South Carolina continues to make improvements in education with the predominant publicized change being the increase in the minimum starting salaries of teachers. That’s 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.
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 or won’t have to earn a living. Unfortunately, many either don’t understand this at a relatively early age, or the people around them aren’t encouraging them to work hard to develop the skills necessary to achieve certain educational goals.
Add to this poor-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.
The question is why are we not doing more to improve the situation? What is our responsibility to help?
In no order of priority, here are a few things 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. They are not adequate. I believe the state has a responsibility to upgrade facilities to meet a minimum state standard. There needs to be much discussion on what we expect those minimum conditions to be.
2. Teachers should receive adequate pay: first-year minimums and pay raises based upon the teacher’s performance, rather than by the years of experience and level of college degree. 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 third-grade requirements in all subjects except maybe math. At the end of the school year, that child is promoted to fourth grade in all subjects. Now they are in fourth-grade math whereas they might only be on a second-grade math level, which only gets them further and further behind. Students should pass from one subject level to the next rather than the grade.
4. 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 that 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 how they will live out their adult lives.
Last year, South Carolina had 86.7% of students graduating on time but only 75% 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 worked for 40-plus years as a mechanical engineer designing primarily educational facilities, health care facilities, and performing arts centers. Upon leaving private practice, he began his new career as a project manager in the University of South Carolina's construction and planning department. He lives in Lexington.
Student violence causes SC teachers to quit. Legislators are working on a solution.
Advocates worried the bill as introduced would prevent students with behavioral and emotional disabilities from getting the help they need
BY: SKYLAR LAIRD - APRIL 15, 2026 6:00 AM
COLUMBIA — Students acting out in class, sometimes to the point of attacking teachers, is causing educators to quit. How to protect teachers while also providing students the education they need is still a question, advocates and legislators said Tuesday.
Legislators attempted to address it with a House bill that would require schools to remove students from the classroom, possibly permanently, if they consistently act out in a way that disrupts or harms other students or their teacher. If a student got violent, a teacher would be able to react with “reasonable physical force” to protect themselves or other students under the proposal.
The House education committee hit pause on the bill Tuesday after teachers’ advocates, civil rights groups and parents raised concerns it could go too far.
The dozen people who spoke all supported the idea behind the bill. Without additional support and training, however, they worried it could disproportionately lead to students who act out because of disabilities and struggles at home being removed from their classrooms.
Legislators plan to take a closer look at the bill to make sure it protects students as well as teachers, said Rep. Shannon Erickson, who leads the committee and is the bill’s primary sponsor.
“There is a lot of gray area in this,” the Beaufort Republican said.
Teachers need some sort of protection, said Patrick Kelly with the Palmetto State Teachers Association. Educators call the organization weekly with stories of “how their professional and physical wellbeing has been upended by student conduct,” Kelly said.
Students have bitten, hit and thrown objects at their teachers, Kelly said. He has heard from teachers who sustained concussions, torn tendons and, in one case, a miscarriage as a result of students assaulting them.
“These behaviors result in lesson plans abandoned in order to evacuate students from a class when desks and Chromebooks are being thrown across a classroom,” Kelly said. “These behaviors have also resulted in real physical injury to educators and other students.”
In an association survey, 22% of teachers said if they reported a student’s violent behavior to the principal, they could expect that student to return to the classroom that same day. An additional 2% said the student wouldn’t be removed from the classroom at all, Kelly said.
Administrators want students to spend as much time as possible in the classroom learning, which is admirable, though not at the expense of teachers’ safety and comfort, said Kelly, who also teaches advanced high school government classes in Blythewood.
“But in the face of these reasons, the response can’t be the too-common status quo of expecting and requiring educators to endure and carry on with business as usual,” Kelly said. “Yet, every student has a right to an education, even those who misbehave.”
Sometimes, students are misbehaving because they have either a diagnosed or undiagnosed disability, said several disability rights advocates and parents of children with disabilities.
As Jennifer Rainville, an attorney for education policy for Appleseed Legal Justice Center, put it: “Behavior is communication.”
“So, if we don’t look at the root cause of a child’s behavior, we can’t effectively fix it, and we are just kicking the can down the road,” Rainville said.
That was the case for Amy Holbert’s son, who has a behavioral disorder that caused him to act out in class, she said. His middle school teachers often described him as disobedient, disrespectful and disruptive — three of the qualifications to have a student removed from the classroom under the bill.
“In these moments, what looks like defiance is often a child struggling,” said Holbert, who leads Family Connection of South Carolina.
When Holbert’s son, whose disability she did not name, entered high school, a psychologist, administrator and teacher worked to understand him and how he communicated. Once his needs were met, he excelled, going on to earn a business degree from Clemson University, she said.
“This outcome would never have been possible if his behavior had continued to be treated only as a discipline issue instead of a need for support,” Holbert said.
Other parents named similar struggles with their own children with disabilities. Mary Reaves’ child has Tourette syndrome, which causes uncontrollable outbursts, said the advocate for Able SC.
Rep. James Teeple’s daughter “learns different and acts different” after having an aggressive brain tumor removed, said the Johns Island Republican, who’s among the bill’s co-sponsors.
Other children with anxiety or trauma might act out because they don’t know how to handle their emotions, said Holbert, whose group supports parents of children with disabilities.
If teachers and administrators received more targeted training or schools hired more counselors and other trained professionals who could talk to children removed from classrooms for acting out, that could help, advocates suggested.
Some principals go through extensive training that mirrors what special education teachers learn, giving them the ability to identify and work with students who have disabilities that cause them to behave violently or disruptively. But the state has no uniform policy for all districts, said Ryan Bailey, spokesman for the South Carolina Association of School Administrators.
Legislators need to find a way to ensure every student is getting the education they need. At the same time, teachers need some sort of protection from students who are acting violently in class, Erickson said.
Some school districts have threatened to revoke teachers’ certifications because the teacher grabbed a student who was threatening them or a peer, she said. Teachers shouldn’t be afraid to defend themselves if necessary, and they shouldn’t be scared to come to work, she said.
That’s especially true in a state that still had 706 empty teaching positions at the beginning of the school year, she said.
“This is going toward that situation, to make it easier for teachers to have a predictable outcome and for parents to have a predictable situation and for administrators to have a predictable set of circumstances on how these situations are dealt with,” Erickson said.
Students with disabilities
The federal Individuals with Disabilities Act, commonly called the IDEA, ensures all children with disabilities can receive a free education. It also governs how public schools provide the appropriate intervention and services they need.
The law lists the covered disabilities as “an intellectual disability, a hearing impairment (including deafness), a speech or language impairment, a visual impairment (including blindness), a serious emotional disturbance (referred to in this part as ’emotional disturbance’), an orthopedic impairment, autism, traumatic brain injury, any other health impairment, a specific learning disability, deaf-blindness, or multiple disabilities.”
Under the law, behavioral disorders are part of what’s called an “emotional disturbance.” The definition includes “inappropriate types of behavior or feelings under normal circumstances.”
Characteristics of children who have an emotional disturbance include hyperactivity, aggression, withdrawal, immaturity, and/or learning difficulties, according to the Council for Exceptional Children’s Division for Emotional and Behavioral Health.
Common disorders under the umbrella of emotional disturbance include anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder, conduct disorder, eating disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and psychotic disorders, according to the organization.
Skylar Laird covers the South Carolina Legislature and criminal justice issues. Originally from Missouri, she previously worked for The Post and Courier’s Columbia bureau.
SC Daily Gazette is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
