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Education Oversight Committee director briefs panel on dashboards, graduation rates and rural teacher incentives
Summary
Dana Yao, executive director of the South Carolina Education Oversight Committee, reviewed the agency’s role in standards, accountability and program evaluation, highlighted a new public dashboard and described evaluations showing benefits from the state’s full‑day 4K program and rural recruitment incentives funded with EIA dollars.
Dana Yao, executive director of the Education Oversight Committee, told the House Education and Public Works Committee that the EOC approves academic content standards and the statewide assessments used for accountability, produces annual school report cards and evaluates state‑funded programs.
Yao said the EOC issues an annual accountability report each year by Oct. 15 and maintains a public data portal at dashboardsc.sc.gov to visualize spending and performance by school. "We produce an education data dashboard and I'm going to give you a little peak at that as well and encourage you to take a look at it," she said.
The EOC director reviewed recent evaluations the committee has completed. She said the committee performs annual evaluations of major investments such as the full‑day 4K program and the Educational Credit for Exceptional Needs program. "The evaluations that we've done show that that program does work for 4 year olds," Yao said of the full‑day 4K program.
Yao described the EOC's 2024 graduation metric: "This is the graduation rate from 2024 so high school students and public schools 85.4 percent of students from 2024 graduated on time." Representative Bridal asked whether the same cohort’s college‑and‑career readiness rate was 30 percent; Yao answered "Yes, sir. College and career ready." Earlier in the presentation Yao also described dashboard graphics showing college‑and‑career readiness bars and used the phrase "72% roughly are students who are college or career ready" when describing a related chart, creating differing figures in the transcript between her chart commentary and a member’s summary question. The record contains both statements; the article reports each with attribution rather than reconciling them.
Yao said the EOC conducted an evaluation of a rural recruitment incentives program funded with Education Improvement Act (EIA) money. "Currently you all are investing $7,600,000 of EIA funds into rural recruitment incentives," she said, and described a menu of roughly 15 incentives districts may use, such as housing assistance, mentoring, international teacher recruitment and recruitment fairs. Yao said the EOC’s evaluation looks at return on investment and retention, particularly in the first five years of a teacher’s service.
The director flagged chronic absenteeism as a growing problem. She said, referencing the 2022–23 school year, about 23 percent of students were chronically absent and noted the EOC completed focus groups with students and parents and was still receiving parent feedback. The committee is planning a public awareness effort promoting small school‑level responses, Yao said.
Committee members asked about teacher turnover, remediation, retention policy and the EOC’s cyclical review of the accountability system. Yao said the EOC has eight full‑time staff and can provide additional data or meet with members individually on topics such as rural turnover rates and absenteeism focus‑group results.
The committee chair emphasized the dashboard as a tool for lawmakers and staff and thanked the EOC for its work.
The presentation did not result in any formal motions or votes during the hearing.
