Superintendent debate revolves
around dangerous obsession

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
AFTER THE debate Monday night between candidates for state superintendent of education, Republican Karen Floyd accused me of being obsessed with a “single issue.”
    Say what? Moi? Hey, I was the very last person there to mention that issue. Her opponent, Democrat Jim Rex, brought it up. She vaguely touched upon it herself. S.C. ETV moderator Andy Gobeil pressed her repeatedly, but to no avail, to answer a simple “yes” or “no” question about it.
    That issue, of course, is the one that has paralyzed debate over schools in South Carolina ever since Gov. Mark Sanford introduced it, and thereby attracted vast sums of money from out-of-state extremists determined to undermine the very idea of public education. It’s the issue of whether to abandon the concept of accountability for tax dollars spent on education, and instead throw money to individuals to spend on any alternative that strikes them as attractive.
    Before the governor weighed in, parents, educators and policymakers were debating all sorts of ways to improve the quality of those schools that did not meet South Carolina’s standards — which, ever since the 1998 Education Accountability Act, have been among the most demanding in the nation.
    The governor used his bully pulpit to change the debate from how to meet those standards to whether we should even try. He wants to take money that would be spent on that strict regimen of improvement, and toss it at parents in the vague hope that better options will naturally spring up to take their money.
    And Karen Floyd is his candidate. In the year since he anointed her, she has presented no other convincing reason why she is on the ballot. She has absolutely no relevant experience. She has never improved a school system, or even one school, or one classroom. To my knowledge she had never publicly exhibited any interest in school reform of any kind before she decided to run for this statewide office.
    Her opponent offers 30 years of experience in education, from K-12 through higher education, both public and private. Her response is to dismiss completely the value of his experience, airily proclaiming that what our schools need is an outsider’s perspective. She can boast an infinite supply of that.
    Dr. Rex, product of “the system,” is the one telling the system that it needs to do some radical
things that lawmakers have never dared require — such as paying teachers by their performance rather than how many degrees they have, and empowering principals to fire the teachers who don’t measure up.
    She says she’s for those things, too. But she doesn’t articulate them as well, possibly because she knows far less regarding what she’s talking about.
    Visit her Web site. Under “Issues,” she offers four brief position papers. One is about tweaking the PACT — which is her most substantive foray into actual academic improvement. Another is about preventing violence in schools. The other two are about channeling resources to the private sector of education — one about contracting with “diverse providers” and the other “choice,” which is her and the governor’s preferred term for taking tax money away from public schools and urging parents to spend it on something else.
    I don’t find all of Jim Rex’s proposals on his site, either. But I do find the kind of comprehensive approach you get from a thorough professional who is fed up with the status quo.
    To back up her assertion that her version of “choice” is but one subtopic in a multifaceted plan, she had a campaign assistant draft a chart and send it to us recently. It’s on my blog if you’re curious. But I warn you: Your only chance of making any sense out of it is to look at it while you listen to the streaming video of her buzzword-laden elaboration during Monday night’s debate. Good luck with that, because it didn’t help me much.
    So please excuse me if I identify her with the single issue that caused the governor to endorse her before it was known who else would even seek the Republican nomination.
    But I’m the single-issue guy, right? I think I know where that came from. Even though I was the last one at the table to address vouchers and such, I was the one who did so in embarrassingly specific terms. She managed to slough off Mr. Gobeil’s several attempts to get a straight answer, but I was more successful back during the primary debate in the spring. It took three attempts, and even then she answered with great reluctance. Yes, she had said, she would have voted for the last version of the governor’s proposal considered by the Legislature.
    OK, I said last week, so that means that rather than just advocating options for the disadvantaged trapped in “failing schools,” you favor giving these tax credits to anyone who is already sending their kids to private school or home-schooling them — because that bill did that.
    She turned to the camera and gave another long nonanswer. (Along the way she cited Shakespeare as having compared legislation to making sausages. But it was Otto Von Bismarck, not the Bard, who said that.)
    Let’s face it: When it comes to factors bearing upon her candidacy to preside over our state’s public schools, Mrs. Floyd is the single-issue candidate. She could dismiss it with a word if she chose, but she won’t. Consequently, that one thing looms over everything else she says or does.
    And on that one issue, she’s wrong.