Here's what's wrong with the Monitor study of education

Well, you knew it was coming. It was really done quite intentionally.

The Monitor Group completed a study of public education concluding as the Greenville News put it that Contrary to some perceptions, state's students hold their own.

Now along comes The State newspaper opining that:

THE FICTION THAT South Carolina has the worst schools in the nation has become something akin to an urban legend, perpetuated by the same means: Tell a lie often enough, and eventually people will believe it.

The State reads into this report that:

But there is good reason to believe that the combination of [current] changes and the full 12-year implementation of the 1998 Education Accountability Act that is already producing such dramatic results in the lower grades will put our graduation rates on that same path to improvement.

So in other words, let's just stick with the status quo and everything will be all right.

But the reality is, as Swamp Fox showed a couple of weeks ago, that in the words of Andrew J. Coulson, who also studied SC public education and reached a fundamentally different conclusion,

The better educated a South Carolina student'’s parents happen to be, the further that student scores behind students in other states whose parents are similarly educated.

Arguing that we should maintain the status quo in public education and that everything will be alright is not going to help our children be the best in the world at what they do to compete in the global economy they will face over their careers.