Lakarr Cooper

Lessons in How Not to Operate a Public School System Lakarr Cooper

Nationally, South Carolina's public school system is on the lowest tier-grouping of states denoting students' academic performance. Over the years, SC State Legislators and the SC Department of Education have made various changes in academic benchmarks and standardize tests. So much so, that tests are now called assessments or assessment reports. How parents navigate their children's learning in South Carolina towards academic achievement, especially in an environment of constantly changing academic standards, is a riddle for many parents. However, this is not a problem for all parents. In well-to-do communities which have the resources to put forth, that community can offer students a quality public education, regardless of the State's changing academic standards. Most well-off communities usually have high levels of college educated people within their social order. When you have a community peopled with significant numbers of college graduates, that social order will have significant influence on growing children's intelligence towards attaining a college degree. In "Lessons in How Not to Operate a Public School System," we are not talking about the above. We are talking about communities which are low-income poverty-based, depending on government for survival. Communities that are under-resourced, peopled with significant numbers of undereducated adults, having folks with "questionable" college degrees, culminating in a community of rudimentary low-level thinkers in positions of power.