'Minimally adequate' sets education bar too low

From the afternoon e-mail ... Retired Florence educator Tom Truitt argues that fixing the S.C. Constitution's education article is the key to high quality public schooling:

By Tom Truitt

A state's constitution is a covenant between the government and the people. Since most of us haven't read the South Carolina Constitution, we don't know what it says about education nor understand why the education clause needs to be amended. But if we want to move from the bottom of the educational rankings and have South Carolina students prepared to compete in a global economy, we need to make a change in our state constitution. Here's why.

Article XI, Section 3, of the South Carolina Constitution states:

    The General Assembly shall provide for the maintenance and support of a system of free public schools open to all children in the State and shall establish, organize and support such other public institutions of learning, as may be desirable.

Most states include qualifying phrases that establish standards for their education systems. For example, the Kentucky and Ohio constitutions contain the phrase thorough and efficient. The North Carolina Constitution guarantees an equal education for all students.

Both Florida and Virginia include the word quality to describe the kind of education they will provide to their students.

But notice the absence of any qualifier in the South Carolina statement. You won't find minimally adequate either, but that is the standard for our state's students, as determined by the State Supreme Court in 1999.

When 40, mostly poor and rural, school districts sued the state in 1993 over funding issues, the state asked that the suit be dismissed, arguing that our Constitution does not require a fair or equitable system, only a system. When Judge Thomas Cooper agreed with the state and dismissed the suit, the plaintiff school districts appealed to the South Carolina Supreme Court.

In April 1999, the state Supreme Court ruled that children in the state have the right to the
opportunity for a minimally adequate education.

The Supreme Court sent the case back to the lower court for trial. Judge Cooper, who had earlier dismissed the case, then tried the case on whether the state was meeting its obligation to provide the opportunity for a minimally adequate education.

During the trial, the state attorney defined minimally adequate as the least that will do. In other words, the policy of the state of South Carolina is to do as little as it can get by with when it comes to educating its children.

I disagree. A minimally adequate education is not good enough for our children and grandchildren. If the generation of young people going through our state's public school system is to be successful, they require a high quality education.

Senator John Matthews introduced legislation to amend the education clause to call for a
high quality education that would allow each child to reach his or her highest potential. For the people to be able to vote on this amendment, the General Assembly has to vote by a 2/3 majority to place the amendment on the ballot in 2010.

Supporters of this amendment have organized a petition drive campaign to request the General Assembly to allow the people to vote on this amendment to the education clause of the State Constitution. This petition drive has a goal of 1 million signatures. Persons wishing to sign the petition to amend the State Constitution can go to www.GoodbyeMinimallyAdequate.com and sign the petition, or they can download a hard copy, sign it, and get other to sign it and mail it in to the address provided.

While it's difficult to say precisely what changes would be effected by amending the Constitution, the General Assembly could revise the current funding system for education to ensure the resources needed for a quality education, or fund programs to ensure that all students have high quality teachers. The General Assembly might revise the education budget schedule to one that would allow school districts to plan more effectively. A high quality statement in the Constitution could have implications for curriculum and testing and a variety of other issues.

A constitutional amendment would provide a new standard or yardstick for measuring the effectiveness of our schools and set a high goal for the state. History demonstrates that high goals lead to high achievement.

The process of amending the constitution also has value for selecting leaders for our state. If we, as citizens, want higher standards for education incorporated into our Constitution, we can ask each candidate for state office where he or she stands on amending the constitution and then vote according to their answers.

We should not blame the General Assembly or the governor for the shortcomings of our public school system. Our leaders ultimately act based on what they believe the people want. For too many years, South Carolinians have been tolerated minimally adequate education. We can change that to high quality if we have the will.

Tom Truitt is a retired superintendent of Florence School District One.

Comments?

Comments

[Bret]

I'm certainly not one to advocate throwing money at every problem in the hopes that it will just go away, but, in the case of education, money is exactly the problem.

In this state, the average starting salary for a teacher is less than $30,000 a year. In fact, the average salary for all educators in our state is just a little over $40,000. I constantly hear people wax philosophical in all the reasons that teachers deserve higher pay, but I have seen very little done to actually address this situation.

Why can't we recruit the brightest college students into the field of education? Why is the turnover rate for teachers in their first five years so alarmingly high? Some would argue that disrespectful students, overbearing parents, and disinterested administrators are the root of the problem. I disagree. Raise teacher salaries across the board. Ensure that there is actually competition amongst those who want to enter this profession. I can almost promise that the aforementioned problems will be resolved, including the quality of education that all students receive.

[Denney Clements]

Agree on more money for teachers, Brett, though Jim Rex, the state supt. of education, has had some success at persuading legislators to beef up teachers salaries. The looming problem is that finding the money to pay higher teachers salaries could be a future problem because of -- you guessed it -- property tax reform. The 2006 law stripped school boards of their property taxes for operations (salaries) and the sixth sales-tax penny does not generate nearly enough revenue to replace the local revenue from property taxes. Legislators are now responsible for this problem, but show unwillingness to designate the revenue sources needed to meet future needs.

But it also needs to be noted that ending the minimally adequate philosophy does not necessarily require more money. What's really needed is a razor-sharp focus on quality from bottom (teachers, principals) through the middle (local school boards) to the top (S.C. DOE, the legislature and especially the governor). Right now, despite the report-card system, which has worker wonders on the public school system the past 10 years, there's this laxness of attitude that high-qual schooling doesn't really matter: Why should it, when we have plenty of low-wage jobs to fill here on the Strand and across the state? If we really want to build a knowledge economy, and we should make top to bottom excellence our overriding goal.

dc

[DanielC]

DC,

How do we get out education system out of the hands of the Federal Government?

How do we pay for this stuff without property tax increases, well I've pointed to my "pet taxation product" time and time again on this forum. $30 million could go a long way.

The children not corporations are our future. We must allow them to have the best education our tax dollars can buy, and allow our local communities (County) to oversee this education not some folks in Washington, DC.

My .02,
DanielC

[Patrick Hill]

The 800-pound gorilla is the resources with wich teachers deal. Not the money, not the salary, and not any other extraneous factors influence the outcome in the form of academic accomplisment.

The major tainted input is the receptacle of pop culture, the observation of parents, the vakues parents inculcated into children.

When a 12-year old child rapes an 11-year old - there is something wrong AT HOME.

HOME IS WHERE A TEACHER EARNS HER SALARY. Which means that if the right students wind up in her class - she gets an award. But a teacher is not going to do the social-service work to insure she/he has teachable students.

Would a teacher respond?

[Denney Clements]

Patrick: That's a good point; context is everything, and even the best teachers have trouble motivating kids who are perpetually distracted. But I don't see that as a good reason not to nuture teachers with the salaries AND resources they deserve.

dc

[Denney Clements]

Daniel: I totally agree with you. For assuming about 7 percent of the cost of educating the typical U.S. kid, the feds have way too much control over public education. No Child Left Behind effectively deems good schools to be deficient as a result of ridiculously demanding performance targets (100 percent of special ed kids must show improvement?!) and pretending that state school accountability systems are equal in value when they're not. This is what happens when George W. Bush and Ted Kennedy cooperate to pass legislation.

Before No Child, the federal role in schools was largely confined to helping kids learn to read and a pittance in extra aid for kids with disabilities. The average level of assistance was 4 percent of the total cost of schooling. For the extra No Child money, the feds basically took over the whole enterprise because its accountability system drives everything. Ridiculous and counterproductive.

dc

[Patrick Hill]

The resources teachers deserve (without being challenged) is kids that want to learn. Not kids that spent the entire evening watching the latest dvd the "fat a--- welfare collecting, child support rec............. woman wants to watch.

And she is also waiting for the national health insurance that will help her, because of sitting on her fat a...... watching Oprah...........

If she was educated herself, she would question words, phrases, colloqials, facts, geo........