Cecil Taliaferro

Dr. Cecil Taliaferro presents himself as a conservative Democrat who is running for SC State Superintendent of Education. The incumbent Inez Tenenbaum, a Democrat, has decided not to run for re–election.

At the Clarion Town House on Gervais Street last week, campaign manager April Heyward introduced Taliaferro to the press conference audience. Taliaferro has a B.A. in sociology (Virginia Union University), M.Ed. in international and development education (University of Pittsburgh), Ph.D. in higher education administration (University of Pittsburgh), and Post Doctorate in educational management (Harvard University). He has attended the Graduate School of Education at Howard University in Washington, DC. He was first a classroom teacher in 1967.

Taliaferro threw his hat into the ring and gave a short speech to initiate his campaign. He quoted Aristotle: “The fate of our future depends on the education of our young.” The state’s Corridor of Shame , as the televised video of eastern SC schools calls it, needs to soon become the Corridor of Hope , if Taliaferro has anything to do with it.

Among the first steps of his proposed administration, Taliaferro called for school choice among public schools. The schools losing in performance would soon be losing in student population, forcing radical improvements or inevitable closure.

Radical improvement is necessary, Taliaferro said, in preparing SC children for the SAT exams. Last year SC children were last, bottom in the US. Their average score of 986 was a three–point drop from the previous year.

Taliaferro was asked by The Columbia Star about the other end of the SC student population, the top half or even to top 10%. What did he plan to do to help them move up even higher? Could they aspire to be counted among the nation’s top half or top 10%? Taliaferro suggested the real achievers were doing fine and needed no further school support.

When asked specifically about what other reforms Taliaferro proposed, he asked for patience until his advisors – “some of the best education brains in the state, maybe the country” – met to produce a position paper for the press.