is education, pure and simple. Over at the Wall Street Journal Brendan Miniter has a great article about the battle for school choice in South Carolina. Leading the charge are a handful of prominent black Democrats, who have publicly challenged party orthodoxy when it comes to education issues. It’s no wonder why:
There are about 700,000 students in public schools in South Carolina, more than a third of whom — 247,000 — are in schools considered to be failing based on test scores. Nearly 60% of the kids in these failing schools — about 146,000 — are African-American. Blacks make up about 39% of public-school students.
Fortunately, a growing coalition of politicians in South Carolina are willing to say that enough is enough and are working to pass a new system of tax credits that would give middle-class and poor parents more control over where they send their children to school. More info here.