Education Pillar - The Post and Courier Investigative Fund

THE POST AND COURIER EDUCATION LAB

MAKING EDUCATION A TOP PRIORITY

In 2018, The Post and Courier undertook the daunting but important task of cataloging the many reasons why South Carolina’s public education system was failing to prepare students for college and beyond in a project entitled “Minimally Adequate.”

“State leaders including Gov. Henry McMaster pledged to make education reform a top priority and submitted more than 100 bills aimed at fixing our struggling school system.”

The series of stories from the project, as well as forums hosted by The Post and Courier throughout the state garnered significant attention. State leaders including Gov. Henry McMaster pledged to make education reform a top priority and submitted more than 100 bills aimed at fixing our struggling school system. But in 2022, little has changed.

EDUCATION DASHBOARD

The Post and Courier Education lab has created a Dashboard to help parents, teachers and others navigate South Carolina’s educational landscape and understand how schools are performing.

You can view it here

EDUCATION LAB

RESPONSE:

In Response to our state’s lack of follow through on promises made to our educational system that never materialized, The Post and Courier partnered with philanthropic funders to launch an intense, three-year data-driven Education Lab to focus on reform with the following mission

The Post and Courier Education Lab is founded on the principle that all children in South Carolina deserve equal access to quality
public education. We will use our medium and resources to create solutions-based journalism that provides an accurate, understandable and measurable examination of our state’s educational system. We will use metrics for tracking the Lab’s success and create statewide engagement that leads to progress for all students, regardless of race or economic status.

STRATEGY:

The lab serves as a watchdog unit that looks at systemic education problems with the goal of improving opportunities for all South Carolina students. These challenges are tackled with a combination of daily news reporting, narrative feature articles, data-driven projects, and investigative reporting. In addition to shining light on the ways our South Carolina’s education system is failing its students, the lab focuses on bringing attention to areas in the state that are doing particularly well. The intent is help South Carolina fix its education system by exposing systemic failing and holding up bright spots in the education space.

EDUCATION LAB IMPACT

Obtained records that shed new light on controversies involving the Lee County school district, where investigators found spy cameras used against staff, falsified documents and a pattern of silencing critics.

Analyzed how over half of the districts in the state planned on spending their third round of federal COVID relief fund money.

Collected and analyzed data on the number of SC superintendents who left their jobs in recent years discovering that 19 have left their job since the pandemic began which isn’t unusual.But, the real problem was that the teacher shortage crisis was creating a future pipeline catastrophe for these administrative positions.

Examined how bus drivers across the state were leaving their jobs during a period when school districts were already short staffed. The piece was reported through interviews with bus drivers across the state and a survey of almost half of South Carolina school districts.