Dana Yao, executive director of the Education Oversight Committee, told the House Education and Public Works Committee that 85.4% of South Carolina public school students in the Class of 2024 graduated on time and that the committee maintains the state's K-12 accountability system and public report cards.

The Education Oversight Committee, Yao said, approves content standards and statewide assessments in the ‘‘big four’’ subjects, issues the annual report cards that are legislatively mandated to be released by Oct. 15, evaluates state-funded programs such as the full-day 4K program and the Educational Credit for Exceptional Needs program, and produces an education data dashboard at dashboardsc.sc.gov.

"I'm Dana Yao, I'm the executive director of the education oversight committee," Yao said during the committee meeting. She described the EOC's work on program evaluations and special studies, including a recent review of $7.6 million in EIA-funded rural recruitment incentives that let districts choose from a menu of about 15 incentives such as housing support, mentoring, and recruitment fairs.

Yao highlighted chronic absenteeism as an urgent factor affecting achievement: in 2022-23 roughly 23 percent of students were chronically absent, meaning they missed about 10% of the school year, a condition the EOC says depresses academic performance. The committee said it recently completed focus groups with parents and students on attendance and is beginning to analyze results.

Committee members pressed Yao on the relationship between on-time graduation and college- or career-readiness. Yao displayed dashboard material and said the EOC reports measures of college readiness (ACT/SAT thresholds, dual-credit and AP/IB coursework) and career readiness (industry certifications, state career assessments, completion of CTE pathways and work-based learning). She told the committee the dashboard shows performance and spending by school and encouraged members to review it.

Several members asked about teacher recruitment and turnover in rural districts and whether the EOC had measured retention rates. Yao said the EOC's rural recruitment evaluation examined return on investment for the incentives but did not have a single statewide turnover percentage immediately available; she said the EOC would try to provide that figure on request.

The committee discussed retention policies tied to the state's Read to Succeed work and the Science of Reading professional development. Yao and members emphasized that retention without high-quality, differentiated instruction is unlikely to succeed; she said intentional retention supported by targeted interventions yields better results.

The EOC presentation closed with a reminder that the committee issues annual EIA recommendations to the General Assembly and that the EOC staff is small (Yao said the EOC has eight full-time staff) but maintains multiple dashboards and evaluation reports.

For follow-up, Yao said she could supply the slides and the EOC's recent EIA recommendations and promised to provide additional data on rural teacher turnover and parents' focus-group findings when available.