By WENDY PAGONIS
The Numbers
War
Clemson University economics
professor Cotton Lindsay reported this spring that South Carolina could
save more than $900 million in the first five years of implementing Put
Parents in Charge.
Opponents of the proposed legislation say
public schools would in fact lose more than $300 million under Put Parents
in Charge. |
Parents wait quietly in their cars by the front doors of Waccamaw
Elementary School on Pawleys Island. In just a few m inutes, the
intercom buzzes, and after a dose of announcements from the principal, a trickle
of students starts to charge outside. Their eyes quickly search the line of
cars. Back and forth, and then they go. Once the eyes stop, the students’ pace
quickens as they head for the sedans and SUVs taking them home. It’s been a long
day of learning at this affluent, successful public school.
Not every
public school succeeds like Waccamaw, Hand or Dreher, however, and this is
why parents, legislators, policymakers
and churches are talking about school choice in South Carolina’s capital. The
state’s public education system has lackluster success overall, shown time and
again in report after report. Critics point out that South Carolina students
have dismal SAT scores and relatively few go on to college. These same critics
sadly concede that the school system does rank first in at least one national
comparison: It has the highest percentage of school dropouts.
The
federal No Child Left Behind Act, adopted during President George W. Bush’s
first term, helped school administrators and teachers galvanize support from
local governments by way of funding and partnerships with businesses willing to
donate money and mentors. The goal is the same everywhere: get struggling
students up to speed and push test scores toward the roof.
But the
federal effort initiated to help flailing
students also illuminated their failures. Reports show South Carolina students
compare poorly to those in other states; they also show disparities among school
districts within the state. Despite improvements, better isn’t necessarily
good.
People converging at the State House believe they have a cure for
these academic problems — the Put Parents in Charge bill. But public school
systems have never been without critics. From abrasive parents to CEOs, teachers
often receive plenty of opinion on how they should do their
jobs.
Though officially introduced by state Rep. Doug Smith,
R-Spartanburg, Gov. Mark Sanford is credited for the Put Parents in Charge
legislation. The governor heard applause across the state when he first began
talking about school vouchers, and today’s proposal — which uses tax credits
rather than outright vouchers — is the culmination of years of Sanford’s
thoughts on school choice.
 |
“At a time that we are struggling to meet
No Child Left Behind, why would we divert money to a system where there is
no accountability?”
— Inez Tenenbaum, S.C.
superintendent of education |
Sanford, a
fan of free-market economics, believes that public education improves when it
has competition. The proposed legislation creates a tax credit for parents who
send their children to private schools, other public school districts or who
choose to school them at home. Children who already qualify for free or reduced
lunches would be eligible for scholarships in the amount of the tax credits
allowed by Put Parents in Charge. Families that earn less than $75,000 a year
could qualify for tax credits of $3,200 for children in kindergarten, $4,000 for
children in first through eighth grades, and $4,600 for children in high school,
or 80 percent of actual tuition costs, whichever is less. Unlike tax deductions,
tax credits are applied in the full amount toward the taxes a person owes.
The money would come from state dollars now allocated to schools based
upon the number of school-age children within a given district. If Put Parents
in Charge is adopted, then federal and local money flowing into public schools
would remain unchanged, but the state would withhold dollars for children no
longer attending public schools. The state would dispense most of those dollars
to parents under the proposed tax-credit plan and could keep the rest in the
state’s general fund. Estimates of the impact on school districts
vary.
If the governor succeeds, more private schools and charter schools
would open within the next five years. His office says churches are looking at
property where they can start new schools in rural areas. That way, proponents
say, all parents in the state would have options.
Pushing the Plan
If you’ve had
your TV tuned into local stations in recent weeks and months, you’ve seen
Sanford asking South Carolina residents to support the proposed legislation. He
appears in television advertisements paid by a nonprofit group called the South
Carolina Policy Council.
The Policy Council has been advocating for
school choice since 1986, and it will not pack up and go away if it succeeds in
getting legislation passed. President Ed McMullen says the group would just
switch gears and help charter schools open throughout the state.
 |
| Ed
McMullen, president of the South Carolina Policy
Council |
McMullen’s
group is leading the charge for school choice in South Carolina. It isn’t his
first attempt to change the public education system as we know it. Think big and
think Republican: McMullen worked on former Vice President Dan Quayle’s
short-lived presidential campaign, and later advised Sen. John McCain’s in the
Arizona legislator’s failed bid for a presidential nomination. The Center for
Public Integrity says McMullen wrote the initial draft of McCain’s education
plan, in which “one component of it is to create pilot charter schools through
budget cuts in the Department of Education.”
It’s descriptions like this
that send opponents of school choice into a frenzy. But McMullen isn’t a man who
responds to emotional appeals. He studies numbers. And the numbers tell him
South Carolina, like other states, would save money by opening the public
education system to more competition.
McMullen and his council are
criticized because they aren’t from around these parts. The council is one of 55
pieces of the State Policy Network, a partnership of think tanks created to
support policies generated by conservatives within the Republican Party. The
largest financial contributor to the council in South Carolina is the Thomas Roe
Foundation. Roe also supports the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., where
McMullen worked before he came to the policy council.
His resume
infuriates opponents of the Put Parents in Charge legislation, who refer to him
as part of the “they” who want to destroy public education. But his push for
school choice isn’t about ideology, McMullen says. It is about facts. The policy
council has studies and reports that support the council’s mission. They show
South Carolina’s students are underperforming, despite increases in
spending.
“You can’t have limited government with an uneducated
populace,” McMullen says in the Policy Council’s two-story office, located
around the corner from the State House.
Clemson
University economics professor Cotton Lindsay reported this spring that South
Carolina could save more than $900 million in the first five years of
implementing Put Parents in Charge. Lindsay says the state’s educational costs
decline by 1 percent for every 1 percent decline in student enrollment. Thus the
savings. Several reputable economists throughout the country praised Lindsay’s
study. The most notable was Milton Friedman, father of contemporary free-market
economics and a Nobel Laureate.
In the case of school choice, however,
Friedman’s praise is suspect. Friedman and his wife, Rose, started and oversee a
foundation dedicated to spreading school choice throughout the United States.
Lindsay’s work stands on its own, but it is not without critics.
Opponents of the proposed legislation say public schools would in fact
lose more than $300 million under Put Parents in Charge. The S.C. School Boards
Association and the superintendents’ division of the S.C. Association of School
Administrators hired Miley and Associates Inc. of Columbia to review Lindsay’s
findings. The firm says Lindsay incorrectly estimated the cost to public schools
because the impact varies among school districts and could cost each district
between $570 and $2,040 per student. All together, the firm says public schools
would lose $354 million over the legislation’s first five
years.
Supporters of the legislation point to success in other places
like Milwaukee and Florida, which implemented school choice programs in the
‘90s. However, Milwaukee’s income threshold for eligible families — $29,225 for
a family of four — is considerably less than the $75,000 level proposed in South
Carolina. And Florida’s program does not reduce the state money going to public
schools even when students leave to attend private schools.
Supporters
also point to increases in student success in those places, while critics point
to repeated complaints of voucher fraud. Adding to the confusion, no state has a
tax-credit proposal like the one being proposed in South
Carolina.
Homegrown
Advocate
 |
“You have a monopolistic system that
doesn’t respond to the needs of children.”
— Tom Swatzel, chairman of
South Carolinians for Responsible
Government |
Parent Tom Swatzel read about school choice plans in other states before
he took a side in South Carolina. He believes Put Parents in Charge would not
only be the most efficient use of tax money, but also the most fair. Swatzel
serves as board chairman of the South Carolinians for Responsible Government.
His government watchdog organization celebrates its second anniversary in June
with a membership list that adds to more than 80,000 people. It advocates
limited government and individual freedoms.
The group reorganized in
March when its executive director resigned after he was caught sending editorial
letters with a made-up name to The State newspaper.
As a member of the
Georgetown County Council for two terms, Swatzel learned that state legislators
in Columbia are sometimes a world away from their constituents. He experienced
it firsthand when the state tried to impose a hefty license fee on fishing
businesses in the late ‘80s. As owner and operator of Captain Dick’s at Murrells
Inlet, Swatzel organized a group of coastal businessmen to lobby legislators in
Columbia for lowering the license fee. Now he’s commuting 12 hours a week to
lobby legislators again.
“Public education in South Carolina needs meaningful reform,” Swatzel
says. “You have a monopolistic system that doesn’t respond to the needs of
children.”
Swatzel and his wife Susie send their 11-year-old daughter to
public school — Waccamaw Elementary School. Hayley doesn’t just do well in
school, she does exceedingly well. Note that she won first place in the school
spelling bee. And even if Put Parents in Charge goes through, Swatzel says
Hayley will stay in the public school system.
But Swatzel recognizes his
daughter is lucky to be in an affluent area with good public schools. Other
children throughout the state are not so fortunate, which is why he believes Put
Parents in Charge should be adopted.
The Loyal
Opposition
Everyone agrees this discussion about Put
Parents in Charge has drawn emotions on both sides. S.C. Superintendent of
Education Inez Tenenbaum says the debate offers people good reason to be upset.
“This is a battleground,” she says during a break at a speaking
engagement in the Upstate. If proponents win in South Carolina, they will push
for similar legislation across the country, Tenenbaum says. “You have to be real
careful with what you hear from the other side. They will paint a
picture.”
The money used to lobby for Put Parents in Charge is pouring in
from people in other states, she says. South Carolina is a target because it is
a small state with relatively low advertising costs.
Tenenbaum, who
secured the Democratic Party’s nomination for a shot at the U.S. Senate last
year and is running for re-election as superintendent in 2006, says Put Parents
in Charge would devastate the state’s public education system because the
millions of dollars going to tax breaks would no longer go to public schools.
Currently, the school system struggles to pay for school bus transportation, she
says, and needs more money for after-school programs, summer school, teacher
salaries and reducing class sizes.
Tenenbaum hasn’t just presided over
the state’s 1100 public schools; she has worked in some of them as an elementary
teacher. Now she is trying to salvage the gains public schools have made in
recent years to meet federal requirements.
“At a time that we are
struggling to meet No Child Left Behind, why would we divert money to a system
where there is no accountability?” Tenenbaum asks. “I think this bill would
ultimately raise property taxes.”
She says the Democratic Party is firmly
behind her — and so are many Republicans. This legislation is making unlikely
allies.
Odd
Bedfellows
 |
“It’s easier for us to tell the parent
they’re part of the problem. Who’s going to tell their pastor to shut up?”
— Pastor Richard L. Davis of
Clergy for Educational Options |
Pastor
Richard L. Davis is touring the media circuit on behalf of Clergy for
Educational Options, a group of 30 to 40 black pastors, ministers, priests and
elders who cut across denominations to support school choice. The group does not
specifically support Put Parents in Charge, Davis says, but it is considering
whether to endorse the bill.
“Our goal is to be as nonpartisan as
possible, but also open-minded to what is out there,” Davis says. “We haven’t
taken a stance for or against it yet.”
The legislation is spiriting
church interest in the public school system, which Clergy focuses by encouraging
congregations to volunteer in after-school programs and to help buy schools new
equipment, such as computers. Some churches, though, want to know what it would
take to start their own schools.
Davis has been putting those churches
in contact with the Southern Association of Black Independent Schools.
It
makes sense that churches could accomplish more with students who are doing
poorly in public school, Davis says, because church leaders already know the
children’s families and communities. They can step into a home and say things to
a parent that teachers in public schools are not allowed to say.
“It’s
easier for us to tell the parent they’re part of the problem,” Davis says.
“Who’s going to tell their pastor to shut up?”
Church leaders care about
education because education is at the heart of healthy communities. They also
take notice when students fall behind in the classroom, because those students
have trouble reading scripture in church. Davis can tell which school district
children attend by listening to them read.
Members of Clergy are taking
heat for siding with the concept of school choice, if not the proposed bill.
Many represent black congregations in some of South Carolina’s poorer school
districts. Church leaders who disagree with the Clergy have called its members
“Uncle Toms,” Davis says, for going against the Democratic Party’s position on
public education. It’s not often in South Carolina — where a Confederate battle
flag still flies in front of the State House — that poor, liberal blacks stand
beside wealthy, conservative whites. Other churches also allege that supporters
of the legislation are promising the Clergy cash incentives for the church
leaders’ support.
Davis says that’s just not true.
“Nobody I know
has gotten a dime,” he says.
(Not) Converting the
Flock
The Clergy must convince their own
congregations of their good intentions, though.
Sunday school teacher
Misty Alewine can think of no good reason for churches to support this
legislation.
“It wouldn’t make a difference,” Alewine says, seated in
her classroom at Ridge Branch Baptist Church in Batesburg.
Alewine
teaches primary students every Sunday and sees the same variation in reading
ability that Pastor Davis sees. It still falls along school district lines, but
she doesn’t attribute slower skills entirely to the schools. In fact, she says
it mostly comes back to the parents within those districts. Children who read
slowly or struggle to get through the Sunday school scripture often come from
single-parent households, she says, where the parents spend a lot of time at
their jobs with little time left for home.
JoAnn Hughes teaches Youth
Ministry at the church, but her job during the week is in real estate. She says
parents shopping for new houses usually ask about the area school districts, but
she says those are people who can afford to choose where they live. Many
families cannot. The cost of private school tuition aside, Hughes says poor
families would struggle daily to find time and transportation to get their
children to private schools. The proposed legislation doesn’t account for those
obstacles.
“It’s a tax break for the wealthy,” Hughes says. And she would
be among the legislation’s beneficiaries. She and her husband send their son to
V.V. Reid Elementary School in Richland County. The Hughes believe he would get
just as good an education in Richland County Two public schools, she says, but
they want their son to get the extra lessons in black history that V.V. Reid
teaches.
No Room at the
Academy?
The Hughes chose the school after doing the
same thing most parents do when selecting a private school: They looked at the
school’s established history. Not having that history is one of the biggest
obstacles for those starting a new school, says Larry Watt, executive director
of the South Carolina Independent School Association.
“If there were a mass exodus [of students
from public schools], I don’t know where they’d go.”
— Larry Watt, executive
director of the South Carolina Independent School
Association |
Watt’s
organization represents 100 independent schools in the state and also sets
accreditation standards. People interested in starting a new school call him for
information.
He estimates only 10 percent of the people who contact him
about opening a new school actually start one. Many new schools close because
they have to sell themselves and, Watt says, parents hesitate to send their
children to a place with no history of performance. Watt likens it to buying a
car and not being able to see it for the first year of payments.
Many
supporters and opponents believe, if Put Parents in Charge passes, that parents
will take their children out of underperforming public schools and try to enroll
them in private schools. The legislation would, its proponents argue, allow poor
students the same educational opportunities afforded to wealthy
students.
“I’m sorry, but a tax credit is going to do nothing for them,”
Watt says. Independent schools in the state’s metropolitan areas, where demand
for private education is expected to be greatest with Put Parents in Charge,
tend to have the highest tuitions. For example, Hammond School in Richland
County has a good reputation, but parents paid between $5,400 and $9,905 in
tuition this year, depending upon the grade level. Many private schools have
scholarship programs now for students whose families cannot afford tuition. And
even with more scholarship money, Watt says, independent schools with the best
of intentions can handle only so many students.
In theory, he supports
the concept of Put Parents in Charge. If an independent school doesn’t do what
it says then it goes out of business. A public school shouldn’t force children
to keep coming if it isn’t doing what it says it’s doing, Watt says.
But
the state’s independent schools are not clamoring to start new scholarship
programs or plan building projects in preparation of increased enrollments that
Put Parents in Charge is supposed to send from public schools, Watt says.
Private schools, like a business, plan budgets year-to-year because they do not
have the option, unlike public schools, of asking local government for more
money to accommodate large influxes of students.
“If there were a mass
exodus, I don’t know where they’d go,” Watt says.
But he doesn’t believe
the demand for private education really exists to the extent that proponents of
Put Parents in Charge claim.
Parents are generally happy with the
state’s public education system.
“I can’t see anything in this bill
that’s going to warrant the alarm that’s come out of the public sector,” Watt
says. “If someone were extremely concerned about the education of their child,
they would have moved the child a long time ago.”
Money Can’t Buy Good Parents
Of course, some
concerned parents don’t move their children from public to private schools —
they home school instead. Home schoolers generally support the Put Parents in
Charge Act, because it would help them offset what they pay to educate their
children on their own. But not everyone can afford to home school their
children. And ultimately, it’s public schools that end up with children from all
kinds of families with all kinds of challenges.
 |
| Sheila
Gallagher, president of the S.C. Education
Association |
Sheila Gallagher sees these challenges play out as a physical education
teacher in middle school. And she is exasperated by the arguments for Put
Parents in Charge. She’s even had it with the name. Parents are in charge, she
says. Sometimes that’s the problem with low test scores and underperforming
students. Teachers want to push students to take more rigorous classes, put more
effort into getting the best education, Gallagher says. Then parents,
increasingly often, relent to their children’s wishes.
“I’m not going to
make them if they don’t want to,” Gallagher hears. She now serves as president
of the S.C. Education Association.
Things have changed since Gallagher
graduated from high school in Florence. More problems are interfering with
students who want to learn. Private schools do not have to keep difficult
students, Gallagher says, but public schools must keep working with them.
Experience has worn down the necessary paths to the government agencies, like
the Department of Social Services, that need to intervene in problems that
students bring from home. How would start-up schools know what to do in some of
these situations, she asks. And where would they find qualified
teachers?
“Student achievement is more than those test scores,” she says.
Before the governor started talking about school choice, public schools
were already making headway on student performance. They had a plan. Instead of
getting the money to fully implement their own proposal for improvement, public
schools are now fighting to hold onto the money they have.
The education
association’s membership, open to all school employees, has been rising since
the governor raised the volume of discussion about school choice last year, now
topping over 13,000.
Gallagher cannot say definitively whether the two
are related.
Teachers have been “knocking themselves out” to meet
standards of accreditation as legislators began debate about school choice, she
says. Many are consumed with paperwork, especially those working with special
education students. Those reports are not going away. No one has suggested
opening a new school for special education students, Gallagher says.
But
everyone wants a cure-all answer to improving education. Gallagher says this
proposal isn’t it, but the name is a good start.
“You want to put parents
in charge, well, then get them involved in the process.”