ISSUE: John Edwards's education plan
OUR VIEW: Focus on dropouts on target, but candidate will find a skeptical S.C.
Presidential candidate John Edwards is putting a focus on South Carolina, where he won the Democratic presidential primary in 2004, by emphasizing a much-discussed topic here, education.
A day ago, we wrote of the candidate's call for reforms in the state's standardized testing so as not to discourage lesser-performing students from remaining in school. But there is more to the candidate's plan, with Edwards' target being reducing the state's highest-in-the nation student dropout rate.
Only 54 percent of South Carolina students graduate from high school. About 30,000 a year drop out. Repeating: Just more than half of our young people are completing high school at a time when a degree is essential for most any endeavor.
Across the country, high school dropouts earn nearly 50 percent less than workers with a diploma or G.E.D. and they are only three-quarters as likely to be employed as high school graduates.
Important to note is the disparity between urban and rural school districts. Superintendent of Education Jim Rex cited it during his visit here this past week, calling for a new method of equitable funding that improves education across the board, but particularly by elevating the poorer districts.
In Edwards' words: "Nowhere is (the dropout problem) more prevalent than in the rural school districts along the I-95 corridor, sometimes referred to as the Corridor of Shame. Students in these districts, often poor minorities, face the challenge of attending schools where the public high school graduation rates have fallen as low as 44 percent.
"The dropout rate in South Carolina not only affects the lives and educational opportunities of these students but also has a negative effect on the state and the community as a whole. Public school drop-outs from 2006 in South Carolina alone will cost the state more than $7.8 billion in lost wages, taxes and productivity over their lifetimes and create a further strain on South Carolina's jails and public services."
Edwards promises that as president, he will reform schools and provide multiple pathways to graduation, including "second-chance" schools for dropouts and alternative schools for at-risk students.
"We need to address the dropout crisis in our country, because we all pay a price when young people who could someday find the cure for AIDS or become the next Supreme Court Justice are sitting on a stoop because they didn't get the education they needed," Edwards said. "America is about second chances, and we should make sure all of our children have the chance they need to earn their high school diploma. A good education is the sturdiest ladder to success and we need to do everything in our power to encourage our young people and make sure they have the chance to go as far as their hard work and God-given talents will take them."
Noting that surveys have found those who drop out universally regret doing so later in life, Edwards is on target with emphasizing education. On the down side, he is doing so in a state that has heard about education reform in one way or another annually, and in every campaign on the state level for decades. There is skepticism and pessimism aplenty in the populace. He'll need to be very convincing if his word are to translate into broad support in the 2008 first-in-the-South primary.
The Corridor of Shame, given that name by a television documentary, was also the target of Democratic candidate Sen. Barack Obama this past week. The Illinois senator, who has referenced South Carolina education often, toured the J.V. Martin Junior High School in Dillon, which built in the 1800s is the state's oldest school building.