Mentor Eli Broad Reveals McGinley's Goals for CCSD

Let's not recruit another graduate of the Broad Institute!

Charleston County's last two superintendents have been graduates of that organization founded by Eli Broad with the purpose of improving urban school districts. However, Broad recently revealed his true feelings about urban schools.

According to Diane Ravitch,

The truth comes out. Broad has low regard for public education. He thinks it works best when technocratic managers make data-driven decisions, close struggling schools, and open privately managed charter schools. He likes mayoral control, not democratic engagement. He funded a campaign to block a tax increase to support public schools in California. He thinks poverty can be overcome by good management .

Gee, that sounds familiar!

Bobby Needs to Come Clean on CCSD Over-Payments to Axxis

Superintendent McGinley may be gone, but her methods linger on in Acting Superintendent Bobby's high-handed treatment of the Charleston County School Board of Trustees.

First of all, Axxis, the diversity consulting firm that was so helpful in the watermelon incident, was hired without advice or consent of the board, one of several no-bid or single bidder contracts McGinley entered. The maximum ceiling for its consulting was $50,000. Nearly $69,000 later Bobby asked the school board to extend the contract by $48,000 while keeping it in the dark about the overrun.

So, is CCSD paying up to $98,000 or $117,000? Is there any hope that the board will ever rebel at this kind of deception?

New GED Discourages Dropouts from Certification

When you think of the GED, what ideas come to mind? I remember the disaffected boys and pregnant girls in my high school classes and hope that somehow they managed to get a GED and further education after dropping out in the tenth or eleventh grade. More recently, I worry about students I knew who failed one or two senior-year courses and never went to summer school to finish.

Until I did some research, I didn't know that the GED was created for returning WWII veterans who had dropped out of high school. Prior to that, no such test purporting to represent equivalence to a high school diploma existed. Maybe it's time to get rid of it.

Now that Pearson has purchased GED testing (don't get me started), it costs twice as much, must be taken on computer, and is aligned to the Common Core (which dropouts were not exposed to)--all aspects turning it into a real money-maker for Pearson. Its customers are unlikely to be among our most affluent citizens.

Supposedly it now measures the "real-life" skills needed for further education. Gag me with a spoon.

Such a test does not measure the real life skills that determine a person's success in higher education. Motivation? Time-management skills? Personal problems? The very parameters that cause students to drop out will never appear on such a test. Instead, the new tougher GED practically guarantees failure and a large outlay of money for those trying to turn around the trajectory of their lives.

Since the "new" GED appeared, passing rates have plummeted.

A few states have rebelled against the Common-Core loaded GED. Since South Carolina's legislature rejected the Common Core, it should allow other tests as substitutes, especially the HiSET sponsored by ETS and the Iowa Testing Service. This test answers the objections above, and SC would not be alone in rejecting homage to Pearson.

Time for change.

Gushing Editorial on Charter Schools Ignores McGinley's Biased Role

Ask anyone about former superintendent Nancy McGinley's support for charter schools, and you should get a tirade. Though the community wholeheartedly supported the Charter School for Math and Science, Superintendent McGinley and her NAACP lackeys were determined to crush it from the beginning. 

Today's editorial welcoming the Allegro School on the peninsula makes the point in the most mealy-mouthed way possible: "Charter schools weren't initially welcome in Charleston County. Educators in traditional schools saw them as a threat to their funding and attendance." Educators? Read "Saint McGinley."

Despite McGinley's doing everything in her power to stomp on it, CSMS enjoys the success predicted when it began as a grass-roots effort. No worries about diversity there. How about the rest of the district?

Clothespin Your Nose and Vote for Spearman for SC Education Superintendent

Molly Spearman, a former music teacher, is also, fittingly, former director of the SC School Administrators Association. She thinks like them.

Tom Thompson is former dean of graduate studies at SC State University, a place not known for graduate study, and he is now involved with for-profit institutions. He sees federal intervention in education as a positive force.

Both candidates are mouthing platitudes in debate. Neither has any new solutions other than to have high standards and fix funding inequities.Of course, you could throw your vote away on the American party candidate, Ed Murray, but why would he be an improvement over Jim Rex, one of his supporters?

This year's race proves once again that the state's superintendent of education should be appointed by the governor.

No wonder only 13 states have elected superintendents when you contemplate the candidates our primary elections have tossed up for us.

Spearman appears to be marginally less entranced with federal intervention. Of course, she could merely be mouthing what Republican voters want to hear.

CCSD Disconcerted by Its Own Policies Regarding School Transfers

I'm not sure anyone has counted how many programs Charleston County School Superintendent Nancy McGinley has instituted to entice students to attend school outside their attendance zones, but those programs are legion.

So it's all the more puzzling why CCSD administration last month claimed to be "disconcerted" over this trend. Maybe it thinks the "wrong" students are heeding the siren call of magnet and partial-magnet schools or petitioning for curriculum offered only at the other end of the county?

Actually, one reason for concern is that, while North Charleston's elementary and middle schools are full, numbers are exiting North Charleston for high school, perhaps to avoid ninth-grade classes where up to 40 percent are reading at the fourth-grade level or below. Another concern is falling enrollment at de-facto all-black Burke, the only high school on a majority-white peninsula. Could Burke's celebration of its all-black hsitory have anything to do with white flight?

Seriously, does anyone wonder why students who can choose to go elsewhere do so, even opting sometimes for "gasp" private schools?

Board Vice-Chairman Ducker worries that too much parental choice will send some schools "into a death spiral." Some parents, on the other hand, think a death spiral might be the solution for the ones with dismal records.

CCSD has decided to throw another edublob consultant at their perceived problem: for $16,500 he or she will "study school choice trends using a two-pronged approach--an online survey and focus groups." With all the fine administrators already on board at 75 Calhoun, you'd think this could be an in-house job. Apparently not.

Let's at least hope that McGinley resists tinkering with the focus groups.

Grooms Gets an A for AP History Analysis

When the College Board first instituted the Advanced Placement American History curriculum, a five-page guide was enough direction for its small cadre of teachers.

Flash forward thirty years or so to the spread of AP classes to the masses and the problems the CB faces with teachers not fully prepared to teach them, perhaps not even capable of making a "3" on the test itself. Of course, through AP conferences and training many not-so-well educated teachers have become adept at challenging their students. However, recently the College Board decided that the younger teachers now taking over needed more guidance.

Hence, the genesis of the 142-page guide ,or "framework," provided to today's history teachers. The necessity for such a guide reflects the dumbing down of American high schools over the last thirty years. The America-bashing of the guide merely reflects the liberalism of today's educational establishment. The furor has occurred because they put it in writing. The College Board is surprised at the controversy because it doesn't know anyone who doesn't think the way it does.

Larry Grooms's op-ed in Tuesday's paper, a reasoned analysis of the fuss over the framework, bears reprinting:

There was a time when American exceptionalism was as much a part of a student's education as Jamestown, Manifest Destiny, and the Wright brothers. In his 1989 farewell speech, Ronald Reagan described America as a "shining city upon a hill... a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds ... a city that hummed with commerce and creativity."

The American experience is not this tidy. Our history includes plenty of mistakes, but we've overcome plenty, too. As Bill Clinton observed, there is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.

This highly American ideology - the can-do spirit, the casting aside of differences when history demands - does not resonate with the historians who recently rewrote the College Board's Advanced Placement U.S. History curriculum. The College Board is a nonprofit that helps students prepare for college through programs such as the SAT and the Advanced Placement Program.

Claiming that the existing five-page guide prevents students from studying "the main events of U.S. history," the board's scholars poured out their collective genius, releasing a new 142-page curriculum they call a "framework." Their self-proclaimed landmark project presents a consistently negative view of America. It also reveals a left-wing, radically flawed reinterpretation of history.

The framework does not include questions about the Mayflower Compact, Thomas Jefferson, the Gettysburg Address or the Truman Doctrine. Neither are students asked about Dwight Eisenhower, Jonas Salk or Martin Luther King, Jr. The valor of our soldiers who ended Nazi oppression in World War II and the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust are omitted. Instead of focusing on resilient personalities and extraordinary achievements - the history most of us learned - the framework centers on controversy. Identity group grievances, conflict, exploitation, oppression, unresolved social movements - these are presented as our nation's foundation.

We do a great disservice when we gloss over these injustices. But while America's means haven't always been laudable, our ends most often are. As Churchill observed: "The United States invariably does the right thing - after exhausting every other alternative."

It is this uniquely American approach that the framework ignores. Students should be taught facts - triumphs and tragedies. Instead, the framework consistently focuses on all that was ever wrong with this, the most generous and progressive people in the history of mankind.

Now that commonsense folks are calling them out, the test's writers are falling all over themselves to defend their work. They say that teachers are free to discuss George Washington, the role of capitalism, the Holocaust and other topics that may be required by a particular state's standards. South Carolina's education officials also assure us that our state's standards will safeguard students from negative biases.

Both assurances ignore page 2 of the framework: "Beginning with the May 2015 AP U.S. History Exam, no AP U.S. History Exam questions will require students to know historical content that falls outside this concept outline." Teachers face the difficult, if not impossible, task of finding time to teach both the state standards and the framework. Why teach topics that are not on the test?

The College Board knows this. Its stated goal is to "train a generation of students" to become "apprentice historians." The hope is that these apprentices in turn inculcate another generation. This is the same strategy used to promote controversial Common Core state standards. It is no coincidence that David Coleman, chief architect of Common Core, is also president of the College Board.

In the same remarkably prescient speech, Reagan warned of such schemes, cautioning that "we've got to teach history based not on what's in fashion but what's important. ... If we forget what we did, we won't know who we are. I'm warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit."
Reagan concluded with a challenge to students: "... if your parents haven't been teaching you what it means to be an American, let 'em know and nail 'em on it. That would be a very American thing to do."

These historians are not teaching what it means to be an American. They are teaching victimization and social politics.

It is time we call them out on it. That would be a very American thing to do.

Larry Grooms, a Republican, represents Berkeley and Charleston counties in the S.C. Senate.

Opportunity for "Critical Thinking" Missed by Hard-Line Educrat Darwinists

Perhaps retired Bishop Allison's measured letter can contribute to the debate over evolution versus intelligent design. Note the irony of the anecdote at the end.

                                                         
Sep 30 2014 12:01 am
                                                            Not so random
Frank Wooten's Sept. 27 column on "Natural selection: Keep faith in science" is based on popular misunderstandings regarding issues of 100 years ago. The issue confronting us today is whether random chance can account for the created order or whether there is scientific evidence for intelligent design in nature.

Biologist Michael Behe has more recently shown that cilium, a microscopic hair-like organism that keeps foreign objects out of our lungs, is so irreducibly complex that it takes an act of credulity to believe it just happened by chance given the limited time of the planet's existence.

Of course, this does not prevent such credulity on the part of scientists already committed to a natural self-explanatory world.

But Wooten seems unaware of Behe, Stephen Meyer, Jonathan Wells, William Dembski, all (and many more) credentialed scientists that, on the basis of science, perceive intelligent design in creation and not mere random chance.

Last year's "Mere Anglicanism" conference featured famous scientists who believe nature discloses more than random chance. (CDs of these addresses are available through the office of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina on Coming Street.)

Especially interesting and even delightful are the addresses by Dr. John C. Lennox, professor of mathematics at Cambridge University. Dr. Stephen Meyer related a telling anecdote:

A Chinese paleontologist was lecturing at the University of Washington on the astonishing findings in China from the pre-Cambrian era, turning Darwin's bottom-up assumptions to top-down developments.

One American asked if he were not uncomfortable speaking skeptically of Darwinism coming "as you do from an authoritarian country."

The Chinese scholar smiled and replied, "In China we can question Darwin, but not the government. In America you can question the government but not Darwin."

C. FitzSimons Allison
Retired Bishop, the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina
Indigo Avenue
Georgetown

Gilbreth on APHistory Standards and American Exceptionalism

Edward M Gilbreth in his pieces for the local paper generally stays out of politics. However, one recent column is an exception. He narrows his concerns to some responses to Sherry Few's (and others) objections to AP History guidelines published by the College Board.

According to a recent Newsweek article, a former New Jersey history teacher, Larry S. Krieger, with 40-year classroom experience, sounded the loudest alarm of revisionist history. He has since joined forces with opponents of the Common Core curriculum. Critics claim it's no coincidence that College Board President David Coleman previously had a hand in writing Common Core's math and English benchmarks and that they have similarities.

It hasn't taken long for this furor to get red-hot with politicians, including the National Republican Committee (RNC), taking the lead. Private or not, the College Board takes public dollars and there's a move in Congress to halt federal funds until the curriculum is revised. 

College Board officials, who also run the SAT exam, say it's all a big misunderstanding.
Its website contends the number of historical references actually has increased and that thousands of teachers motivated the changes by expressing "strong concerns that the course required a breathless race through American history" that sacrificed opportunities "for students to engage in writing and research." 

Conversely, the Newsweek article says Krieger is convinced that the failure to mention most of America's greatest historical figures by name means that they won't be on the test and therefore won't be taught. He also contends the new curriculum has "a consistently negative view of American history that highlights oppressors and exploiters." 

Krieger told Newsweek he is particularly upset by the absence of discussion of the valor or heroism of American soldiers in World War II. Instead, he cited this from the framework: "Wartime experiences such as the internment of Japanese Americans, challenges to civil liberties, debates over race and segregation, and the decision to drop the atomic bomb raised questions about American values."

Critics have targeted New York University Professor Thomas Bender as influential in the changes. A National Review article by Stanley Kurtz claims that the redesign process actually took root in 2006 at a conference attended by Bender. He describes Bender as "the leading spokesman for the movement to internationalize the U.S. History curriculum at every educational level" and as a "thoroughgoing critic of American exceptionalism." 

There's that term "American exceptionalism" again. Some love it; some hate it. Some believe America is truly exceptional in overall exceptionally good ways - far better than any other country in history. Others see just the opposite - that we're an exceptionally bad country and have achieved our status through exceptionally bad means - and that we now need to hang our heads in shame, retreat from the world stage and apologize in unison. Accordingly, our rise to exceptional status must somehow be morally invalid, and that our good works mean nothing because they originated from bad. Make sense?

Well, not to this daughter of a marine veteran of Iwo Jima. "Questions about American values" will always occur in a society with free speech; however, free speech in the AP History classroom is generally controlled by the teacher. How about some research on the hardships faced by ordinary citizens in a war agains pure evil?

Pay Attention, CCSD: It's Teacher Pay, Stupid

Yes, Kay Haun's Letter-to-the-Editor solution will be expensive, but so is the edublob! In the recent Charleston County School District's pay raise, administrators got 75 percent of the funds! Does anyone believe that will improve student outcomes?

Attract teachers 

Our state Senate Committee on Public School Teachers could save lots of time and money if it simply did what it really takes to get and keep effective and inspiring teachers. 

Increase S.C. teachers' pay dramatically, and do it right now. 

The most important factor in producing students who can compete in the world has always been each individual teacher. 

It's not beautiful buildings, laptops on every desk, hordes of support staff and administrators. Socrates never had a classroom; he taught on the porticos of Athens without textbooks. 

A good teacher is intelligent, creative, self-confident. Want to know how to evaluate our teachers? Ask the students - they know exactly which of their teachers knows his stuff, can control the classroom, and provides challenging and interesting lessons.

Worried about paying too much to ineffective teachers? No problem. As more and more bright and talented young people come out of college and see a competitive salary waiting in the teaching field, they will come. And the chaff will be winnowed inexorably.

Many would love to go into teaching as a career. It's a wonderful experience for those who have the right combination of skills and smarts. 

But they have to be compensated and recognized as valuable contributors to their communities. Also, they should direct the support staffs and administrations in their schools. 

They should determine the core learning standards as well as learning materials. Wonderful results would occur. 

Kay M. Haun
West Liberty Park Circle
North Charleston

 Amen.

Common Core? It's Done

As Diane Ravitch recently concluded:

Common Core is not simply a toxic brand, as some of its defenders believe. It got one of the greatest send-offs in history, adopted by 45 states even though no one was sure exactly what it was. It came wrapped in such grandiose claims that it was bound to flop. There was no evidence that Common Core standards would improve education, raise test scores, narrow the achievement gaps, make children globally competitive or college and career-ready.

If there is a lesson to be learned from this fiasco, it is that process matters, evidence matters. Money can buy elections, but money alone is not enough to buy control of American education. A change as massive as national standards requires the willing and enthusiastic by educators, parents, and communities. Arne Duncan and Bill Gates thought they could bypass those groups, if they funded enough of their leadership organizations. They thought they could design the standards they thought best and impose them on the nation. It is not working. As New York high school principal Carol Burris said recently about Common Core, stick a fork in it, it's done.

The question remaining is whether education officials in South Carolina will keep this flawed program by simply re-branding it.

Why SC's High School Exit Exam Was Dropped

Last April after 30 years of requiring students to pass an exit exam to receive a high school diploma, the South Carolina state legislature, with the blessing of the education establishment in the state, dropped the requirement and even told those who had not received their diplomas in the last seven years to apply for them. What caused this change of heart?

We could surmise that the edublob feared falling scores due to implementation of Common Core.

We could conclude that, despite a continual dumbing down of the exit exam (HSAP), students were still failing at too high a rate for the comfort of the edublob.

Whatever it was, let's not forget the original purpose of that exam: students were receiving diplomas without the reading and computing skills needed to thrive in college or at work. Dropping the test will not change that  deplorable outcome one iota. If the items on the HSAP didn't correctly identify those who were deficient, then why did South Carolina pay out the millions it contracted to the edublob to create and then refine the test?

We are assured that WorkKeys and the ACT or SAT will fill the void left behind. While the purposes of those tests are valuable to students, will they truly reflect how well a particular school or school system has educated the student? Probably not.

What happened to accountability, folks?

State Superintendent Campaigns Dither on SC Test Scores

First, lame-duck State Superintendent Mick Zais didn't allow districts time to get their stories straight on why South Carolina students' test scores plummeted in most subjects this year. Looks like he didn't give Molly Spearman, Republican nominee for his replacement, or her Democrat opponent a chance to prepare talking points either, for neither campaign "could be reached for comment" for the lengthy and confusing article on test results prepared by the associated press reporter.

Ever hear of a major campaign that can't be reached? Right.

If the standards by which students are tested are changed every year, who cares what the results show? It's apples to oranges every time, just as the educrats like it. They are the ones who support Common Core with all of its drawbacks. If more students test as exemplary, while most scores fall, the results suggest that the test measures more native intelligence than learned subject matter.

Our major candidates for state superintendent are hiding from the press because both of them support the implementation of Common Core, and they sense the majority of voters do not.

Chicken!

Montessori Key to Integrating CCSD's Murray-Lasaine?

The percentage of black students at Murray-Lasaine has dropped from 80 to 68 since Montessori was introduced into this James Island elementary school. That result is exactly what the Charleston County School District hoped for. Not so the surrounding community of black parents who have sent their children to a traditional, mostly black school for decades. The NAACP, usually so vocal on such matters, remains silent on this one.

The reality is that black parents want control of "their" school. CCSD wants integration. After all, the attendance zone for Murray-Lasaine is now 83 percent white. White parents want Montessori so that their children can work at their own speed. Black parents want the community of a traditionally black classroom.

So why is CCSD so adamant in jettisoning the traditional classroom from Murray-Lasaine? Because it fears segregation within the school will replace segregation without. 

Superintendent McGinley and her cohort of "experts" are confident they know what's best for black students on James Island. They really don't care what present black parents think because they answer to no one except a school board loaded with a majority of McGinley sycophants.

Bill Gates Owns Common Core: How that Happened

According to Diane Ravitch,

Horton: Not a Conspiracy Theory: The Gates Foundation Bought Control of U.S. Education
by dianeravitch

A year ago, Paul Horton wrote a letter to Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, asking him to conduct hearings on the Common Core and Race to the Top, and specifically to inquire about the role of the Gates Foundation and the Broad Foundation in shaping federal education policy. Nothing happened. Now that the world knows that the Gates Foundation, working in alliance with the U.S. Department of Education, underwrote the creation and promotion of the Common Core standards; now that we know that Bill Gates bought and paid for "a swift revolution" that bypassed any democratic participation by the public; now that we know that this covert alliance created "national standards" that were never tried out anywhere; now that we know that the Gates Foundation's willingness to invest $2 billion in Common Core enabled that foundation to assume control of the future of American education: it is time to reconsider Horton's proposal. How could Congress sit by idly while Arne Duncan undermines state and local control to the chosen designees of the Gates Foundation? How could Congress avert its eyes as public education is redesigned to create a marketplace for vendors?

Public education IS a marketplace for vendors. Now one of them has cornered the market!

Mick Zais: Atwater for SC State Superintendent of Education

To no one's particular surprise, Mick Zais, the outgoing superintendent of education in South Carolina, has thrown his support behind Republican candidate Sally Atwater, who virtually tied with RINO Molly Spearman in the Republican primary.

Spearman, a "former" Democrat who switched parties in 1995, has contributed to opponents of school choice within the last decade, although she now claims to be in favor of  "public school choice."

Can you imagine the cronyism that will ensue if Spearman, the director of the State Association of School Administrators, tops Atwater in the primary runoff? Why, even liberal Democrat CCSD Superintendent Nancy McGinley might cross over and vote Republican in the fall!

CCSD School Board Cowed into Raiding "Rainy Day" Fund

What is a "rainy day"? Well, really, it's an emergency fund, so why not call it that?

Because the emergency in the case of the Charleston County School District came about through a consultant's study of administrative salaries that the CCSD Board of Trustees approved on Superintendent Nancy McGinley's recommendation.

The emergency? the bloated bureaucracy at the Taj Mahal needs to be paid more.

McGinley and Chief Financial Officer Michael Bobby have cloaked this raid on the emergency fund by allowing the ordinary step increase in teacher pay! Imagine that! What an innovation!

Still, 75 percent of the pay increases will accrue to administrative staff in the Taj.

You can't make this stuff up. In fact, the $7.4 million taken from the emergency fund (It's an emergency! These bureacrats might leave!) doesn't fully cover the $8.5 million for denizens of the Taj. And these are ongoing salary increases that only partially meet the recommendations of the consultant's study for salary increases.

Instead, dollars for low-income middle schools get the ax.

To complete the farce that purports to be a responsible school budget, the Board, again at McGinley's recommendation, voted to forgo taxes from two TIF districts, no doubt in order to please Mayor Riley. Certainly it is not in the best interest of CCSD to forgo tax dollars when it must raid emergency funds for ongoing salaries.

You can see where this is headed. Time for an outside audit.

Stop CCSD Administrators' Bloated Pay Packages

The Charleston County School District remains topheavy with too many chiefs and not enough Indians. Neverless, Superintendent McGinley is determined to increase pay for administrators at a higher rate than that for those teachers who are on the front line everyday.

Who doesn't believe that those from "off" would take a lower salary just to live in the Lowcountry? Talk to medical students at MUSC and see the truth of that statement. The same undoubtedly holds true for incoming educrats. However, McGinley (and her school board of lackeys) commissioned a study several years back to justify having CCSD's administrative salaries equal to those of less desirable cities. 

Now, the chickens come home to roost: over $11.6 million in rising costs in the district is tied to employee pay raises, but only a quarter of that rise is due to increasing teachers' pay; nearly 75 percent ($8.5 million) is "partial implementation of a new salary study that will boost pay for some employees [i.e., not teachers!] based on market pay for similar positions." The district will dip into the "rainy day fund" so that taxes need not be raised.

Nice work if you are a friend of McGinley's--live in the Lowcountry and get paid as though you live in Podunk.

How Tall Did This Year's Teaching Make Your Child?

According to an Education Week article cited by Diane Ravitch,

"Perhaps most provocative of all are the preliminary results of a study that uses value-added modeling to assess teacher effects on a trait they could not plausibly change, namely, their students’ heights. The results of that study, led by Marianne P. Bitler, an economics professor at the University of California, Irvine, have been presented at multiple academic conferences this year.

The authors found that teachers’ one-year “effects” on student height were nearly as large as their effects upon reading and math. The researchers did not find any correlation between the “value” that teachers “added” to height and the value they added to reading and math. In addition, unlike the reading and math results, which demonstrated some consistency from one year to the next, the height outcomes were not stable over time. The authors suggested that the different properties of the two models offered “some comfort.” Nevertheless, they advised caution." 

So, let's get this right: teachers' effects on students' height were nearly as large as their effect on reading and math.

Love that VAM, Superintendent McGinley?

What's Wrong with Cursive Writing Instruction?

Wait till the edublob hears about this one.

The South Carolina senate balked at requiring the teaching of cursive writing because that would cost the state $27.6 million.

Say, what? 

As Sen. Ray Cleary, R-Murrells Inlet, said, that's ridiculous, since every elementary school teacher should know how to write in cursive.

"How much is it to put a banner across a classroom, give them a pad of paper and say, 'We're cursive writing today?' It seems to me that's a defensive item," he said.

Why, $25 million for instructional materials and $5 million for travel for teacher training, according to the state budget office. Now it admits there may have been a miscalculation. 

Ya think?