So let’s look at some other numbers that will give you a window into how we’re doing with our low-income, African-American students which, as you know, make up much of our under-resourced population in South Carolina. The College Board who puts out the SAT test, they have something called the College and Career Readiness Benchmark. Okay, and if students meet or exceed that benchmark, they’re more apt to be successful in college, ultimately graduate, and have an interesting career. And that is a total score of 1550 points for verbal, math, and writing – a score of 1550.
So let’s look at Charleston County last year. A total of 1,100 African-American students in Charleston County were eligible to take the SAT last year. Out of that, about half, 568 students actually took it. Out of that, 31 students met that benchmark for the entire county of Charleston.
So how do we move the needle in education? Well, I’m here to tell you the problem isn’t the kids. The problem is the system. It doesn’t work for under-resourced kids. How can we expect – again, think about that simple logic again. How can we expect a “one size fits all” system to work for under-resourced kids and families when their circumstances are so radically different?
In many cases we are talking about single-parent households without enough access to things like proper medical care, books at home, even exposure to the world at large. Heck, even for single, working moms, spending enough time with her children becomes a challenge. These are families that care dearly about their children but just don’t have the means.
So what can be done? Here’s the crazy part. We know what works in educating under-resourced kids. We know what works but we have not made the changes in our public schools that are required. Don’t get me wrong; there are many people who would love to see some of the changes that I’m about to talk about.
Take for example, the leadership of Charleston County schools; they would love to see the reforms I’m going to talk about. But making change happen on a broad scale is very difficult. Changing the entrenched status quo is very, very hard and it takes the involvement of the silent majority. Hopefully, many of you.
So before we talk about what works, let me touch on what doesn’t work. Throwing money at the problem doesn’t work. Over the last 40 years, as the two upward-sloping lines show, we have roughly tripled spending on an inflation-adjusted basis – in South Carolina and the nation as a whole, roughly tripled spending.
But you can see academic achievement, as represented by math and reading, has basically been flat. So okay throwing money at the problem doesn’t work. What does work? Well, I’m going to review some ideas for you that we have found to be game-changing ideas serving a similar demographic around the country.
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