WILSON URGES HOUSE ED TO FULLY FUND SCHOOLS IN '04 SESSION
The SCEA Vice President Joyce R. Wilson urged members of a House Education Committee subgroup to "fully fund the reforms you've mandated already, and don't adopt any more statewide programs until we've had time to weigh the benefits of the ones that you will fully fund."
Wilson spoke this afternoon to the House K-12 Subcommittee chaired by Rep. Bob Walker of Spartanburg. Walker invited The SCEA and representatives of several other organizations and agencies to respond to a series of five questions related to education reform.
Pointedly, one of the questions asked respondents to identify what support, "other than money, is needed to strengthen the system".
Asked what roadblocks might be removed by the legislature in efforts to narrow the achievement gap between students, Wilson told the group, "In my opinion, the biggest roadblock that prevents us from moving all of South Carolina's children to proficient status is this notion that some part of their education can be delivered to them for free."
"What has South Carolina gotten for free lately from the medical profession, or the legal profession? How many buildings have been built at our major universities for free in the past ten years?" she asked.
Wilson cited an example offered two weeks ago by Larry Wilson, a member of the Education Oversight Commission. Mr. Wilson told EOC members that when asking questions about education funding, you must first decide what sort of education you want to provide.
"He was correct in pointing out that at the state's two Governor's Schools, all the children score at an advanced level, and at many of the state's private academies, most of the children score at a proficient level. But the state funds more than $20,000 per student at the two Governor's Schools, and tuition to private academies is often more than $15,000 per student per year. That's a lot more than the $1,777 that was appropriated for the rest of our children in this year's budget," she explained.
Most but not all speakers adhered to the questions' premise. Superintendent Inez Tenenbaum reminded committee members that in past years, "if the Board of Economic Advisors decided you needed that amount of money for the base student cost, the General Assembly moved heaven and earth to see that you had it. But we've moved away from that."
Tenenbaum advised the committee that, as one example, the state Department of Education included a $2 million request for data collection and analysis in the 2003-04 budget, but that request went unfunded. As a result, the department lacks the data and cannot perform necessary analysis to aid student achievement.
She added that among the department's legislative requests for the 2004 session will be maintenance of early childhood development programs, expansion of reading initiatives in middle grades, and continuation of state-funded application fees for national board certification (NBC) candidates.
Walker balked at continuing to fund the application fees for NBC candidates. "We've gotten ourselves into a position where we have to be cautious," he said. "My goal last year was to get that out."
While he said he would not support "reneging" on the contractual stipends paid to those already certified, Walker was not convinced that the certification process "gives us a better teacher".
Superintendent Jim Ray of Spartanburg District 3, one of four superintendents speaking for the S.C. Association of School Administrators, offered a list of aggressive initiatives designed to improve student achievement. Ray cited compulsory parenting training for the parents of high-risk three- and four-years olds, and subpoena power to compel parent involvement for students with discipline problems, as goals. He also urged "testing that improves teaching -- meaning diagnostic information that is given to teachers in a timely fashion".
Ray encouraged the committee to also support a renewed focus on reducing class size and to advocate for "a licensure and compensation package to attract and retain highly-qualified teachers".
Dennis Drew, who recently succeeded former Rep. Rita Allison as Governor Mark Sanford's education advisor, focused his remarks on early childhood development investment but suggested that the legislature should eliminate the First Steps program supported by Sanford's predecessor. Funding now used by First Steps could be used to provide "opportunity scholarships" -- a popular euphemism for vouchers -- to parents of pre-schoolers.
"Any good pre-K school out there would not have a problem with this revised approach," Drew said.
He repeated Sanford's calls for "school choice", understood to include vouchers for private and parochial schools, and tax credits for donations to state voucher funds.
Testimony was concluded in the afternoon session by Chuck Saylors, president of the South Carolina Parents and Teacher Association (PTA). Avoiding a repetition of many of the previous speakers' comments, Saylors strongly urged the committee to support additional parent involvement in schools.
The state PTA has recently begun a "5 cents makes sense" campaign to propose that federal funding for public K-12 schools be increased from 2.9 percent of the federal budget to five percent, Saylors said.
WILSON'S REMARKS TO THE HOUSE K-12 ED SUBCOMMITTEE
Following are the remarks offered by The SCEA Vice President Joyce R. Wilson to the subcommittee today:
Good afternoon. I'm Joyce R. Wilson, vice president of The South Carolina Education Association, and I teach science and mathematics to fifth-graders at West Pelzer Elementary School in Anderson District 1.
We at The SCEA appreciate your invitation to speak to the important questions you have outlined. I'll move quickly through our responses to those questions because I'd like to have conversation with you in a question-and-answer structure.
You have asked us, "What are the current strengths in the public education system?"
The strengths of the present system of public education in South Carolina are many. First among them is the commitment, the expertise, the quality of our educator workforce. Last December, Education Week magazine gave South Carolina educators its highest rating for teacher quality in the nation.
I cannot overstate that commitment. You well know that public schools took a hit last year -- mid-year cuts totaling more than $162 million -- and those cuts were not restored in the 2003-04 budget. The real effect of those cuts is that we now have fewer educators serving more students, while those students have fewer program resources available to them. Yet, as South Carolina has added greater burden to our teaching workforce, I have witnessed their commitment in action, and that commitment hasn't weakened.
That does not mean that they approve of or appreciate their treatment by the state; it means they take seriously the obligation that all of us share to educate our children.
I believe the commitment of the current leadership in the Department of Education is a great strength. They have suffered budget cuts alongside every other state agency, which means that they, too, are providing more services with fewer personnel.
In some areas of the state, the commitment of local elected leaders adds strength to the school system. For example, in Florence last spring, voters at the local level chose to fund the needs of their public schools at a higher rate when that commitment at the state level faltered. Where there are local elected leaders, parents and voters who are committed to providing more than the barest minimum in education, our education system is strong.
Finally, our students try so hard, and that is a strength. I witness -- and my colleagues witness -- intrinsic motivation in our children daily. A great many of them want so badly to learn, because they hear from us and from their parents or grandparents that learning is the key to success in our nation, whether they can find that success here in their home state or elsewhere.
You asked us, "What support, other than money, is needed to strengthen the system?" I must tell you that our response to this question colors our responses to the remainder of your questions to us.
Let me explain where I'm coming from: In my own experience, I have taught for 30 years. I hold two masters degrees, one in special education and one in elementary guidance, and I'm a doctoral candidate now.
Educators in South Carolina today are serving more than 680,000 students. Eight thousand of these are classified as limited-English-proficiency and those children speak 50 different languages. Fifteen percent of our student population has disabilities. Twenty percent of them have no health insurance coverage, and twenty percent have mothers who didn't graduate high school. Thirty percent of them come from single-parent homes. Almost half of them are eligible for free or reduced lunch.
You can get these figures from the Department of Education, and there are more.
Skilled, experienced teachers CAN teach these children, but that skill and experience costs money. Giving these children more individual attention certainly WILL STRENGTHEN their education, but that individual attention costs money because it requires that you help us reduce class size. Offering these children after-school tutorial programs and remediation, or summer school options, also costs money -- and all of these things ARE proven strategies to strengthen public education.
Your next question is a part of my answer to this one. You asked us, "What are the roadblocks that we can remove to narrow the achievement gap and move all students to proficient levels?"
In my opinion, the biggest roadblock that prevents us from moving all of South Carolina's children to proficient status is this notion that some part of their education can be delivered to them for free. What has South Carolina gotten for free lately from the medical profession, or the legal profession? How many buildings have been built at our major universities for free in the past ten years?
Two weeks ago, Mr. Larry Wilson, who sits on the Education Oversight Commission, expressed his view to that commission that when asking questions about education funding, you must first decide what sort of education you want to provide. He was correct in pointing out that at the state's two Governor's Schools, all the children score at an advanced level, and at many of the state's private academies, most of the children score at a proficient level.
But the state funds more than $20,000 per student at the two Governor's Schools, and tuition to private academies is often more than $15,000 per student per year. That's a lot more than the $1,777 that was appropriated for the rest of our children in this year's budget.
Now, he and I are not related, but let me echo Mr. Wilson's view on that point, and let me offer my own opinion:
By 2014, the federal government has mandated in its No Child Left Behind law that every student will score -- WILL SCORE -- at proficient levels. Last week, we learned that only 23 percent of our schools satisfied those federal standards last year. In my opinion, unless and until public education is funded at some level higher than it currently is, at least as high as our neighbors in North Carolina and Georgia or more, South Carolina won't make it to 100-percent proficiency over the next decade -- despite the commitment of our educators to their profession, despite the intrinsic motivation of so many of our children. That's a pipe dream.
One of our teachers right here in Richland County, Anita Gabbard who teaches language arts at Summit Middle School, said it as plainly as it can be said: "Simply raising the bar does nothing to improve education without the needed resources."
Are there other roadblocks that can be removed?
Yes, if you're willing to adopt a statute requiring parents to spend time with their children every day, reinforcing what those children have learned in the classroom. Parents are a child's first teacher, but many take no active role in their child's learning until there's a crisis, which is usually a discipline problem rather than a strictly academic problem.
Yes, if you're willing to sustain the deferred retirement option program that keeps veteran teachers in the classroom longer, at least through the current teacher shortage. There is movement now to repeal the Teachers and Employees Retention Incentive, the TERI program, when it clearly encourages veteran teachers to continue serving our children in the classroom.
And yes, if you're willing to include the input of more practicing public school educators on more boards and bodies that govern or influence public education. If you created an oversight panel for the judiciary, that panel would likely be dominated by men and women from the legal community. But practicing educators are in the minority on the Education Oversight Commission by law, for one example.
But if addressing these roadblocks is not possible, or feasible, or viable, then I go back to the issue of deciding what sort of education you want, then paying for that.
You asked us the question, "What statewide programs need to be abandoned to infuse more funds into programs for meeting our achievement goals?"
I know many educators whose first response -- seriously -- would be the PACT testing program. When you take into account the time and resources that South Carolina spends on developing tests, field-testing tests, test preparation in the classroom and then test-taking itself, it's too much. We don't have the time to conduct our most important work: the ongoing, day-by-day teaching and evaluating, re-teaching and re-evaluating our children.
We absolutely agree with holding ourselves to high standards and accountability. I think we would best respond to your question by asking you to fully fund the reforms you've mandated already, and don't adopt any more statewide programs until we've had time to weigh the benefits of the ones that you will fully fund.
Finally, you asked, "What two changes would you most like to see in current education regulations or statutes?"
I'm happy to say that Governor Sanford and we agree on one point: that more complete data from the PACT test results should be given to teachers, so we teachers can review our own efforts to teach the curriculum standards. Simple proficiency results don't tell us what our children knew or didn't know on the test date. Of course, that kind of change is going to cost money.
Finally, since you asked for changes to current statutes, we would ask you to strengthen the reporting requirements for campus violence. Those requirements are mandatory, but there are instances where incidents are not being reported. If school safety is as important to you as it is for those who work in those environments, we would ask you to revisit that statute and include mandatory penalties for failure to report incidents of violence or drugs or weapons confiscation.
DATELINE OCTOBER 14, 2003
EDUCATORS, PARENTS ASK GREENVILLE LAWMAKERS TO RAISE FUNDING
Armed with data on class size increases and resource reductions -- and The SCEA legislative report card -- Greenville County educators pressed their legislative delegation to raise the revenue necessary to fund education next year.
"It is your responsibility to find sources of funding," said Kathy Creswell, a teacher at Hillcrest High School, where educators rallied in an early-morning protest more than a month ago. Creswell, representing the Parent, Teachers and Students Association, testified that lack of adequate funding has resulted in overcrowded classrooms and cuts to programs and personnel.
"How can we hope to replace our lost textile economy without an education system to attract jobs?" Creswell asked. "Our children aren't just the parents' or the teachers' children. Our children belong to all of us."
Some lawmakers expressed empathy -- Rep. Adam Taylor of Laurens noted that he has two children in public schools and suggested that the problem is "the pot of money is a lot smaller" -- but not all lawmakers appeared open to increasing funding.
Rep. Lewis Vaughn, the delegation chairman, said that education funding has increased by 38 percent since 1995-96, and that the House Ways and Means Committee has made education its "number-one priority". "In the 1990s, the money was rolling in. We put significant revenue in education," he said.
"I am not apologizing for the budgets put together for the last three or four years. We've done the very best we can with what we have, without raising taxes. I would be very interested in how educators think we can solve this problem," Vaughn said.
House Speaker David Wilkins echoed Vaughn's suggestion that education remains the state's highest priority. But, Wilkins said, "With the downturn in the economy, we don't feel we can increase the tax burden. We hope there are no more cuts."
Another Hillcrest High School teacher, Joanne Bachman, warned lawmakers of "a potential crisis in South Carolina education with the removal of schools as a priority."
Bachman, a national-board certified teacher and member of The SCEA, offered data comparing state funding in South Carolina to funding in Georgia and North Carolina and asked, "What level of education do you want to provide for our children?"
While legislators like to say that 53 percent of the state budget is dedicated to education, Bachman pointed out, K-12 public education only receives 35.3 percent of the total, with the remainder funding colleges and universities.
"I didn't go into education to get rich, but I look around and see peers who have received no raise in four years. We got into this situation through bad priorities and unfunded mandates," Bachman said. "Students need individual attention and instruction. Different children have different needs. Teachers can't get to all of the students, so which students do you want us to ignore today?"
One teacher at Hillcrest High calculated that he has 23 seconds per student per day to create and assess their assignments, Bachman reported.
Bachman held up The SCEA's legislative report card for 2003 and thanked Sen. Ralph Anderson for his 100 percent voting record supporting public school funding, and thanked Rep. Fletcher Smith for his score of 90 percent. But the rest of the region's delegation earned failing scores, including the zero-percent score of Sen. David Thomas, she noted.
Thomas assailed Bachman's reference to the report card, charging that education funding is about ratios. "In the prison system, it's recommended there be one guard for every eight prisoners, but we cut prisons twenty percent. It's also about ratios in schools."
"You folks look at votes and scorecards -- that is a partisan score card. Look at those with a 'D' beside their name and you will find they are the ones with 100 percent voting records. That's just the way it is. I don't like unions anyway," Thomas said.
He added, "There is no correlation between funding and student achievement. Vast numbers of experts agree on that."
Rep. Daniel Tripp, who earned a score of 14 percent, declared that the report card was not "statistically valid."
Chairman Vaughn, whose score was 10 percent, offered, "I won't tell you here, but I would like to tell you privately what I think about those rankings."
Later in the meeting, Dave McMockin, representing the local PTA chapter, issued an invitation to delegation member to visit their schools, to meet with PTA members and see the effects of education funding cuts in elementary, middle and high schools separately. "PTA members put in a lot of volunteer hours. This year, that has dramatically increased at the request of principals, just to get through the day."
Poignantly, instructor Toni Cato of Travelers Rest High School told legislators, "We're asked to do more with less, to increase test scores, but we are given nothing to use as resources."
"When business cuts back, they continue to produce the same products. Our 'products' are different; cutbacks in education affect our 'products'," she said.
At her facility, Cato reported, there is a physical education class with 51 pupils, and social studies and English classes with a range of 37 to 50 pupils each. In one AP English classroom, 35 textbooks are available to 40 pupils. In other cases, textbooks are photocopied when the copier is working. Classrooms built to accommodate 25 to 30 students are housing 35 students, with some sitting on boxes because there are not enough desks.
"Do you have to share copies on the House floor?" Cato asked legislators. "Do you share laptops, desks and chairs?" And these problems, Cato added, are only "the daily problems. When teachers go home at night, the problems are just as bad. One teacher has to prepare for 130 students in her four English classes, and 128 freshmen in Freshman Success."
"I'm not asking for a raise," Cato declared. "I'm asking you to support our children."
DATELINE OCTOBER 28, 2003
ECONOMY STANDS STILL; REPS. DISCUSS 10% CUTS, NO REVENUES
As the state's Board of Economic Advisors (BEA) prepares a preliminary revenue estimate showing no economic growth, House Ways & Means Chairman Bobby Harrell outlined the need for cuts totaling up to 11 percent of the state's budget. When pressed for some consideration of increasing revenues, Harrell effectively declared taxes a dead issue.
"The vast majority of [House] members will not vote to raise taxes," he said.
Harrell convened his committee this afternoon, more than two months before the official opening of the 2004 legislative session and earlier than ever before, with advice to his subcommittee chairman to begin examining and outlining their budget proposals for the 2004-05 fiscal year.
The committee heard from Dr. William Gillespie, the BEA's chief economist, that even after revenue projections were downgraded in February 2003, revenue collections fell another $76 million through June 30. This continuing downward trend, coupled with rising unemployment and the carry-forwards of losses in individual capital investments, paints a dire picture of the foreseeable future.
"I don't have any good news," Gillespie told the committee. "Things haven't changed since last year."
Gillespie referred to several charts and graphs documenting the spiraling numbers across the range of state revenue streams, including income taxes and sales taxes. Although the economy suffered some degree of recession in the mid-1970s, twice in the 1980s and again in the early 1990s, the current recession's length is cause for concern, he said.
"I wanted to show you how serious and long this recession has been," he explained. "There haven't been three bad years in a row since I've been a professional economist."
South Carolina revenue collection suffered a loss of $1.5 billion in capital gains income in 2001 alone because of the collapsing stock market. But because capital investment losses can be carried forward indefinitely, "not all of those losses have been taken yet," he added. "It gets worse as time goes on."
When sales tax revenues increased by four percent in the first quarter of fiscal year 2003-04, some observers believed it marked a rebounding economy. "But that's just not true," Gillespie said. While some area of industry -- the medical and home construction sectors, for example -- are maintaining strength, the manufacturing sector and others are suffering.
"Production is up, and that causes the perception of rebounding economy. But we don't tax production, we tax income," he said. "Some companies, particularly in manufacturing, have closed factories to take losses and write off their taxes."
The BEA will release its preliminary forecast on November 10, based on a two-percent growth factor. He cautioned that economists generally aren't optimistic.
Rep. Ken Kennedy of Greeleyville queried Gillespie on job losses in the private and public sectors during the recession period. Gillespie reported that approximately 6,000 state jobs have been cut in the past three years, and as many as 50,000 were cut from the private sector. The net difference, he estimated, was a loss between 10,000 and 20,000 jobs, since some displaced workers found other employment.
Gillespie told Kennedy that the displacement of workers reflected a loss of $210 million in state jobs, and more than $1.5 billion in private-sector employment.
CUTS, NOT REVENUES, ON THE TABLE
With Gillespie's report before them, Harrell opened the floor for discussion of options but only a few members spoke. Harrell outlined proposals that have come from state agencies in the past month and their requests for additional funds. One example was a request from the Department of Education for $319 million to fully fund the 2004-05 base student cost of $2,234. Another was the anticipated increase in costs to the State Health Plan, estimated at $60 million.
Totaled, the new-money requests amounted to almost 11 percent of the present state budget of $5.1 billion. "Our options are, either we can reduce 10 or 11 percent of the state budget, or we can raise that amount, or we can find some combination of the two," Harrell said.
Kennedy asked the chairman whether it was conceivable that the assembly would adopt a tax increase, and whether the House leadership had even contemplated such an idea. Harrell's responses to both questions were negative.
"The leadership has discussed how to deal with the budget and how to cut the budget to avoid raising taxes," he said. "The vast majority of members would not vote to raise taxes. I doubt seriously that has much of a chance of passing."
Kennedy said state employees and teachers in his district are hurt by rising health care costs and ask him for relief. "They're hurting," he said. "On what they make, they can't afford this. I mean, Mr. Chairman, can we get some leadership?"
Harrell responded that he and others have provided leadership in "making hard decisions to cut the budget the past three years."
"I don't want to come back this year with just cutting, cutting, cutting," Kennedy said. "It's hard to go back home and talk to my state employees and teachers, but they're asking me these question. Everybody's suffering."
"And I get lots of people asking me, please don't raise my taxes to pay for it," Harrell countered. "I'm concerned for my constituents."
Rep. Lewis Vaughn of Greenville asked whether cuts to public education might be taken off the table in the budget process, after being "hit hard" by educators at a recent delegation meeting in his district. "None of us want to cut education any more than we already have," he said.
"But that means the cuts are deeper on everyone else," Harrell declared. "We'll have to figure out in subcommittee where we have to cut to balance the budget, then come back and do it. I want to at least hold where we are on education but, personally, I don't want to raise taxes to do it."
