The Other Brooks Brothers and Their Sister, Too. — “Suddenly-relevant”

I’ve always found it sad that our schools are required to strive to achieve Adequate Yearly Progress or AYP. After all, “adequate” isn’t anything to brag about – unless it’s my golf game which still hasn’t gotten there.

At work, when it’s time for the annual review, the boss isn’t going to reward with a raise and/or promotion for adequate work.

In sports, as the coach makes lineup decisions, he or she isn’t going to put those with adequate skills as starters.

When it comes to hiring, as the pool of applicants grows, it’s pretty certain that those with adequate credentials/skills won’t get the job above those prepared to compete.

Why is it that “adequate” progress is what we strive for in our schools, then? What’s worse is having to ask why we can’t even seem to achieve that adequate progress we work so hard to attain.

For the record, this is not a post in support of vouchers. Frankly, I don’t support vouchers.

At the same time, I will say that something isn’t working. I’m not blaming the teachers. Their hands are often tied, and they’re doing the best with what they have. Unfortunately, what they have isn’t much.

I blame the system. I blame elected officials at several levels who are convinced that money is the ultimate answer and refuse to expand the debate further.

They haven’t wanted to talk about the outlandish levels of administration. They haven’t wanted to talk about squandered finances resulting from unnecessary redundancies and waste.

They’ve been convinced that if they throw enough money in this pit it will eventually fill up.

Excluding local bond revenues, South Carolina’s 2009 educational budget has plans for $11,480 ($4,867 in state funds, $1,097 in federal funds, and $5,516 in local funds) per pupil. That’s $200 more per pupil than Georgia and $2,000 more than North Carolina. For what are deemed our state’s “worst” schools, they will receive as much as $20,000 in per pupil funding.

That means that excluding local bond revenues, total K-12 appropriations for the upcoming school year in South Carolina will be more than $7.9 billion.

The numbers are deceiving, though. The unfortunate reality is that only 44 cents of each “education” dollar ever reaches the classroom. Out of each dollar, 44 cents pay for things like classroom materials (at least the ones that teachers aren’t forced to pay for out of their own pockets), books and teacher salaries. That means 56 cents of every dollar never reaches a classroom because that’s reserved for “non-instructional” expenditures like administration and bureaucracy.

It’s easy to see that the problem really isn’t that there isn’t enough money like some want us to believe. The problem is the system we created, fostered, and continue to support.

I know I wrote about this back in January, but the debate rages on, and these updated numbers illustrate even more than before how broken the system really is.

All of this explains why I was so encouraged to read the latest proposal (highlighted yesterday by The Palmetto Scoop and echoed by FITSNews) from Superintendent of Education Jim Rex and his friends.

Yea for us! A constitutional amendment adding the line “that will provide a high quality education, allowing each student to reach his highest potential” makes perfect sense.

Why didn’t we think of that before? It’s brilliant.

Revamping the educational system to foster real education for our children seems so silly now.

Putting money in the classrooms instead of breeding a bigger bureaucracy now seems downright ludicrous.

Of course. The answer is a constitutional amendment with no enabling legislation to spell out how this new public school system would operate to provide this high quality education and how we would pay for it.

A new line in South Carolina’s constitution will make us feel good, so the superintendent’s plan has to work. Right?

Thank you, Superintendent Rex. You’ve done it, old bean.

When you went on your name-calling tirade against someone who disagreed at the end of January, who knew it would only take you three months to single-handedly move South Carolina from 49th to 1st and prove all of your detractors wrong?

I have egg on my face now.

– Wilson Charles