My mission as South Carolina State Superintendent of Education is for every one of our students, from their first day of school, to be prepared to graduate from high school and to maximize their success in the workforce, military, or higher education.
Every classroom in South Carolina is safe and orderly.
- Teachers must be respected. They should be supported in maintaining discipline and order in the classrooms.
- Appropriate boundaries between adults and children must be established and maintained.
- Every student must give and receive respect.
Every child and every parent should expect academic progress every year. Foundational to this is proficiency in reading.
- Students and parents need to see a return on the investment of their time and energy. No child can afford to not be making progress.
- One size doesn’t fit all. Parents should have choices in the educational options for their children. Teachers and principals should have choices in the educational communities they lead.
- Aggressive implementation of reading instruction for struggling readers must be a priority. Every student needs to read to succeed in high school and life.
Every dollar that is spent on education must be accounted for and be directly connected to the classrooms of our state.
- Teachers should be rewarded for exceptional academic gains for students.
- Funding should be based on the students served, not the programs operated, and expenditures must be transparent to the public.
- Principals and teachers are most visibly accountable for their students’ achievement. They need to be given flexibility in designing the academic programs to best meet the needs of the students.
