Editors' Choices & "Letters to the Editor" on CCSD

How revealing! The lead editorial in Tuesday's Post and Courier congratulates Jim Rex for his decision to return Allendale School District to local control on the basis of unspecified "positive results." Don't you wonder what they are? Well, you're not going to find out from the P & C's editorial or any other piece in this newspaper, and I suspect the writer doesn't know either. That wasn't really the purpose.

In fact, here are some comments on progress being made in that district taken from the minutes of the Allendale School Board meeting of last November 27:

"Ms. Martin [the assistant superintendent] said principals and everyone worked hard last year and several kinds of strategies were used so all [were] disappointed with the school ratings. The numbers don’t report an accurate picture of our teachers, students or administrators. This year the number of schools rating unsatisfactory increased. The numbers scoring excellent also dropped. Science and Social Studies weighting increased from 15 to 20%, and this year the weights will increase even more. The overall State rankings continue to move 1/10%. Three schools last year were Below Average . . . . The District is not pleased and they think they can do better and have started to put the action in place. . . . We want to see the scores go up. Mr. Frazier [school board chairman] asked the Board to have further conversation about the Report Card and about funding. They are getting further and further in the hole. . . . Students are walking the street because something is going wrong. They asked for a budget last year to put people in the right places, they are headed somewhere, but not in the right direction. A lot of people are being frustrated. Over the years the District is bouncing up and down."

Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

No, here in the editor's own words is the purpose of the editorial: "The fully informed decisions [taken by Jim Rex] that state intervention is no longer needed in Allendale--and that it will not be needed this year at Burke High, Morningside Middle or Colleton Middle--are welcome signs of educational progress."

Well, I'd like to think it's educational progress, but it's much more likely to be educational politics. NO failing school in the entire state will fall into the calamity of losing local control under Jim Rex--I guarantee it. Rex is carrying out promises he made to the education lobby in order to get elected.


Don't believe it? My bridge in Brooklyn is still for sale.


On another note, the editors published side-by-side under the caption, "Readers offer views on needs of Charleston County schools" letters of equal length by Sunny Rakestraw Gray, who identifies herself as a resident of District 20 (but is also the editor of Charleston's version of The Little Black Book for Every Busy Woman), and Luther W. Seabrook, a resident of Johns Island (but also a former executive assistant in curriculum and instruction for the S.C. State Department of Education).


Of interest about Gray's letter is that she appears to be unaware of the controversies surrounding the Buist lottery and waiting list (and selections from it); somehow, she probably detected (and rightly so) that raising those topics would prevent publication of her desire to duplicate Buist's excellence in other schools for the 2000 now on its waiting list. No doubt she has friends whose four-year-olds are on its 230-strong kindergarten list as she looks forward to the schooling of her own pre-school children. One wonders how she feels about address cheating.


In a less-than-admiring tone, Seabrook astutely identifies the heart of Goodloe-Johnson's strategy:

"Our past superintendent, it appears, adopted the strategy to focus on those schools that were functioning just below the 50th percentile while assigning the lowest, and often most disruptive schools, to an outside agency. The cost of this action was almost $12 million.Maybe the intent of the superintendent was to justify her salary with some winners, and then concentrate on the schools with the greatest need. We will never know."

McGinley should pay attention to this expert; the rest of his analysis is fact-based and impressive. He's worked in much larger districts than CCSD and clearly understands the education "game." He correctly hones in on McGinley's unfortunate statement that "she doesn't plan to force teachers to transfer to places where they don't want to go," rightly mentioning that persuasive power that superintendents have to put excellent teachers into schools with the greatest needs.

Let's see if she's wise enough to take his advice.