You Can’t Handle the
TruthNothing will get a politician in more trouble than the clear statement of an obvious fact.
Just ask Gov. Mark Sanford, who is in trouble again for suggesting (elderly readers, expectant mothers and those with heart conditions may wish to skip this shocking portion of the column) that some of South Carolina’s public schools aren’t very good. He specifically compared Milwaukee’s successful voucher-powered school system with some of our worst: “Can you imagine tears [of joy] being shed because you got into the public school in Allendale or Marion?”
You would think he had hired University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill to lead the “Pledge of Allegiance.”
The usual suspects were outraged, of course. The State newspaper bemoaned Sanford’s “rhetoric” as “clueless and reckless.” S.C. Superintendent of Education Inez Tenenbaum tells anyone who will listen that Sanford and his allies are overly negative about the state of our schools.
Well, I’d like to give these government-school shills a pop quiz: Can you identify who said the following?
“My primary concern is the education and welfare of more than 2,100 children who attend public schools in Allendale County. By every major statistical indicator, we know that they are not getting the kind of education they need and deserve. I’m not willing to gamble on their future and merely hope that the local situation improves.”
The answer, of course, is Inez Tenenbaum. These were her comments in 1999 when she seized control of the disastrous Allendale County school system from the locally elected school board because of the horrific performance of the students, teachers and administrators.
How bad were the Allendale schools when Tenenbaum took over? According to her report at the time, only 70.5 percent of students were performing at minimum grade level and SAT scores were 150 points lower than the state average, but taxpayers were spending $600 per pupil above the state average to get these mediocre results.
And how are these schools — so recently and unfairly maligned by Gov. Sanford — performing after five years under the tutelage of Madame Tenenbaum? According to her own Department of Education, taxpayers now spend about $2,000 more per Allendale pupil than the state per-student average, yet approximately half of Allendale students failed both the math and reading sections of the 2003 Palmetto Achievement Challenge Test, and Allendale SAT scores are among the lowest in the state.
I’m sorry — exactly why are we upset with Sanford again?
The numbers are similarly dismal for Marion County, by the way. In Marion District 7 (average SAT score: 885; national average: 1026), 51 percent of 8th-graders scored below basic in English/language arts on the PACT. A whopping 73 percent were below basic in math and 83 percent below basic in social studies.
If Inez Tenenbaum was right to seize control of Allendale County’s schools, don’t these results mean Sanford should send in the National Guard and seize control of Inez Tenenbaum?
How can anyone, from Mark Sanford to Fred Sanford, get in trouble for making the painfully obvious observation that South Carolina’s public schools suck? And not just in Allendale or Marion, either.
You pick the measure — SAT scores, dropout rates, illiteracy, whatever — and the Palmetto State is in the running for dead last. What are the opponents of school choice defending? Failure? Ignorance? Vast amounts of tax dollars wasted on mediocrity?
But even asking that question puts the lie to everything Sanford’s opponents claim to represent. They aren’t fighting for anything. They are fighting against. They are fighting against parents. They are fighting against the free market. They are fighting against the most common-sense education philosophy devised by man — that I, as a parent, understand more about the individual needs of my children than any total stranger working in the state Department of Education.
How can any rational person deny this obvious fact? Wait — let me rephrase the question: How can Inez Tenenbaum and Dick Riley and the S.C. Education Association and the editorial board of The State deny it? Do these people really believe that they love your children more than you do? That they understand your children better? They don’t even know your kids’ names.
And if Sanford’s opponents aren’t dumb enough to believe this nonsense, then how can they in good conscience continue to oppose letting you choose the right education for your children? And while they’re at it, perhaps these geniuses can explain how they can know so much but run a school system that achieves so little?
Perhaps Sanford’s tax-credit plan is the wrong approach to education reform. There are rational arguments to be made on that count. Perhaps South Carolina should try an experimental test of school choice in a few counties. That’s an idea worth debating.
But to maintain that the current school system is not a disaster; or that our children don’t deserve far better; or that the knuckleheads who’ve been running this system into the ground for 30 years are going to suddenly figure out how to fix it next Thursday — these aren’t arguments, they’re utter, irrational nonsense.
Which is why they are regularly repeated without controversy by politicians across the great state of South Carolina.