Greenville County, SC

When President-elect Barack Obama announced earlier today that Arne Duncan, the current chief executive officer of Chicago Public Schools, is his pick for Department of Education secretary, I figured it’d be a good idea to see where South Carolina stands in the national rankings.

Looking at the graph, it’s not entirely surprising to us that we rank #34 on the national education report card. What is surprising is some of the categories that we did so well in - and STILL wound up with a ‘D’ grade!

Two categories we got an ‘A’ in were:

1. Truth in Advertising About Student Proficiency, and
2. 21st Century Teaching Force

So: our teachers tell the truth and they are state-of-the-art.

From there it goes downhill though, with two categories getting a ‘D’:

1. Academic Achievement for Low-Income and Minority Students, and
2. Postsecondary and Workforce Readiness

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Randi Weingarten, in her first major speech since being elected American Federation of Teachers (AFT) president in July, was introduced by Mayor Bloomberg and then proceeded to outline approaches to improve public education and taking a long-term investment in the country’s lagging economy.

She also expressed her desire to seek common ground on various contentious issues often thought to be off-limits for teachers unions, including merit pay for teachers. With all the flak unions are facing nowadays - especially the UAW - it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Included is a short video of the event at the National Press Club.

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