These writers appear to have the best of intentions, but the reality is that their facts are completely and unabashedly wrong.

State teachers' unions, school administrators and school board associations organized a protest march Saturday to decry the lack of education funding in South Carolina.

Many of these groups claim that the base student cost is being funded at lower than $2,234 annually.

The base student cost is actually derived from taking the amount of funds raised from the Education Finance Act.

The problem with their math is that EFA funds are not the only state funds appropriated for South Carolina public schools. There are many other sources of state funds that go directly to the school districts -- lottery funds and Education Improvement Act funds, for example.

Most readers might be surprised to learn that in the 2002-2003 school year, the average per pupil expenditures of state dollars was actually over $4,500. When local and federal dollars are added, the average per pupil spending in 2002 was $8,324.

And Gov. Mark Sanford's executive budget this year increased the base student cost from the previous year.

Anyway you add it up, the average dollars going out to the districts in state funding per pupil far exceed the $2,234 that the march organizers insist is the only funding.

You may ask why these groups would continue to misrepresent the facts?

Well, I think the answer may very well be as simple as this -- they want more money. More money for administrative buildings, more money for discretionary administrative spending and more money for administrative staff salary increases.

But just look at the hard data and you can find that in 2002, Orangeburg 3 received over $4,900 per pupil, Richland 1 over $4,350, Greenville over $3,600 and Beaufort right at $2,800.

Gov. Sanford has promoted a new way to change the flow of money directly to the classroom. His SMART funding could revolutionize the way we fund education in this state.

The governor's concept is that public education should always be about making sure that every child has access to a quality education.

The governor sees a problem with the way we fund education in this state. He believes to be successful we need to make sure that we measure a school's success the same way we measure every child's academic progress

Having said all of this, I do believe there are some real reasons we should all march for education in South Carolina. In four short years, the state has gone from 45th in the nation to dead last in high school graduation rates. We are 49th in SAT scores and 48th in ACT scores. Only 51 percent of South Carolina's ninth-graders go on to graduate while only one in four of our eighth-graders are proficient readers.

These should be the civil rights issues of our generation.

When half of the dollars spent on education in our state never reach the classroom, we have a serious problem.

Yes, we do need a march. I think parents should be marching on the state Department of Education and their local school district administration buildings to demand more accountability for the dollars that we are already spending.

If more people will take the time to look at current spending, I feel confident we can make the changes necessary to improve education throughout our state.

Click here to return to story:
http://www.charleston.net/stories/051904/com_19maguire.shtml