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Update from the Land of the Lost
On balance, it was a not too terrible day here on Sanford's Plantation, formerly known as the Great State of South Carolina.
On the one hand, we had the latest in the long-running torrent of fatuous comments by our junior senator, flagged this morning by TPM's Jim Kurtz.
Using tortured logic that would make even the governor proud, Senator DeMint predictably named unions as the culprits in the GOP's failure to win Pennsylvania last November. Not, of course, because they played a key role in healing the wounds of a divisive Democratic primary and rallying blue collar workers around Obama's candidacy. The real reason, according to DeMint, is fear of unions that drove working class Republicans from the Rust Belt into the welcoming embrace of the right-to-work South.
Whatever. I was willing to give the senator a pass on this one. Maybe he lost his train of thought, or suffered a moment of divine inspiration. But his subsequent branding of Club for Growth posterboy Pat Toomey as a "mainstream candidate" sealed the deal. Sigh.
All, however, was not lost. This afternoon, the latest round in what has become an endless fusillade of private school choice legislation was moved out of a senate education subcommittee on a 6-4 vote, with an "unfavorable" recommendation. The negative recommendation significantly reduces the bill's chances in the full committee.
The fight is far from over, but public school advocates are breathing a sigh of relief. Providing tax credits to parents who send their children to private -- read religious -- schools is one of the governor's pet projects, and his drive has been bankrolled by out-of-state zealots who view South Carolina's children as pawns in an amusing board game.
Under the tired rubric that competition will cure all ills, these disingenuous legislative gambits would do nothing to improve access to quality education. Private schools go where the money is, and the majority of South Carolinians can't afford the tuition even with a tax credit. The net effect would be further erosion in an already fragile public school system and subsidized religious education for the wealthy. Praise the Lord and pass the vouchers. The beat goes on.
With all due respect to those who believe the administration should make prosecuting war crimes its top priority, as the parent of a public school seventh grader this kind of stuff scares me crapless.
On the one hand, we had the latest in the long-running torrent of fatuous comments by our junior senator, flagged this morning by TPM's Jim Kurtz.
Using tortured logic that would make even the governor proud, Senator DeMint predictably named unions as the culprits in the GOP's failure to win Pennsylvania last November. Not, of course, because they played a key role in healing the wounds of a divisive Democratic primary and rallying blue collar workers around Obama's candidacy. The real reason, according to DeMint, is fear of unions that drove working class Republicans from the Rust Belt into the welcoming embrace of the right-to-work South.
Whatever. I was willing to give the senator a pass on this one. Maybe he lost his train of thought, or suffered a moment of divine inspiration. But his subsequent branding of Club for Growth posterboy Pat Toomey as a "mainstream candidate" sealed the deal. Sigh.
All, however, was not lost. This afternoon, the latest round in what has become an endless fusillade of private school choice legislation was moved out of a senate education subcommittee on a 6-4 vote, with an "unfavorable" recommendation. The negative recommendation significantly reduces the bill's chances in the full committee.
The fight is far from over, but public school advocates are breathing a sigh of relief. Providing tax credits to parents who send their children to private -- read religious -- schools is one of the governor's pet projects, and his drive has been bankrolled by out-of-state zealots who view South Carolina's children as pawns in an amusing board game.
Under the tired rubric that competition will cure all ills, these disingenuous legislative gambits would do nothing to improve access to quality education. Private schools go where the money is, and the majority of South Carolinians can't afford the tuition even with a tax credit. The net effect would be further erosion in an already fragile public school system and subsidized religious education for the wealthy. Praise the Lord and pass the vouchers. The beat goes on.
With all due respect to those who believe the administration should make prosecuting war crimes its top priority, as the parent of a public school seventh grader this kind of stuff scares me crapless.
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Unspoken is the fact that the private schools don't have to accept those unpleasant other students. I suspect many supporters of "choice" (they already have choice) would like the public system to simply collapse, and no longer get any tax funding.
April 30, 2009 9:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
You are so right. And many here don't even make a serious effort to hide the fact.
April 30, 2009 9:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
Bothered me for years. Just out of law school a wrote a brief to my state Supreme Court on this issue for the ACLU. It was kind of neat because we lost but they cited my Amicus. ha And on a $20.00 typewriter. hahaha
In the North, many minorities benefited from Catholic Schooling. No fooling. And the Catholics really did a fine job teaching and separating religion from science for example because the Catholics do not give a damn about creationism/ Darwinism issues in biology class. In the sense that the American bishops have been for evolution for a hundred years.
Here context is all important. I mean southern religious law schools are partially responsible for the OLC's problems these last eight years.
Public schooling puts up that all important bar.
Oh, and your real point that only the rich benefit depends upon how the statute is written and again, The South sucks at this. Always in favor of the oligarchy, the aristocracy the patricians.
Oh and good post.
April 30, 2009 9:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
I myself benefited from Catholic schooling up north. Ursulines and Jesuits. They tried to teach me rhetoric and all kinds of crap that would be really useful to me now if I'd only listened. I guess they tried to teach me religion too only that didn't stick.
If more people had been taught by Jesuits the quality of our national discourse would be greatly improved.
To be honest, if the result is equal access to a quality education I'm not sure I care who delivers it. If you have to suffer through Sister Jeanette's Mission Movies once a semester so be it. Buck up and tough it out. She always fell asleep after the opening credits anyway.
April 30, 2009 10:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
Good luck with this. I know the Sandlappers have been talking about vouchers for a very long time.
By the way, is there any chance--any at all--that Brad Hutto could beat DeMint in 2010?
April 30, 2009 11:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's a longshot, but I think it's easy to underestimate Obama's impact on the political calculus. Even in the upstate Democrats are more energized than they've been in the ten-plus years I've lived here. DeMint is a lock in my corner of the state, where he lives. But more volatile elsewhere, especially in the center of the state, where Sanford's anti-stimulus showboating and school voucher shenanigans have got a lot of folks upset.
I think anything could happen if the party gets organized. Man, it would be nice to have a few of Obama's operatives around to help.
May 1, 2009 2:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
There is a myth that I think needs debunking, that the private sector can do things cheaper. That is patently false. The public sector CAN do things more cheaply because, all things being equal, they have no profit motive.
The privateers have a great deal of skill in reducing costs, but they would only do it if they were well paid. They refuse to bring their skills to their local school districts and instead seek to create schools they own. They refuse to get involved to bring down the costs of public education preferring to destroy it to pursue their own ends.
I prefer a school whose sole purpose is the education of children, rather then profit. I want to be able to evict bad leadership. In the public sector, we are better able to do this because in the private sector, the thieves hide behind their attorneys. This does not bode well for making changes when needed.
April 30, 2009 2:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
It is also a factor that the effort to privitize school has the destruction of yet another union as a happy consequence for the Right.
April 30, 2009 2:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
The problem in South Carolina isn't for-profits, but nonprofit schools run primarily by churches. This raises church-state, accreditation and a host of other issues in addition to starving public education.
The best example of a for-profit venture is probably Chris Whittle's Edison project, which is considered a failure by most measures.
Either way, I agree with your general observation.
April 30, 2009 3:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
The private sector is neither equipped nor motivated to meet the need, which is to give every child an equal shot at success.
April 30, 2009 3:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here is a rule of thumb, use the Bush Inversion Rule
and that is this,if GWB was an advocate for it then its surely upside down to what is the correct way to go about it. Examples : Vouchers (starves the public school system which damages the very children you claim you want to help), privatized retirement (based on stocks and bonds and unreliable, I can prove it with my last 401 statement)),torture(has the reverse effect of all it claims to do),and on and on. Trust him, his record is perfect on being wrong,if he was for it, don't do it! He is as reliable as a compass with the arrow on the wrong end, go the other way.
April 30, 2009 7:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bluemeanie Im sorry, should have commended your fine post first, thank you for writing on this important topic.Got a little upside down meself.
April 30, 2009 7:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
BlueMeanie: I am tired -- so bloody tired -- and so I am elated that you are willing to beat the South Carolina drum of telling it as it actually is in education.
Invite the MSM to take a tour of impoverished Johns Island, or Wadmalaw public schools, and then compare and contrast the facilities and/or available resources at, incredibly, endowed and voucher-toting students at Porter-Gaud, Ashley Hall, and all the recently-sprung Christian schools....not to mention the state-supported magnet schools like Charleston's Buist Academy that, dare I say it, seems to acknowledge legacies and parental addresses in determining availability of admittance slots, despite the governmental restrictions against such practices.
BlueMeanie: I want every child in South Carolina to have an equal chance for achievement. Will it happen in my lifetime? Or yours?
April 30, 2009 7:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, Bluemeanie, so sad. I have been in Delaware for 6 weeks now. I miss my friends in Charleston but boy, I DO NOT miss that pathetic southern good ol'boy attitude (and I knew plenty of women that had it). It was always a mystery to me what happened to all those tax dollars, both income and sales tax because there was damn little evidence of public benefit. Most of my friends were retired or had moved there after their children were grown and all said they would never send their children to school there.
You know they are cutting off their noses to spite their faces and are proud of it.
May 1, 2009 12:20 AM | Reply | Permalink