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EDITORIAL
A Welcome Candidacy
GOP education hopeful believes in public schools
At a minimum, the person who succeeds Democrat Inez Tenenbaum as state education superintendent should believe in the perfectibility of the S.C. public schools. That's why the candidacy of Republican businessman Bob Staton of Lexington, announced last week, is welcome. He believes that South Carolina should stake its economic future on the public schools.
Equally important, Staton has the credentials and appears to have the skills to lead the public schools to greater academic success. As a business leader, he helped craft the state's school report card system in the mid-1990s.
He's served the past four years as chairman of the state's Education Oversight Committee; the EOC is the independent agency that monitors and reports on schools' progress toward meeting the state's accountability goals.
He says it's time a businessman ran the state Department of Education, and he well may be right. Certainly, he knows enough about the department's inner workings to fine-tune its operations effectively, should voters award him the superintendency.
His principal GOP opponent, Karen Floyd, also has strong credentials. She is chief executive officer of a Spartanburg marketing firm and former chairwoman of the Spartanburg County Council. She has garnered endorsements from Gov. Mark Sanford and U.S. Sens. Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham.
Like them, she believes that putting public money into private schools can create a climate of competition that elevates public school performance. In this, they are not necessarily wrong.
But Floyd also sees parental satisfaction - or lack of same - as a sufficient gauge of school performance. Staton, in contrast, believes that schools' progress toward imparting critical skills to students can and should be measured, and that data should be used to drive the academic process. We believe that, too.
None of this is to suggest that the newspaper is backing Staton's candidacy or will recommend him to readers next fall, when campaigning begins in earnest. It's far too early for that.
But it is refreshing to have a Republican in the race who doesn't see bad-mouthing public education as the key to winning office.
Making the S.C. public schools be the best they can be is a great platform to run on, and Staton did well to recognize that.
