THEIR VIEWS

A lifesaving effort

When the state of South Carolina took over Allendale County Schools in 1999, good management practices were nonexistent. The day on which teachers were paid varied from month to month. New academic standards implemented by the state the previous year were still in shrink wrap, untouched. Forty teaching slots were still vacant two weeks before the first day of school. Not long before, a school board member had been accused of pulling a knife on another during a meeting.

Today, as the state returns control of the schools to the community, teachers are paid on time, twice a month, with direct deposit. The district’s checkbook is balanced. School fire alarms were upgraded, and basics such as mowing the grass are no longer ignored. In the classroom, teachers have lesson plans and strategies for employing the state’s academic standards. Interim tests prepare students and teachers for annual state testing. Teachers and principals are better-trained. ...

That is not to say that everything is solved in Allendale. Too many students drop out ... Too many teachers leave each year. ... Allendale schools are plagued with discipline problems. Academic performance is not rising fast enough to meet state or federal goals. ...

It is a mission that must neither be ignored nor starved for funds by South Carolina’s elected leaders. What the state has done in Allendale is no less than lifesaving; communities around our state must be supported in their efforts to make, sustain and accelerate such progress in their local public schools.

The (Columbia) State

Educational failure

In this high-tech era, failure to earn a high school diploma hampers a person’s economic potential. When, continuing a long-term trend, a high percentage of our state’s students fail to attain that basic standard, it hampers South Carolina’s economic potential. And when graduation-rate statistics are unreliable, that hampers effective assessment of public education’s performance.

Unfortunately, the 78 percent rate reported by the S.C. Department of Education is much higher than reality, according to research released last week by a national independent nonprofit organization. ... The Education Trust placed South Carolina’s high school graduation rate at 51 percent, less than two-thirds of the state’s official estimate. ...

The federal Department of Education should standardize the process of measuring graduation rates to provide the clearest possible picture of how many children are being ‘‘left behind.’’ And South Carolinians should understand that whether nearly half — or ‘‘only’’ a fifth — of our state’s children don’t finish high school, those non-graduates aren’t the only ones whose futures are undermined by educational failure.

The (Charleston) Post and Courier