Innoventure Blog Post focus on education in Darlington County

We are used to telling some sad and mad stories about education in Darlington County and in South Carolina. That may be one reason that this http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifparticular blog post needs some highlighting -- it is a story of success and a story of hope. It is also a story of Darlington County.

Here are a few of the opening paragraphs to this blog, which was written by John Warner:
Submitted by: John Warner on Aug 11, 2011 at 9:14 am Tagged with: K-12 education Source: Darlington Country School District

I attended an annual planning meeting of the SC Education Oversight Committee on August 8, 2011. There I met the superintendent of the Darlington County School District, Dr. Rainey Knight.

Let's first define a term. The "Poverty Index" includes students who are eligible for the free and reduced price Federal lunch program and/or Medicaid.

Based on the 2010 SC Annual SC Annual School District Report Card, Darlington is the 12th best performing out of 85 school districts in the state. On a 5 point scale, Darlington is a 4, performing similar to Richland 2 (53% poverty index) and Dorchester 2 (56% poverty index). Darlington's performance is blowing away districts with a performance of 3 like Greenville (58% poverty index) and York 3 (61% poverty index).

Here is the deal though. The poverty index in Darlington is 81%. Wow! Darlington is performing significantly better than districts whose poverty index is 20 percentage points lower. Mind you this is not the exceptional performance of just one school with high poverty. This is the exceptional performance of an entire district of schools with high poverty. (End quote text)

The new school year is beginning. Our garage door slammed shut at 6:50 this Friday morning with my wife off to St. John's Elementary where she teaches music four days a week and then to Cain Elementary, where she teaches music one day a week. Teachers all over Darlington County have been at work since Monday and they begin seeing students this coming Monday. At Coker College, where I have one of my jobs, we began faculty week meetings with a panel-audience discussion about teaching and learning in what we call at Coker the "Circle of Learning." What we continue to uncover when we discuss the learning process is just how crucial education is to the FUTURE. I hope our teachers begin to tell us the stories of the miracles that occur daily in their classrooms so that you can begin to feel the the power that is education;even when it is in need of serious repair on many fronts.