Clearly our state’s education opportunities are too numerous and too complex to entirely ameliorate in one hastily assembled bill. South Carolinians are all too familiar with the negative ramifications of hurried half-baked bills such as the Gas Tax and the Base Load Review Act.
Let’s not further validate Einstein’s theory of insanity by making additional hasty mistakes with our education reform. Rather, let’s immediately address the prime areas of education levers that almost everyone (including teachers) can agree upon. After implementing the priority remedies we can thoughtfully move on to the more contentious areas of concern.
In other words let’s pass legislation Today which we absolutely need today.
- Provide all full time teachers with an annual bonus retention of $ 6000, to be paid out over the course of the school year. This bonus would effectively raise the average teacher salary by about 12% and put us well within our region’s salary range. Investing in 50,000 public teachers with a $6000 annual bonus would cost the state an affordable $300 million annually according to the latest state budget figures).
- Reduce state mandated testing by a net 50%. Teacher input is vital here to ensure we eliminate the least productive tests).
- Completely scuttle any notion of adding to the state education bureaucracy. Einstein would remind us adding government bureaucracy never ends well.
Legislatures can make a giant leap in education by enacting just the aforementioned, now. Such prompt action on key education issues would offer immediate hope that we are serious about raising the education bar in South Carolina.
Additionally, legislators could then better focus on addressing the remainder of our education obstacles.
Randy Bright
Ridgeway