New School



Nobody is looking at the current state of education and saying to themselves, “This is great. Let’s keep everything just like it is.” For that reason, our Sunday editorial celebrates the innovation going on in our area:

It is perhaps the most important duty of our state to give South Carolina’s children the preparation they need to be successful contributors to our society. Not only for their sake, but for ours.

Our children are our future work force, our future business owners, our future legislators, and even our future governors. The quality we give them now is the quality they will return back to South Carolina, the quality that will define our state long after we’re gone.

– Gov. Nikki Haley in her State of the State address

There’s a school in Georgetown County where the kids teach themselves, deciding when to move from one subject to another.

It sounds like a strange experiment, or something out of a child’s dream, but it is actually part of a fairly well-established tradition known as the Montessori method. Following the innovations of an Italian educator over a century ago, the Montessori School of Pawleys Island emphasizes self-discipline and self-direction as a crucial element of a child’s education, encouraging students to learn how to learn at their own pace.

Studies have shown that, in schools where the method is properly applied under strong teachers, Montessori students actually outperform their peers, even for years after they leave the program. The school in Pawleys Island, however, comes with a $6,000-per-year price tag, a barrier to entry for many of the students who could most benefit that its founders are now hoping to change.

Specifically, the school is applying to convert from a private school to a charter within the Georgetown County School District. If approved by the Board of Education, the school would then receive state funding per pupil equal to other public schools, and it would become free, just like a traditional public school. Unlike a traditional school, the campus could still participate in the charter method, and it would be governed by a separate public school board solely responsible for that school.

The board in Georgetown is understandably wary of ceding so much control to an external group and certainly should do its due diligence into the Montessori school’s finances, operations and performance before committing to it. But their goal should be finding a way to allow the charter to open, because this is precisely the kind of experimentation that our public schools need in the long run.

Let’s be clear: These are experiments, and they do not always succeed.

In South Carolina, it appears, charter schools as a whole are underperforming. The only charter in Horry County that has been open long enough to rate, Bridgewater Academy, was rated “average” last year, below 60 percent of the county’s traditional schools. Of the state’s traditional public high schools, about 20 percent are performing at “below average” standards, while four of the six charter high schools are rated “below average.”

In an illustration of the strange realities of these experiments, however, the other two charter high schools in the state are rated “excellent.” In practice, these schools are heavily dependent on their local leadership.

Our education policy ought to set a goal of encouraging this innovation, rewarding and facilitating it where it succeeds and halting it where it fails. Charters ought to be awarded and renewed in varying lengths, depending on a school’s performance. They are easy to support, because they do not take money out of the public school system – they expand the public school system into a 21st century shape.

Perhaps nothing Gov. Nikki Haley could have said in her State of the State address last week has more potential to broaden her appeal among the political moderates who remain skeptical of her than the statement we quote at the beginning of the piece. Haley has long professed herself a champion of innovation in schools, and we believe the charter movement is an ideal place for her to start. Let’s all work together to empower these schools to launch and all agree to hold them as accountable as we do the rest of the school system.

 

There’s a school in Georgetown County where the kids teach themselves, deciding when to move from one subject to another.

It sounds like a strange experiment, or something out of a child’s dream, but it is actually part of a fairly well-established tradition known as the Montessori method. Following the innovations of an Italian educator over a century ago, the Montessori School of Pawleys Island emphasizes self-discipline and self-direction as a crucial element of a child’s education, encouraging students to learn how to learn at their own pace.

Studies have shown that, in schools where the method is properly applied under strong teachers, Montessori students actually outperform their peers, even for years after they leave the program. The school in Pawleys Island, however, comes with a $6,000-per-year price tag, a barrier to entry for many of the students who could most benefit that its founders are now hoping to change.

Specifically, the school is applying to convert from a private school to a charter within the Georgetown County School District. If approved by the Board of Education, the school would then receive state funding per pupil equal to other public schools, and it would become free, just like a traditional public school. Unlike a traditional school, the campus could still participate in the charter method, and it would be governed by a separate public school board solely responsible for that school.

The board in Georgetown is understandably wary of ceding so much control to an external group and certainly should do its due diligence into the Montessori school’s finances, operations and performance before committing to it. But their goal should be finding a way to allow the charter to open, because this is precisely the kind of experimentation that our public schools need in the long run.

Let’s be clear: These are experiments, and they do not always succeed.

In South Carolina, it appears, charter schools as a whole are underperforming. The only charter in Horry County that has been open long enough to rate, Bridgewater Academy, was rated “average” last year, below 60 percent of the county’s traditional schools. Of the state’s traditional public high schools, about 20 percent are performing at “below average” standards, while four of the six charter high schools are rated “below average.”

In an illustration of the strange realities of these experiments, however, the other two charter high schools in the state are rated “excellent.” In practice, these schools are heavily dependent on their local leadership.

Our education policy ought to set a goal of encouraging this innovation, rewarding and facilitating it where it succeeds and halting it where it fails. Charters ought to be awarded and renewed in varying lengths, depending on a school’s performance. They are easy to support, because they do not take money out of the public school system – they expand the public school system into a 21st century shape.

Perhaps nothing Gov. Nikki Haley could have said in her State of the State address last week has more potential to broaden her appeal among the political moderates who remain skeptical of her than the statement we quote at the beginning of the piece. Haley has long professed herself a champion of innovation in schools, and we believe the charter movement is an ideal place for her to start. Let’s all work together to empower these schools to launch and all agree to hold them as accountable as we do the rest of the school system.