Louisiana: Louisiana's Course Choice pilot program is full, with about 2,000 students enrolled in online courses and 500 more on a waiting list (Times-Picayune). More from The Advocate.

Connecticut: Department of Education officials approve the state's first local charter school, a Montessori school financed by the local education board and the state (New Haven Register).

Massachusetts: U.S. News & World Report ranks the Sabis International Charter School as seventh among the state's charter schools and among the top 10 percent nationwide (Republican).

Ohio: Ohio Gov. John Kasich signs a bill that allows levy proceeds to be shared with charter schools partnering with the Columbus school district (Associated Press).

Wisconsin: A Racine school board member and her husband, a former teacher at a private school that accepted vouchers, want the program eliminated (Journal Times). The Racine school board approves a resolution opposing voucher expansion (Journal Times). St. John Fisher Academy, a private high school that opened in Racine last fall using state voucher money, has reportedly not paid staff members since March and has seen student enrollment dwindle (Journal Times). Parents are eager to apply for the voucher program, but a recent expansion only adds 500 seats statewide (Greenbay Press-Gazette). (more…)

Students know their priorities the moment they enter St. Joseph Catholic School. A sign by the front door reads, “Our Goals: College. Heaven.’’

Inside the West Tampa school’s cafeteria, boys and girls gather for Holy Karaoke, a morning program that encourages them to dance and sing, and focus on the lessons ahead.

Cartoon pumpkins belt out “Blue Moon’’ while bobbing across a giant movie screen. Sister Nivia Arias, in full habit, croons along at the pulpit before prompting her charges to recite daily affirmations.

“We are active learners who do our best work every day,’’ little voices say in unison. “We do the right thing at the right time.”

The saying sums up the philosophy of this 116-year-old parochial school once run by Salesian nuns. It may also be prophetic.

Like other Catholic schools across the nation, St. Joseph struggles with limited resources while trying to attract students and teachers. But a new partnership with the Diocese of St. Petersburg and the University of Notre Dame might be the right thing at the right time.

St. Joseph and another local Catholic school, Sacred Heart in Pinellas Park, are among five schools in the nation taking part in the Notre Dame ACE Academies, a pilot program in conjunction with the university's Alliance for Catholic Education that aims to strengthen Catholic schools and the communities they serve.

The idea is to boost enrollment and help schools develop better leadership, curriculum, instruction, financial management and marketing. (more…)

The Associated Press reports that Indiana's new school voucher program has caused a spike in enrollment at the state's Catholic schools:

Weeks after Indiana began the nation's broadest school voucher program, thousands of students have transferred from public to private schools, causing a spike in enrollment at some Catholic institutions that were only recently on the brink of closing for lack of pupils ...

... Nearly 70 percent of the vouchers approved statewide are for students opting to attend Catholic schools, according to figures provided by the dioceses in Indiana. The majority are in the urban areas of Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, South Bend and Gary, where many public schools have long struggled ...

... Our Lady of Hungary Catholic School in South Bend is among those institutions reaping the benefits of the vouchers. Just two years ago, it was threatened with closure by the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend. Now enrollment at Our Lady of Hungary has jumped nearly 60 percent over last year, largely because of an influx of voucher students.

An Indiana judge refused to halt the state's new voucher program, concluding that new statutory provisions guaranteeing publicly funded choice of even parochial schools are "religion-neutral" and "for the benefit" of students, not churches. It is a conclusion wholly different from one ruling issued Friday in Colorado, where a district judge weighed similar arguments challenging a Douglas County voucher plan and found that the same choice provided "no meaningful limitations on the use of taxpayer funds to support or promote religion."

From Indiana Superior Court Judge Michael Keele:

The [scholarship program] is religion-neutral and was enacted 'for the benefit' of students, not religious institutions or activities ... It permits taxpayer funds to be paid to religious schools only upon the private, individual choices of parents ...

... [The plaintiffs] would thus threaten long-established, and apparently unquestioned, Indiana traditions of permitting tax dollars to be spent on religious education by way of private, individual choice.

From Colorado District Judge Michael A. Martinez on the Douglas County ruling:

Because the scholarship aid is available to students attending elementary and secondary institutions, and because the religious Private School Partners infuse religious tenets into their educational curriculum, any funds provided to the schools, even if strictly limited to the cost of education, will result in the impermissible aid to Private School Partners to further their missions of religious indoctrination to purportedly 'pubic' school students.

To those who argue that voucher and tax credit policies create dual school systems where one half cherry-picks students who are less difficult to teach, look to the Catholic Diocese of Evansville, Ind., which is embracing the state's new voucher law and starting the school year with a new theme: "All Are Welcome."

by Kenya Woodard

While a group of educators and clergy are challenging Indiana’s voucher law in court, more than 125 schools have submitted applications to participate in the program, according to The Associated Press.

About 80 have been admitted to the program, considered one of the most sweeping voucher efforts in the nation which will initially allow a limited number of low- and middle-income families to use public money toward private school tuition. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels signed the voucher program into law in May.

Meanwhile, Fort Wayne-South Bend Catholic Diocese Schools Superintendent Mark Myers says his organization “has been flooded with calls from parents hoping to obtain vouchers,” reports Fort Wayne’s The Journal Gazette.

“The target is to admit 25 students in each building or about 1,000 new children in grades K-12 this summer,” Myers wrote in an article for Today’s Catholic News, the diocese’s official publication. “If this goal is reached, the diocese would receive just fewer than 14 percent of the total number of vouchers awarded by the state in 2011.”

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels is planning to sign two sweeping education bills into law today -- one that will create the nation's most expansive school voucher program, another aimed at expanding charter schools. During a talk yesterday at the American Enterprise Institute, Daniels said that no longer will Indiana "incarcerate any family's kid in a school that they don't believe is working, having tried it for at least one full year." That portion of his talk is below. The full hour-long discussion can be found here at AEI's Web site.

From the Evansville Courier & Press:

INDIANAPOLIS — Two key planks of Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels’ education reform platform cleared their final legislative hurdles Wednesday and are now headed to the Republican governor’s desk.

The Indiana House of Representatives approved measures Wednesday afternoon that would ease the process of opening new charter schools and launch the nation’s most broad private school voucher program.

Their passage comes as the Republican-led General Assembly enters its final two days, and despite opposition from Democrats in the House who at one point fled to Urbana, Ill. for five weeks to block progress on the education bills and others.

From The Associated Press:

The Indiana Senate has approved a plan to create the nation's most expansive school voucher program.

The Republican-ruled Senate voted 28-22 Thursday to advance the bill, which is the most contentious part of GOP Gov. Mitch Daniels' extensive education agenda. The bill allows parents to use some of the tax dollars that would normally be sent to public schools at private schools instead.

Families of four making up to about $60,000 a year would qualify. The program would be limited to a fraction of the state's students - just 7,500 for the first year and 15,000 in the second.

by Kenya Woodard

Now into their third day of a self-imposed exile in neighboring Illinois, Indiana’s House Democrats say they want another 11 Republican-backed bills soon to come up for a vote to be “killed” along with the proposed “right-to-work” legislation that initially prompted their flight from the state.

Republicans have offered to dump the latter, but are refusing to yield on any of the other bills, including a proposal to allow low- and middle-income families a public means to choose a private school for their children. House Minority Leader Patrick Bauer, a Democrat from South Bend, told reporters that the tax credit scholarship proposal and a bill that limits teachers' collective bargaining rights are “dealbreakers.”

While it’s common for Democratic leaders to distance themselves from tax-credit and voucher programs, it’s interesting to see Indiana’s Democrats do so. After all, in Indiana, such programs had their roots in the Democratic Party, and those roots don't go back far. (more…)