SC EOC: Education Progress Stagnant, Change Needed

A new report released Monday by South Carolina's Education Oversight Committee says the state's schools are not making significant, consistent progress in most areas, and that the state needs "a new sense of urgency, a wake-up call, to focus on education and take action."

The EOC is an independent, non-partisan group of 18 educators, business leaders and elected officials that was created to hold the state accountable for building the school system the state needs to be competitive. In August 2009, it established a set of goals for the state's schools, the "2020 Vision".

"By 2020, all students will graduate with the knowledge and skills necessary to compete successfully in the global economy, participate in a democratic society and contribute positively as members of families and communities," reads the vision statement.

The committee adopted specific ways to measure those goals, with intermediate steps along the way in 2011, 2014 and 2017. Monday's report is on the state's progress and how schools did on the 2011 goals.

The EOC looked at reading proficiency, high school graduation, workforce readiness and eliminating at-risk schools.

For reading proficiency, the EOC looked at grades 4 and 8. The 2020 Vision goal is to have 95 percent of students scoring basic and above on state and national tests. But the 2011 target for 4th grade students was only 68 percent scoring basic and above on the national test (NAEP-National Assessment of Educational Progress.) Only 61 percent did, though.

8th grade students did better on the national test. The 2011 goal was 73.8 percent and 72 percent scored basic and above.

Education and business leaders agree that improving reading proficiency is the first way to improve our schools, since everything else depends on reading. "It's going to take all parents to ensure that their children are reading, reading, reading. It's going to take more quality classroom teachers," says Barbara Hairfield, Vice-Chair of the EOC and a curriculum specialist in the Charleston County School District.

The state also fell short of its goal for on-time graduation. The 2020 goal is that 88.3 percent of students will graduate on time. The 2011 target was a rate of 76.1 percent, but only 73.6 percent actually graduated on time.

On workforce readiness, the 2020 goal is for 85 percent of high school graduates to qualify for postsecondary education or employment, but in 2011, only 65.9 percent of students enrolled in two- or four-year colleges.

Jim Reynolds, chairman of the state Chamber of Commerce, says a lack of qualified workers can have an impact on the state's ability to attract jobs. "The biggest issue for companies coming to South Carolina is confidence that we will continue to produce a steady pipeline of highly-qualified workforce," he says.

"When we're talking to the BMWs and the Boeings about a 20-year commitment to this state and what your workforce is going to look like ten years from now, we can't do it with 38 percent of our fourth-graders reading below grade level. We need to embrace transformational change in our K-12 system," he says.

So what does transformational change look like?

Rep. Kenny Bingham, R-Cayce, chairs the K-12 subcommittee of the state House Ways and Means Committee, which writes the state budget. He says, "If you had all the money in the world and you put it there and that's all you did, the problem will still exist. What you have to do is change attitude. You have to change culture. You have to make those students want to learn."

He says one way to do that is to offer more public school choice and magnet programs, which gets parents more involved since they choose which schools their children will attend. And it gets the children more interested because magnet programs offer different styles of learning, like single-gender classes, hands-on learning, a math and science focus, arts programs, and technology-driven learning.

"I can show you and cite specific examples where schools that were not performing well, once we empowered the parents and the teachers to change the educational environment to create a new magnet program in that school, that school soared. That school took off, because now you have people that are engaged," he says.

While he says money is not the answer to solving all of the state's education problems, he says the state does need to increase its per-pupil spending, which was cut during the last few years of the down economy. He says he will recommend that in his role as chairman of the K-12 subcommittee.

The EOC will provide more updates on the state's progress toward the 2020 goals after looking at the data for 2014 and 2017.