Dear Gov. Haley, President Pro Tempore Leatherman and Speaker Lucas:
This summer, many South Carolinians have seen through fresh eyes the opportunities and challenges of building a shared future together. Many of us are grateful for your leadership in the wake of the tragedy in Charleston. I’m writing to ask you to build on this momentum by empowering South Carolinians in two areas critical to our future together: public education and economic development.
Public education
The key to outstanding 21st-century public education is empowering teachers as professionals. South Carolina can become a global leader in universal, publicly funded education where teachers are respected as professionals who are creating a diversity of education options that match the diversity of children served, and where parents can choose the best educational options for their children.
At the state level, public education is controlled by three independent entities: the State Department of Education led by the state superintendent of education, an elected constitutional officer; the state Board of Education; and the Education Oversight Committee, neither of whom the superintendent reports to.
South Carolina has 89 different school districts, some of which are whole counties and some of which are parts of counties, with at least three different models of governance and widely differing types and levels of funding. Layered on top is the U.S. Department of Education bureaucracy and funding. If we set out to create a more dysfunctional, inefficient and unaccountable public education system, we would be hard-pressed to improve on the system we have.
We should restructure public education by eliminating the stifling bureaucracy and empowering educators in all schools with the responsibility and flexibility of those in charter schools.
At the highest levels of state government and the education establishment, we don’t trust teachers to perform as professionals. Rather than dealing with the real issue that we don’t believe our teachers are good enough, we have a high-stakes testing regime that warps education to teach to the test and drives out creative thinking.
Education expert Sir Ken Robinson most eloquently states that public education globally takes innately curious first-graders and over 12 years systematically beats that out of them.
We have some good schools serving affluent communities, but they do not to perform as well as peers across the country serving similar affluent communities. We have a few excellent schools serving poor students. The K-12 Legacy Charter School in Greenville serves the poorest neighborhoods in the county with a holistic approach, understanding that sick and hungry children have difficulty learning. The Pee Dee is proud that the Darlington County School District is a high-poverty district maintaining excellence across all its schools. Because we have a top-down, industrial factory model of education, it is very difficult for an inspired entrepreneurial educator to copy these successes.
We can build world-class universal, publicly funded education by addressing the fundamental structural and governance problems to empower professional teachers to drive transformational innovation.
Economic development
The key to outstanding 21st-century economic development is focusing on attracting, developing and retaining world-class talent. For decades, our technical colleges have developed a skilled workforce as a magnet to recruit branch manufacturing. South Carolina should enhance our economic strategy by using our research universities to attract and develop top faculty, graduate students and undergraduates as magnets to draw higher-value-added industrial R&D facilities and corporate headquarters.
Michelin is a successful case study: We first recruited Michelin Manufacturing, then the Michelin Americas Research Corporation, and then the Michelin North America headquarters.
About a decade ago, the Legislature made investments that have helped improve our research universities, such as the Centers for Economic Excellence Act, the University Infrastructure Act, the Life Sciences Act and the Venture Capital Act. Investments like these led to world-class university research centers like CU-ICAR, the McNair Center, and the Hollings Cancer Institute, as well as technical college facilities like the Hugh K. Leatherman Advanced Manufacturing Center at Florence-Darlington Technical College.
We lost momentum during the financial crisis, and we need a new burst of investments to drive high value economic development for the next decade.
An enhanced economic strategy should build on our deep international relationships by engaging corporations, economic developers, entrepreneurs, university researchers and the Legislature. I’ve met with leaders, from university presidents to industry R&D directors, economic development agency heads and entrepreneurial champions, and each agrees we can and must step up our game.
There has been a sea change in South Carolina’s culture this summer. The state needs your leadership to develop and execute a comprehensive education and economic strategy to make the state a global powerhouse. Thank you for your service to South Carolina.
