GOOD news! There are now 20 private school choice programs. Special needs children in Louisiana will have more educational choice! Read the news release from our friends at the American Federation for Children:
Children Win as Louisiana Enacts Special Needs Scholarship Program
Washington, D.C. (June 25, 2010) - Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal this week signed into law the nation’s 20th private school choice program, which will allow children with special needs to use state-funded scholarships to attend the private schools of their parents’ choice.
Hailed by school choice activists as a significant, bipartisan victory for children with special needs in Louisiana, the legislation enacts a two-year pilot program benefiting children in the state’s parishes with populations of 190,000 people or more. Accordingly, children in Caddo, East Baton Rouge, Jefferson, Lafayette, Orleans, and St. Tammany parishes will be eligible to participate.
The scholarships are worth up to half the cost of what the state pays to send participating children to public schools. The new law will assist children in Kindergarten through eighth grade who have autism, developmental delay or other specific learning disorders.
“This new program is a significant victory for Louisiana’s children,” said Betsy DeVos, chairman of the American Federation for Children, a leading school choice advocacy organization. “This program will improve educational access and quality for thousands of students with special needs across the state, and we applaud legislators from both parties for doing what is right for families and not bowing to pressure from special interests.”
The bipartisan piece of legislation was authored by Representative Franklin Foil (R-Baton Rouge) and cosponsored by Representative Major Thibaut Jr. (D-New Roads), Representative Patrick Williams (D- Shreveport), Senator Conrad Appel (R-Metairie), Senator Ann Duplessis (D-New Orleans), Senator Eric LaFleur (D-Ville Platte), and Senator Gerald Long (R-Winnfield).
The School Choice Pilot Program for Certain Students with Exceptionalities Act will place Louisiana in the ranks of six other states (Arizona, Georgia, Florida, Ohio, Utah, and Oklahoma) that have enacted school choice programs designed for children with special needs. Across the country there are approximately 24,555 students enrolled in these programs and nearly 200,000 students participating in private school choice programs in general.
There is some very GOOD education reform news to report from our neighbors in Oklahoma this week. Governor Brad Henry signed into law a new program to provide scholarship assistance for special-needs students to attend the private or public school of their parents’ choosing.
The Foundation for Educational Choice proudly reported the news:
The Lindsey Nicole Henry Scholarships for Students with Disabilities Act redirects dollars spent on a participating child at his current public school to the public or private school of his family’s choice. The scholarship, named after the governor’s infant daughter who died of Werdnig-Hoffman Disease, will be equal to state and local dollars that would have been spent to educate the child in his public school or the amount of private school tuition, whichever is less.
“Because of the governor’s and legislature’s courageous acts, Oklahoma’s children with special needs have been afforded a new, better chance to succeed in life,” Robert Enlow, president and CEO of the Foundation for Educational Choice, said. “Other states should emulate Oklahoma and its willingness to put the interests of kids and parents first.”
Local blogger and education reform supporter Brandon Dutcher not only published a press release with some excellent quotes explaining the legislation and how it came to be named for the governor’s late daughter but also gave a “hats off” to Governor Henry for signing HB 3393. We couldn’t agree more!
Oklahoma now joins Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Ohio and Utah as states with tax-funded scholarship programs for special-needs students. To understand why more states are moving this direction, read this recent Education Next article by Dr. Jay P. Greene. He brings forward the overwhelming research that demonstrates the success of this particular school choice policy.
So what’s holding back Colorado? As recently as last year, a more modest proposal to expand choice for special-needs students was killed by the Democrat-controlled House Education Committee — clearly a BAD move then. But could we expect officials in our state to do something GOOD with special-needs scholarships in the near future?
For students to achieve the best outcomes, they need teachers and principals to be as effective as they can be. To make that happen, we first need a clear and fair way to know which teachers are effective. We need to do more to invest both teachers AND principals in student academic success. And we certainly need to make it easier to dismiss teachers who aren’t up to the job.
These are the reasons why long overdue Senate Bill 191 makes so much sense–so that we can have Great Teachers and Leaders. It’s a GOOD thing to see a large coalition of parents, community organizations and advocacy groups line up behind this quality proposal to promote effective teaching. The same can be said for the team of 9 Democrats and 9 Republicans–behind lead sponsor Senator Michael Johnston (D-Denver)–who have agreed to co-sponsor this important piece of education reform.
On the other hand, it’s too BAD that one special interest lobbying group has decided to work so hard to stop SB 191: the Colorado Education Association (CEA). Before they even saw the official bill that seeks to hold both principals and teachers to greater account for their effectiveness in improving student learning, leaders of the state’s largest teachers union complained and vowed to do all in their power “to kill Sen. Johnston’s bill.”
The union is no doubt familiar with the long, fold-out chart showing how difficult Colorado state law makes it to remove a “non-probationary” teacher with 3 or more years of experience. (And that doesn’t include additional steps in some local district policies and collective bargaining agreements.) Some of these dismissal cases have cost taxpayers more than $100,000 to remove a single teacher. Often, boards and principals don’t even bother trying.
In the end, by opposing SB 191, CEA leaders prove they are much more committed to preserving expensive and burdensome job protections for ineffective teachers than they are committed to ensuring those in charge of educating Colorado students are as effective as they can be. There is a word to describe their approach: SHAMEFUL.
On consecutive days this week at the State Capitol, Colorado lawmakers once again killed two private school choice bills. HB 1295 and HB 1296 would have provided tax credits so families could choose a non-public school.
Even the fact that both bills would have saved public schools money on a per-pupil basis during these hard budget times didn’t convince Democrats in the majority on the House Finance Committee. They said too BAD and voted down HB 1295 and HB 1296.
More SHAMEFUL, however, was some of the testimony against the bills. According to the account of home education legislative analyst Treon Goossen, the CEA (teachers union) lobbyist made the unsupported claim that private schools and home schools provide an “inferior education.” And the CASB (school board association) lobbyist implied non-public schools would discriminate against students based on race or some other characteristics. As far as we know, no discussion was had concerning the exclusiveness of many “private” public schools.
The proof is in that private school choice benefits many children, and in the case of these two bills would no doubt save money for the state to serve other students. All the less reason to provide excuses for the BAD decisions of lawmakers and the SHAMEFUL claims of lobbyists.
When it comes to public performance audits, there’s a difference between good governance and oversight on one hand, and a far-reaching fishing expedition on the other. The latter SHAMEFUL act is what a handful of Democrat state legislators (Rep. Mike Merrifield, Rep. Judy Solano, Sen. Bob Bacon, Sen. Evie Hudak) put into motion last month.
The four lawmakers crafted an audit proposal to make a wide-ranging probe into all of the state’s public charter schools. They did not consult with charter school leaders on their expedition. They singled out charter schools from other public schools, with some of the requested information presented in an obviously skewed way. They neglected some of the oversight already provided by charter school authorizers and the Colorado Department of Education’s charter school office.
Fellow Democrat state senator Lois Tochtrop publicly called the proposal a “witch-hunt against charter schools,” and she was right. Tochtrop and the four Republicans on the committee (Sen. Kevin Lundberg, Sen. Josh Penry, Rep. Cheri Gerou, and Rep. Frank McNulty) did a GOOD thing by voting down the proposal at a Monday meeting of the Legislative Audit Committee.
Sen. Lundberg was also quoted as saying:
“This request was way over the top,” he said. “It was a misguided attempt to unfairly target and discredit Colorado’s charter schools and deprive parents of their right to public school choice.”
Click the play button below (or this link) to listen to an iVoices podcast as Colorado League of Charter Schools president Jim Griffin explains the issues at hand and why the proposal was simply out of line:
Below is a copy of the memo that includes the original request for an audit: Read the rest of this entry »
The Colorado Supreme Court says today in response to Boulder Valley School District’s lawsuit against the State Charter School Institute: Hearing “DENIED.”
The state’s highest court will not hear the case, and that’s a GOOD decision. Boulder Valley previously lost its legal attempt to deny families more educational choice and opportunity, both at the district court level and at the appellate court level. To better understand the case, read Attorney General John Suthers’ response to the appeals court decision.
You can find full coverage of this story at Ed News Colorado.
Colorado is making major revisions to the state’s academic standards. At the Independence Institute, we’re especially interested in the Social Studies standards. Our own Ben DeGrow has served on the subcommittee to draft new standards for history.
What’s really GOOD about the process is how the Colorado Department of Education has worked to solicit feedback on the the draft Social Studies standards (PDF) from everyday citizens. Many have already shared their comments. If you have any interest, you should take the opportunity to participate, too!
If you would like to learn more about the process and the first draft of standards, click on the play button below to listen to a new iVoices podcast discussion featuring Pam Benigno and Ben DeGrow: Read the rest of this entry »
June 30, 2009 was a GOOD day for thousands of Indiana children in the home state of the Friedman Foundation and the GEO Foundation, two long-time school choice advocates. Governor Mitch Daniels signed into law a 2.5 million corporate and individual scholarship tax credit program. The program gives companies and individuals a 50 percent tax credit in return for their donation to a nonprofit organization that provides scholarships to low-income children to attend private schools. Obviously, the state of Indiana has recognized that it needs the private sector to play a greater part in the education of Indiana’s low-income students.
ACE, Parents Challenge, and Seeds of Hope are Colorado’s three major nonprofit organizations that have helped thousands of low-income children obtain a high quality education in private schools. A tax credit law in Colorado would increase the numbers of children these organizations could rescue from the BAD situation in many public schools.
Also in June, the Colorado Children’s Campaign, A+ Denver, and the Metropolitain Organizations for People released a new report showing that even though the Denver Public School system has implemented several new reforms Denver’s schools still do not perform adequately. Only about half its ninth-grade students graduate from high school in four years.
The anti-private school choice special interest groups need to drop their weapons of mass destruction and recognize that a tax credit for donations to scholarship programs would allow for thousands more Colorado children to receive a high-quality education and at the same time save the state millions!
Acting like spoiled children, over a three-day period, several hundred Boulder Valley teachers held a collective temper tantrum. Our government-run education system has trained teachers to expect a raise whether or not the money is available and whether or not they are good teachers.
When a spoiled child misbehaves, who must share in the blame? (Usually it’s the parents, but in this case it is society as a whole.) However, teachers are not children.
What can we say about those Boulder Valley teachers who caught the “blue flu” and neglected their duty as public servants? The Denver Post calls their actions “appalling”, but we prefer to say it’s just plain SHAMEFUL.
Good picks by a Republican leader! Colorado Senate News has reported that Republican Senate leader Josh Penry will appoint a Democrat to the Interim Committee to Study Financing of Public Schools. The Democrat is education reformer Michael Johnston, who was selected by a committee to fill the vacancy left by the departure of Senator Peter Groff.
Before he left for D.C., then-Senate President Groff appointed Republican school choice supporter Senator Nancy Spence to the committee. One GOOD non-partisan decision deserves another!
Penry also appointed fellow Republican Senator Keith King, who supports charter schools and has his own creative ideas of how to improve school finance. This interim committee (which also includes Democrat Senators Bob Bacon and Chris Romer) may come up with some fresh ideas rather than focus on politics as usual!
