♪ opening music ♪ ♪ <Gavin> Welcome to This Week in South Carolina.

I'm Gavin Jackson.

This week, we talk with Superintendent of Education, Ellen Weaver, about the state of education in South Carolina.

Superintendent education Ellen Weaver.

Thanks for joining me today.

<Ellen> Great to be here, Gavin.

<Gavin> So, like we were talking about last November, you won 16% of the vote, you took office in January.

It's been almost nine months now, tell us how it's been going, how you're approaching leading the state in education.

<Ellen> Well, I will tell you, it is such an honor to do this job.

It is truly an honor of a lifetime, and I have such a strong sense of stewardship and responsibility of this office, for the over 700,000 students in this state for the wonderful teachers and educators that we have, who go to work and work hard every day on behalf of those students.

So, this is a huge responsibility, but I come into this office every day with such a sense of joy and purpose, because there is nothing more foundational to our shared success as a state, as a nation than a strong educational foundation.

I truly believe that education is the front door of the American dream, and so to be able to go to work every day to think about how we can do education better in South Carolina, to serve students to the very best of our ability to give them the opportunity to reach their full potential, I mean, it's an amazing thing.

In terms of how I've been approaching the job, I really went in with an attitude of listen and learn.

We were talking a little bit before we started taping that this is a massive responsibility.

We have $8 billion that flows through that agency, on an annual basis, over 1000 employees.

We are responsible for running the state transportation fleet, the bus fleet.

So there is a lot of responsibility that goes along with this job, and so I thought it was really important for me to go in to sit down with employees at the department to really get my feet under me, and as I was telling you, I'm not going to claim that I know everything there is to know but I know a lot more than I did nine months ago, and so I think that, that kind of posture of being willing to listen and learn is also how you build trust and respect.

So, I have been meeting out in the community with business leaders, faith leaders, with our superintendents, our local board members, have been visiting schools.

So, it's been a crazy nine months, but it's been a nine months full of purpose.

<Gavin> That's wonderful to hear.

Superintendent, with that being said, how's your relationship with the legislature?

You had a budget that had to go through.

Were you happy with everything that was in that budget, as well as maybe support from the governor?

<Ellen> I was thrilled.

We have an incredible team dynamic happening in Columbia now.

The governor's office, the leaders of the General Assembly, specifically our policy and budget committees, and I as well as the folks at the EOC have been working together, incredibly well, having regular conversations about how we can align the respective work that each of us do around a strategic outcome, which is how are we going to advance academic achievement for students.

That is the baseline that we all share, across party, across race, across urban and rural.

Any possible difference that divides us, I think we all want to see our students succeed, and so we had a banner year in the General Assembly.

We saw a massive investment, $600 million in new spending and public education.

About half of that was in recurring spending, to support increasing teacher salaries.

We know that if we're going to educate students well, we have to take care of our teachers, and if you take care of our teachers, a lot of the rest of the issues take care of themselves, and so I'm thrilled with where we are.

I'm also incredibly grateful to the legislature for supporting my number one learning priority, which is early literacy.

Everything that we do rests on the foundation of reading, even math.

You have to be able to read well to do math, and so we see early literacy and that focus changing outcomes in states across the country, and we're starting to see that now here in South Carolina, and so the General Assembly's partnership in that work has just been phenomenal.

<Gavin> - and I know you're seeing $600 million in new spending, but it's probably too soon to maybe say how much of an impact that's having, but when it comes to teachers and retentions, retention, have you seen any, any of that maybe trickle down as we started this new school year?

Did you see maybe fewer folks leave teaching or any way you can anecdotally point to that?

<Ellen> Yeah, well, I think...we're still seeing incredible challenges because money is only one part of the equation when it comes to retaining teachers.

It's an important part of the equation.

Our teachers have to be paid as professionals and they have to be paid so they can support themselves and their families, and so I know there's a shared commitment in the General Assembly and our office and the governor's office to continue to advance that critical priority, but we also have to look at many of the other factors about why teachers are leaving the classroom tired, stressed out.

Student behavior is honestly the thing that I hear more often than not from teachers, and so that's something that maybe we can talk about, but something that we are planning to focus very strategically on, intensively on, how we can...support students and teaching them the character traits and the resilience that they need to perform well in school, but a lot of that even Gavin comes back to literacy.

If you stop and think about it, you know, if you're not reading on grade level, by the end of third grade, you're going to continue to fall further and further behind, and is it any wonder that students are frustrated that they act out because if they don't have that foundational skill, they can't do the work that we're asking them to do, and so they're going to become discipline issues.

They're going to become class clowns, maybe they'll drop out.

I mean, you know, 70% to 80% of our prison population is functionally illiterate, and so again, I think supporting teachers and addressing our recruitment, retention crisis really starts with giving teachers the skills that they need to teach reading well, and we'll see the downstream effect of that in the years ahead.

<Gavin> Yeah, and we'll talk about that for sure, and I want to ask you about just some recent testing data from SC PASS, SC READY, and it looks like scores are ticking up when it comes to English language arts, nearly 54% of third through eighth grade students tested, met or exceeded expectations in ELA for the last school year 2022 to 23.

That's been increased, too.

So, it sounds like something's going right there.

<Ellen> Yes.

>> How much more do we need to do, I guess, get everyone on this grade level?

<Ellen> Yeah, we've got to double down on that strategy.

So, my vision is that every child leaves a South Carolina school prepared for college, career or the military, but in the meantime, we have to set some measurable benchmarks, some smart goals to know that we are making progress towards that ultimate end goal, and so I have said publicly that I want to see at least 75% of students on grade level in reading and math by the year 2030, and the numbers that you just gave, I mean, we have a tough hill to climb, we only have 54% of our students who are proficient in ELA reading, and about 41% in math.

So we have a long way to go and a short time to get there, as the great philosopher said, but we are making progress, especially on that literacy front.

<Gavin> When you talk about benchmarks.

Does that mean more testing?

Do you think we have enough testing, too much?

Or what's your take on that?

<Ellen> I...certainly don't think we need more testing.

I think that the key is how we use the data from the testing that we're already doing, and so there's an important distinction to know between what they call formative testing and summative testing.

So what you and I are talking about right now is the summative testing that happens at the end of the year, which is kind of a, you know, one time snapshot of what a student learned the entire school year, but what many districts are doing what all districts are doing really is also this formative testing so that you're getting benchmarks along the way, so that teachers are able to address deficits that they're seeing in their students so that by the time they get to that last final test, hopefully they've been able to prioritize what those students are missing, and actually get them what they need.

So I think we have to be smart about how we use testing, how we use the data generated by it, we have to make it useful for parents, and we have to make it useful for teachers.

So no, I don't think we need to do more testing, and I'd certainly love to see us streamline the testing, we have.

The summative testing that we do as a state is required by the federal government.

So that's not something that we can necessarily change at the state level, but I think we can be smarter about how we use it.

<Gavin> Well, we talked about ELA, English Language Arts and standards.

You guys have updated those standards after years of input and work on that, obviously, something's going on before you got there, but is that something that you're hearing a good reception from this new ELA standards?

What's the benefit here...?

<Ellen> Yeah, very much so.

So, these new ELA standards are truly South Carolina generated.

So the last vestiges of kind of that national Common Core hubbub that we had about 10 years ago, I think has finally been dealt with.

We have South Carolina created and driven standards now in ELA and one of the big focuses that we are doing not only in those ELA standards, but in the upcoming standards for math that are currently being rewritten, is we're trying to simplify and prioritize.

What we have heard from teachers over and over and over again, is that there's just too many standards.

It's too complicated.

I don't know where to start, and so we've heard that.

We have heard that feedback in the math standards that we're currently working to rewrite.

I understand in one grade level, we've gone from 100 standards to 40 standards.

That's still a lot of standards to teach, but it's a lot more focused and prioritized and so, I think we're actually in the perfect window of opportunity when it comes to where we are with the English Language Arts and reading, because we have the new standards that are South Carolina derived and aligned to what we value here in South Carolina, we have the partnership that I mentioned with the General Assembly where they have provided money for us to invest in evidence based professional development for teachers that will give them the tools they need to equip students with the foundational literacy skills that are so important in ELA, and then we also are currently in the curriculum adoption process for new high quality ELA materials that are aligned to the science of reading professional development that we're doing, and so what you see is an alignment that rarely happens in education.

One of the things I've learned in this job, and certainly had seen on the outside looking in, prior to being elected, is that a lot of times there's a lot of activity happening, but not a lot of alignment of that activity, and so it's very well intentioned, but we have to be strategic.

There's only so many hours in a day, and there's only so many resources, and so we have to align those...for impact.

<Gavin> - and when it comes to alignment of resources, can we talk about federal funding that we saw as a result of the pandemic?

We got some, I think, $3 billion in elementary and secondary school emergency relief funds, the first two tranches of that total about a billion dollars, I think that's been depleted, but there's still about a billion dollars left from the American Rescue Plan Act money.

Are we seeing benefits from those billions of dollars?

Are you going to see alignment with that?

Are we seeing schools work with other schools to say, hey, this worked here, spend money on that there, etc.?

<Ellen> You're speaking my language here, because when I was on the Education Oversight Committee, that's exactly what we were asking for was how are we going to be tracking what we are doing with this money, student interventions to understand what works?

Is it summer school?

Is it high dose tutoring?

Is it maybe the you know, high quality instructional materials.

So I can't say that we have done a real great job of that, as a state, I think it's been pretty diffuse in the accountability of that, but I can tell you that I plan to issue a challenge to districts and it's the same thing that I'm actually doing within the State Department of Education, because I believe that whenever I'm speaking with districts, I have to make sure my own house is in order too.

So, the State Education Agency got to withhold some of those funds, and so what we're currently doing now at the department is going line by line through how those funds have been allocated, because we basically have one more year, the ESSER III it was called, is that last tranche of spending that came down, and it was the largest, and so what we're working to do is to align that money within the agency around specifically the priority of literacy, but then also to support the high quality instructional materials and resources that we provide to our teachers, because that was the whole point of this ESSER spending was to support improvement and student outcomes, and I think a lot of it unfortunately, has been used for other purposes.

<Gavin> So I mean, are we going to be able to see any measurable wave declaring success?

I mean, as we could be seeing those standardized test rates going up, or are you worried that maybe some of that money didn't go to where it needed to go so it might affect outcomes in general?

<Ellen> Well, I think that, I think that it's going to be really hard to attribute success or failure one way or another, because I'm not sure that we have always done the best job of, of tracking the spending exactly what you were talking about for impact.

So, you know, I hope that over the next year, we see a much more intensive focus across the board, on really using what's left of that money to support student outcomes, and especially looking at evidence based interventions, things like high dose tutoring, we see in the research, that that's one of the most effective things you can do to catch a child up on math, and it's clear that that's an area we really need to focus on as a state.

<Gavin> A lot of that money went through school districts too.

So I'm sure there's some oversight on your behalf of your department, but when we look at school districts, there's a lot of them do we need to see more consolidation of those school districts going forward?

<Ellen> Well, that's a question for the General Assembly, really, we have seen a lot of very rural school districts that have consolidated.

Most recently we have Barnwell, who is in the process of consolidating, and that is something that the local legislative delegation in those areas, spearheads, and so, I plan to partner with local legislative delegations to understand the needs of the community from their perspective, because they know firsthand what that community needs, and I think, you know, one piece of this work that I'm particularly passionate about is the work that we're doing in the turnaround districts that we currently are running at the State Department, so Allendale and Williamsburg and I think that there is a lot that we can do in those districts to build a network of support for rural districts, regardless of whether they're ever taken over by the state or not, but a network of support for like IT services for professional development for things that they might not have the scale to do on their own, but that we can help support at the state level.

So that doesn't require consolidation to do that.

That's just services that we can offer, and so I'm really excited about the opportunity that we have in those districts to kind of pilot that work.

<Gavin> Yeah, especially when you talk about IT and just connectivity of schools too, I mean, we're seeing that big push for broadband, rural, and even in cities across South Carolina.

So there'll be some availability there too, but when we talk about school districts, school districts, we're talking about involvement with parents, we've been seeing some activity on the Charleston County School District, I don't want to get too local on these things, because those are local issues, but you know, there's talk about Mommas for Liberty, that group being involved in a lot of upheaval in some places, how do you feel about those groups, or groups in general, when they're trying to maybe change that I know that the dynamic of a school board or school or principal, things like that, do you think that's beneficial?

Or how do you how do you mesh that?

<Ellen> So I think that we have to start from the foundational premise that public schools are just that.

They are our schools, which means they're our responsibility, and I think that local civic engagement, especially when it comes from parents, in that local community who are being served by that school, is very beneficial, and I think that what we have to do in the education space, is figure out how to extend a hand of partnership, to those local groups, to parent groups, to the business community, to the nonprofit community, to the faith community, and say, we are here and we are fully transparent.

We have nothing to hide, and so that's why I'm such a strong supporter of financial transparency, why I am such a supporter of curricula transparency, which is what many of these parent groups are asking for, and I think that we have to, we have to do that if we are going to build the trust that is necessary for parents and teachers to work together, because that's the only way students are going to be successful.

So I think that trying to to marginalize groups of parents as being too vocal or too active, I think that's a losing strategy, a losing strategy for public education.

We've got to be building trust.

<Gavin> When we talk about transparency, though do we have to have cameras in classrooms to see what teachers are teaching?

Doesn't that kind of overburden teachers, when we're trying to recruit them and retain them?

How do you feel about that?

<Ellen> Yeah, I think we have to, ...be able to set some clear parameters and guidelines about what we expect public education in South Carolina to be, and I think that there is a strong role for the state in that, because if you look at how we fund schools, you know, about 7% to 8% is federal funding, and then the rest of it is a pretty even split between state and local share, and so there's a strong level of state investment in public education, and I think that there needs to be clarity and uniformity at the state level around what we want our public schools to be.

I think there's a push nationally, to make public education much more focused on creating student activists than in educating them and the fundamental skills that we in South Carolina want our students to have, and so I think kind of creating that framework within which then we can empower local leadership to make decisions.

I truly believe that nobody knows better what's best for a student than the parent, the teacher and the principal, who are there with that student every single day, and so I don't want to micromanage schools, from the state level, but it's clear that in the environment that we're in right now that there are just norms that we need to clarify.

We want our public schools to be what public schools were always intended to be, which is a developer of the potential of students to go out and become strong civic leaders and to be employable.

<Gavin> - but so, would you support that measure?

Or do you think that money for cameras in classrooms should maybe be used towards technology in classrooms instead?

<Ellen> Yeah, I don't.

I don't know that.

I don't know that I have a firm position on that.

I think I would want to talk to teachers more and to understand what they think the impact would be.

I think we have to be really careful to not become big brother.

I'm also concerned about the privacy right of students.

You know, in a situation where there are cameras in the classrooms, I think there's a lot of really complicated factors that we would have to weigh carefully.

<Gavin> You were also talking about the federal level and just the involvement.

There's always been a lot of talk about, you know, not taking federal funds or, you know, on the campaign trail recently from Republican presidential candidates talking about getting rid of the Department of Education.

How do you feel about that?

What do you what are your thoughts when you hear that kind of rhetoric coming from the campaign trail?

<Ellen> Well, I would love to see block grants come back to the States.

I think one of the, one of the greatest obstacles that we face in education is the red tape and the strings that really do come with federal dollars.

I mean, I can't quite quantify it scientifically by percent, but you know, I told you that 7% to 8% of our total investment in public education in South Carolina, is from the federal government, and yet, I mean, I would venture a guess that at least 40% to 50% of the compliance and regulations and hoops that we have to jump through, comes attached to that federal money, and so at what point is the tail wagging the dog, and so I think that's a conversation that reasonable people can have.

I would love to see education funds come back to the states in a much more block grant form, so that you don't have so many programmatic strings and bureaucratic red tape that goes along with it.

<Gavin> Got you.

We have about five minutes left.

I want to ask you about this letter that you wrote to the SC Association of School Librarians on August 25, to inform the organization that the Department of Education will formally discontinue any partnerships with the group.

Effective immediately, what was the need for that?

What was your...what was the basis behind that?

<Ellen> You know, Gavin it really comes back to what we were just talking about, which is what is the purpose of public education?

Is it to create political activists?

Or is it to educate kids in the fundamental skills that they need to be successful in their future, and I think that there is a loud and vocal minority of educators who ascribe to the former and they think that political activism is what we need in our school libraries is what we need in our school classrooms.

I just think the vast majority of South Carolinians reject that idea, and so when I see an organization like SCAL, that seems to be actively stirring up that debate and those conversations, I don't think that's a constructive partnership, because what that's doing is detracting from our primary purpose of supporting students, and so, you know, we at the Department are actually, just next week, are going to be offering an incredible training to librarians and to media specialists across the state, and its going to be focused on what I shared with you as my number one goal, which is early literacy, we need our librarians to be partners in this literacy work.

It's going to take an all hands on deck effort if we are going to turn around academic outcomes in South Carolina and continue to see progress on these core fundamental skills, and so I want to build partnerships and to leave the politics outside of the school and focus on what we actually need to focus on.

<Gavin> Yeah, it's very difficult to do that, too, but I want to move on really quick, because we have a few minutes left, I want to ask you about this mental health crisis going on in our schools.

What do you see?

What are you hearing from parents, and are we getting enough school counselors in there?

I know the governor made that a priority.

I want to know, what's being done to help tackle this problem?

<Ellen> Yeah, that's fantastic.

You're exactly right.

I think that's one of the biggest challenges that we face are the underlying needs of students and their mental health, and so one of the things that we are working to focus on at the department is what I'm calling CARE, which is character and resilience, education.

and CARE is not a one size fits all curriculum, but it is a compendium of resources that we are working to put together for districts to help them support the behavioral and mental health needs of their students, and so I was just with former Superintendent Spearman, last week, she's working with the Maxwell Foundation.

They have some wonderful curriculum, that, as she says, is for people of any faith or no faith.

It is about the values that we know our students have to have the values that we articulate in the profile of the South Carolina graduate, The soft skills, if you will, that employers need to see in our students, and so that's already being deployed in schools across the state, and we're seeing incredible results in terms of lowering of discipline outcomes.

In those schools.

There's also an incredible curriculum, the Medal of Honor curriculum that was developed by teachers.

It's being deployed in schools across the country, but very few schools in South Carolina have heard of it, which is ironic, since we have the Medal of Honor Museum on board the Yorktown, and so that's something that we're going to be working to change but that's going to be a major initiative that you see coming out of the department.

<Gavin> - and then also SROs in classrooms, too, but before I talk about that, I want to ask you about this voucher bill that the governor signed into law this past session.

They'll eventually allow up to 50,000 students to use public money for private schools.

It starts with 5000 openings for students whose families make less than about $60,000, and within three years, this will be phased in.

How do you see that working?

There's a lot of concerns about public money for private schools, etc.

How do you see that working going forward?

<Ellen> Well, I think that's a great question, and I really think that it gets back to an article that I read in Education Next, this last week that was written by two former superintendents, one from Seattle and one from, I think Hartford, Connecticut.

They were talking about the unbundling of education, and what the education ecosystem of the future looks like, and I think that's really the opportunity that we have in front of us right now.

Technology was already unbundling education even prior to the pandemic, but I think since the pandemic, many parents have seen that there's an ability for them to actually customize their children's education in a far more flexible way than just the traditional four walls of a classroom, and so what innovations like ESA do, we see them growing all over the country, and right here in South Carolina, as you said, we have this new ESA bill that we're currently standing up at the department.

Applications will open in January for the 24-25 school year for those first 5000 kids, and it's geared to support the students with the most needs.

So it's tied to family income.

So, the threshold is 200% of the federal poverty level, which double check my math on this, but I'm pretty sure the latest guidelines were between $50,000 and $60,000, I think, per family, in terms of who would be eligible for this.

So to me, tools like ESAs are how we help students and families navigate the unbundling of education that we see, because you know, folks who are in the upper income levels, they're going to be able to navigate the system for their families.

They have the resources to do it, but how are we going to support families that need the assistance to navigate this.

I think this is a great opportunity.

and it's something that we see not only here in South Carolina, but across the country, and I know we need to move on, but the last thing I'll say about it just quickly, is that we need public schools to be partners in this work, and this bill allows for partnership with our public schools.

So it's not just for private schools.

It's for tutoring, it's for therapy.

It's for transferring from one district to another.

So it's a broad...range of uses not just private schools.

<Gavin> We'll have to revisit that when we talk again.

State Superintendent of Education, Ellen Weaver.

Thank you so much for joining us.

<Ellen> My pleasure.