Monday, August 4, 2008

The coming battle for your education dollars

Georgia is ahead of Kentucky in providing educational options to students and parents. That state's Governor signed into law last year a bill to allow special-needs students to escape public schools in which they were poorly served in order to attend private schools with the money that would have otherwise gone to the failing schools.

This has, needless to say, made a few people mad.

The Athens (Ga.) Banner Herald said today in an editorial:

"If it wasn't perfectly clear when he introduced a measure calling for vouchers for special-needs students in the 2007 state legislative session, it is now: State Sen. Eric Johnson, R-Savannah, is intent on leading the charge to dismantle Georgia's public schools."

While the 900 families that have joined the new special-needs scholarship program are glad to no longer be political footballs, the newspaper quotes an Insider Advantage/Majority Opinion Resarch poll which found that 68 percent of Georgians want the program spread to all children. There is no reason to imagine less pent-up demand exists in Kentucky.

Kentucky's House Education Committee remains the place where education innovation dies. That is where you can still find what is left of Kentucky's special-needs scholarship bill.

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