Anna B. Mitchell reports for the Post and Courier. South Carolina’s taxpayer-funded voucher program has tripled in size in three years. There is still no data to show that it’s working.
South Carolina’s $83 million voucher program has tripled in size over three years despite no public data showing whether it’s working.
Hundreds of test scores required under South Carolina’s school voucher program are missing from its inaugural year, preventing the state from completing a long-anticipated assessment on learning gains among participants.
Now in its third year, the program has expanded to 15,000 students.
After months of delay, and back-and-forth exchanges between the S.C. Department of Education and the Education Oversight Committee, EOC officials have concluded they do not have a representative sampling of student data to make any assessment, officials told the newspaper last week.
The EOC is the state agency charged under state law to collect test scores and evaluate the program’s academic performance. Nearly 2,900 students received vouchers in the 2024-25 school year. The EOC received test scores for 798.
Only 286 were usable, officials said. They also received no graduation data, as required under the law, and no prior-year data with which to compare students’ learning gains.