OUR STATE HAS no greater need, and must have no greater priority, than improving its residents’ educational status. That is essential to doing better in all the other areas in which South Carolina lags behind the rest of the nation.

This is indisputable. Yet today some of our most influential policymakers, including our governor, are off on a tangent. They want to turn away from the best and surest route toward improving the quality of life for all South Carolinians. Rather than strengthening our public schools, they want to drain money from public coffers and use it to help operate private schools.

Over the past six weeks, The State’s editorial board has exposed many of the pitfalls that would entail. Today, we recap the main problems with the proposal known as “Put Parents in Charge.” But this is not the end. We will continue our scrutiny of this initiative as long as it has life, or potential life, in our Legislature. The future of our children and our schools is too important to do otherwise.

• Keep the covenant

Tax credits for private education would break a covenant that our state has with its people. Public schools are a cornerstone of America. More than any other institution, they equip us to be strong, participating citizens. They are the only means for providing universal education.

Some parents choose other routes for their children. That is their right. But it is every citizen’s duty to support the public schools — which benefit all of us, not just those families that currently have children in them. Public dollars must support public aims. That includes schools that are open to all children — regardless of their qualifications or status — and accountable to all voters and taxpayers.

South Carolina’s schools, and the academic outcomes they produce, are not where anyone would have them be. But we must consider our history. Only in the past 30 years has South Carolina even begun to try to educate all children — black, white, rich and poor. And we are finally making progress with that.

• For the poor, nothing

In spite of the claims of advocates, those who most need help would get no benefit from a tax credit that gives them neither enough money for tuition to a private school, nor a ride there from their rural homes. Children who qualify for free or reduced-price lunches — meaning an income of $24,505 in a family of four — are promised a $3,200 tax credit. That’s a cruel joke when you realize they would have to make $60,000 in taxable income alone just to have paid that much in taxes.

The greatest hope for the children with the greatest need lies in a fully funded, high-quality system of public schools open to all.

Our state is still building that system. The status quo was turned on its head just seven years ago when the General Assembly adopted the Education Accountability Act (a reform pushed by conservative Republicans, and resisted mightily by the “education establishment” tax credit supporters like to talk about). Now, just as that is paying off, is not the time to give up.

South Carolina students have shown remarkable gains since the act’s Palmetto Achievement Challenge Test was first administered. Finally, state schools are trying to educate all children — no matter their race, no matter their economic status, no matter where they live. The system is still plagued by funding and governance methods that tend to create pockets of excellence and swaths of rural failure. But under the EAA, progress is being made even in unlikely places. We must not take away hope yet again.

And that is what would happen if public coffers were depleted by the proposed tax credits.

• Draining state resources

Since the credits would come from the state’s general revenues, state funding would be cut for other essentials such as law enforcement, health care and even local governments. That could force your property taxes to rise.

Private charity would be undermined as well. Donors who give to “scholarship granting organizations” could wipe out their entire tax liability with credits — a much sweeter deal than mere deductions for charity. Many would make the switch, to the detriment of many good causes.

Gov. Mark Sanford, the tax credits’ chief proponent, doesn’t talk much about that. He is equally silent about the many good things going on in our public schools. He is more fond of talking about and touting a voucher program used in Milwaukee city schools.

That program, which pays full private school tuition and guarantees transportation for children living in an urban environment, bears no resemblance to what our governor is selling.

The political constituency for “Put Parents in Charge” is parents who already keep their children out of public schools. In 2010, the tax credit would be opened up for all students currently in private, parochial or home schools.

If lawmakers want to debate such a handout, then let them do so, straight up. But call the tax break what it is, and don’t try to tell us this would help public education. That is a bigger lie than the “education lottery.”

• Parents have choices

Parents already have “choice” in South Carolina. Richland 1 and 2 are among the many districts offering non-traditional public school choices.

In Richland 1, There are Montessori classrooms, where young students in mixed-age groups participate in hands-on learning. Older students can take advantage of International Baccalaureate programs, which feature tougher classes designed to help our students compete on the world stage. Richland 2 is home to a school where students are divided by gender; both districts have schools that focus on the arts.

While offering choices, these two districts and others funded with taxpayer dollars never shirk their most important obligation — that of educating every child.

Parents in South Carolina can choose home schools, independent private schools or faith-based ones. Nearly 70,000 children are educated outside our public school system. Most of the parents who choose these routes pursue them responsibly, comparing accreditation status and student outcomes. As well they might, since they are supporting those institutions with their own dollars.

But “Put Parents in Charge” offers zero public assurances for how tax credit dollars are spent. So much for education accountability.

• Outsiders don’t care

The ideologues and wealthy out-of-state interests pushing “Put Parents in Charge” in South Carolina (spending $400,000 that we know of) see our state merely as the most fertile territory for a large-scale experiment in moving public money to private schools. They don’t believe in government or essential public services, and they want to impose those fringe beliefs upon our children. And, backed by individuals connected with such names as Wal-Mart and Amway, this movement has plenty more money to spend.

They don’t care that tax credits would derail one of the nation’s most robust public school improvement efforts. They sneer at the reforms pushed by our state’s more responsible leaders, and implemented by teachers, parents and students.

These political carpetbaggers need to hear just one message from South Carolinians: Our state is more than a notch on someone’s belt. We are a real state with real children whose future is nothing to gamble with.

• Not again, not ever

“Put Parents in Charge” would put South Carolina precariously close to repeating an ugly episode in its history. In 1963, when state-sanctioned segregation was fighting a rear-guard action against social justice, the General Assembly helped pay for white parents to send their children to private schools. A separate, whites-only private-school system sprang up. The effect on public schools and communities was devastating. Bankers, lawyers and merchants pulled out their children, along with their financial, political and personal support.

The worst thing that could happen to any South Carolina community is another such exodus. The draining of active, engaged middle-class parents — who are precisely the ones most likely to take advantage of tuition tax credits — is a real possibility if the state again subsidizes private schools.

“Put Parents in Charge” is the most serious move yet to return to days that must remain in our past. “Separate and unequal” was not right then, and it is not right now.

• Stick to real reforms

The bill has needlessly distracted from the real educational issues. This year, the General Assembly must fully fund the state formula for school operations. Lawmakers should be working on ways to further accountability, rather than undermine it. They need to take on the greatest remaining challenge — ensuring that every child has access to as good an education as those in our wealthiest districts. We also need to reduce the absurdly high number of school districts, find ways to recruit and retain good teachers, increase access to early childhood education, reduce the dropout rate and increase parental involvement in our schools.

There is no mystery any longer about what needs to be done to complete the work of educational improvement in South Carolina. The only mystery is why so many of our leaders have gotten so far off-track on what must remain our state’s No. 1 priority — better public schools for all.

To read the entire series, go to http://www.thestate.com/ and click on “Opinion,” then “Our Children, Our Schools.”