With growing criticism of SC education, lawmakers are talking about reforms.

According to Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey who represents western Lexington County, Senate bill 419 will:

• Require high schools offer a computer science course.

• Eliminate state-mandated tests for social studies in 5th and 7th grades and science in 8th grade.

• Provide better ways of tracking student progress through the K-12 process.

• Offer high school students a personal finance elective as part of the requirement for economics course work.

• Protect elementary school reading intervention specialists from having to perform non-teaching duties.

• Mandate districts offer summer reading camps for students after 1st and 2nd grade years.

• Remove requirements that all teachers be certified for Read to Succeed, the statewide effort to ensure students are reading on grade level by the end of 3rd grade.

• Require college students who want to teach early childhood and special education to demonstrate mastery of literacy to ensure they are qualified to teach reading to those students.

• Adjust state scholarship criteria in response to the Department of Education changing the K-12 grading scale to a 10-point scale. (e.g., A=90-100; B=80-90, etc.)

This change would reinstate the academic eligibility standard that the state used up until a couple years ago when the grading scale changed. That means fewer high school graduates would be eligible for state scholarships than last year. Massey expects this to be a contentious part of the debate.

• Allow Palmetto Fellows and Life scholarship recipients to use those scholarships at technical colleges.

• Create a pilot program for subject-matter experts who are not certified teachers to lead classrooms if they meet prescribed standards.

• Put the minimum starting salary for teachers ($35,000/190-day contract) and a salary inflation factor into permanent statute.

• Guarantee a duty-free, 30-minute lunch period for elementary school teachers.

• Require more ethics training for school board members.

• Consolidate some of the state’s smallest school districts.

• Move the earliest school start date from the 3rd Monday in August to the 2nd Monday in August.

• Authorize the governor to fire school board members and take over under-performing school districts.

The Senate took up the bill this week and will send it to the House after debate and a vote.