COLUMBIA — Former State Superintendent of Education Barbara Nielsen died Sept. 3, according to an announcement from the Department of Education. She was 81.
Barbra Nielsen, former state superintendent of education, during her time leading the Department of Education.
Nielsen, first elected in 1990, spent two terms as superintendent before choosing not to run again in 1998.
The state’s 14th superintendent, she was the first woman to hold the position and the second woman ever elected to statewide office. Only Lt. Gov. Ferdinan “Nancy” Backer Stevenson, elected in 1978, preceded her.
She was also the first Republican elected state superintendent since Reconstruction.
Legislation she championed included the landmark Education Accountability Act of 1998, which required statewide standards in math, reading, science and social studies, and end-of-year testing on those standards to evaluate students’ and schools’ performance. The state accountability law predated the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which added another layer of public reporting requirements.
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“Today South Carolina has lost an education champion, and I have lost a dear friend and mentor,” Ellen Weaver, the current GOP state superintendent, said in a statement. “Her wit and wisdom will be greatly missed, but her shining legacy lives on forever in the lives of the students and state she served.”
Born in Ohio in 1942, Nielsen earned a doctorate of education from the University of Louisville in Kentucky in 1983, according to the South Carolina Encyclopedia. She spent three decades working in education, most of them in Kentucky, before being elected. She was a teacher, curriculum specialist and administrator in Louisville before working as a curriculum specialist in Beaufort County.
Nielsen oversaw a reorganization of the Department of Education. Other major education laws she advocated for that passed during her tenure include the 1996 act authorizing charter schools and the requirement that all districts provide full-day kindergarten for 5-year-olds, beginning in the 1998-99 school year.
Her tenure saw the introduction of computer technology and internet access to schools statewide.
After leaving office, Nielsen was appointed a senior fellow with the Clemson University Strom Thurmond Institute in 1999. In 2022, Gov. Henry McMaster appointed her to a new teacher retention and recruitment task force.