South Dakota Searchlight has a story today on how one legislative committee is complaining about student performance in South Dakota.
Senate President Pro Tempore Chris Karr, R-Sioux Falls, called the department’s review the “worst performing report that we have” and said Department of Education Secretary Joe Graves faces an “uphill battle.”
And..
The department didn’t reach any of the report’s target performance outcomes in the last fiscal year.
For the past five years, the department hasn’t reached its target performance outcomes for reading proficiency, math proficiency, Native American student success or absenteeism. The last time the department met a target for college and career readiness was in fiscal year 2021.
Now compare that to this story from April of this year, where South Dakota hovers towards the bottom of national rankings, certainly the bottom of anything in the region for teacher salaries:
The South Dakota Education Association (SDEA) announces that South Dakota has moved up three positions to rank 46th in average teacher salary according to the latest NEA Rankings and Estimates report. For the 2023–2024 school year, South Dakota’s average teacher salary is $56,328, a significant increase from the previous year’s average of $53,153 when the state ranked 49th. This current rank of 46 is the highest South Dakota has achieved since the report’s inception.
But I’m sure the South Dakota Legislature believes it can solve the problem by stripping funds from public schools, and posting the 10 Commandments on the classroom wall.
Because that’s the best way to solve everything isn’t it?
It seems a little unfair for the legislature to hold the Department of Education responsible for this. Isn’t that kind of like blaming the Department of Agriculture when corn yields are down?
Amen to that.
Well said. They think teachers should work for minimum wage, but magically transform other people’s kids into geniuses. They all run on a platform of lower taxes but cannot balance the people’s need/desire for government services, let alone society’s needs.
Depending on metrics used, SD is the 4th lowest tax burden in the nation. Yet people are claiming to be “taxed out of their homes.” Of course, none of the responsibility falls on the individual who didn’t prepare for retirement and wants to keep their 4 bed, 3 bath home for eternity.
Leadership is lacking in the SD Legislature – which by the way we are also likely last in the nation.
Perhaps we have too many administrators involved in our 150+ school districts. If we consolidated, some of our very limited education dollars to go to areas that really matter.
That could be, but the savings likely would not outweigh the diluted oversight. It would be worth looking at though.
Consolidation of counties is another inevitable reality. Especially East river where the geographical size is relatively small.
After the Blue Ribbon task force, our District was forced to gut the Administration staff. We are a school of 500 students K-12. 7 Adminstrators with an average salary of 87k. 1 Superintendent, 2 Principals covering 3 buildings, 1 Maintenance Director, 1 Business Manager, 1 Special Ed Director, 1 IT Director, and 1 Guidance Counselor. Most of these positions are dual-hatted and take care of other duties as well. I am guessing most A level and B level schools are in similar shape. If you look at a CEO of a company like ours that manages 50 employees with an annual budget of $7,000,000 they would make way more than our Superintendent would. I believe your comments come as a result of a misinformation campaign from 2 Senators from the SE part of the state who have ties to Private Schools. They testified on the floor of the Senate, South Dakota teachers are 49th in the nation and the Administrators are 16th in the nation. These 2 Senators were using Zip Recruiter.com Data for the Admin and an NEA database for the teachers. The zip recruiter data had the teachers in SD also at 16th……………….Now Gubernatorial candidates are using this information. At some point the LRC or Dr Graves needs to truth some of these lies. I hear Rep Auch say yesterday in committee that our K-12 education system costs SD 2.5 billion dollars a year and the average per pupil spending is over 19k per year. She is a 1/2 a billion dollars off and over 6k per pupil. And Dr Graves was sitting there in that room and said nothing. He had the numbers and never corrected her. It is obvious to most of us that he was hand-picked to push Noem’s school choice agenda and should be replaced.
You’re wrong about my comments. They don’t come from any senators, they come from ignorance. It was a comment based on eight seconds of shallow thought.
It should be looked into.
The question is, if you consolidated the districts with say, under 3000 students. Made the average district in the state 10,000 or 12,000 students. What would the actual cash savings be statewide? And would it be enough to move the teacher pay and/or address capital needs of old buildings?
Hey Steve, I was replying to anonymous above you. Apologies.
See? I told you it was ignorance.
The Superintendent of Meade County makes $200k. You need to read the school board minutes. Superintendents are way over paid. Meade County spent $1.3 million on artificial turf. Now they are closing rural schools because their budget is short $1.2 million. Consolidate schools and remove the overpaid administrators.
This is the issue. Whatever happens in the largest 7-8 Districts is what the rest of the 150 districts are compared to. The majority of the districts can’t even fathom what you have just said and we want to make changes based on the largest districts. Rural SD is tired of having to wearing diapers just because Rapid or Sioux Falls shits their pats.
Their pay is market based? Are Republicans against market based pay now? That is right! This is MAGA and all the chaos that comes with it.
Graves sucks and needs to be replaced.
Grave’s testified to the committee that Educational Savings Accounts and School Choice would benefit the Native American Reservations. I was happy to see Representative Emery ask him for his plan and clarification on this. Graves went on to explain that they have seen great success from Maypiha Luta, a Private School outside of Pine Ridge, and this could be used as a model. This private school limits enrollment and requires transcripts from previous schools and mandates GPAs for entry. Doesn’t seem to be open for all. I was wondering how he defined “success?” This school, contrary to most private schools post their test scores on their school website. On the latest SBAC, the results were 26% proficient in reading, 6% proficient in Math, and 17% proficient in science. He also spoke about the success of Onward Learning, in Martin, SD. Directly from their website: “Standardized testing leads to children being labeled as behind or gifted. We believe children should be seen and assessed as individuals without comparison with other children.” I find it completely hypocritical that school choice advocates and Legislators continue to use test scores against public when this is their philosophy. I also found this interesting that Grave’s explained that SD’s test scores in the ACT are 2 points ahead of National Average and 60 percent of our students take this test. SD actually leads the nation in the ACT against states that have at least a 30 percent participation rate. He then went on to explain the NAEP test and how students/schools are randomly selected to take the test and SD 8th graders are 4th in the nation in Math scores and 16th in the nation in Reading. There were very few questions from Legislator’s on these first 2 tests. He then went on to the SBAC and it was like sharks came out of the water. He explained the proficiency rates and it was almost as if the school choice legislators were waiting for this. He did not explain that 100 percent of the students take these tests and there are very few exemptions to the test. He did not explain that only 11 States, mostly liberal states us this standardized test and that it is based on common core standards. In our school we receive 1 to 2 exemptions for our entire school. Kids with significant cognitive disabilities take this test including children with Down Syndrome. Non-English speaking kids are required to take this test. Foster children who may have been placed in the District mid semester are required to take this test. Kids who don’t want to take this test or see the value in it are required to take this test. I’m not sure why Grave’s doesn’t provide the same clarity on this test as the other ones. Seems like Sleepy Joe has ulterior motives.
Thanks for providing reasons why he sucks lol. People employed by the state should not be in favor of giving public money to private schools. He also rammed through the Hillsdale nonsense.
A few random thoughts. If money was the answer to all our problems, the students at schools in our nation’s inner cities and even on our reservations would be doing really well. Schools are only half the equation. Parents/family life is obviously the other half and that’s not a new issue. Having said that, we clearly are no longer attracting enough young people to teaching. There was a time when getting a job in many school districts was very competitive. Today there are schools that will hire whoever they can get, even without a teaching certificate with a promise to get them certified as soon as possible. I’ve seen schools hire a teacher without a degree to plug a hole at the last minute. This can’t be good for the kids. So yes, teacher salaries continue to be an issue, as part of the problem. The other side of the equation – family life – is much more difficult to tackle. Meantime, home school populations continue to grow. Why is that? Quality of product? Quality of teachers? Something else?
One other thing – now that we are going to make all high school kids take the ACT, just wait until we see those scores. Currently, 60% take it. Add the rest, and that 21 average ACT in South Dakota is going to come tumbling down.
We have had multiple kids in our school who weren’t going to graduate and frankly were troublemakers have their parents sign papers and now they are “home schooling.” They are actually “no schooling’ and their parents were tired of dealing with constant disciplinary meetings. The previous commenter is spot on, parents have changed. I could read before I went to kindergarten, we were farmers and my mother stayed home with us. This is not the case anymore based on how families are set up no.
The biggest issue the homeschooler brigade won’t address is that many of the “no schoolers” in their ranks will just turn around and dump their kids back on the public schools come December, so now the public schools are back on the hook for educating and remediating those kids. However since they “home schooled” for September, the money the district has to spend to provide those services comes out of the pie already trimmed down just for those who choose public schools in August/September.
Public schools should still absolutely take those students without question. It’s not the kid’s fault their parent made a dumb decision but at least has the wherewithal to realize it.
Chalk up another win for team Sleepy Larry. Maybe he can task-force the blame out on this one.
New task force with Lt Gov Tony as Chair. That will be original.
This post says a lot about the alignment of DWC, which is interesting!
I mean, mo money amirite? 😀
Reason #34 why I will never purchase any of your literature. In the words of DJT…..”I have no idea what he just said.”
It’s the typical “you get what you pay for”. Teachers deserve more salary but there also has to be more adherence to rules in the halls and classrooms. The kids run the schools these days.
I have an idea. Let’s increase sales tax by a half percent and promise it to the teachers 😜. Then we will put that in the general fund. Then school districts can increase wages and raise property taxes. Then we elect a bunch of crazy “conservatives” to come up with ideas for destabilizing the property tax base for schools. Oh wait 😀