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Web posted Sunday, April
11, 2004
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Voices
of Carolina: Put the parents in charge
By
Ashley Landess
Special to the Carolina
Morning News
The author, Ashley Landess, is
vice president for public affairs of the South
Carolina Policy Council Education Foundation, a
nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization in
Columbia. For more information, visit
www.scpolicycouncil.com
When the
Accountability Act passed in 1998, it increased
standards and assessments and laid out overall
guidelines for schools to succeed - in other
words, goals that should be a given for public
education.
So, of course, there was
opposition from panicked politicians and career
bureaucrats.
In spite of their
doom-and-gloom forecasts about the "dangers" of
higher standards, here we are six years later and
public schools have miraculously
survived.
But just surviving is not
acceptable - South Carolina schools have not moved
forward fast enough. One third of our
eighth-graders cannot read, and that number is
even higher for African Americans. Half of our
children cannot make it out of high school in four
years. Too many never do. Our SAT scores remain at
the bottom.
Spending more money as a
singular strategy to raise achievement simply has
not worked.
It is time to stop living in
the past when it comes to education reform. Gov.
Mark Sanford campaigned on an idea that he knew
worked in other states - expanded choice in
education. In other words, while we work on making
our schools better, we cannot afford to sacrifice
the opportunities of the children in
them.
Education reform leaders in the House
and Senate finally have the support they need in
the governor's office to move forward. The Put
Parents in Charge Act, sponsored by Speaker Pro
Tempore Doug Smith, Rep. Lewis Vaughn and Sen.
David Thomas along with many others, presents
South Carolina parents with the option to take a
tax credit and spend it at the school they believe
is best for their child.
Naturally,
opponents of choice toss out the same argument
they make any time change is suggested - how their
cash flow will suffer because of education reform.
They claim that school choice takes money out of
public schools.
That would not be the case
at all. In fact, according to Clemson economist
Cotton Lindsay, per-pupil spending will actually
increase faster under Put Parents in Charge than
without it.
The Put Parents in Charge Act
is not a new idea. In fact, plans to let parents
choose their children's school are working all
over the country, and have been for
decades.
The public schools in Milwaukee
have not fallen apart under the plan they have had
in place for more than a decade. Maine and
Vermont, both rural states, have offered school
choice plans that include private schools for more
than 100 years. And in Arizona, low-income
children finally have choices they never had
before, and the public schools have hardly
crumbled.
School choice opponents know that
public schools in other states are faring just
fine under choice plans. Unfortunately, those
folks are the same ones who fought accountability
- they simply do not like change.
They also
incorrectly assume that if a child goes to private
school, they'll have less money. The average
per-pupil expenditure in South Carolina is $8,324,
while the median independent school tuition is
$3,115. The tax credit will be around $4,000.
Clearly, in many cases it will cost less to
educate a child at an independent school than at a
public one.
It is important to note that
not all the dollars would leave the school - the
majority of local funds would ultimately go back
to the public schools, and all of the federal
dollars would remain. In other words, schools will
keep some of the money without the cost of
educating the children who choose other
schools.
Public schools will not lose
money, but this debate should not even center on
that question. According to the National Center on
Education Statistics, South Carolina ranked 27th
in the nation for per-pupil spending. At the same
time, the U.S. Department of Commerce shows S.C.
ranked 43rd for per-capita income. In other words,
our citizens make less money but spend more on
education than in other
states.
Unfortunately, parents in many
school districts are not seeing the results. They
have a right to make good decisions for their
children. Other states put parents in charge a
long time ago. We cannot afford to lag any further
behind.
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