The SC House Debates Education and School Vouchers

This piece and coverage of yesterday’s debates is brought to you by ProTruth South Carolina. For more information on neo-vouchers from ProTruth, click here.

Quick summary: The House Education and Public Works Committee met yesterday to discuss the neo-voucher bill S. 62. The bill was amended to remove the Senate language using state Education Lottery funds to regular general funds (from tax revenue) and to add a trustee appointed by the Superintendent of Education to oversee the funds. Other amendments to add reporting requirements, cap enrollment, and require a pilot study were tabled or withdrawn. The bill was passed, as amended, to second reading.

Discussion about education dominated the South Carolina House yesterday.

In the morning, a bill which seemed headed for easy passage became bogged down in debate and recriminations between factions within the House. The SC House Freedom Caucus opposed language in the bill which would have required the state Department of Education to create a model online safety curriculum for students.

Rep. Jordan Pace (Berkeley), current chair of the Freedom Caucus, objected at length to the language, on the basis that it would be implemented by librarians, who he said were likely to “indoctrinate” students because, he claimed, librarian education programs in the state were accredited by the American Library Association. He provided no evidence for this claim, which repeats common anti-public school talking points, under questioning by another House member.

At another point in the meeting, Pace said,

The most recent South Carolina Librarian president [note: he seems to be referencing the South Carolina Association of School Librarians] was my journalism teacher in high school, and I’m very glad that her indoctrination didn’t stick, in my case.

Pace’s former yearbook teacher is a former president of the Association; she has stated publicly that Pace merely took pictures for the yearbook. He did not provide any evidence or examples of how his teacher had “indoctrinated him”.

This line of attack, of course, is reminiscent of a growing number of smear campaigns and threats against educators over the past several years; the librarian in question has been targeted publicly by South Carolina legislators many times.

Rep. April Cromer (Anderson) introduced an amendment which would remove school psychologists from involvement with the model policy, claiming without evidence that the American Psychological Association would prevent school psychologists from participating without undue ideological bias.

Pace also repeatedly alluded to a conspiracy theory called Cultural Marxism, by connecting state librarians and library associations to “German socialists” from the post-World War II era. Former Freedom Caucus Chair Adam Morgan is also a proponent of the conspiracy theory.

Meeting on the neo-voucher bill

When the House Education and Public Works meeting on S.62 finally began, the committee first introduced two committee amendments, representing a major change to the Senate version of the neo-voucher bill. The House version would no longer use State Education Lottery funds; instead general funds from tax revenue would be overseen by a “trustee” who has to be a financial expert and would be appointed by the superintendent. (The amendments are not publicly available, and there was confusion among committee members as to what the “trustee” would specifically do.)

Under questioning from committee members, Erickson at one point acknowledged that a trustee could, for example, be an employee of a state charter authorizer. Most state charter schools are currently authorized by either the state or by private religious colleges like Erskine. Erickson has had a long relationship with Erskine Charter authorizer Cameron Runyan. The Erskine charter authorizer and other private charter authorizers in SC have come under significant scrutiny by lawmakers and the public for alleged mismanagement of charter schools and misuse of funds. Erskin and Runyan have even been accused of “criminal conspiracy” in a court filing by former associate James Runyean, who runs a rival private charter school. (Public filings show Runyan has donated to Erickson’s campaigns in the past.)

The committee then called several witnesses.

A representative from the South Carolina Department of Education spoke at length in favor of “educational freedom”.

During her testimony, Rep. Jeff Bradley (Beaufort), who ultimately voted in favor of the bill, pointed out that if the maximum number of students apply, the total cost would be up to $60 million in the first year.

Rep. Michael Rivers (Beaufort and Colleton) asked the Department spokesperson if the goal of the Department of Education is to educate children, or parents. The spokesperson said the goal is to educate the children. Rivers asked how that mission could align with creating “educational freedom” for parents.

Another speaker invited by the committee to speak in favor of S.62, said he believed the legislature will make vouchers “universal” within a few years.

Universal school choice has cost many states billions. And indeed the House amendment to the bill would make the neo-voucher program universal after the first three years. (There would be “no hard cap” on the number of students who could enroll, in the words of Pierce McNair, the committee’s director of research.)

Public testimony

Interestingly, the first several speakers during public testimony were strong supporters of what they called private school choice, who opposed S.62.

One speaker who often speaks in favor of school book restrictions at State Board of Education meetings objected to the bill on the grounds that what she called the “subsidies” would create more “government dependence.”

Another speaker pointed out that private education scholarships already exist, and that bringing in government money to private programs would inevitably “erode the independence” of private schools. The speaker, who said she was a homeschool parent, maintained that “taking the money and giving it to a trustee is unconstitutional”.

At least two speakers objected to the bill on the grounds that they believed there was a plot by the United Nations to use neo-voucher programs to insert government into private education. This kind of rhetoric seems unsurprising given that the pro-voucher lobby has frequently made distrust of the government a central feature of its argument, and echoes Rep. Pace’s comments earlier in the day about teachers indoctrinating students at the behest of the ALA.

As Chris Rufo famously stated, “To get to universal school choice, you really need to operate from the premise of universal school distrust.” Similarly, SC’s pro-voucher Palmetto Promise Institute released a “dossier” (entitled “Education or Indoctrination”) claiming educator associations were part of a “constellation of the left”. The editor of that “dossier,” Oran Smith, was present during meeting on S. 62, wearing a sticker supporting “school choice.”

Public and private school educators also spoke out against the bill, arguing it would harm public schools while doing little to help the average student not currently attending a private school to afford tuition. While committee members pushed back forcefully on this latter argument, even the head of the South Carolina Independent Schools Association, who spoke last, acknowledged that the average tuition in his network was greater than the $6,000 subsidy amount, and that, for example, tuition at Hammond School in Columbia is around $22,000 a year. (According to Private School Review, the average tuition for private schools in SC is $8,286 per year.)

A contentious public comment period

Rep. Shannon Erickson (Beaufort), committee chair, had to stop the proceedings about halfway through to remind representatives not to be combative with speakers. In particular, Rep. Bradley and Rep. Brian Teeple (Charleston and Colleton) repeatedly asked speakers aggressive, sometimes leading questions about the bill.

Teeple, for example, zeroed in on one speaker who had testified against the bill, asking repeatedly if she thought “competition” was helpful in improving schools— a question based on the premise that our schools are “failing” due to their own actions, and not those of the state. When she respectfully rejected the premise that public services should engage in the same kind of competition as private businesses, he continued to push back until Erickson excused the witness and reminded committee members that public testimony was “not a debate”.

Dr. Janelle Rivers, speaking for the SC League of Women Voters, urged the committee to wait to see the effects of current vouchers before expanding them. Teeple repeatedly demanded statistics on which states— other than Arizona, which Dr. Rivers had already cited.

The ACLU’s Paul Bowers and others later provided specific data about Florida and other states which have seen ballooning budgets since adopting “universal vouchers,” but Teeple asked them no follow-up questions. Bowers also warned about the existing research showing negative outcomes for students.

Rep. Bradley at one point aggressively asked a speaker why the state should continue to spend “billions” on education.

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Again, his question was based on a premise that was never explained. (For example, the fact that by his own observation the bill would require up to $60 million to partly subsidize the educations of just 10,000 students, while the public school system serves nearly eighty times that amount, could provide part of the answer.)

More importantly, though, the SC Constitution specifically requires that the General Assembly create a system of free public schools: “The General Assembly shall provide for the maintenance and support of a system of free public schools open to all children in the State and shall, establish, organize, and support such other public institutions of learning, as may be desirable”. This mandate doesn’t allow for the kind of defeatism multiple voucher proponents on the committee showed; it requires that if there truly are “failures” in the system, it is those very legislatures who must address and rectify them.

Ultimately, though, the committee instead passed the bill as amended on to second reading. It will likely be on the full House floor by next week.