COLUMBIA — Spending controls on vouchers need to be tighter and testing data from the publicly funded program must improve. These were the key takeaways as a committee charged with evaluating the program confronted major gaps in its first academic review.
Accountability is “the whole argument,” said state Sen. Ross Turner, R-Greenville.
State education officials faced pointed questions Sept. 21 from Turner and other members of the S.C. Education Oversight Committee about testing and spending checks, but the analysts charged with evaluating the program said too little reliable information exists three years into the program to provide answers — at least for now.
Meka Childs, director of school choice for the S.C. Department of Education, said her agency is actively adding “guardrails” to prevent improper spending and can remove families who do not comply. The clawback process Childs described applies only to money remaining in a family's account, not funds already spent before a violation is spotted.
The questions arose at a subcommittee meeting of the Education Oversight Committee, the body whose team of analysts evaluate tens of thousands of test results annually to determine the effectiveness of K-12 public-education programs in South Carolina. EOC members — including lawmakers, educators and business leaders — had expected to hear a presentation Sept. 21 about test results of students who had received vouchers in the Education Scholarship Trust Fund’s inaugural 2024-25 year.
To date, no data on the academic achievement of students in the voucher program has been released; meanwhile, the program has tripled in size, with 15,000 students now benefiting from vouchers worth up to $7,634 each. The General Assembly has put about $150 million toward the program over three years, including $83 million this year.
When members learned that data supplied by the education department were incomplete and inconclusive — and would have to be rolled into a two-year report set for release Dec. 14 — they pivoted into a discussion about financial controls and regulatory enforcement.
“I have an issue expanding a program we don’t have control over,” said committee member Melissa Pender, an administrator in the Beaufort County School District.
Personal laptops
Under the voucher program’s enabling legislation, revised in 2025, private school students can use vouchers to pay tuition; homeschooled students can use the money to purchase curricula, tutoring services and supplies, among other things; and public school students are eligible for vouchers for educational expenses if they attend a school outside their attendance zone.
Students can spend the money on laptops, Pender pointed out, even if they attend a public school in a district like hers that already provides them.
“Why would their parent need to buy them another laptop for educational reasons?” asked Pender. “I'm just thinking: are we being good stewards of taxpayers’ money?”
Childs said she hadn’t been aware of the laptop situation in Beaufort but said the education department flags “anomalous” transactions and can stop payment through the state’s voucher vendor, ClassWallet.
“We also receive feedback from meetings like this, feedback from the community, feedback from stakeholders, so that if there's something that we need to put parameters around, we do,” Childs said.
Weak enforcement
Several lawmakers — including Rep. Neal Collins, R-Pickens, and Rep. Terry Alexander, D-Florence — questioned whether the law's enforcement provisions were strong enough.
“What we're doing now is saying, ‘Hey families, take this money. … And if we catch you, we're going to take the remaining funds, but you've already absconded with what you've already received,’ ” Collins said.
When a student is kicked out of the voucher program, Childs said, remaining voucher funds — which are distributed quarterly — go to a student on the program’s waiting list.
Childs did not provide a number when asked how many students had been removed, saying that information would be included in the EOC’s December report.
Collins also questioned how more than 1,100 participants were able to continue from 2024-25 into 2025-26 when the EOC was able to use test results for fewer than 300.
Some 452 children who took part in the voucher program during 2024-25 were under the age required for testing or were exempt because of a disability, department officials told The Post and Courier last week, but the remaining discrepancy between the 1,100-plus returning students and the 286 whose results EOC could evaluate remained unexplained this week.
“The math ain’t mathing,” Collins said.
Testing standoff
EOC Executive Director Dana Yow provided multiple recommendations that could improve the quality of data and speed up reporting. These included a hard deadline for the education department to deliver test scores to EOC analysts, giving the EOC access to ClassWallet data so they can tie test scores to whatever kids are spending voucher money on, and requiring voucher recipients to take South Carolina assessments.
That last change would require a change in state law, Yow said.
Her team is in a standoff with the education department over students who submit scores from the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and the Stanford 10 — assessments popular among private schools and used broadly outside South Carolina. Yow said these tests align with the Common Core but not S.C. teaching standards, which she said leaves the EOC unable to compare their results with those from public schools as required under the voucher law. The education department disagrees and plans to continue allowing the assessments.
Yow said some problems were to be expected and pointed to Tennessee, which has had vouchers twice as long as South Carolina and still hasn’t hammered out all its testing requirements.
One of the law’s authors, Rep. Shannon Erickson, R-Beaufort, popped into the meeting and urged patience, saying lawmakers always knew they would have to revise the program as it matured.
“So I just would ask that everybody remember that this is a moving ship in the middle of the ocean, and the hurricane has passed, but we still have waves, and I think we can get through it,” she said.