Dana Yao, executive director of the Education Oversight Committee, briefed the South Carolina House Education and Public Works Committee on the committee’s responsibilities, its public data tools and recent evaluations.

Yao told legislators the EOC approves statewide content standards and the assessments used in accountability for English language arts, math, science and social studies; issues annual school report cards by Oct. 15; evaluates state-funded programs paid from the Education Improvement Act (EIA); and maintains a public education dashboard at dashboardsc.sc.gov. “We do an annual evaluation of [the full-day 4K]…and the evaluations that we’ve done show that that program does work for 4-year-olds,” Yao said.

The committee’s dashboard and its evaluations are intended to give lawmakers visual access to school-level spending, graduation and performance trends. Yao cited the class of 2024’s on-time graduation rate at 85.4% and said roughly 72% of that cohort is classified as college- or career-ready under the EOC’s accountability measures. She also called chronic absenteeism a major concern, saying about 23% of students in 2022–23 were chronically absent (about 10% of school days missed) and that absenteeism depresses achievement.

During questions, Rep. David Bridal pressed on the relationship between graduation and readiness: “Am I to understand an 85% graduation on time rate and 30% of that group is college and career ready?” Bridal asked. Yao affirmed the distinction between on-time graduation and the subset the committee labels college- or career-ready and said the EOC is working with schools to tighten standards and supports so diplomas better align with credentials of value.

Yao described recent EOC work and studies: a review of a rural recruitment initiative funded at $7,600,000 in EIA funds to incentivize teacher hires in hard-to-staff districts (housing, mentoring, international recruitment and recruitment fairs were among the incentives), evaluation of alternative modes of instruction (face-to-face showed stronger outcomes in the most recent analysis), and work on the teacher loan program, military-connected students, and the Education Improvement Act recommendations the EOC delivered to the General Assembly in December.

The EOC director said the committee runs cyclical reviews of the statewide accountability system this year and that the office is small (about eight full-time equivalent staff) but produces multiple public reports and datasets. She encouraged committee members to use the EOC’s dashboards for school-level drilldowns and said the committee recently completed parent and student focus groups about attendance; those parent focus-group results were still being processed and would be shared with the committee when available.

Representative Joe Tipple and others pressed for more local data on teacher turnover in rural districts. Yao said the office did not have a single statewide turnover figure to cite in the meeting but offered to provide the breakdown to members later.

The presentation concluded with Yao asking members to nominate participants for the EOC’s cyclical review of accountability and offering to meet individually with members who wanted deeper briefings on indicators such as chronic absenteeism or the rural recruitment evaluation.

Less-critical details: Yao noted historical context (the EOC traces to the 1998 Education Accountability Act and earlier 1997 PASS Commission work), listed current EOC projects and staff, and offered to distribute slides and EOC reports to committee members.