Carolina Politics Online

State schools Superintendent Jim Rex sent an e-mail to employees explaining the mandatory furloughs, which represent a $569,000 savings.

All agency employees must take the unpaid days off before the fiscal year ends June 30. The furlough does not apply to teachers or other school district workers.

The move should save between 13 and 15 jobs, Rex said.

The Greenville News

Why not just elminate the jobs and see the savings every year?  The South Carolina education system doesn’t exist to provide employment for people; it’s there to “educate” our children.  The education complex is too over loaded with administrators and bureaucrats.

COLUMBIA — Lawmakers should allow four-day school weeks, limited standardized testing and flexibility for school systems to shift state funding as a way to deal with more than $200 million in anticipated budget cuts for education, state Education Superintendent Jim Rex said Tuesday.

Rex’s suggestions came as education officials prepared for the Legislature’s decision next week on how to cut the state’s budget by 7 percent, largely as a result of reduced revenue projections by state economic advisers.

The Greenville News

Yet through all of this, still no talk of eliminating positions of educative bureaucrat administrators and pie in the sky programs that have not shown to be effective in enhancing education nor their worth in tax dollars spent.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina Education Superintendent Jim Rex wants the Legislature to give local school districts flexibility to deal with budget cuts on their own, including adopting four-day school schedules.

Rex is planning to describe what’s needed in a news conference Tuesday afternoon after days of meeting with district officials. Schools will shoulder the biggest chunk of budget cuts the Legislature is expected to debate in a budget-trimming expected as early as next week.

WACH

This is an interesting proposal, particularly the four day school week, although I’m not sure how many parents are going to be as impressed with it when they are working five.  What is to be done with junior on the fifth day?  Frankly, I think American children spend far too much time in school.  We obviously have nothing to show for it considering how awful public education is in the U.S.  In Finland, for example, children don’t start school until age 7.  They get very little homework and yet they consistently score at the top of all nations in literacy, math, and science.  The OECD has ranked Finland number one in the world in quality of education.

As I’ve said before, contrary to what you’ll hear the NEA scream and other educational bureaucrats, anybody who takes the time to actually become informed on education in this country is well aware that our schools are OVER funded.  Yes, that’s right.  I said over funded.  The U.S spends more on education than any other nation in the world and we rank no where near the top of the list of industrial nations in terms of educational quality.  According to the Voice for School Choice, only 44 cents of every dollar spent on schools in South Carolina actually reach the classroom.  The rest is on adminstrative expenses.

If given the power, it will be interesting to see how the individual districts respond.

H/T to The Voice for School Choice

After a year of poor SAT scores and bottom-line PACT proficiency, news of an across-the-board drop in the number of schools making “Adequate Yearly Progress” is just bad icing on an already inedible cake.

Parents have already had to hear that even the best performing school districts in South Carolina are still hundreds of points below public schools in North Carolina. Now, figures from the State Department of Education show that only 1 out of every 5 schools in South Carolina met goals for “Adequate Yearly Progress.”

Of all the public schools in South Carolina, only a pitiful 18% managed to meet federally-defined Adequate Yearly Progress Goals for 2008. That breaks down to 715 of the state’s 875 elementary and middle schools failing to meet their goals! Of the 200 high schools in the state, 165 failed to meet their AYP goals.

So here is what I want to know.  How many parents will still vote to reelect their school boards in these failing districts, which is most of the state?  What will the incumbent retention rate be?  How many voters will support Jim Rex in his reelection bid or in what ever further political ambitions he has?  How many voters will actually start paying attention to what these people running for these offices are saying what the problem is and what they will do to fix it and how many voters will actually take the time to do the research to know whether or not these people are correct their diagnoses or totally clueless?

I’ve said it before and I am going to keep saying it again.  The only reason the South Carolina school system is as appealing as mold in dirty gym shoes is because of the voters!  You elect these people to run these school systems and you’re getting exactly what you have elected.  Stop being so damn lazy and stand up and fight for your childrens’ futures!

That’s what we’re doing.  The money certainly isn’t being invested in turning out a quality product.  The Voice for School Choice released some stats today showing that South Carolina has one of the highest drop out rates in the country and some of the lowest test scores, all while increasing spending to over $11,400 per student.  You could send each kid to a private school in a limousine each day for that amount of money.  It’s no secret to me that we don’t get the bang for our buck when it comes to public education in the U.S.  I’ve been following that for years.  The Europeans spend slightly more than half of what we do and they are far better educated, but here in South Carolina we’re at the bottom of the barrel even for the barrel.

Heck of a job you’re doing there, Jim Rex!  Still going to run for governor?

If Bauer sticks to the same less government, less spending orthodoxy as Sanford then I’ll happily get behind him.  With the addiction the State Assembly has to tax dollars and pork, someone has to be there to smack them down.  I can’t imagine what it will be like without Sanford at the helm.

Jim Rex (D) has also stated that he will make a decision around this time of next year.

South Carolinians for Responsible Government have called out State Superintendent Jim Rex on his claim that schools in low income areas are underfunded.  They have provided plenty of data showing that this simply is not the case.  This actually isn’t news to me.  I have been aware of this for many years, but most people would be surprised to find out that in many instances schools districts in the lowest income areas have the highest per pupil cost.

Advocates of higher school spending, mainly Democrats, RINOs, and teachers unions are forever claiming that the public schools are under performing in this country because they are under funded, but I have debunked that many times myself.  The United States of America spends the most money per child on public education than any other country in the world and we have the dumbest kids of all industrialized nations.  When I used to live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania the Pittsburgh Public School District had some of the highest spending per child in the state and yet had near a 1/3 drop out rate.  I also had a conversation with a State Representative there some years back who told me the state did a study that showed there was absolutely no correlation with the amount of funding a school received and its overall performance.  Some wealthy districts did poorly and some poor district did very well.

So what is the reasoning for so many poor neighborhoods having the highest school spending?  That’s actually an easy answer and while I generally prefer to keep my opinions nonpartisan, I am breaking my own rule on this one.  Your poorest neighborhoods are usually in your inner cities and urban areas.  These are neighborhoods where Democrats are overwhelmingly elected and control the government.  The Democrats are also the ones backed by the teachers unions and they pretty much do their bidding.  The school boards and the unions want more money, they give it to them.  It’s no secret that the Democratic Party loves taxes.  They keep raising the taxes more and more to give more money to the schools and it of course makes no difference, but that doesn’t matter.  They just want the money.

Now being the State Superintendent one would think that Jim Rex is aware of the figures that SCRG have posted on their Web site.  So the ultimate question is, why is Mr. Rex lying to the people of South Carolina?

The bill would eliminate the state’s Palmetto Achievement Challenge Test and replace it with a test that would give teachers more timely feedback, require a review of the state’s accountability system every five years and restructure the annual school report cards so they are shorter.

Some lawmakers say state law doesn’t need to be changed for ideas in the bill to become a reality. Sen. Kevin Bryant, R-Anderson, circulated a letter Thursday that said state law gives Rex authority to develop the state’s assessment program.

The Post and Courier

Spending resources on developing another version of the aptitude test is just a waste of time.  The only thing that is going to improve the failure we call public education is competition and allowing teacher to actually teach instead of teaching students to pass a test.  It’s amazing to me how awful the education system is in this country and the educative establishment across the nation just keeps modifying the same failing approaches.

The state schools chief says he plans to push another public school choice program in the Legislature next year, even though his efforts were defeated last year.

“I do think this is an idea whose time has come,” said State Education Superintendent Jim Rex. “We have a lot of parents and children who deserve and need more choices in public schools now.”

Last year’s effort faced several critics, including Gov. Mark Sanford, who wanted to include private schools in the choices. Rex’s plan was to allow parents to send their kids to any school, regardless of district.

The Beaufort Gazette

This is a no-brainer. Competition breeds quality. Why shouldn’t parents be allowed to choose where to send their kids? Does the government tell you where you have to go to college? Of course not. The state should attach the funding to the student, rather than the school district and the funds follow the student to whichever school he goes to.