Greenville News supports public school choice

The headline tells the tale: "Open enrollment is a good idea."

That's the verdict of the editors of the Greenville News, and it accompanies an editorial that lays out in flat facts the case for supporting public school choice, the substance of a bill sponsored by Senator Wes Hayes and now before the Senate for consideration.

This is not the private school voucher bill adopted by the House in March; that one drains tax revenues from the General Fund, in turn draining available resources from public schools. The Hayes bills addresses choice among public schools, earning the praise of Greenville's editors.

A bill that would provide for open public school enrollment across district lines and ensure students have other choices such as single-gender schools, Montessori schools and language-immersion programs seems to be a reasonable way to provide students in South Carolina greater access to high-quality public schools.

The bill has been passed by a Senate Education subcommittee, but has a long way to go before it becomes law. A similar bill was passed by the Legislature in 2007 but vetoed by Gov. Mark Sanford because it didn't include a private school choice option.

Public school choice, or open enrollment, is an obvious place to begin creating competition for public schools. Public education is a constitutionally mandated function of the state government and it makes perfect sense for lawmakers seeking to increase competition to do it in a way that clearly is within their constitutional authority. A proposal such as this avoids any of the potential gray areas that surround the idea of using state funds to pay for or subsidize private education.

A bill that would provide a tax deduction for parents who send their children to private schools is being considered in the Legislature, but it does not offer the incentives that would truly increase competition for public schools.

Open enrollment for public schools would let parents opt to have their children attend better performing schools that are outside of their attendance zone as long as there is room in that school.

School districts would be able to turn down students seeking a transfer if a school is at capacity, and the bill would cap the number of students crossing attendance boundaries at 3 percent of total enrollment. These are sensible limits.

The bill also would require that students at all grade levels be offered one additional choice beyond the school they are assigned, according to a report by The Associated Press. Those choices could include single-gender, Montessori, language immersion, magnet, charter, arts-intensive, extended-day and year-round programs, according to AP. That sounds like a good idea, but lawmakers should carefully study the financial impacts of such a requirement.

This law would need to be a zero-sum proposal -- districts should not lose funding by accepting students from outside the district or meeting other requirements in the bill. Decisions on which students are accepted also would need to be made in a completely objective manner. For instance, this is not intended to open the door for schools to recruit talented athletes to bolster an athletic program.

Those cautions aside, this bill could increase competition among public schools. Under-performing schools could see their enrollment decline unless they take steps to improve, and that should be an incentive for schools to constantly assess their own performance.

In addition to giving students a choice to attend a better school, this bill could offer parents a more convenient option. Some parents, for instance, might seek a school that's closer to work than their child's assigned school.

It would be unfortunate to see this bill falter again because it's not linked to a private-school choice option. It makes perfect sense to separate this type of school choice from other bills that would open the doors to using tax money to fund or subsidize private school attendance.

With public school choice there are no questions of equity involving lower-income students who want to transfer, there's no question about appropriate levels of accountability to the state, and there's less concern about financial impact on local public schools. All of those are serious questions that need to be asked and carefully answered before South Carolina adopts any sort of private school choice. (That said, there is room in this state for limited private school choice that is carefully crafted and is aimed at increasing the options for children trapped in low-performing schools.)

Lawmakers would do well to give this bill a serious look and give state students the option to attend schools across attendance and district boundaries. The limitations in this bill appear to be reasonable enough to ensure that open enrollment in South Carolina would be both manageable and beneficial to students and our public schools.

South Carolina needs to take steps to continue improving the quality of education in this state. This would appear to be one such step that could be taken with little controversy and no negative financial impact on the public schools that are so vitally important to the success of everyone in our state.

Senate advances choice within public schools

Now this is a horse of a different color: A Senate subcommittee this morning approved a measure that "expands students' educational options within public schools," according to reporter Seanna Adcox.

Notice: This is not the House voucher bill that offers tax incentives to parents who withdraw their children from public schools, or whose children already attend private and parochial schools, or home schools. Rather, this sounds like a true public school choice proposal.

Under the bill, which was approved on a voice vote Wednesday by a Senate Education subcommittee, school districts by 2014-15 would have to offer students at all grade levels at least one additional choice beyond the school they are zoned to attend. Options could include single-gender, Montessori and language-immersion programs, as well as magnet, charter, arts-intensive, extended-day and year-round schools.

It also allows students to attend any school regardless of attendance lines, even outside of their district, at no cost - a concept known as open enrollment. However, the bill allows officials to turn down a transfer application if a school is at capacity, and to limit the number of yearly transfers from another attendance zone to 3 percent of a school's population.

Supporters include associations of teachers, school boards and administrators - groups that oppose private school choice.

Republican state Superintendent Mick Zais supports the bill but would prefer that legislators lift the cap to allow for full open enrollment, said his spokesman Jay Ragley. The agency estimates that 20,000 students could transfer under the cap.

But senators said the allowed cap provides some local control, because no one's certain how many students would elect to transfer. Democratic Sen. John Matthews, a retired principal, called it a good starting point, noting that space could be an issue. He said the cap could be revised later.

Former Democratic Superintendent Jim Rex pushed for the bill in 2007, as he sought to expand choices within the public system while opposing efforts to use taxes to help parents send their children to private school.

But former Gov. Mark Sanford, a Republican, vetoed the measure because it didn't include the private school piece, and the House upheld the veto by 14 votes.

Isn't that interesting. It's the same measure that already passed the legislature once -- in 2007 -- but Mr. School Choice himself vetoed it because it didn't dismantle public education.

What we may take from this point is that the true motive of so-called "school choice" advocates is, in fact, the destruction of public schools if, after all, they cannot support a school choice bill that throws open the opportunity for parents to move their children wherever they like, at no expense, within the myriad public school options.

This is truly an important development, because it helps to focus our attention on doing what's best for all of South Carolina's 700,000 public schoolchildren, rather than diverting public school funding to suit the private-school preferences of our very own one-percent.

Sen. Wes Hayes, the main sponsor of the re-introduced measure, said advocates of private school choice should support his bill as a complement to their efforts.

"There's not necessarily one type of choice. This adds to the options of parents. Having open enrollment across school district lines is new," said Hayes, R-Rock Hill. "I think they all go hand-in-hand."

Hurray for Senator Hayes, for thinking outside the school choice box as constructed by public-school dismantlers.

Senators removed from the bill the requirement that the education agency create an Office of School Choice.

Rex created the office without the law and spent much of his tenure advocating the expansion of various public school choices statewide, making South Carolina a national leader in public single-gender and Montessori programs. But, as Rex noted years ago, many districts need the legal push.

When Zais took office, he merged five divisions into three, and folded the school choice division into the Office of School Transformation.

That sounds like Zais -- consolidating power, purging public servants and chilling dissent, all under an Orwellian banner of doublespeak. I heartily doubt that Zais's definition of "transformation" coincides with mine.

Officials did not know how many of South Carolina's 85 school districts already offer inter-district choices.

High-choice districts include Richland 2 in suburban Columbia.

Board chairman Chip Jackson said more students apply for his district's popular choice programs than schools will hold. Depending on the school, lotteries or an interview process determines who gets to attend. He noted the district's magnet selection process just ended, and parents are flooding offices with calls.

"It's a good problem to have, but it is a problem," he said.

He said he is concerned that students in adjoining districts wanting to transfer in could worsen the problem, prompting senators to let local school officials, rather than the state board, to determine when a school is at capacity.

The lone senator voting against the bill was Sen. Phil Leventis, D-Sumter. He said he didn't like the idea of lotteries determining who gets into a program, and said the state needs to give districts money to help pay for the additional programs.

"We're not going to be able to talk ourselves to good schools. Unless we're willing to invest, we'll end up with lotteries," he said. "Should our children's futures be determined by whether or not they win a lottery? I say the answer is no."

Even better! Why not amend this bill to include necessary funding to ensure that choice within public schools is a reality for every student in every school district?

And let a thousand flowers bloom!

Haley's vetoes, legislative debate earn NPR coverage

South Carolina earned more coverage by the national media this week. As usual, it wasn't for the sweet succulence of our peaches.

Hosts of the syndicated "Marketplace" on National Public Radio reported on Thursday that the legislature of Texas "hacked off $4 billion from the education budget" earlier this week. "In South Carolina though, there's a different problem: what to do with all their extra revenue," they reported.

NPR's correspondent Lisa Miller of WFAE in Charlotte reported on the windfall of $210 million in revenues, and quoted Sen. Wes Hayes of Rock Hill saying, "We certainly haven't had surplus money the last few years. We've had the other problem."

Miller mentioned Hayes's proposal to spend "half of the extra money as tax relief for some businesses, and the other half to start making up for past cuts in K-12 education. The state senate voted to increase per pupil spending from about $1,600 to nearly $2,000."

"Still substantially less than where it was a few years ago, but it would be better," Hayes told NPR.

Enter Her Excellency, the Governor.

But two weeks ago, Republican Governor Nikki Haley said that wasn't going to fly.

(Nikki Haley): "The fact that we had additional money going to the senate doesn't mean you go and say 'Oh, where can we spend it and how fast can we spend it?' It means you say, if you're not giving it in tax relief, if you're not giving it to pay down debt, you send it back to the taxpayer."

South Carolina's House agreed to only send $56 million of the extra money to public schools. But even that was too much for Haley. Yesterday, she vetoed the funds. The House votes today on whether to override that veto.

This was another one of those moments that makes South Carolinians cringe to hear our state's name mentioned in national news coverage.

Miller spoke to a Lancaster County principal, Linda Blackwell of North Elementary School, about the impacts of recent annual budget cuts to public schools, include increases in class size and fewer positions for teachers.

Over the past few years, [Blackwell has] had to cut summer school, lay off five teachers and trim work days for remaining teachers. She says, lately, teaching has become much more challenging.

Miller: How many desks are in here?

Linda Blackwell: This is 28 and there's two more here, so that's 30.

Some classes have swelled by almost a third.

Blackwell: You've got to be everywhere and you got to have eyes on everyone and it's hard to do that if you're on one side of the room and someone thinks, 'I'm not going to get called on and it's going to be a little while before she gets over here.'

Whether the extra education money comes through or not, Blackwell is getting ready to prepare her teachers for more of the same next year.

She, and more than a thousand other principals across the state.

Lawmakers avoid charges of heroism, advance private-school subsidies

In most state legislatures, a subcommittee is the first place a bill must weather -- and survive -- scrutiny from conscientious lawmakers. Of course, such a system depends entirely on the active engagement of conscientious lawmakers. In the exceptional republic of South Carolina, we have the lawmakers we have, conscientious or not, and they suffer no obligation to scrutinize anything before forwarding a suspect piece of legislation to the full committee for review.

This was the story of Wednesday's House and Senate hearings on the Sanford-Haley-Zais plan to divert public dollars from public schools and invest them in private and religious schools. The only scrutiny applied by subcommittee members, it appears, was to those individuals inveighing against the unaffordable, unaccountable and unnecessary proposal. Even the longtime legislative liaison from the state School Boards Association was attacked by legislators in the process.

At the end of the Senate subcommittee's "hearing," the group voted not to approve or disapprove the bill, but rather to "move the debate" to the full Senate Education Committee. By a vote of five to one, they represented beautifully the principle that elections have consequences.

The kicker?

Budget advisers estimate the latest version would save the state $2 million in the first year, but cost $6 million in the second year. The state's net loss would increase yearly to $133 million in 13 years.

These are the same state economists whose projections guide lawmakers in their choices to appropriate and cut state funding for various priorities. But in THIS case -- in THIS case -- the experts' numbers ran into a wall:

Advocates of the measure question the state economists' figures.

Because in the exceptional republic of South Carolina, fantasies trump facts.

Budget advisers say private school choice would eventually cost the state $133 million, not save money as advocates predict, but the new information didn't stop legislators Wednesday from advancing the measure to use tax credits to help parents send their children to private schools.

Here's another difference between subcommittees in other state legislatures and subcommittees in South Carolina: Elsewhere, the subcommittee level is where experts are summoned to answer questions ad nauseum about statistics, dollars, revenue projections and policy priorities before the subcommittee takes its position. In fact, some subcommittees meet again and again on a single topic, to allow multiple experts to bring data reflecting multiple points of view.

But in South Carolina, the subcommittee addressing public subsidies for private school tuition summoned its experts, who brought an "inch-thick report," then gave him -- the state's chief economist, no less -- time for only "cursory remarks" before getting to its business.

Phil Leventis, a Sumter Democrat and opponent, argued the latest version needed further study in subcommittee, particularly after the state's chief economist had time for only cursory remarks on an inch-thick report.

But Sen. Wes Hayes, the panel's chairman, said senators know where they stand on an issue that keeps resurfacing in the Legislature.

This is informative and should be dissected.

Hayes's first power as subcommittee chairman is to schedule the hearing in the first place. Subcommittee chairs who oppose a piece of legislation often exercise this power in the negative: They never schedule a hearing. But Hayes did. Does this mean he supports the plan to drain public dollars from public schools, and send them to private schools?

The subcommittee chairman's second power is to allot time, even to schedule additional hearings, so that all pertinent data is given full airing. But Hayes didn't do this; he allowed only time for "cursory remarks" from the state's chief economist, and he called for a vote at this hearing to "move debate" to the full committee. Does this mean he has little regard for the chief economist's expertise and projections, and little interest in hearing opposing viewpoints?

The subcommittee chairman's ultimate power is to recognize members' motions. Many's the time I've seen a subcommittee chairman ignore a motion loudly stated by a member, either to allow for more discussion or to subvert the member's clear intent. But in this case, Hayes entertained a motion -- NOT a motion to vote up or down the bill, which would clearly identify members' position on the bill -- but a motion to "move debate" to the full Senate Education Committee.

Not to succumb to too much hyperbole here, but I'm reminded of Matthew 27:24: "When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it."

Is it possible that Hayes, acting on instructions from some higher power, scheduled the hearing, limited the input from the state's chief economist and entertained the motion to move debate just to get the bill out of his hands and off his shoulders? Or is it simply that Hayes supports the measure and chose to grease the wheels to move it as quickly as possible? Who can say for sure?

The basics of the latest proposal are the same: Parents who can afford to foot the tuition upfront could claim a credit on their state income taxes, while poor parents could apply for a scholarship for their child. The people and businesses that donate toward those scholarships take the tax credit. Homeschoolers could also take a $1,000 credit toward the cost of instructional supplies.
...

Budget advisers estimate the measure would save the state $2.1 million in the first year, but cost $6 million in the second, as revenue lost due to tax credits exceeds how much the state would save with fewer students to pay for in public schools. The state's net loss would increase yearly to $133.4 million in 13 years, when all students would be eligible.

Districts would receive an estimated $66 million less from the state initially, and $115 million by 2023-24, the report said.

How will this impact your school district? Even the imported anti-public-schools expert from the Cato Institute admitted it would impact children in public schools negatively:

"Districts do reduce spending when enrollment goes down," said Coulson, with the group that advocates for limited government and free markets, which could work up a separate report on the bill's impact.

Reduced spending means fewer classroom resources, larger class sizes, fewer extra-curricular activities.

At least one Senator saw irony in the Cato Institute's intervention in South Carolina's policies:

Leventis said he found it ironic that a group that advocates for free markets is pushing for government subsidies of private education.