Saturday, December 16, 2017

SC Policy Council Wants SC Education Power Shift


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The South Carolina Policy Council (SCPC) has weighed in on how our state distributes power over education.

Surprise, surprise. It doesn't like the present set up. Actually, the SCPC may dislike all power structures in the state except its own.

After publishing a lengthy analysis of the situation regarding appointments to the Department of Education, the State Board of Education, and the Education Oversight Committee, the Policy Council concluded that "many of those in charge are largely unaccountable to citizens." Essentially, SCPC concludes that the SC legislature wields too much power. 

How these bodies would be "more accountable to citizens" is missing from the analysis. Isn't the legislature accountable through elections? How would power be taken away and handed to "citizens"? 

You must wonder, as I do, if the SCPC simply dislikes the reality that the legislature is majority Republican. 

The Policy Council also seems to assume that power over education in South Carolina should be solely the purview of the state. Given the control over schools by individual school districts, most of which follow county boundaries, the SCPC seems to ignore or premise the demise of the power of these individual entities. However, state power over individual school districts is a relatively recent development in this state.

Its analysis makes you wonder if the policy makers at the SCPC are natives of states where all power over education is centralized in state government.

To that idea? Thanks, but no thanks!

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