Inez Tenenbaum says her record of working across party lines to look out for South Carolina's families and children would make her an ideal U.S. senator.

Republicans say just the opposite.

Tenenbaum, 53, the Democratic state education superintendent for the past six years, also has been a teacher, an abortion-rights lobbyist and a juvenile justice advocate.

Under her watch, she says, the state's schools have made progress.

But Republicans say the early part of her career shows she is too liberal for South Carolina - and her record of accomplishment with S.C. schools is questionable.

Teachers and school leaders are loyal, saying that under her leadership, they have seen a glimmer of what South Carolina's schools could achieve.

"Her stress tolerance, her poise, her regal demeanor - she's a good person," says Jim Ray, Spartanburg District 3 superintendent. "We're better off for having had her."

Others note that South Carolina still is in the basement of many education rankings and that Tenenbaum's past few years have been marked by conflict with Republican lawmakers over the schools' budget.

"Our kids can't graduate from high school," says Kristin Maguire, a state school board member from Clemson. "I don't know that she should graduate from education superintendent."

'We've made progress'

Tenenbaum says her biggest accomplishment as superintendent has been implementing sweeping new school standards, including the Palmetto Achievement Challenge Test, or PACT.

They were part of the Education Accountability Act, approved by state lawmakers in 1998, before she took office.

"Every challenge that's been thrown at us, we've jumped on it with enthusiasm," she says.

The results are measurable, she says:

Since 1999, when third- through eighth-graders started taking PACT, scores in every subject have improved.

SAT scores have risen 32 points in five years, though scores dipped three points this year.

"The act's making an impact," she says. "We've made progress."

Tenenbaum mostly has done what she said she would while campaigning for superintendent in 1998.

The schools superintendent is primarily an advocate before the General Assembly for the $2.6 billion the state spends on schools and the leader of one of the state's largest, most visible bureaucracies. Most decisions, including how much state money the schools will get, are made by the General Assembly and state and local school boards.

Tenenbaum has helped teachers, principals and administrators get training to learn new skills, and she has increased the number of parents and community members involved in schools.

Such programs have won her praise from many school leaders.

"She's a good listener, and she has the pulse of what needs to be done to get children ready for school," says Everette Dean, Marion District 7 superintendent.

Struggles remain

Critics say that, despite gains, South Carolina's schools still struggle:

South Carolina still ranks 50th in the nation on SAT scores.

Surveys show that one-third to half of all ninth-graders fail to graduate from high school four years later.

There is a wide gap in test performance between black and white students. For example, 9 percent of S.C. black eighth-graders scored "proficient" or above in reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress test, compared with 36 percent of white eighth-graders.

NAEP is used by the federal government to measure how well schools are teaching core subjects.

An increasingly powerful group of critics says that what South Carolina is doing isn't working and that it's time to try something else.

"Her mantra has been, 'More money, more money,'" says Maguire, who home-schools her children.

Money has been the biggest conflict between Tenenbaum and the General Assembly.

She says the state needs to restore cuts in education funding made over the past few years when the budget was tight.

In April 2003, she attended a rally on the Statehouse steps and called for a tax increase to send more money to schools.

Republican legislators have been unwilling to do that, saying taxpayers can't afford it.

Education Department critics, including Gov. Mark Sanford, say the state has shown "throwing money at schools" alone won't solve the problems.

Case in point, they say: Allendale.

A 'poorly impaired' district

One of Tenenbaum's first actions as superintendent in 1999 was to take over the struggling Allendale school district.

Five years later, the state is still in charge, and Allendale is receiving more than $10,000 in state, local and federal money per pupil - the second-highest in the state.

Students have made small gains on PACT, but they failed more than 60 percent of the tests they took this year.

Tenenbaum says Allendale is an unfair example because its problems are so extreme.

When the state took over, the district's finances were in chaos, teachers didn't know when they would get paid and buildings were falling apart.

Those problems are fixed, she says. The per-pupil spending is so high because poor districts get more federal and state money than wealthy districts do.

Tenenbaum says that in other states that have intervened in low-performing schools, it has taken seven or eight years to see sustained improvement.

"I don't think anyone could turn a district that poorly impaired into a success overnight," she says.

'Morally right'

Tenenbaum and other school advocates say South Carolina will never know what the schools can be until the state adequately funds early-childhood education and after-school programs and reduces the student-teacher ratio.

House Democratic leader James Smith of Columbia praises Tenenbaum for standing up for school funding. Republicans have used the bad economy as an excuse for not funding education, he says.

"We need good, strong, positive leadership, and she has provided that," Smith says.

But Tenenbaum's campaign has been hurt by her call for the tax increase and a claim that her office spends money exorbitantly.

An ad paid for by the Republican-leaning group Americans for Job Security accuses her of advocating a $2 billion tax increase and of spending $4 million on travel and more than $675,000 on catered meals in 2002-03. The travel and meals numbers are from a state Legislative Audit Council report.

Tenenbaum says the claims distort her record.

Most of the meals and travel were for 40,000 teachers who had to come to state-conducted training sessions, she says, partly to learn how to teach the new standards the General Assembly required.

At the rally, Tenenbaum says, she was talking about a 2-cent sales tax increase, which would have raised about $1 billion.

She would do both again, she says.

Cutting the state money forced local governments to raise property taxes, lay off teachers and cut programs. "I felt like - and I still feel like - I was morally right on that," she says.