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With Friday night’s Miss Teen S.C. meltdown still lighting up web browsers and television sets across the country – just the latest example of South Carolina’s educational train wreck to gain national attention – the Myrtle Beach Sun News reports that South Carolina’s SAT scores have fallen.
The class of 2007 had a combined average score of 984, down one point from last year.
But thankfully we held our 49th place status overall, edging out Maine and the District of Columbia. The reason Maine’s average, 931, was so low however, was that 100 percent of their graduating seniors took the test. South Carolina recorded only 62 percent participation.
Oh well… a win’s a win. And this is definitely a win. Unlike nearly every other educational statistic including graduation rates, we aren’t dead last.
If the recent wave of nationally embarrassing education news continues to make South Carolina’s public schools the laughing stock of the rest of the country, we might pick up even more wins. Forty-ninth place today, tomorrow the moon. Wherever that is.
And someday, we might even begin to solve the problem and U.S. Americans from South Carolina can use their education to help the Iraq and the Asians and everywhere like such as. Here’s to hoping…
Not suprising with the state department of education doing little more than moving the deck chairs around on the “Titanic” MOdels exist elsewhere in the country that work even in the poorrest of districts. Some investigation of these models might be in order, however vested interests in the educational boondoggle make thie unlikely. The legislature could hire some outside consultants but that is unlikely. Dr. Myles Friedman at USC had the solutions for many years, but its a bit late to call on him. The legislature will continue to throw good money after bad and Gresham’s law will continue to apply in education as well as monetary policy.
If SC would just spend more money on government schools, our students would do much better. $10,000 per child isn’t enough. $20,000 would be a little better, but what we need is an unrestricted budget to do the job right. We especially need more money to pay our government school lobbyists, because without them, the GOOD OLE BOYS down at the state house might start listening to those annoying parents, school choice advocates, and Sanford!
The government school system is designed to be a failure. Those in government want to continue producing ignorant, gullible voters who will forever be dependent upon our illuminated elitist leaders.
The only way to correct the educational problem is to allow parents to decide where the $11,000+ per student spent by the state is spent. That means enabling all parents to decide whether to send their children to public or private schools. When faced with competition, government schools will be forced to either improve or close.
Just a thought. These are the SAT results from SC’s public schools and their rating nationwide.
Are there similar stats for the state’s private schools and home-schooled children and how they stack
up against other states? Anybody know?
Miss Teen South Carolina’s embarrassing TV moment had nothing to do with the quality of education in our state, but the headline “If only it WAS just a map problem” is certainly indicative (pardon the pun, if the editor has the learning to understand it) of an educational failing, ironically so. What “shcool” taught the editor subjunctive?
Ironically so… perhaps it was even planned that way? Maybe with the intent to be subtly, umm, humorous?
Duh- duh-duh!
Well, OK, that possibility did cross my mind, and pardon me for underestimating the level of expertise to expect here. It was, after all, my first visit. And, anyway, everywhere else like such as from South Carolina never led me to expect grammatical subtlety.