South Carolina’s children continue to be hindered by weak family structures, a poor education system and inadequate health care, according to a national survey.

Poverty remains a serious issue statewide and for children in the tri-county area of Orangeburg, Bamberg and Calhoun counties.

S.C. Kids Count, a nonprofit organization that tracks county-by-county trends in educational and social behavior, released a survey looking at six major indicators: families, economic status, health, readiness and early school performance, student achievement and adolescent risk behaviors.

The Kids Count report indicates that poverty makes it difficult for many families to provide the material and environmental enrichment necessary for healthy child development. The poverty numbers suggest that the state has a long way to go.

The U.S. Census Bureau’s rough estimate of child poverty in 2003 revealed that 19.4 percent of South Carolina’s children below age 18 were living in poor families.

The tri-county area’s percentages hovered above the state average. There were 27.9 percent of Orangeburg County children living in poor families, with 27.1 percent and 20.4 percent living in poverty in Bamberg and Calhoun counties, respectively.

Children and the elderly are the most seriously affected by poverty. The report indicates that during the last four decades, federal policy actions have substantially improved the economic status of the elderly, but not children.

Single-parent families are most likely to be poor, with children in single-parent families making up 68 percent of all the state’s children living in poverty in 1999.

In 1999, 48.1 percent, 54.6 percent and 40.6 percent of children in single-parent families lived in poverty in Orangeburg, Bamberg and Calhoun counties, respectively.

In 2005, the poverty level was estimated to be at $16,900 for a family of three and $19,350 for a family of four. The Kids Count report indicated that the threshold is often criticized as an arbitrary number, however, because people can still be poor living just above the poverty level.

In 1999, there were 12,630 children between the ages of birth and 7 years old who were living at less than 200 percent of the poverty level in Orangeburg County. That means there were an additional 6,140 children who were above the poverty level, but still considered poor or near-poor with incomes below $32,180 and $38,700 for three- and four-person families, respectively, in 2005.

How big of a role does poverty play in creating barriers in a child’s ability to learn? Local legislators said it plays a very large one.

“When we talk about education, that’s critical. I’m not suggesting that poverty in and of itself means that a child can’t learn. What I’m suggesting is that barriers created by poverty harm a child’s ability to learn,” said Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, D-Orangeburg.

She said the parents of a child living in a poor family often have very little time to read with the child, help him with homework, or even take him to a museum or a movie because they’re too busy struggling to make ends meet “by working some low-paying job.”

’Let resources

follow needs’

Cobb-Hunter said a child’s exposure to different activities in their homes and community environments impacts how they learn and their scores made in system dominated by tests that “are designed based on the assumption that a child has been exposed to a number of things that a lot of kids in poor communities have never heard of.”

Sen. John Matthews, D-Bowman, a retired public education administrator, said the formula for distributing state money for public education needs to be changed.

“Let the resources follow the needs. The problem we’re running into in the Legislature is that urban representatives who come from affluent districts are not getting any pressure about their schools” because their areas can increase taxes if they need to, Matthews said.

He said “Then there are those who represent financially marginal districts where there is high poverty and the needs are greater and others are not willing, at this point, to share in the revenue to bring them up.

“I think the future of our rural counties is dependent on how we fund education and the investment that we make in it. If we don’t invest in it, we’re going to wind up with two states: one urban and prosperous, and the other rural, poor and going downhill.”

Matthews was a witness in the school equity lawsuit, in which rural school districts sued the state for more education dollars. Judge Thomas Cooper ruled the state largely provides the “minimally adequate education” required by law in all areas except early childhood education.

While Matthews agreed with Cooper’s assertion that early childhood education opportunities should be improved for the state’s children, he said the judge “missed the boat” in failing to adequately address the need for the long-term acquisition of effective, quality teachers in rural and poor-performing schools and the need for improved school facilities to support educational infrastructure.

“That helps us to move through the entire system. We’re got a weak secondary K-12 infrastructure to support a quality education. But you can’t abandon the system at the middle school and high school level either because 70 percent of the state’s workforce has either a high school diploma or a two-year technical degree,” Matthews said. “If we’re going to create a skill-based workforce ... then it’s going to take a greater investment.”

Cobb-Hunter said, “Money in and of itself is not the answer. We have to figure out the parental involvement piece of this; however, we’ve never actually thrown money at this problem. So why don’t we try it and see if it makes a difference? In this state, I don’t see how we can get much lower than where we are.”

Dr. Baron Holmes, Kids Count project director, suggested that early childhood education is only “half the answer” and that the profound problems of rural areas must also be fully addressed to improve the education system.

While 38.7 percent, 32.1 percent and 20.3 percent of kindergarten students were assessed by their teachers as “less than consistently ready” for first grade in Orangeburg, Bamberg and Calhoun counties, respectively, Holmes said more needs to be done beyond bolstering early childhood education.

“We’ve got to educate better from grades 4 and above. It might not pass the judge’s standards as constitutionally compelling, but it certainly is substantively compelling in terms of the competitiveness of the state,” Holmes said.

Holmes said the Kids Count report reveals that between grades 3 and 8, for example, the percentage of students performing below basic on the Palmetto Achievement Challenge Test almost doubles.

In Orangeburg Consolidated School District 3, one of the districts to sue the state, 23 percent of third graders, 30 percent of fifth graders and 42 percent of eighth graders scored below basic on the English/language portion of PACT. Twenty-six percent, 38 percent and 49 percent of third-, fifth- and eighth graders scored below basic on PACT math.

Although the state Supreme Court has ruled that the state’s constitution only requires the state to provide all children with the opportunity to receive a “minimally adequate” public education, Holmes said that may not be enough.

“We’ve heard that before, but it’s always something minimal. The state has an obligation to come up with a remedy,” he said.

Poverty/Part 1

A three-day T&D series

S.C. Kids Count’s survey of the state’s children finds that many continue to live in poverty, including almost 30 percent of children in Orangeburg County. Children in Orangeburg, Bamberg and Calhoun county have to overcome the problems of poverty, poor prenatal care and, some lawmakers, a lack of money to help them catch up later in life at their schools.

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