I’LL LET OTHERS worry over whom Jim DeMint would bar from teaching. The greater problem is what he’s said about our public schools overall.

Inez Tenenbaum has said some misleading things about his tax proposals. But Rep. DeMint’s federal sales tax is nothing more than a think-tank theory that is nowhere near happening. I’m more concerned about a recent DeMint ad that attacks, and by attacking undermines, the most critical enterprise in our state — the quest to provide a good education to every child, something we must do if we are no longer to be last where we want to be first, and first where we want to be last.

Oh, he didn’t couch it that way, or even mean it that way. Stung by the damage he’s suffered over the tax thing, he was just trying to hurt Mrs. Tenenbaum back.

But Mrs. Tenenbaum is the state superintendent of education, and she has spent the last six years trying to implement a massive education reform effort. Not, mind you, some wild-eyed liberal scheme she cooked up just for the fun of spending our tax money (as Mr. DeMint would have you believe), but a concerted, long-term, comprehensive reform initiative, drafted mostly by Republicans before she even took office.

And she’s done a good job of it, in the face of staggering odds. Not alone, of course — far from it. Business leaders, legislators, administrators, principals, teachers, parents and students have all been working hard. And every citizen of this state has an incalculable stake in their success.

To trash this effort in a way that discounts the progress made, causing people who have given so much along the way to lose heart, is unforgivable. And yet we’ve seen two of the state’s most prominent politicians do just that.

In Gov. Mark Sanford’s State of the State address in January, he basically said the money we’ve spent over the past 30 years to try to pull up our schools has been wasted, and “supported” the assertion with highly selective data that gave a wildly inaccurate overall impression.

Then, early in the summer, an out-of-state group ran a commercial on Mr. DeMint’s behalf that grossly misrepresented Mrs. Tenenbaum’s stewardship at the Department of Education. “I wish it hadn’t run,” Mr. DeMint said to me about the ad at the time. “It... makes me look bad, when I had nothing to do with it.”

But he refused to denounce the commercials, simply allowing them to do their damage without his overt blessing. That was bad.

This is so much worse. Now, we’re seeing basically the same attacks again. And the most shameful thing about this ad is the opening words: “I’m Jim DeMint, and I approved this message.”

Then, he goes on with the usual pooge we hear from those who counsel despair over public schools: Our SAT scores are the lowest in the nation (ignoring that they’ve still climbed faster than in any other state). Our graduation-rate ranking has dropped (during a period when prerequisites for graduation were sharply increased). Education spending increased 40 percent during the Tenenbaum tenure. (That last one ignores two key facts — that the Legislature increased funding during boom times to implement its 1998 Education Accountability Act; and that it later decreased funding to levels that would have been illegal if it hadn’t used its sovereign power to change the law, thereby dumping the load on local school districts — many of which couldn’t afford it.)

In a display of stupendously awful timing, Rep. DeMint released this ad on the very day new figures came out showing S.C. schools had made dramatic gains in Adequate Yearly Progress, a measurement created by the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

The DeMint camp, rather than letting our students and teachers feel a sense of accomplishment, immediately sputtered that Mrs. Tenenbaum’s department had somehow cheated by changing the way AYP was calculated. Yes, the state did make changes — with the permission of the Bush administration, along with 46 other states that made a case that the old way didn’t make sense.

Note also that when you go back and figure last year’s AYP using this year’s standards, we still did much better this year.

Since Mr. DeMint is so proud of voting for the federal law (he especially likes the fact that it promotes “choice”), he should understand all this, and take pride in our progress.

DeMint campaign manager Terry Sullivan said the ad “has the virtue of being true.” Oh, there’s truth in it, all right — isolated, out-of-context truth that gives the false impression that we’re not making progress. But there’s no virtue in it. On the contrary, there’s nothing here but the vice of preaching despair, of ignoring successes in favor of picking at the painful sores that remain.

What sort of progress do I mean? There are too many positive indicators to detail here, but they include greatly improved school readiness scores, a No. 1 rating from Education Week on improvement in teacher quality, a steady increase in high school exit exam scores and so forth. And don’t forget the very real AYP improvement Mr. DeMint scoffs at.

Are we where we want to be? No, and that’s not the fault of any one person. In its own way, the effort to bring our schools up to where they need to be is as daunting as our nation’s quest to create a peaceful and democratic Iraq. In both cases, history has dealt us a nearly impossible hand. But those who cry “despair” and say we should pull out of Baghdad counsel the ruination of the United States. And those who want to substitute vouchers and other magic beans for the hard slog of real education reform just as surely endanger hope for South Carolina’s future.

Run against Inez Tenenbaum, Mr. DeMint. She’s dealt you some tough hits; deal her some back if that’s the way you want to play it. But don’t do it by denigrating what we’re trying to accomplish in our schools. The enterprise is difficult enough without that.

My irritation here has very little to do with the Senate race itself. Whether we embrace hope or despair over our public schools is a much more important matter than whether a Democrat or a Republican joins the U.S. Senate.

As for that, I still don’t know which one should be elected.

But at moments like this, I’m tempted to say, send Jim DeMint to Washington, and keep Inez Tenenbaum right here. We need at least one statewide leader who remains committed to doing what it takes to educate our kids.

Write to Mr. Warthen at bwarthen@thestate.com.