State education chief outlines gains on NAEP, literacy initiatives and budget requests, senators press on digital resources

State Superintendent Ellen Weaver told the Senate K‑12 Finance Subcommittee that South Carolina’s recent NAEP (national) results and state assessment trends show encouraging trajectory and outlined the Department of Education’s funding and policy priorities, including literacy, math adoption, teacher compensation and school facility safety.

The superintendent asked the committee to consider recurring and one‑time funding for instructional materials, consumable textbooks and program expansions tied to her agency’s strategic plan and a 2030 goal of 75% of students at grade level.

Why it matters: the department’s funding requests and policy guidance would shape curriculum materials, teacher compensation, intervention programs and capital planning across K‑12 schools in the state.

Weaver told senators the state’s NAEP scores showed South Carolina holding or improving ground in fourth‑grade math and reading scale‑score change, and the state assessment (SC Ready) showed a 7 percentage‑point increase in ELA and a 2 point increase in math for grades 3–8. She said almost 20,000 K–3 teachers have completed or are close to completing the Palmetto literacy (“letters”) training funded by the state. She described a Palmetto Math project already piloting at 10 sites and noted the department distributed about $3,780,000 in high‑intensity tutoring grants to districts and will direct remaining tutoring funds to Palmetto Math pilot schools.

On instructional materials, Weaver asked for $20,000,000 in recurring funds for consumable materials (cursive handbooks and other yearly consumables) and a one‑time nonrecurring appropriation to adopt new math instructional materials aligned to the 2023 standards. She said the $20,000,000 recurring request is for consumable textbooks and is not technology. For the one‑time math adoption, Weaver said there may be digital components and the department will “look into that” to identify at what grade ranges digital components would be part of the adopted package.

Senators pressed Weaver about technology in early grades and whether funds would put devices in young children’s hands. One senator expressed alarm about “dopamine response cycles” from gamified digital resources and said K–5 should largely avoid such devices; Weaver agreed that technology should be strategic, not ubiquitous, and described an example in a sixth‑grade classroom where an AI writing tutor provided targeted feedback that let the teacher coach other students. Weaver said the department would explore grade‑level limits and report back on whether the math adoption’s digital components would reach K–5.

Weaver reviewed several other requests: continued funding for summer reading camps tied to Read to Succeed implementation, a $200,000,000 request to the state aid to classroom line to support a $3,000 across‑the‑board raise for pay scales (the House had funded half of that), a recurring request to continue $20,000,000 for facility safety upgrades and $35,000,000 for bus lease purchase to maintain a 15‑year replacement cycle, and a request to seed an education infrastructure bank to support rural and charter facility needs. She also described a $5,000,000 strategic compensation pilot that funded 36 schools from $22,000,000 in requests and said the department will monitor implementation closely.

Weaver described the department’s “free to focus” phone‑free school day policy and said an April field survey will collect data on impacts; early anecdotal reports from teachers have been positive, including reports that students bring board games and Legos to lunch and that classroom culture has improved. She also said the state has increased minimum teacher pay from $32,000 to $47,000 since 2018–19 and that the department is working with higher‑education teacher‑prep programs to embed science‑of‑reading training.

Committee members asked for further detail on the department budget document labeled “classified positions,” and Weaver said she would follow up with staff and clarifications on how salary and fringe entries are displayed. Weaver also said the department would provide information about whether digital components of the proposed math adoption would involve K–5 devices and agreed to return results from the phone‑policy field survey when available.

No vote was taken; the testimony framed budget priorities and generated follow‑up questions senators asked the department to answer.