Pennsylvania: A budget deal expands the state's existing tax credit scholarship program and creates a new one aimed at helping students in struggling schools. (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Washington: Bill Gates chips in $1 million for a ballot initiative to bring charter schools to one of the last states without any. (Associated Press) It appears supporters gathered enough signatures to get the initiative on the ballot. (Associated Press)

Florida: Former Gov. Jeb Bush endorses a local school board member who openly supports vouchers, tax credit scholarships and other forms of expanded school choice. (Tampa Bay Times) The incoming state House speaker also backs the board member. (Tampa Bay Times)

New Jersey: The state-appointed superintendent in Newark overrules a local advisory board and moves ahead with plans to lease empty buildings to charter schools. (NJ Spotlight)

Louisiana: State Superintendent John White continues to face criticism for his handling of a questionable private school that is seeking to participate in the state's new voucher program. (New Orleans Times Picayune) A state lawmaker now says she regrets voting for the program because she fears it will promote Islam. (Huffington Post)

California: The teachers union at Green Dot charter schools pushes for performance pay and evaluations tied to test scores. (Contra Costa Times)

Tennessee: A charter school operator vows to appeal to the state after a local school board rejects its plan to open charter schools in wealthy West Nashville. (The Tennessean)

Oklahoma: Online learning is growing more popular in Oklahoma, with supporters seeing it as an equalizer between districts that are big and small, rural and urban. (Tulsa World)

(Image from businessweek.com)

New Hampshire: The state legislature overrides Gov. John Lynch's veto of a tax credit scholarship bill. (Manchester Union-Leader)

North Carolina: School choice leaders throw in the towel on a legislative proposal for tax credit scholarships. (Associated Press) A judge rules that a virtual charter school cannot open, siding with the state board of education, which had refused to consider the proposed school's application. (Raleigh News & Observer)

New Jersey: Gov. Chris Christie says it's unlikely that a school voucher bill will move in the state legislature this year. (NJ Spotlight)

Florida: Faced with declining enrollment and increased competition from school choice, the Broward County School Board wants to open its own charter schools. (South Florida Sun Sentinel) Meanwhile, the state Charter School Appeal Commission sides with four of five charter school applications rejected by the Palm Beach County School Board. (Palm Beach Post)

Pennsylvania: A well-funded political action committee and the Philadelphia Archdiocese are pushing hard to expand the state's tax credit scholarship program. (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Texas: The state's main charter school group filed suit against the state, charging it with short-changing charters on facilities funding and arbitrarily capping the number of charters that can open. (Houston Chronicle) (more…)

Arkansas: A federal judge's ruling on the state's school choice law opens the door for legislative action on choice. (Arkansas News)

Maine: Gov. Paul LePage and the newly formed Maine Charter School Commission are at odds over the pace of the commission's work. (Bangor Daily News)

Louisiana: More financial concerns surface about a private school that has drawn an unflattering spotlight to the state's new voucher program. (Monroe News Star) Meanwhile, state education officials are still considering how best to assess private schools that accept voucher students. (New Orleans Times Picayune.) And lawsuits over the voucher program begin to pile up. (Shreveport Times)

Pennsylvania: Lawmakers get set to consider school choice expansion in the form of more tax credit scholarships. (Harrisburg Patriot News) The Pittsburgh schools system is considering its own virtual school to win back students lost to cyber charter schools. (Pittsburgh Post Gazette)

Michigan: Black students in charter schools outperform their peers in traditional public schools, a study by a charter school support group finds. (MLive.com) (more…)

New York: 5,000 charter school parents rally to send a message in the mayor's race. (NY1) More from the New York Times and New York Post. (New York Times photo at left shows students and parents from a KIPP charter school who attended the rally.)

South Carolina: A proposal for tax-credit scholarships got traction in the state legislature this year, but ultimately came up short. (The State)

Louisiana: As expected, the state teachers union files a lawsuit to stop the new statewide voucher program. (New Orleans Times Picayune)

Ohio: The state is ending a once federally mandated program that allowed low-income children to receive free, private tutoring but raised concerns about fraud and effectiveness. (Columbus Dispatch) 

Michigan: State lawmakers get set to debate parent trigger legislation. (MLive.com)

Tennessee: A key state lawmaker says the legislature is likely to pass a voucher bill next year, limited to urban areas. (Memphis Commercial Appeal) The state plans to convert 10 struggling Nashville schools into charter schools. (The Tennessean) The state also okays the expansion of charter schools in Memphis. (Memphis Commercial Appeal) (more…)

Stephanie Saul offered an indictment in the New York Times today of tax credit scholarship programs that have, in my opinion, serious design flaws. These flaws were almost guaranteed to provide examples like Saul found for her article. How lawmakers and, just as importantly, parental choice advocates respond is an important test of their credibility.

Not much of what Saul reported is new, though that makes it no less troubling. Georgia’s law sets no boundaries on the income of scholarship recipients and no limit on the amount of the scholarship itself. It requires no financial audits, no attempt at any meaningful data collection. Many of the contributions are steered through schools and parents with a self-interest to underwrite the tuition of their own students. In Georgia and two other states she covered, Pennsylvania and Arizona, the public has little idea whether students are learning because no tests are required and no academic data collected.

The story was loaded with powerful anecdotes of abuse, but employed surprisingly pedestrian journalistic standards in its attempt to portray those practices as national in scope. The punchline in what newspaper writers call the nut graph – that “the programs are a charade” – was qualified as a  question raised by “some” private school administrators. The characterization of programs becoming “enmeshed in politics” was leavened again with the word “some.” How many of the eight states with tax credit scholarship laws “collect little information”? You guessed right. The answer was “some.”

To her credit, Saul did acknowledge that at least one state has different statutory and regulatory standards: “In Florida, where the scholarships are strictly controlled to make sure they go to poor families, only corporations are eligible for the tax credits, eliminating the chance of parents donating for their own benefit. Also, all scholarships are handled by one nonprofit organization, and its fees are limited to 3 percent of donations. Florida also permits the scholarships to move with the students if they elect to change schools.”

The Florida scholarship program, as readers of this blog should be aware, is where the creators of this blog work. So we certainly have a self-interest in seconding such an assessment but also an intimate appreciation of the tension that appropriately exists with education options that have one foot in the private market and the other in the public treasury. We want to give the parents of poor and struggling school children something they could not otherwise afford – a private school learning option – and we recognize that with tax-credited funding comes public responsibility.

Finding the right balance between regulation and market is no simple feat. But our prescriptions for a well-designed law are as follows: (more…)