South Carolina elected private choice advocate Ellen Weaver as state superintendent. She defeated a full-time teacher, Lisa Ellis.
Republican Ellen Weaver, one of the state’s foremost champions of private school choice, has been elected South Carolina’s next superintendent of education.
A non-educator who has spent her career working in Republican politics and leading a conservative think tank, Weaver defeated Democrat Lisa Ellis, a veteran teacher and founder of grassroots teachers group SC for Ed, by nearly 13 points, according to unofficial election results.
South Carolina voters seem determined to undermine their low-performing public schools and allow students to go to any religious or private school that will take them, at public expense.
Voucher researcher Josh Cowen of Michigan State University says, after 20 years of studying them, that they set children back academically and that learning loss for vulnerable children at voucher schools is greater than the loss caused by the pandemic.