#1 Those Pesky Statistics Reveal Charleston County Schools' Woes

Remember the good old days? When reports put South Carolina at the bottom of some achievement list, we could always count on Mississippi and Alabama to bring up the rear. When it comes to educational achievement, we don't have them to kick around anymore.

What looks even worse for the Charleston County School District is the enormous gap that exists between its best and worst performing schools. The gap is yet another example of unintended consequences: acts done with good intentions that have unexpected bad effects. That pretty well sums up the forty or so years that the consolidated district has existed. 

Twelve months ago the CCSD Board of Trustees set three goals for the district: "ensuring every student reads by grade 3, developing and retaining talent, and more equitably distributing resources across the district." It offered up a damning statistic: "Our bottom five elementary schools have only 7 percent of their students reading on grade level." 

Just pause to think about of the consequences for the middle schools those students will attend. 

In response, Superintendent Postlewait began a push for diversity. She must believe that spreading out the 93 percent of students in the bottom five elementary schools who aren't reading on grade level is the way forward. Wouldn't it be simpler to gear up the buses and close those five schools? Then each of the remaining elementary schools would take its fair share. That's what Nancy McGinley did.

Yes, I'm being facetious. Still, it's unclear how diversity will cause those students to read on grade level. On the other hand, Meeting Street Schools' resources and methods seem to be doing just that. We were told that we needed several years of data before concluding that MSS was really working. Does anyone now believe that it isn't? So why hasn't the school board tried to replicate its success? Sour grapes?

Incentive bonus pay to teachers who teach in the failing schools? Principal shuffling? Image consultants? Nibbling around the edges.

It's past time to acknowledge that educating the "under-resourced" costs more than educating the "resourced." Attempting to equalize funds spent on each is a fool's errand. Just ask Meeting Street Schools.