this state, the union can mail out literature, lobby and email to their heart’s content, run a website and bitch. Neither the NEA nor any other union has any collective bargaining rights. What teachers are ‘scared to death’ of is school policies being driven by a bunch of uninformed, pseudo- religious hypocrites like Spielman and Armey who couldn’t answer a single Masters level question about education if their lives depended on it.

After mercifully shutting down his one-man distortion speech, Connelly gave way to the featured speaker of the night, Dick Armey, current head of FreedomWorks.
...
Armey informed the local audience that his wife had once been a teacher, but quit. He claims her principal told her, “It’s always the good ones that leave.” I wonder if she was that same ‘good’ one who left Armey?

Armey claimed that for 200 years “we did education better than anybody; better because we did it ourselves.” In the period Armey is apparently referencing (beginning roughly with the signing of the Declaration of Independence), schooling was so diffuse throughout the states, there would have been no way to quantify a national performance model. Secondly, school attendance was almost the exclusive domain of the rich until the mid-1800’s. Jefferson would have made the move to public schools many decades earlier.

Armey kept talking; somebody whose life has been dedicated to enriching himself from the public teat (he once sued to keep his government health care) is now hustling the Tea Party crowd. As he launched into his latest extremist tirade, I got up and walked out. I hope it looked like I was walking out on the speech because I was. I wonder if Armey shared the facts that bills like HB 4576 only benefits those with incomes high enough to declare such credits and parents of public school students essentially pay the tab estimated at nearly $100 million Carolina dollars the first two years of this farce.

I apologize to my dedicated teacher wife for Armey and his band of opportunistic BS-peddlers. Armey and company should have been hooked up to polygraph machines.

Dennis S, thanks so much for attending this event in person and giving us a bird's-eye view. You stayed a lot longer than was healthy.

Dog-and-pony show pushes vouchers in Spartanburg

Pleased to share a first-person account of last week's voucher rally in Spartanburg, sponsored by the Koch-funded Freedomworks organization, an astro-turf outfit that pretends to be a grassroots concern.

After several consecutive years of watching their voucher legislation defeated voucher legislation in Columbia, our corporate overlords who wish to privatize schools and every other public institution chose to begin a new offensive in Spartanburg. That city and county is home to six House members who, as the Herald-Journal reminded us last week, voted against the voucher bill last year. This being an election year, convention wisdom suggests those six might be a little more open to the idea if a few dozen rabid voucherites gnaw on their public image a bit.

FreedomWorks, which estimates it will spend between $500,000 and $1 million this year in a statewide school choice campaign, will co-host a Thursday evening rally at Spartanburg’s Cleveland Park with the Spartanburg Tea Party and South Carolinians for Responsible Government.

FreedomWorks and its grass-roots supporters, of which the group claims 20,000 in the Palmetto State, are betting that its financial and organizational muscle will force legislators to do something they’ve failed to do in every session since 2004: Pass a bill implementing the system.

The top priority is turning the votes of six House Republicans from Spartanburg who voted against last year’s bill, which was killed by one vote, or backing challengers who will support the legislation.

“We were asked by our activists and by people on the ground to come in and help drive that grass-roots support so we could put pressure on those guys to actually pass something this time,” said David Spielman, campaigns coordinator for FreedomWorks.

That last bit is laughable -- "We were asked by our activities and by people on the ground to come in..." -- on its face.

Adopting a statewide voucher bill has been on the right wing's bucket list for a decade, and the aging funders of that agenda -- who live far, far from South Carolina's borders -- are getting desperate for a win. They smelled it last year, could taste victory in their gold fillings, but had their meal snatched from them by a single vote. So they -- not any activists and not by any people on the ground -- likely began planning this dog-and-pony show as soon as the legislature finished its business last summer.

Why is this a reasonable speculation?

The six House members, Derham Cole, Steve Parker, Doug Brannon, Rita Allison, Eddie Tallon and Mike Forrester, were dubbed the “Spartanburg Six” by tea party supporters after they voted to table last year’s bill that would have provided tax credits to families to send their kids to private schools.

The six have said their votes centered on a lack of support from constituents and cost concerns.

Ching-ching. It's all about the money, boys. The so-called Spartanburg Six looked at the financial impact statement of voucher legislation and saw the mile-long costs down the road. They voted the will of their constituents rather than the will of Deep Pockets From Off, including the funders of FreedomWorks -- which sounds vaguely fascist, doesn't it? -- and our own South Carolinians for Reprehensible Government.

An estimate by the S.C. Board of Economic Advisers, the state’s official economists, showed the state would save $2 million in the first year of the bill’s implementation because of students transferring out of public schools. But the proposal would cost the state in each subsequent year, leading to an annual cost of more than $133 million starting in 2023-24, when all of the tax credits associated with the legislation would be fully implemented.

Hard to defend putting your children and grandchildren in hock for $133 million in annual deficits. Everybody has a limit.

Voucherites -- and Deep Pockets from Off -- were incensed, but that's natural. You see, the ultra-wealthy and the ultra-righteous in America -- and the very worst among them, the ultra-wealthy-righteous of America -- have what we might call an inflated sense of entitlement. They want what they want, and they're used to getting it, by hook AND by crook, and usually through fear so they don't have to actually pay for it.

Representative democracy is the fly in the ointment for these ultra-wealthy-righteous people. Simple folk such as you and me have simple expectations, and among these is the expectation that we elect people to represent us in the state government. When this does happen, it infuriates the ultra-wealthy-righteous, and they're inclined to send their dragoons into our midst to tell us what we should do and say.

So they got incensed, and they commenced to jabbering at us: Jabberjabberjabberjabberjabberjabber, they said in Spartanburg last Thursday night. (This is truly what they sound like.)

As the Herald-Journal wrote, in part, "Supporters of the bill, including Spartanburg Tea Party organizer Karen Martin, say the potential savings" jabber jabberjabber jabberjabber jabber! and "FreedomWorks is pushing a new version of last year’s" jabber jabberjabber jabber "authored by House Ways and Means Chairman Brian White" jabberjabberjabber "cost the state more than $30 million" jabber jabber (give me your money now for my private school vouchers) jabber jabber.

Now listen to this. Chris Connelly leads the conservative party in South Carolina. He's new in the job, relatively, so he may not know that citizens have been bombarded with pro-voucher propaganda since 2002 when Mark Sanford ran for governor, and that lawmakers have been inundated with calls and letters from their people every year since then on this issue. So when Connelly makes a foolish statement like the one below, we must smile and shake our heads together.

Get ready for it:

FreedomWorks is using its money to pay for grass-roots training, voter education events and promotional materials in the run-up to the General Assembly’s vote on the new tax credits bill.

The group says it has distribution centers statewide armed with “tens of thousands” of door hangers, yard signs, district-targeted palm cards, T-shirts and bumper stickers. Spielman confirmed some of the materials highlight votes of the six Spartanburg House members.

He calls five of the members’s support of deductions instead of tax a credits a “cop out.”

“Tax credits are always a fiscally conservative thing to do,” he said.

Spielman is scheduled to speak Thursday night, along with FreedomWorks chairman and former U.S. House Speaker Dick Armey, Martin and state Republican Party Chairman Chad Connelly. U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint of Greenville is set to address attendees via video.

Connelly said the state party won’t recruit challengers to its incumbents, but the party believes competitive primaries are healthy for the party. He said school choice is a platform issue for the state party.

“I think the people that vote against it don’t really understand the issue, and all too often the school boards and the teachers unions are heavily influential,” Connelly said. “The party’s always going to be pushing people to support the platform.”

Did you see it? He said, "I think the people who vote against it don't really understand the issue."

This is 2012. For a decade, these same legislators have been hearing about this issue, year-in and year-out. If after ten years, you say they don't understand it, you're calling them stupid. You're saying they don't comprehend plain English and may not be able to calculate elementary math.

How about this: What if they're not stupid? What if they comprehended plain English all this time, and did calculate the elementary math, and concluded that stealing public revenue to pour into private schools through vouchers is a stupid idea?

Who's stupid then?

But Connelly’s ties to the push for tax credits run deep. He’s a former director of the nonprofit South Carolinians for Responsible Government, one of the sponsors of Thursday’s rally, and has continued to serve as an SCRG officer and a member of the group’s board since leaving the position after 2007. He made more than $90,000 as an SCRG director in 2006-07, according to the group’s tax records.

SCRG is one of the South Carolina groups closely tied to Howard Rich, a New York developer and activist who’s funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars into the state since 2004 to push the legislation.

Well, as I mentioned at the top, I'm pleased to share a first-person account of the dog-and-pony show that rolled into Spartanburg last week.

Blogger Dennis S posted a great note at PoliticsUSA, and I'm happy to share it with you here.

A progressive mingling with Tea Partiers? Guilty! I gritted what teeth I have left and headed for a local TP rally in honor of National School Choice Week, mainly because the featured speaker was going to be the individual who gave the party its national voice, Dick Armey. The event was scheduled for the evening of Groundhog Day, February 2nd.

Groundhog day was a little odd since the dates for National School Choice Week were actually January 22-28. The National School Choice Week website was still up post-event and I noticed the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) icon prominently displayed at the bottom of the page as a supporter. My guess is that ALEC’s support extended to major bucks.

The rally was held in a Chateau-like structure located in a public park. I felt like I should have arrived by ski-lift. Instead I wound my way around the park and backed my pickup into a space about a half-block away from the host building. The lot was already filling up 30 minutes before the official opening.

I had no sooner weaved my way to a stop when a scruffy, somewhat ill-kempt fellow approached my Dakota. He reminded me of those aggressive car salesmen that grab your door handle the minute you stop your engine. I rolled the window down as he greeting me and handed me a single sheet of paper with the heading ‘Preschools Are Using a Marxist’s Theories to Manufacture Collectivists’. I had no idea. The piece was written by one Chuck Roger with a snooty accent aigu over the ‘e’. Seems Chuck is convinced our kids are being ruined by a long-dead psychologist named Lev Vygotsky, 77 years removed from this earth.

The other subject matter on the page displayed a website that listed 24 things that government schools dare not teach. Examples 1, 2 and 3 were staring back at me. The first ‘thing’ the schools DARE NOT TEACH was that all men were endowed with certain unalienable rights (I’ve compressed a bit). The second ‘thing’ the schools DARE NOT TEACH was that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men and finally, schools DARE NOT TEACH the meaning of liberty.

I’d like to give you the address of the website so you can read the entirety of these first 3 of these forbidden fruits and the remaining 21, but I DARE NOT!

I quickly thanked this poor wretch and headed in a fast walk to the Chateau.

When I took one step inside the door I felt an immediate thump on my lapel. A lady had affixed a decal on my sports coat like the one with your name on it at gatherings where most of the attendees are strangers. I never bothered to write my name. Upon returning home, I discovered that for the night I had been a human billboard featuring the words ‘SCHOOL CHOICE is the RIGHT choice. So, for this one night, I was a decal-wearing school choicer.

The decal was far from the only school choice propaganda of the night. Tables lined the entire length of one wall, all stacked high with assorted literature, mostly glossy, colorful and expensive.

I quickly skipped over the dessert table, loaded with every high-fat cookie imaginable and its frosted first cousins. And these people want to repeal health care?

The first table piece I ran into was a cryptic single-page in black, white and orange that had Speak/Act in giant letters. The page referred repeatedly to the website of South Carolinians for Responsible Government. SCRG is most obsessed with Superintendent pay and further down the table, SCRG literature headlined Top Ten Overpaid Non-teaching “Educators” named names and showed pictures. Note to SCRG. If you’re competing with the private sector, you’re going to have to pay a fairly high wage to get good people. The average hospital CEO makes $450,000 as of last year. The top Superintendents listed don’t make half that, some far less.

I'll pause here to comment on the dissemination of rational thinking with this disclaimer: The opinions represented herein, rooted in rational thinking and fact data, are applauded by those who have been starved of such thinking for a long time.

Now, to continue:

The piece also described how far below the national average the district’s SAT scores were and how lousy GPA’s were and criticized shortfalls in graduation rates.

Let’s get something else straight. If a child comes from an impoverished background, teachers can have no more than a 15% impact on that youngster’s future. There are many other factors involved in the success or failure of these young people. That’s why many private schools cherry-pick the best students, giving an artificial picture of their SAT, GPA and graduation numbers. Given the odds, it’s extraordinary what public school teachers still manage to do for those unfortunate socio-economically challenged students.

Still further down, SCRG also offered a ten-page mini-tome breaking down the costs to the state and locals of every school district in South Carolina, plus a boatload of every educational expenditure extant. The distorted explanation of teacher job losses was painful to read. If there are fewer teachers, it’s because they leave of their own accord. Firings? Maybe a few. Ignored is the fact that over the past two years public schools have lost over $750 million in state funding. Lemme see – what page was that on? Thousands of teachers were laid off, with salary freezes in the offing for those who remained.

In August of 2011, The South Carolina Superintendent of Education Mick Zais and his fellow birdbrain, Governor Nikki Haley, refused to go after $144 million in federal money from the federal Education Jobs Fund. It was money for school districts impacted by the economy and forced to lay off teachers. No other state, red or blue, was that ignorant or insensitive to the lives of school employees. Zais said the money would result in unwanted ‘federal intrusion’.

But the piece de resistance of the table top displays was a glossy, 33-page, full-color booklet with pictures of every member of the state General Assembly and their contact information. At least 500 copies had to be printed given the crowd estimates of 350-400.

And the final item, rather nice T-shirts (you can guess the screenprints) weren’t cheap either.

I’ve got a call in to a printer friend of mine. I’ll share his estimates in part two of my school choice visit. You’ll also hear what Armey and his sycophants had to say about your horrible public (government) schools after I sat down with three little kids.

Ooooh, I hate a cliffhanger. But rest assured, I'll bring you Dennis's second part, too.

Stay tuned.

Survey yields low view of Spartanburg, despite great quality of life

A national survey of American cities by Gallup-Healthways reports that Spartanburg, South Carolina, not only ranks 188th in "contentment" but is among the 10 least-content cities in the nation. This bothers me.

I've spent a good bit of time in Spartanburg. Like everyone else in Spartanburg, I've driven past the tree-lined Milliken fortress and wondered what goes on in there, marveled at the trees that the late billionaire Roger Milliken contributed all over the city.

I've eaten at the Beacon, both when there were major political figures holding rallies there and when blue lights went racing up the hill behind it at night.

I've taken Sunday afternoon drives through Una and praised the freedoms that people have in South Carolina to live as they choose, park any furniture they like on the front porch, and fly the flags of their choice in the front yard.

I've read the Spartanburg Herald-Journal and been excited at the professionalism of the whole county's law enforcement, featured nearly daily in various reports of criminal activity.

I've visited Hatcher Gardens and Woodland Preserve, still so small and intimate, unencumbered by funding from the city or state.

I've felt a real spirit blanketing the city on Sunday mornings. I happened to be in Spartanburg on the morning after Election Day of 2008 and watched the pastor of First Baptist Church of Spartanburg kneel on both knees beside his pulpit, pleading for strength in organizing and leading his church.

I know of the educational leaders of Spartanburg and know that while there are pockets where teachers get little real support from their administrators, there are some really fine leaders, too. Superintendent Jim Ray of Spartanburg District 3 has been an examplar for his colleagues in Spartanburg and across the state, winning state and national awards by the armload for visionary support of school technology and his educators.

I've witnessed great efforts by non-profit organizations to revitalize Spartanburg's downtown area, so hard to accomplish without great public investment. Hub City Writers Project, for example, perseveres into its sixteenth year -- a small but committed group of artists, leaning on one another and their colleagues from North Carolina and elsewhere.

I know a bit of Spartanburg's history, and its pride in textiles and manufacturing; that Philip Weaver of Rhode Island opened the city's first textile factory in 1819, just 11 years after the state's first factory opened in Charleston, and I know that even though Weaver fled the state in 1826 because of financial difficulties and his opposition to slavery, he'd firmly planted manufacturing in the county for the next two centuries. And what a legacy: Dexter Converse was able to endow Converse College with the proceeds from his Converse Manufacturing Company, opened in 1866. And it was John Montgomery and C.E. Fleming, who opened Pacolet Manufacturing Company in 1882, who established an important relationship with Deering-Milliken of New York just two years later. Without these pioneers, Spartanburg would never have become a land of successful mill villages, offering opportunities to poor people across the region after the Civil War.

And I know the city is blessed with gifted and well-connected political leaders. When former Vice President Dick Cheney needed a place from which to watch former President George W. Bush's debate with Sen. John Kerry, he came to the home of then-Speaker Pro Tem Doug Smith in Spartanburg. When former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee came to South Carolina during the 2008 presidential campaign, he made a beeline to this city first, to speak at First Baptist Church.

I read the extensive coverage of last year's Congressional race, when Spartanburg's own District Attorney Trey Gowdy took on and defeated the ultra-moderate Rep. Bob Inglis in his primary. What could be better than having your member of Congress live in your own county?

And even when the state's most influential leaders don't come from Spartanburg itself, they now live only a stone's-throw away: both Sen. Lindsay Graham and Sen. Jim DeMint are from right next door in Greenville.

So, with these freedoms, this spirit, these leaders and this deep history, I cannot understand why Spartanburg ranks so low in a survey of contentedness.

The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index interviewed at least 1,000 U.S. adults every day in 2010. Nearly 353,000 people age 18 and older were surveyed.

Participants, selected and called at random throughout the year, were scored according to how they measured their emotional health, physical health, healthy behavior, work environment and basic access to necessities crucial to well-being, such as clean water, medicine and safety. Residents also were asked to evaluate their present and anticipated future life situation on an index of zero to 10, where “zero” represents the worst possible life and “10” represents the best possible life.

All but one of the categories for Spartanburg residents measured in the fifth and lowest quintile. Spartanburg's “healthy behavior” ranked 131st, putting it in the study's fourth quintile.

Spartanburg's lowest ranking was in physical health. The county's residents ranked it 181st in the nation. The physical health index includes information on items such as sick days, health problems that get in the way of normal activities, obesity and feeling well-rested.

The number seems to contradict the county's rank for healthy behavior, which factors in healthy eating habits, smoking, consumption of fruits and vegetables and exercise. Residents said they have poor physical health, even though they're making at least some attempt at a healthy lifestyle.

One local non-profit administrator offers a different, surely a rare, view of factors in Spartanburg's quality of life.

Trez Clark, program director for the PACE Center, a local nonprofit that provides mental health services, said a community's emotional health is directly related to other factors touched by the health and well-being survey.

People with poor physical health or a stressful work environment tend to be more depressed, she said. The study bases emotional health on factors such as worry, stress, depression and how much a person smiles or laughs.

“There's a part of me that's not surprised (with the survey) because we see so much (poor emotional health),” Clark said. “... So much is related. Physical, emotional, spiritual — it's related to the whole person.”

I can hardly see how Spartanburg's emotional and spiritual needs aren't being addressed. Its churches are generally large and regularly well-attended. It's a rare Wednesday night that the city's middle-class youth aren't keeping busy at the Hangar.

And I'm uncertain of how to interpret the survey's last point, as the language is not very clear:

Spartanburg residents ranked 177th on the well-being study for factors such as job satisfaction, their ability to use their strengths at work and how their supervisor treats them.

Perhaps it is the vagueness and ambiguity of the questions that yielded such poor results in this survey. If so, I hope that the sponsors will draft clearer questions if they intend to repeat the survey. Results like these are unhelpful in maintaining a sense of well-being about one's community.