May we briefly interrupt the public-school bashing by Gov. Mark Sanford and supporters of his flawed "Put Parents in Charge Act"?

In some parts of the state, the airwaves, billboards and telephone banks are filled with mean-spirited rantings of public school-bashers. The glass is completely empty for this group urging support for an unaccountable drain of hundreds of millions of dollars from the state's beleaguered general fund to encourage an exodus from public schools.

We have no problem with private schools, but public money should go to public schools.

Public schools should not be the whipping boy of a governor. It is sad to see Sanford fall in with the out-of-state ideologues who are spending large amounts of money so this state can be a testing ground for their failed philosophy.

The linchpin of their argument is that the public schools are hopeless. They are wrong.

South Carolina schools are playing catch-up for many reasons -- in a nutshell, generations of neglect. But the legislature's landmark 1998 Education Accountability Act changed that. The facts are plain. The schools have a long way to go, but they are improving. The weaknesses can no longer be hidden. But neither can the strengths.

Here are some facts, taken verbatim from the State Department of Education, that the public needs to know:

Students have made significant improvements in statewide PACT testing, with gains across all grade levels, subjects and demographic groups.

The number of schools rated "Unsatisfactory" on state-mandated school report cards has decreased from 73 four years ago to only 25 today.

South Carolina high school seniors have improved their average SAT score by 32 points in the past five years, the largest gain in the country and three times the national increase.

South Carolina has the nation's third-best improvement rate in mathematics, and the fourth-best improvement in reading, on federal NAEP tests required by No Child Left Behind.

South Carolina is one of only three states in the nation that has increased high school seniors' scores on the ACT college entrance exam over the past five years despite doubling the number of students who took the exam.

For the fourth consecutive year, South Carolina students are scoring above the national average in reading, language and math on TerraNova, a nationally standardized test.

South Carolina eighth-graders meet or exceed the international average in the Third International Math and Science Study, which compares student test scores in 38 nations.

The Princeton Review ranked South Carolina's testing system as No. 11 in the nation.

Four independent research studies, including work by the Princeton Review and the Northwest Evaluation Association, have confirmed that South Carolina's standards for student academic proficiency are among the nation's most rigorous.