Fix Bill on School Choice

Could the General Assembly responsibly adopt state and local tax credits for S.C. parents who wish to place their children in private schools? Yes, if such a law guarantees that any S.C. child could enroll in a private school. Such a law also should make certain that S.C. children receive a high-quality education in subsidized private schools.

Gov. Mark Sanford's Put Parents in Charge Act, unfortunately, falls short on both standards. The proposal, subject of a report Sunday in The Sun News, would likelier create a subsidy for middle-class parents than create an escape valve for poor youngsters trapped in substandard schools. Moreover, the proposal fails to include any method by which the state could objectively assess the academic quality of the private schools that the measure would subsidize. Even home-schooled S.C. children are required to meet the state's curriculum standards.

Yet the principal proponents of the measure, the 80,000-plus members of the S.C. Citizens for Responsible Government group, regard parental satisfaction - a nebulous standard - as the only "accountability measure" a school tax-credit program needs.

None of this is to suggest that a school-choice plan has no place among South Carolina's tax-supported education alternatives. It could.

A private school subsidy plan may seem a strange concept to residents of Horry and Georgetown counties. Here, we are blessed with good - and improving - public schools. Reports of parental dissatisfaction are rare.

Some schools across the state, however, have shown minimal improvement under the state's report-card system. One reason that's so is a rural-school funding shortfall so severe that there is little hope the youngsters in those schools could quickly perform on a par with their peers in better-funded schools. This problem inspired eight rural school boards to sue to overturn the state's school-financing plan, on the ground that it shortchanges students in poor rural counties. The trial of the lawsuit ended late last year.

Legislators owe these kids a better school-funding plan. But a responsible school-choice plan also could be part of the solution for some youngsters who attend such schools. With reshaping, Put Parents in Charge could become such a plan.

The proposal's biggest failing is that it relies on charitable organizations - which may or may not come into being - to raise tuition money for youngsters whose parents pay low or no state and local taxes. Tax credits are only useful to parents with substantial state-income and property-tax bills. To ensure that poor youngsters would have immediate equal access to private schools, legislators should plug this funding gap themselves.

Legislators also should require private schools participating in the program to enter the school report-card system. Why should the state subsidize a private school in which a kid might learn less than he learned in public school?

Thus far in the S.C. school-choice debate, which is back for its second legislative session this year, S.C. Citizens for Responsible Government and other supporters have opposed such reasonable improvements to the Put Parents in Charge Act. Readers who believe that all S.C. children deserve high-quality instruction regardless of where they attend school have good reason to wonder what other agenda might be at work here.