Issues

Issue Spotlight: Education

Lee Stranahan, a columnist for Breitbart, once said that “Human beings have an innate, natural drive to learn things. One thing can kill this: it’s called an ‘education system.’” We need education more now than ever. The problem is, our educational system ironically fails to teach students the knowledge and skills they need. Rather than teaching key subjects, life skills, critical thinking, and creativity, we’re teaching the student how to ace a test that the teacher and the school will be evaluated on. Worse, we’ve burdened the taxpayer down to the point that some parents are financially trapped and have no other option.

How do we begin to fix this?

Funding

If there was ever a sacred cow, it’s education. It seems that any waste is excusable if it is “for the children.” You, the taxpayer, are footing the bill and you deserve to get more bang for your buck.

We spend roughly $12,000 per child in Anderson School District 4, yet the most basic supplies (like paper) have at times been rationed. Neither teachers nor parents should be forced to furnish classroom supplies out of pocket.

We can fix this if we:

  • Fully fund teacher pay and classroom supplies in the education budget first. If cutbacks are made, they should be made in administration, not where teaching happens.
  • Eliminate unnecessary boards such as the State Education Oversight Committee and the Anderson County Board of Education.
  • Save money on school facilities by creating a set of efficient, pre-designed architectural plans that can grow with district needs. Abe Lincoln learned math with chalk on the back of a shovel - we don’t need Taj Mahals to teach students effectively. Simple strategies like building in a second unfinished story that can be expanded into, and using metal roofing, can save school districts millions of dollars in the long run.
  • Allow school districts to pool their buying power to purchase supplies at a discount.
  • Examine the SC Education Lottery to see if that money is being used as promised to improve education and lower costs.

Personal Responsibility

Grades Cartoon

Grades Cartoon

What happened?

This country started going down the tubes when parents abdicated responsibility for raising their children to the public school system. Until parents realize that raising their children to be responsible members of society is their most important job, we will continue raising a generation with an entitlement mentality that expects everything to be handed to them on a silver platter.

That said, today we have a system that blames the teachers unfairly. We can fix this system and tilt responsibility back to the parents and students where it belongs.

We should:

  • Restore effective, prompt means of discipline in the classroom and provide whatever legal protections are needed to allow this to happen.
  • Reject merit pay and teacher evaluation schemes that operate according to student achievement, and instead create a work environment that attracts caring, self-motivated teachers and empowers them to do their job.
  • Teach students that there is no such thing as a free lunch. If the parents cannot or will not pay for school lunch, provide ways for students to earn the money to pay for their meal.

Red Tape

Excessive red tape is driving our better teachers to an early retirement. Why collect 20 years of records that no one will look at, only to have them trashed in the end? That paper, and more importantly, that teacher’s time, could have been used better elsewhere.

To the extent that the state is responsible, we need to drastically reduce the amount of paperwork teachers have to spend time on. If we can’t do that, maybe we should eliminate some of administration’s assistants and use that money to hire teacher assistants to handle the paperwork.

Local Control

Decentralized control provides better results - our nation’s history is proof of that fact. So why would we think that letting Washington, or even Columbia, micromanage our schools is a good thing?

We’ve put ourselves on the hook for so many Federal regulations simply by applying for Federal funding. Given that Federal funds comprise a mere 10% or less of the overall funding stream, I think the return in flexibility that we would get by giving up that funding would be worthwhile.

Furthermore, each region is different and I would much rather have South Carolina deciding what is taught in South Carolina’s schools than have Washington, California, or New York decide.

We need to:

  • Resist Federal experiments on our children like Common Core.
  • Reject proposals that consolidate school districts.
  • Support more community-based charter schools.
  • Support an historically honest and academically effective curriculum, including civics, economics, American history, phonics-based reading, traditional math (not Common Core math), and practical life skills.
  • Support the arts, logic, and speech and debate as key components in school curriculum.

Testing

Simply put, we test too much and we make too many important decisions on flawed test results.

Standardized tests are measuring tools designed to measure one specific thing: a student’s grasp of information relative to other students. To the extent that standardized tests reveal where a student’s needs are or where progress is being achieved, they are useful.

Attempting to measure educational quality through standardized tests is about as smart as trying to measure temperature with a spoon. When this becomes the axle which the school curriculum revolves around, standardized tests bring serious downsides to both teachers and students.

We have forced teachers to teach students how to pass a test or the teacher will pay a price. Both the Bush and the Obama administrations have been guilty of pushing us down this road, first through No Child Left Behind and more recently through Race To The Top, Common Core, and NCLB waiver requirements.

Standardized testing recently drove a Boston teacher to retire prematurely in protest:

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We should:

Choice

The only thing worse than a failing educational system is a failing educational system that traps parents and students and leaves them no other choice.

If you are a wealthy parent, you have other options such as private schools. But many parents cannot afford any other option besides the public school in their district, regardless of whether that school is right for their children or not. That’s not ok.

We need to:

  • Allow public school choice. If you live in District 4 and want to send your child to a school in District 5, you should be able to do so without paying extra provided that there is room available.
  • Allow parents to opt-out of the portion of their taxes that they would pay into the school system if they choose a different educational system such as charter, private, homeschool, or online virtual schools.

Higher Education

Barton Swaim at the SC Policy Council stated that “the exploding costs of sending your kid to a public college has nothing to do with state budgets. It has everything to do with the university budgets.” I agree.

A college degree is now yesterday’s high school diploma, since many employers put more weight on real-world experience. Overcharging for an under-valued diploma is adding insult to injury. Just as the State of South Carolina must live within its means, we should hold our state universities accountable to live within their means.

We need to:

  • Accelerate college by CLEP testing high school students before they graduate. This can allow a student to skip the first two years of college and get to work on their major right away after they graduate high school.
  • Hold our universities accountable for tuition price gouging and wasteful spending.
  • Stop funding speculative, wasteful “research” projects such as Innovista - a set of empty buildings in Columbia that came with a $150 million price tag.
  • Encourage our universities to develop and expand into low-cost online and distance learning programs similar to MIT and Stanford.

Conclusion

Fixing our education system is a complex, long-term endeavour, but at the end of the day it is a question of priorities. Do we care more about the system, or about the students the system exists for? If we are willing to start putting our students first, we can have the best education system in the nation.

All it takes is a little common sense and responsibility.

Issue Spotlight: Gun Rights

Gun-Rights-South-Carolina.jpg

Guns don’t kill, people do. Any discussion about guns has to start with the fact that self-defense is a God-given right. No government, federal, state, or local, has the right to get in the way of that. What part of “shall not be infringed” does the Federal government not understand?

Guns of all types are simply tools. They can kill, and they can save lives. I'm thankful that SC has a Concealed Weapons Permit program that allows people to carry for self defence and that you can own just about any firearm in the state.

We fall short of where we should be, though. There are far less regulations restricting the ownership and carrying of guns in other states, such as Oklahoma. Here are some measures we should enact in South Carolina:

  • Constitutional Carry - Citizens should not need a permit to carry concealed weapons. Our CWP program gives us reciprocity with other states, so while it should be maintained, it should be made optional.
  • Campus Carry - If students are of age and have a Concealed Weapons Permit, they should be allowed to carry on college campuses. A recent study showed that one in five girls in college are sexually assaulted - and they should be able to defend themselves here, too.
  • Gun Safety Education - We need to educate children in school about gun safety and respect for firearms. Children raised in a gun-owning household who have been taught gun safety bring a much more mature perspective to handling guns than those who haven't had that kind of upbringing.
  • Teacher and Parental Carry on School Grounds - The reason we have so many school shootings is because criminals know they're gun-free zones. Parents and teachers should be allowed to carry concealed weapons for their own protection and the protection of the children.

It’s time to stop infringing on the rights of law-abiding citizens, and start holding criminals accountable for violent crime. If you get right down to it, you can kill someone with a rock (or a fork). Wanna start regulating rocks? Good luck with that.

Issue Spotlight: Job Creation

Any discussion on job creation must start from the premise that politicians don’t create jobs, businesses do. Government should maintain an environment where businesses can grow and thrive. Here is how we can do that in South Carolina.

Let businesses keep more of their own money

It takes revenue to grow and expand a business. Every dollar we take from a business is a dollar that could be used to hire someone. Here are some practical ways to relieve the oppressive financial burden on businesses:

  • Reduce or eliminate the property tax, and instead rely on a flat retail sales tax. We might not even have to raise the sales tax rate - 6% is probably enough if we just flatten it out and eliminate all the special exemptions that have been carved into it.
  • Cut the income tax, and flatten it rather than rely on antiquated tax brackets that haven’t been adjusted for inflation in decades.

Cut regulations and red tape

It should be simple and easy for businesses to operate. Let’s stop putting the proverbial lemonade stand out of business with excessive DHEC permits and fees.

Where government does have to be involved, it should function in a professional and effective way. There should be clear checks and balances on state agencies, and a clear line of recourse for the business if that agency isn't doing their job or is abusing their power.

Businesses also need the ability to hire new workers without fear of financial consequences coming down from the government in the form of higher unemployment insurance. They should be able to hire and train underprivileged and uneducated people without worrying about what happens if they don’t work out. Self-employed entrepreneurs should be allowed to opt-out of the state unemployment insurance. And we need to quit punishing businesses for firing people they can't use!

Stop making businesses pay for their own competition

Finally, business owners need to know that their tax dollars aren't going to pay for their competition's new factory or their utility bills.

Certainly no relocating business will choose South Carolina’s 10% manufacturing tax rate over Georgia’s 6%, but the problem that our politicians (including our Governor) have so far ignored is that our high tax rates are the problem. South Carolina has the highest manufacturing property tax in the nation. Instead of fixing this, they would rather play investment banker with your money and go after the big companies that make nice headlines, while leaving the little guys out to dry.

Not only are tax incentives unfair, they are unsustainable. Trying to run an economy on tax incentives is like trying to run a car on starter fluid. It may work at first, but it’s going to tear your engine up eventually because it was never designed to be run that way. If we do this long enough, we will become a state where you have to have a politician in your back pocket to get ahead in business.

At the end of the day, government just needs to get out of the way and let the free market do its thing. When the Pilgrims landed, they didn't have government assistance, and yet through hard work, perseverance, and courage, they pressed on and built not just a community, but a nation.

South Carolina is full of those kinds of heroes. All we need is a government that will get out of the way and let us operate.