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All Talk, But No Action: A Reexamination of Education in South Carolina’s “Corridor of Shame”

South Carolina’s “Corridor of Shame” is an area of rural and poverty-stricken communities that stretch along Interstate 95. This area has received large amounts of media attention since the release of a documentary, entitled Corridor of Shame – The Neglect of South Carolina’s Rural Schools. In addition, the area attracted more attention during a visit from former President Barack Obama, then a U.S. Senator and Democratic Presidential Candidate, to J.V. Martin Junior High School in Dillon, South Carolina. Many of the schools in the “Corridor of Shame” do not have the resources they need to provide their students with a well-rounded educational experience. In the twenty-first century, there are schools, such as J.V. Martin, that have to use coal in order to heat their building and pad their doors whenever there is rain in order to keep the school as dry as possible. In 2014, the Supreme Court of the State of South Carolina ruled that a “minimally adequate” education was not ensured for these school districts. However, no major legislative action has been taken to equal the educational playing field. The purpose of this research project is to analyze whether or not changes were made that had positive effects on the overall quality of education. Through collection of data from 2008 to 2015, statistical software Stata IC 10 is used to manipulate variables and check for overall education quality. By looking at different variables (e.g. poverty index, absolute rating, teacher salaries), available data shows that a “minimally adequate” education has still not been provided for all students and has contributed to the continuous economic instability in the “Corridor of Shame.” LITERATURE REVIEW & BACKGROUND INFORMATION According to the National Education Association, rural communities have continuously struggled in different areas since the colonization of the United States of America. That characteristic is still prevalent today, especially in regard to education. These communities rely on their school systems in various ways, such as for employment and recreational and social usage of facilities and other resources. However, many of these rural schools lack the funding to provide the minimum resources needed for an adequate educational experience. In South Carolina, one term used to describe the high concentration of these communities is called the “Corridor of Shame.” Ferillo and Associates, Inc. describes the “Corridor of Shame” as rural and povertystricken areas that stretch along Interstate 95. This area of seventeen counties consists of a racially diverse population, the state’s richest county (Beaufort) and a rapidly growing county (Dorchester), but it also contains some of the state’s poorest counties with negative population and income growth rates (as shown in Table 1 on the next page).