Campaigning on ED in South Carolina

As the primaries heat up, we've been seeing a lot of commentary on voter priorities. The Chicago Tribune weighed in on Monday, focusing on the concerns of Black voters in South Carolina, and education in particular.

The Tribune reports:

As the presidential campaign migrates south and west, with far more diverse populations than Iowa and New Hampshire, the issues that drive the campaign are changing. In South Carolina, for the first time, the Democratic candidates will have their fates determined by the party's most loyal constituency of the last 50 years: African-Americans. And in a state where half of Democratic voters are black and many are highly interested in improving South Carolina's failing schools, the issues of race, education and poverty prove hot topics leading up to the Jan. 26 Democratic primary.

Now, we've known for a while that education is an issue that motivates many minority voters, but I'm concerned at the implication in the Tribune piece that education is solely a minority issue. Just yesterday I pointed out a poll in Business Week that showed that 78 percent of voters between the ages of 18-29 care about education, and education ranked fourth among all issues in a recent Pew Center poll, with 75 percent of voters of all ages citing it as "very important."

This isn't to suggest that minorities wouldn't benefit from more attention to education reform by the presidential candidates. Half of all black and Latino students don't graduate from high school, and nationally, teachers in high-minority schools are almost twice as likely to be inexperienced as teachers in low-minority schools.

South Carolina, where the campaigns are descending this week, is infamous for its "corridor of shame," a series of districts filled with low-performing, mostly black schools.

However, the real story here is that education is an issue that can move voters, whatever demographic they happen to belong to. I hope that the candidates will keep this in mind as they tour the "corridor of shame" and speak to the South Carolinians who have the same high hopes for their children's futures as do parents in Iowa and New Hampshire.