State Superintendent urges Martin Luther King Day audience to support South Carolina school reform
State Superintendent urges Martin Luther King Day audience to support South Carolina school reformCOLUMBIA — In a speech to the City of Columbia’s 20th anniversary
Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Celebration, State Superintendent of
Education Jim Rex told the audience that unless they get involved in
public education reform, the dreams of Dr. King will never be fully
realized.
Rex said South Carolina can be a national leader in reforming,
supporting and improving public schools so that all children – even
those living in poverty – have access to first-rate facilities and
opportunities, and to teachers with high expectations who hold them
accountable, set high standards and help them to achieve.
“We have come a long way, but Dr. King’s dream is not complete,” Rex
said. “It’s not enough to feel empathy for the children going to
underfunded, outdated and ineffective schools. If you’re not speaking
out to correct these injustices, it’s the same as supporting them.”
Rex urged the audience “to stand up and be counted” in favor of school
reform and to ask their state legislators and local elected officials to
do the same.
Rex said South Carolina has “the potential to turn around generations of
apathy and neglect that have left so many of our students, schools and
communities behind.” He said the turn-around can begin with passage of
his 2008 legislative proposals to increase public school choice,
overhaul the state’s testing system and adopt fair and equitable
funding.
Now is the time for action, Rex said, because “when it comes to our
children, we’ve procrastinated too long.” He also warned that vouchers
and tax credits for private schools are not the answer to raising
student achievement.
“The people pushing that agenda don’t care about our students,” Rex
said. “They are wealthy, out-of-state special interest groups that have
pumped millions of dollars into our state trying to sabotage the work
we’re doing and dupe us into following them into a social experiment
that is unfair, unproven, unaccountable and unaffordable.”
Rex said his bi-partisan public school choice initiative will give more
students the opportunity to be successful in a way that’s accountable
for results and accessible to all families.
“The truth is, we can do everything these voucher supporters want to do,
but we can do it inside our public schools, and we can do it in a way
that does not send the taxpayers’ money to private schools,” Rex said.
