This week, a judge ruled Nevada’s education savings accounts, one of the newest and most far-reaching educational choice programs in the country, are constitutional.
A Las Vegas judge on Wednesday ruled Nevada’s controversial new school choice bill does not violate a constitutional ban against the use of taxpayer money for religious purposes.
In an order dismissing a lawsuit challenging the legislation, District Judge Eric Johnson upheld the constitutionality of Senate Bill 302 as a program “neutral with respect to religion” because parents — not state actors — decide whether they will use an education savings account, or ESA, to pay for tuition at private and religiously affiliated schools.
Johnson also ruled a provision in the Nevada Constitution that charges state lawmakers with encouraging education “by all suitable means” permits the ESA program in addition to the public school system.
Yes, constitutional provisions forbidding public funds from being used to religious purposes can create a legal barrier to educational choice, but this latest victory proves they aren’t always a fatal one. Nor is a certain legal precedent set in Florida.
The legal battles in the Silver State aren’t over, though, and for now the program remains in limbo.
Meanwhile…
An interesting alliance between conservative federalists and teachers unions pushes back against federal funding equity regulations. What does this have to do with the new definition of public education? It’s about structuring education funding around students and their needs, rather than the system and its needs:
As progressives, it makes sense that union leaders would support equity in general, but there’s no good reason for why that moral impulse should stop at school district borders. Instead, this seeming contradiction can be explained by the fact that fixing within-district disparities would inevitably touch on issues of teacher compensation and teacher placement that are under the purview of locally negotiated teacher labor contracts. Districts could address within-district inequities in lots of ways — they could offer higher salaries to teachers in poorer schools, they could have lower class sizes in poorer schools, or they could expand other services within poorer schools — but local teachers’ union contracts often prohibit all of these policy options.
Greg Richmond of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers talks to educators and community leaders who seem bullish about New Orleans charter schools’ coming return to local school board oversight.
The real story of NOLA’s decade of reforms isn’t just that most of its public schools are now charters. It’s that NOLA separated school operation from school authorization (or school accountability). The vast majority of its public schools are run by nonprofits and overseen by a single-purpose, non-district authorizer. In other words, the government body monitoring these charters had a single, clear mission: It didn’t run some schools, employ teachers, set curriculum, mandate professional development, or anything like that. It held performance contracts with charters, making sure that they performed well and followed the law.
This formula is shared by the cities with the largest, highest-performing, and most stable charter sectors. For instance, in D.C., Boston, and Newark, where charter results are outstanding, the schools are overseen by non-district authorizers.
This is entirely different than a number of other cities, like Philadelphia and Chicago, where the district still runs schools and is also charged with overseeing charters. In these places, the district apparatus is the system, and this poorly serves charters and families. Urban districts are generally low-quality authorizers; after decades as a monopoly school operator, the district has built practices, policies, habits, and beliefs that inhibit its ability to gives schools true autonomy and hold them accountable.
So does this mean the “portfolio” approach to running a school system is in trouble? Or alive and kicking?
Flashback: The new definition of public education, circa 2000.
From the department of bizarre education controversies: The Republic of Turkey vs a Texas charter school.
The 74 wades into homeschool regulation.
A media tilt against charters?
D.C.’s education budget is said to shortchange charters.
School choice implications? The rise personalized bus transportation.
Open enrollment and Florida public schools.
A century ago, three Florida Catholic sisters won the right to teach black children in private schools.
Tweet of the Week
This is a must read. Funds are for the kids, not the “system” and the systems needs to flex with size of enrollment. https://t.co/rPUhqKHEQb
— Joe Siedlecki (@JoeatMSDF) May 20, 2016
Quote of the Week
It was never about religion. It was always about empowering parents.
– Nevada state Sen. Scott Hammond, on the education savings account law he authored being upheld.
This Week in School Choice is redefinED’s weekly roundup of national news related to educational options. It appears Monday mornings on the blog, but you can sign up here to get it Sunday. (We apologize for recent technical difficulties that have delayed delivery).
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