Theatre and Dance

Great reasons to be a K-12 teacher in South Carolina

"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."
                                                                                                                 ----Nelson Mandella

• Seven independent national studies have cited South Carolina's academic standards as among the most rigorous in the nation.
• The Princeton Review ranked South Carolina's testing system No. 11 in the nation and rated the state's academic proficiency standards as among the nation's most rigorous.
• Teachers are in demand. The Charlotte Observer reported that North Carolina expects to hire 11,000 new teachers every year for the foreseeable future.
• In Education Week magazine's 2005 "Quality Counts" (its national report card), South Carolina was ranked as one of the top two states in the nation for its teacher quality improvements.
• In 2009 the Thomas Fordham Foundation reported that South Carolina ranks 13th among the states in overall teacher quality.
• South Carolina ranks third in the nation in the number of National Board Certified teachers with over 7700 teachers nationally certified.
• Education Week's 2006 edition of "Quality Counts" ranked South Carolina No. 3 in the nation for raising standards and improving accountability and gave it an "A" in this category.
• South Carolina has instituted a salary scale equal to the southeastern average teachers' salary to attract and keep quality teachers to teach our public school students.
• South Carolina's 31+ point gain in SAT scores leads the nation over the past ten years.
• In 2005 South Carolina eighth-graders had the top improvement in the nation on the National Assessment of Educational Progress( NAEP) math scores.
• South Carolina's requirement that students complete 24 units of credit to receive a state high school diploma is one of the highest graduation unit requirements in the nation. 
• Standard and Poor's has identified South Carolina as an "out performer" on NAEP for consistently achieving above statistical expectations.
• South Carolina is one of only a few states over the past five years to have increased high school seniors' ACT college entrance exam scores while increasing the number of students taking the test.