Infinitesimal gains … infinitesimal losses.

At the end of the day, it’s all the same crap sandwich – and South Carolina parents, students and teachers continue having to take bites from it while the bureaucrats holding them back vacation at the luxurious Kingston Plantation in Myrtle Beach

Sooner or later, people in South Carolina are going to finally figure out that the only way to achieve real progress in education is to stop giving the same morons who have been screwing it up for decades unlimited sums of money with no expectation of improvement. Or maybe they won’t figure it out, who knows … the establishment is certainly doing its best to keep ‘em too stupid to see what’s really happening.  Take the state’s performance on the ACT, which S.C. Superintendent of Education (and Democratic gubernatorial wanna-be) Jim Rex tried to pass off as the greatest thing since sliced bread.

“Especially significant,” he said of South Carolina’s scores.

But wait … the scores went down, didn’t they?

According to ACT:

South Carolina’s average score of 19.8 as 46th in the nation. This average score is 1.3 points behind the national average, and 4.1 points behind the highest average score in the country (Massachusetts). The average composite score dropped from 19.9 in 2008. (S.C. Superintendent Jim) Rex’s claims of “steady increases” appear very flimsy in the light of objectivity. Since 2003, South Carolina has not moved out of the bottom 5 worst ACT performers, and those who do have lower composite scores have much higher percentages of students taking the test.

But wait, theres much much more.  Theres more data at the ACT web site that provide tons of additional info on the ACT results that you won’t find from the state’s mainstream media, like the fact that the state’s ever-present achievement gap is not only still around – but widening. While composite scores for white students have increased from 21.3 to 21.9 since 2005, composite scores for African American students have dropped from 16.5 to 16.4.  Participation percentages have likewise decreased among African American students since 2005, while participation has improved among white students.

But, hey … all those billions we blow each year are for the “poor, minority children,” remember?