South Carolina teachers and principals are using terms like “phenomenal” and “a confidence booster” to describe $4.6 million in teacher merit-based bonuses distributed through Beemok Education’s Excellence in Teaching Awards.
Some 526 teachers in 39 schools across the state earned an average bonus of $8,800, Beemok officials said about the public-private partnership. The largest bonus was $57,250.
For Charleston County English teacher Sydney Carroll, that $57,250 bonus is “life-changing.”
“I’ve been a teacher my whole life,” she told Statehouse Report. “So I’ve just never seen that amount of money.”
Beemok Education is the brainchild of Charleston philanthropists Ben and Kelly Navarro. In addition to the teacher bonus program, Beemok funds four high-performing schools in Charleston and Spartanburg, as well as the state’s largest privately-funded college scholarship program for low-income students.
Carroll teaches at one of those public schools — Meeting Street Elementary and Middle-Brentwood. Like all 39 schools where teachers are currently eligible for Beemok bonuses, Brentwood is what’s known as a Title I school — meaning that at least 40% of its students are poor.
Her outsized bonus for 2024-25 teaching was based on outsized results — the more than two-year jump in academic performance that her students demonstrated in standardized testing.
“At the start of the year, they had this idea that they didn’t deserve an education,” Carroll said of the 75 students she taught last year. “And I just kept telling them, ‘Everything I’m doing and everything you’re doing is because you deserve this education.’”
And what they were doing was challenging, she noted — reading and analyzing the full text of works like All Quiet on the Western Front, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Twice Toward Justice, which tells the story of Montgomery, Ala., civil rights activist Claudette Colvin.
“My students are incredible,” Carroll said. “And I just want everyone to know how awesome they are, because a lot of them have definitely grown up not knowing that.”
‘Common-sense principle’ or ‘divisive for schools’?
At one level, the Beemok bonus tale is exactly what it looks like — a feel-good story about chronically underpaid public school teachers being generously rewarded for a job well done.
But as Beemok Education President Josh Bell noted in an Oct. 2 interview, there’s a substantive policy debate roiling just under the surface.
“The way that we pay teachers in our country is disconnected from the outcomes they help students achieve,” Bell said. “These awards take a common-sense principle that’s used in every other organization and business and says your exceptional performers deserve to be rewarded.”
The awards honor that principle by demanding extraordinary performance, Bell said. To win a cash award, a teacher must raise all her students’ performances by at least 1.2 grade years or elevate individual students’ by at least a quartile in reading or math.
It’s an idea that S.C. Education Superintendent Ellen Weaver has endorsed rhetorically and financially, with a 2024 state grant that allowed Beemok to expand from 29 to 39 schools.
“By rewarding impact and celebrating results, we’re not only honoring our best teachers—we’re setting a higher standard for what’s possible,” Weaver said in a release. “South Carolina students deserve nothing less, and we need more bold innovation like this to raise the bar for every child in every classroom.”
But that’s where SC Education Association President Dena Crews says, in effect, not so fast.
“I’m very happy for the teachers who won these awards,” Crews told Statehouse Report. “But state money needs to be used to raise salaries for every teacher, not just the ones whose students did well on a single standardized test.”
What’s more, Crews said, she worries that merit pay schemes could be “divisive for schools,” pitting one teacher against another in a field where collaboration is key.
“There’s more to student growth than test scores,” she argued. “In some cases, just getting the student to take the test at all is a win regardless of the score.”
And that’s the core of the debate according to people on both sides. For merit-pay skeptics, it’s about fairness in what they call “real world” classrooms. For proponents, it’s about demanding excellence — and making sure it’s rewarded when found.
“A teacher whose students are performing 60% better than the teacher down the hall really is overperforming,” Bell said. “And we continue to hear from teachers and principals just how much of a game-changer this is.”
‘Not just about the money’
Excellence in Teaching feted hundreds of Excellence in Teaching award winners in a Sept.28 ceremony at one of Charleston’s swankiest locations — The Charleston Place Hotel, purchased in 2021 by Navarro’s Beemok Hospitality.
One of the speakers that afternoon was Janice Malone, principal of Charleston’s Sanders-Clyde Elementary — and until recently, she told Statehouse Report, a skeptic of the merit pay program.
“When I first heard about it, I thought there had to be some kind of a catch,” Malone said. “But when they said they just wanted to recognize excellent teachers in our Title I schools, I thought about how hard my teachers work and decided, ‘Why not? Let’s give it a shot.’”
And after seeing the program in action, she said, she came to appreciate its benefits — particularly in helping to attract and retain good teachers in a genuinely challenging environment.
According to state statistics, 95% of Sanders-Clyde students live in poverty.
“There was a time when even I didn’t want to come here because of the challenges,” she said. “But our team is so committed to these students — and I wanted to make sure they got the recognition they deserved.”
But as meaningful as the award bonuses can be, Malone stressed, in the end “it’s not just about the money.”
Even more, she said, it’s about recognizing the passion and expertise that great teachers bring to work with them every day — and the difference that can make in a child’s life.
“It’s like that famous quote,” Malone said. “My teacher believed I was smart, and so I was.”
Which isn’t to say the money doesn’t help.
Carroll said she’s used the bonus to pay down her student loans and sock a meaningful chunk away in savings. But even in her case, where the cash was life changing, she said the other benefits were what mattered most.
First, she said, she was excited for her students, including one particularly hard-working learner who leapfrogged from reading on a fifth grade level to ninth grade in just nine months — progress she called insane.
Second was something more personal — “healing” she called it.
“I know this might sound silly,” she said. “But hearing my parents tell their friends they’re proud of me for this work hit so hard. They’re incredible people — and hearing that pride just means so much.”
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