April 8, 2026

Guest Editorial
By Dan Reider

South Carolina continues to make improvements in education, with the predominant publicized change being the increase in the minimum starting salaries of teachers, which is intended, in part, to encourage more people to consider education as their profession. While this is a necessary first step, there is much more that needs to be done. 

So much of a person’s life revolves around their level of education – whether this is K-12, college, trade schools, etc. This is not to say that one cannot have a healthy, successful life without a certain level of education, but one’s education is a big factor in determining the opportunities one will have or not have to earn a living. 

Unfortunately, many either don’t understand this at a relatively early age, or they don’t have a family or even a community to encourage young children to work hard to develop the skills necessary to achieve certain educational goals. 

Simply put, many children are just not in an environment that allows them to be sufficiently educated. Add to this some of the poorest-performing school districts with less than adequate educators, and we continue to not achieve our goals of adequately educating many of our population.

None of this is a secret. We all know it. We just don’t spend much time thinking about it. The question is, why are we not doing more to improve the situation? Most of us have busy lives. Most of us have expenses we are dealing with – mortgages, car payments, groceries, savings, etc. Most of us are working hard to give our own children the best chance for success. So, what is our responsibility, if any, to help others, particularly school-age children, to achieve their educational goals — whether they or their parents recognize the need to achieve such goals or not?

When doing a search online for “How To Fix US Education” or some similar description, there are an almost endless number of sites addressing various educational concerns expressed by Ph.Ds., M.Eds., educational institutions, etc. Some concerns were very obvious as they are what we hear being discussed in South Carolina at school board meetings, around election times, and in the media from time to time. However, some articles made me pause for a minute and think about whether these really were problems that needed to be addressed and, if so, how best to address them. The ideas on what needed to be fixed (for K-12 as there were a number of pieces related more towards education beyond high school) in no particular order included such things as:

• The method of education we have used for more than 100 years no longer works, and we need to change what we are doing.

• Standardized testing does not work and needs to be replaced.

• Parents need to be more involved with their child’s education.

• People living in poor conditions do not receive the same level of education as those living in wealthier areas.

• Poorer school districts do not have adequate facilities.

• Teacher pay is far below what is necessary to attract and retain good educators.

• Many administrations do not adequately support their teachers and staff.

• A teacher’s role should be more of a guide to help students to embrace “self-directed learning” such as hands on learning in lieu of teaching in a formal classroom.

• Hybrid learning is essential.

• End segregation in school systems based upon wealth.

• Have “behavioral interventions” in lieu of zero-tolerance rules.

• Significantly reduce the size of classrooms.

• Provide school choice for all students.

• Eliminate math beyond basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

• Provide mental health programs and counseling.

• Eliminate homework.

It would obviously take volumes to address even a few of these topics. And the solutions to those issues believed to be valid would have to be provided by someone far smarter than me. However, I do want to focus on several of these concerns, in no order of priority, that I believe will help us in South Carolina continue to head in the right direction.

1. One issue is the condition and types of facilities available in the poorer school districts. I believe that the State, and not just that particular school district, should upgrade facilities to meet a minimum standard for the State. There needs to be much discussion on what we expect those minimum conditions to be. We should consider keeping some level of the State Income Tax, presently around 6%, to help get those facilities to where they need to be in all school districts. Taxpayers already get a huge break on Federal taxes, where the government allows a couple filing jointly to receive a $31,500 deduction without itemizing, even though average charitable giving for those earning under $100K per year is less than $3000.

2. Teachers should receive adequate pay — first-year minimums and pay raises based upon the teacher’s performance. Pay for working in the poorest of school districts should be increased to whatever it takes to incentivize teachers to work in these areas. The idea is that we must get very good teachers in those areas.

3. Grades should be eliminated. No, not scores on papers and exams, but grade levels as we now have them. When a student is good in some subjects and struggles with others in lower grades, they are frequently just moved up to the next grade level with their classmates. For example, a third grader could meet the 3rd grade requirements in all subjects except maybe math. At the end of the school year, that child is promoted to 4th grade — in all subjects. Now they are in 4th-grade math, whereas they might only be on a 2nd-grade math level, which only gets them further and further behind. Changing to such a process where you are not always promoted from one grade to the next would be somewhat difficult for the child until it becomes more of the norm. In the example used with math, maybe the courses are changed to be named Basic Math 1, Basic Math 2, Algebra 1, Algebra 2, etc., and not associated with a specific grade level. Similar naming could be used for all subjects. 

4. Following up on the topic of grades and grade levels, more schools should have after-school programs to support students who are behind. This would entail additional expenses for snacks, teachers, and transportation. It might only be a 90-minute program. And maybe the program would still allow the student to participate in after-school sports or other activities prior to the 90-minute program. In either case, the objective is to help a student struggling in one or more classes

5. My last suggestion, and the one I feel is the most unfortunate, is where the school needs to assist parents in understanding their role in supporting their child. I know most schools have regular parent/teacher conferences, especially when a child is performing poorly. There is no way every single parent is going to accept responsibility that the child does their homework, gets proper rest, studies for exams and otherwise keeps up with their classwork, but maybe these conferences need to be held more frequently, depending upon how the student is performing. 

Education is so important for our children and our society. We cannot expect every child to finish K-12 school, but we have to give them the best chance possible to be successful. Education impacts on how most of them will live out their adult lives. This year, South Carolina had 86.7% of students graduating on time, but only 75.1% of them were college or career-ready. Superintendent Ellen Weaver stated, “We have to make sure that our diplomas are worth more than the piece of paper that they’re written on”. 

I know we can do better than that, but it is going to require significant changes in our efforts and commitments to all children — not only from our citizens but our leaders as well. There are so many issues out there, but educating our youth is probably the best chance we have to improve their lives and our Country.

Dan Reider is a Mechanical Engineer who has designed schools for over 40 years in South Carolina.