PPI’s Senior Fellow Dr. Oran Smith wrote an opinion piece focusing on why South Carolina should invest in building a robust online learning catalog. This op-ed was first featured in The Lexington County Chronicle.   This month we reach the 35th anniversary of the premiere of the original “Back to the Future.” The blockbuster movie’s plot

Palmetto Promise signed onto a letter to Capitol Hill calling on lawmakers to give COVID relief to private schools. Some of the requests in the letter include:  “Temporary education tax credit.” Families paying private school tuition for the 2019 and 2020 tax years should get a 50 percent tax credit on that tuition.  “Temporary charitable

Palmetto Promise polled private schools on how their operations—instructional, financial, and otherwise—have been affected by COVID-19. We released the results, paired with projections about the range of potential impacts of declining private school enrollment and possible school closures on public school budgets in a first-of-its-kind SC-specific analysis.   This survey sparked a long-overdue public conversation

This article was originally published in Forbes by author Patrick Gleason. A new Mason-Dixon poll out this week shows that state Education Savings Account (ESA) programs, which expand school choice by allowing families to control a large share of the taxpayer resources going toward their children’s education, aren’t just sound policy for state lawmakers to enact, they’re

PPI Senior Fellow Dr. Oran P. Smith is quoted in this article from The State that appeared on January 20, 2019. 

PPI’s education agenda was mentioned in an article in the Greenville News. Anna Lee, The Greenville News Greenville County legislators vowing to make education reform a top priority on Tuesday publicized an education agenda from the conservative Palmetto Promise Institute. The Help Our Pupils Excel plan would reformat the state’s education system by addressing “root problems in finance

This originally appeared in the Wall Street Journal on March 6, 2018. As a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy Reserves and the most recently deployed member of Congress, I know firsthand that serving in the armed forces requires tremendous sacrifice. As a husband and father of three young daughters, I know the decision to serve

This op-ed appeared in The State newspaper on January 22, 2018. Our nation will spend $623.5 billion on K-12 education this academic year — an average $12,300 per pupil. That per-pupil spending has increased by more than 35 percent over the past 25 years, even after taking inflation into account. Despite all the spending, S.C. test scores on

Ellen Weaver comments on the nomination of former SC Superintendent of Education Mick Zais' nomination to be Deputy Secretary at the U.S. Department of Education.

Being unable to read is the worst kind of "gift" that keeps on giving.