Remarkable Success in Public Education

In the video below John Stossel interviews Inez Tenenbaum when she was the South Carolina State Superintendent of Education. This first aired in 2006 and during the interview Stossel asks Tenenbaum about the dismal performance of the South Carolina public schools. I'm snipping the part of the interview out that I want to focus on but the relevant segment starts at 22:40 if you'd like to check my editing.

Ms. Tenenbaum makes some strong comments in this interview. She seems confident and predicts great improvements for South Carolina students. I thought it would be interesting to see how her predictions panned out. If nothing else she deserves to be given credit for progress that has no doubt occurred since this interview took place. And of course that progress took place, right? I mean, just listen to how sure she was: (I've started this video at her segment which starts at 22:40 and it runs through about the 27:00 mark)



Here is her current bio. Ms. Tenenbaum is no longer the State Superintendent of Education, she was appointed by Barack Obama to be the Chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission in June 2009. Her bio states a couple things that are relevant to the topic at hand:

Ms. Tenenbaum was elected South Carolina's State Superintendent of Education in 1998 and completed her second term in 2007. Throughout her career, Ms. Tenenbaum has been an energetic and determined advocate for children and families and has extensive experience in administrative and regulatory matters.

During her tenure as South Carolina's State Superintendent of Education, student achievement in South Carolina improved at the fastest rate in the nation, with scores increasing on every state, national, and international tests administered. At the end of Ms. Tenenbaum's tenure, the prestigious journal Education Week ranked South Carolina number one in the country for the quality of its academic standards, assessment, and accountability systems.

So, this woman was not an education system passerby, she was the SC Superintendent of Education for about 8 years.

Some time has passed since this interview so maybe we could check on the "remarkable success" South Carolina was anticipating in its K-12 education. The first thing we'll check are the State's SAT scores. Now, the College Board, who administers the SAT, doesn't recommend you compare the various States by SAT scores but this will be a good starting point for our discussion. The SAT scores by State can be found here. Ms. Tenenbaum would be pleased, no doubt, that South Carolina no longer has the worst State scores. They have moved up two slots and now Hawaii and Maine perform worse. And of course Washington DC if we're going to count them. Over on the right we can see the 10 year improvement for the tests that were given in 1999. (The SAT now has a writing component and improvement data is not available for that) We see that SC has improved 7 in Reading and 21 in Math. These are improvements on their old 1999 scores of 1.5% and 4.4% respectively. Keep in mind that is over 10 years. I will leave it to the reader to decide whether that qualifies as a remarkable success.

The real test (hah hah) however, is South Carolina's performance on the NAEP exams. NAEP is the National Assessment of Educational Progress and is considered the gold standard by which to judge and compare a State's performance in education. It is administered by the National Center for Education Statistics which is part of the U.S. Department of Education. It is even referred to as "the nation's report card." NAEP does include private schools as well but they account for only 10% of students nationally. Let's see how SC compares:

The scores below are all 8th grade scores. It should be noted that in some of the earlier years some States did not participate. The maximum score is 500.

For Math, in 2000 SC was ranked 31st out of 41 with a score of 266. In 2009 they were 34/52 with a score of 280. A 5.3% score increase in nine years.

For Reading, in 1998 SC was ranked 31/38 with a score of 255. In 2009 they were 42/52 with a score of 257. A .7% score increase in eleven years.

For Science, in 2000 SC was ranked 34/39 with a score of 140. In 2009 they were 30/45 with a score of 145. A 3.6% score increase in nine years.

For Writing, in 1998 SC was ranked 32/37 with a score of 140. In 2009 they were 37/45 with a score of 148. A 5.7% score increase in eleven years.


In no area did South Carolina students do better than an average of about a .6% increase per year.

What does that bio say again?

During her tenure as South Carolina's State Superintendent of Education, student achievement in South Carolina improved at the fastest rate in the nation, with scores increasing on every state, national, and international tests administered.

I see. The fastest in the country, you say? Well, I suppose the other States should be um, concerned, yes?

Here is the National long term NAEP trend assessments for Reading and Math.

Reading (Click to enlarge):

Math (Click to enlarge):

Remarkable success.

This just proves we need more money in the education system right? I mean, if we had been spending more on education over these 30 years we would have a different story!

Well... you're probably a racist.