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Education News for Thursday, April 27

House rejects plan to set up school voucher program – By one vote, the Louisiana House of Representatives rejected a plan to set up a voucher program for students attending New Orleans’ worst public schools. (more)

Legislature Overrides Most Budget Vetoes, but Pataki Says He Will Block Some Items – The Legislature overrode almost all of Gov. George Pataki’s 207 budget vetoes yesterday, including one for a $330 per child tax credit that Pataki had wanted to direct to education. (more)

Dropouts Build New Foundations at D.C. Charter School – An in-depth look at a Washington, D.C. charter school that works with kids given up for lost by public schools. (more)

A smaller, better L.A. Unified – A former California Assembly speaker says that L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s plan to take over the Los Angeles Unified School District doesn’t address its biggest problem: runaway bureaucracy. (more)

School choice is made easier – The Aiken County, South Carolina school board recently approved a plan to re-engineer the district’s school choice program, which will make transferring easier beginning in the 2007-08 school year. (more)

Teachers stage `blue flu’ protest – To protest several aspects of state education policy, a few dozen Palm Beach County teachers joined their counterparts across South Florida by catching the symbolic "blue flu" and attending work dressed in blue yesterday. (more)

Court: State still can’t fund religious schools – For the second time in a decade, Maine’s highest court upheld a state law banning state funding of religious schools. (more)

Record school budget settled – Florida lawmakers have agreed on a record education budget that will increase K-12 spending by nearly $1.8 billion. (more)

Chicago principals flunk more than 1,000 teachers – For the second year in a row, Chicago Public Schools principals dumped more than 1,000 non-tenured teachers, citing poor classroom management as the top reason. (more)

Check back later today for more education news. 

UPDATE:

LA Board of Education president visits Capital over takeover plan – Los Angeles Board of Education President Marlene Canter quietly traveled to Sacramento on Wednesday to discuss with state lawmakers the ongoing battle for control of the city school district. (more)

PBP editorial: Can FCAT graders make the grade? – Gov. Bush, in the latest flap and in other FCAT decisions, has tried to ensure that there is no complete record of results on which he can be judged. It’s kind of shameful, to be honest with you. (more)

Democrat senator prevents "lock down" against Florida vouchers – State Sen. Al Lawson said he supports the concept of tuition vouchers – to help poor children get out of failing schools -and that he has doubts about the high cost of reducing class sizes in public schools. (more)

Palm Beach Post take on Lawson refusing to block vouchers – Sen. Al Lawson stunned his Democratic colleagues at a pre-session caucus meeting this morning when he refused to agree to vote as a bloc against the proposed constitutional amendment that would protect school vouchers and another that would water down class-size limits approved by voters in 2002. (more)

Educating from the bench – In the Wall Street Journal, Jay Greene writes about judges ordering legislators to spend more on schools and taxpayers seeing less in return. (more)

Administration Slow to Hold School Districts Accountable Under NCLB – Heritage Foundation’s David B. Muhlhausen writes about the Alliance and CURE’s actions in California. (more)

Arizona Republic editorial: Kids can’t outwait endless legal tangle – No. U.S. District Judge Raner Collins used a few more words than that. But he couldn’t have been clearer in ruling Wednesday on the Legislature’s plan to fund English-language instruction. (more)

Black parents in Maine see obstacles – Closing achievement gap requires changing school system, they say. (more)

Chartering a course in New York – Columnist Stanley Crouch: We should all know by now that the public school system needs to be overhauled, and the changes will not come about as quickly as necessary. There will be bat
tl
es with the unions, which hold failed practices in place… (more)

Californian’s increasingly worried about public schools – A Public Policy Institute of California survey found that California residents hold a more negative view of the state’s vast K-12 public education system than at any time since 1998, when the PPIC conducted its first poll on the subject. (more)

LA mayor wants law stripping state of board powers – Education Week (subsciption required) Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa last week called for California lawmakers to put his office in charge of running the day-to-day operations of the nation’s second-largest school district. (more)

NY Times:Hurricane evacuees struggle on tests – Math scores for fifth-grade students displaced to Texas after last year’s hurricanes are lagging significantly, mirroring similar low scores in reading.  (more)

The Washington Times: FEMA handling of Gulf schools criticized –  Putting the Federal Emergency Management Agency in charge of rebuilding and reopening schools on the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina was a critical mistake, congressional Democrats on the House Education and the Workforce Committee said … (more)

Indy star editorial: Start earlier to stop falling behind – Of every 100 students in Indiana who enter their freshman year of high school, less than 75 will receive a diploma four years later. Only about 40 will enter college. And only 21 will earn a college degree within six years. (more)