Phyllis Bush of the Northeast Indiana Friends of Public Education sent word that it is -16 degrees in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
But the legislature never rests, she says:
“At 1:30 the Senate Education Committee will be discussing taking away the Statewide testing requirements for voucher schools. Anything for keeping the playing field level….just in case you are a glutton for punishment, here is the live stream link: http://iga.in.gov/legislative/2014/committees/education_and_career_development_3400”
Ever busy, the legislature also expects to pass a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, which is already illegal.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
One word…OY! And phrase: WTF?
I wonder if it’s because those publicly-funded private schools that are enrolling the most children in Indiana have very low letter grades in the school scoring system:
“But what really separates Indiana’s program is which schools and students can participate — the number of vouchers has doubled in each of the past two years. Nelson says that’s a problem because a significant amount of money is flowing towards low-rated schools.
“I find it highly problematic that the school in Indiana with the highest dollar amount in Choice Scholarships is Ambassador Christian Academy, and that school was rated an F,” she says. “We need some sort of accountability process in place where schools that are rated F or just poorly overall do not end up receiving huge amounts of taxpayer dollars to essentially reallocate students to very low-performing schools.”
I was also surprised to see that Indiana public schools do better (overall, statewide) than Indiana private schools. Boy, you won’t hear about THAT during School Choice Week.
Love the “Scholarship” marketing language, too. Who WOULDN’T accept a “scholarship”?
They don’t use “voucher” because it polls poorly, although I’ve been pleased to see that media have insisted on using the plain-language “voucher”, and refuse to adopt the rebranding effort.
http://indianapublicmedia.org/stateimpact/2014/01/29/indianas-maximum-voucher/#more-28787
sigh
So how does that level the playing field? We hear all the time about failing public schools. If Charters or
other private schools are also failing, that needs to be aired, too. Fair is fair. Besides which, if the goal was really to send students to better schools, why would politicians want students to go to a different
“low performing” school? So unfair!
I guess accountability is for other people
Wow, Indiana has sunk to new levles, and continues to dig. Look up hypocrisy in the dictionary, a synonym will be “education reformers” and “state legislatures.” How can they even say this stuff with straight faces? I mean, come on, how can they possibly be serious?
It’s all about competition! Except when your team isn’t matching the hype.
Isn’t it interesting that, at a time when charter school test scores across this nation are revealing that they are doing no better and in some cases much worse then public schools, the Indiana legislature wants to exempt them from testing. It appears higher test scores aren’t the real reason for establishing charters – something we all already knew. What a bunch of hypocrites in the Indiana legislature.
there needs to be someway of allowing innovation (wasn’t the impetus for charter schools?) with a level playing field. Specifically, teachers unions. Charter schools cannot be just an end-run around unions. If that is their raison-de-etre (pardon the spellink), then…well, that’s just disengenious.
This is even one step beyond, obviously testing needs to be apple-to-apples.
The other obviousness is student-selection. Selecting out the best students, and leaving behind the rest is too transparent.
Anyhow…