Amid ongoing concerns about lackluster academic performance and fresh allegations of financial self-dealing, state officials are considering major reforms to rein in South Carolina’s charter school system.
The goal, officials say, is to hold the worst players and practices accountable—while preserving what’s working in a system that’s also produced some of the state’s top-performing schools.
The reform effort, which critics say is long overdue, is advancing on two fronts — a recently-introduced bill in the S.C. Senate and new regulations from the state Board of Education.
Together, the proposals aim to fix three longstanding problems, experts say: weak oversight, loopholes that let failing charter schools stay open and what watchdogs call profiteering by some private companies that serve the schools.
Fixing a weak law
As the Charleston City Paper reported last August, South Carolina is one of only three states in the country in which charter school students are underperforming their traditional public school counterparts in reading and math, according to a 2023 study by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes.
At the time, education experts pointed to weaknesses in the state’s charter school law to explain the findings. In particular, they pointed to two key problems with the law — a lack of accountability for failure, and financial incentives that encouraged private colleges and education companies to put profits over pupils.
Senate Bill 454, dubbed the Charter School Accountability Act when it was introduced last month by Education Committee Chairman Greg Hembree (R-Horry), aims to address those issues with three changes to state law:
Stronger accountability for authorizers: Under current law, authorizers — either the state Education Department or more commonly an S.C. college — must agree to sponsor a charter school and oversee its operations. Hembree’s bill would allow the Education Department to shut down any college authorizer program whose schools underperformed for three years running.
New limits on “authorizer shopping:” A key feature of S.C. charter law is the requirement that authorizers shut down underperforming schools. But with three authorizers — Erskine College, Limestone University and soon Voorhees University — schools have been able to move from authorizer to authorizer to evade closure. The bill would place new limits on that practice, including a requirement that the current authorizer approve the move.
More financial transparency: In the current system, authorizers and the private education companies that provide contracted services like academic and back-office support to charter schools have strong financial incentives to open new schools and keep them open. Under Hembree’s bill, charter schools would be required to post all contractual arrangements on a monthly basis.
At an April 2 Senate Education subcommittee hearing, Hembree, who saw a similar bill fail last year, stressed the collaborative effort that’s gone into this year’s version.
“We’ve been diligently working with interested parties, [including] the Department of Education and the authorizers,” he told his fellow committee members. “We’ve spent a lot of time going line by line through the bill and putting some polish on what we already had.”
Meanwhile a few blocks away from the Statehouse, the S.C. Board of Education voted last week to impose new requirements on institutions seeking to become authorizers.
Currently, colleges and universities are only required to inform the Education Department in writing that they plan to start sponsoring schools. Under the new regulation, they would have to win regulators’ approval in an application process that includes a detailed accounting of their academic standards, financial relationships and more.
To take effect, both the bill and the regulation would have to be approved by the S.C. House and Senate by the end of this year’s legislative session in May.
‘A good first step’
S.C. Education Association President Sherry East, who represents teachers in state public schools, including charters, says her organization supports the reform effort.
“We’re excited about it,” East told the City Paper on April 7. “The intentions of some charter schools are good, but the system is a hot mess.”
Specifically, she says the new financial transparency requirements are a key feature of the legislation — particularly with authorizers now creating educational services companies to contract with the schools they sponsor.
To explain why, she points to a charter school leader she spoke to recently, who said she was explicitly told not to concern herself with the school’s finances.
“She was told not to ask questions — just run the school, hire your teachers, take care of the kids and don’t worry about the money,” East said. “But, you know, she was worried about it.”
And stories like that are, at least in part, why lawmakers are considering action now, East argues.
“Legislators have figured out what’s going on,” East said. “And this bill is going to finally put a stop to it.”
Still, East says there’s more to uncover about the money trail — what Hembree called the alleged financial “shenanigans” — between authorizers and education companies in recent years. As she put it, borrowing a line from Watergate:
“Follow the money,” she said.
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