The idea is to break the cycle and to bring middle-class values to areas where there have been no expectations and there is no performance. In addition there is the bottom tier, pulling the rest of the state under, Wilson and others say. Problems there are exacerbated, and the inequity needs to be addressed. Moore, also a member of the Business Center for Excellence in Education, agrees. South Carolina has top students, middle students, a lower layer and then the bottom.
Every state has that, except that in South Carolina the bottom layer is so big.
It is the bottom layer that we have to shrink or it will kill the state. Traditionally, said Jo Anne Anderson, executive director of the state's Education Oversight Committee, South Carolina has accepted the existence of a bottom layer. In the field of education, she said, people have become accustomed to a bad situation. We have to insist upon it. We cannot accept that there be a group that is going to underachieve.