Goodbye Minimally Adequate: Support the Constitutional Amendment for a High Quality Education in South Carolina

Gerogetown Times
1/6/2009

South Carolina will continue to be at the bottom of the national rankings in test scores and graduation rates unless it discards the language -- and the attitude -- from 1895 that the state's children only need a "minimally adequate" education.

That wording comes from the Jim Crow era when poor -- mostly black -- children could only aspire to a job in a cotton mill if they could escape the tobacco farm. Reasoning -- and it was correct -- suggested that a better educated workforce would leave the state for better opportunity. A "minimally adequate" education provided employees willing to work for less.

Education and employment opportunity must rise together.

The General Assembly has done much to make sure that South Carolina schools are more than "minimally adequate" and nobody wants the state's schools to be considered among the worst in the nation. The question that arises from the proposal to vote on a constitutional referendum will be: Does constitutional language have any bearing on the quality of public education?

The resolution aims to amend the state constitution "to provide that the General Assembly shall provide for the maintenance and support of a system of free public schools and shall establish, organize, and support public institutions of learning that will provide a high-quality education, allowing each student to reach his potential."

If only it was that easy.

Without a commitment to provide a better education as well as a plan to provide a better life for the state's residents through jobs, the language of the constitution betrays state citizens. Words matter. Changing the constitution's language from minimum to high quality will probably be approved if fears of dramatically rising school costs can be allayed by supporters. But the hard work will only be starting.

Legislators, the education bureaucracy and local school boards would be legally accountable for defining a "high quality" education and providing educators with the resources to deliver it. The end of minimal adequacy will create a no-excuses environment focused on achievement.

One in four South Carolina children live in households where incomes average just over $20,000 a year. Not only does the state need to expand early childhood initiatives to help guarantee that all students begin school ready to learn, but, as State Superintendent Jim Rex says, we also must fix South Carolina's unfair, unbalanced, inadequate and virtually incomprehensible system of funding public schools. It's not just about doing the right thing; it's about securing our state's economic future.

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