Education Funding Civil War Averted in 2026, But Formula Needs Work
The following article originally appeared in the Post & Courier.
As the 2025 General Assembly headed out the door, emotions in the public education community were raw. A conflict over funding between traditional public school districts and statewide public charter districts led to a Band-Aid that left neither side happy.
As the 2026 General Assembly convened, an even more bitter showdown seemed all but inevitable. But, for the most part, the public education civil war didn’t materialize this legislative session.
Cooler heads may have prevailed in 2026, but the core problems remain.
One of our former presidents famously said, “Doing right is easy; the problem is knowing what is right.” When it comes to education finance reform in the Legislature, much of the difficulty is in the knowing.
In a state of roughly 5 million, my somewhat educated guess is that fewer than 50 fully understand how South Carolina’s education funding process works. The number could be even lower. There’s a reason for that. In the current funding system, with so many nuances in play, I liken a conversation about school finance to driving down an Interstate highway and taking every exit.
How can we direct $15 billion annually in a manner that adequately prepares the next generation for work, college, and life if we cannot fully grasp where education funding is generated and how it is distributed?
In 2017, Palmetto Promise Institute attempted to clear the air on how the state education funding formula works by releasing a 62-page report recommending significant changes.
There were two main takeaways. We called for foundational aid for the basic state education program to be distributed in a student-centered framework with fewer funds directed to programs. We also called for charter students to be funded like any other public school students, which required a shift of public charters out of Education Improvement Act funding and into what is essentially Education Finance Act funding.
In 2022, the Legislature passed aid to classrooms reforms, line items were rolled up, and all in all, the education funding framework was improved. But because changes did not go far enough in that first year, distortions remained. The most significant one had been described nearly three years earlier in another Palmetto Promise study, Fairness & Opportunity: Bringing Student-Centered Funding to South Carolina Students. The missed opportunity of 2022 was the failure to fully embrace a system that appropriated money based solely on the characteristics of the student and the district.
A pure, simple, easy-to-understand and implement framework would have, in the spirit of the 1975 Education Finance Act, considered the wealth of the school district and the characteristics of the specific students attending public schools in the district to determine and distribute all state funding for the district. The starting point would have been the student. Each student would have received a weight based on a host of factors, including whether the student was in poverty, had special needs or was designated gifted and talented.
But instead, rather than student weights actually determining funding, funding became based on what could be called a performative calculation based on a “desired number of teachers” when total dollars are divided by the number of students (and districts use the funds for purposes other than teachers). This convoluted, skewed system with three funding tiers or buckets — formula, hold harmless, and additional proportional funding — has the effect of pitting school district against school district (including charter districts).
It gets worse. Not all education funding is included in this formula, which creates additional distortions where dollars fund programs instead of students.
To solve the problem, well-meaning experts have weighed in with various strategies, including going down the rabbit hole of removing or revising certain funding weights (including charter school weights), setting aside portions of funds for certain fixes, and other patches. But these recommendations, however well-crafted, do not address the fundamental problem of a funding mechanism that has been constructed piecemeal and departed from its lofty purpose a generation ago.
Fortunately, we have a solution: Fund the child. It can be done if we have the political will. Gov. Henry McMaster did his part in 2022. Perhaps the next governor will help us take the crucial next step.
