An Education Proposal That Falls Short
This is well-intentioned, but it’s not enough. The Grade reports on Rep. Ted Hoskins’ proposal to “require accredited school districts who reject a student from an unaccredited district give the parents a reason.”
I’m sure Rep. Hoskins is motivated by a true desire to help students in unaccredited districts, but this bill wouldn’t give them any new alternatives or educational options. It doesn’t reform the education system to make it easier for schools to accept out-of-district students, nor does it give schools any incentive to take students from nearby districts. It just says the districts can continue doing what they’ve always done, but now they have to give a reason.
This is like a teacher telling students they needn’t complete assignments, as long as they say “The dog ate my homework,” and put it in writing.
For what it’s worth, Rep. Hoskins is a wonderful advocate for education reform and this bill is a valiant effort to hold St. Louis-area school districts accountable for their unconscionable refusal to accept students from the unaccredited St. Louis City schools. I think this bill may well be the best he was able to get passed in the face of massive opposition. But you are mostly right, Sarah – it’s mostly toothless. True, it gives St. Louis parents the right to appeal a school district’s refusal to enroll their child, but it sets no standards by which the district’s reasoning is to be judged. Additionally – and more disturbingly, from my perspective – the bill is rigged to exclude Kansas City’s school district from its effect. While the Missouri constitution strictly forbids passing laws that will only apply to certain cities and counties, the courts have routinely allowed the legislature to elude this restriction by creating absurdly specific non-specific limitations on statutes’ application. Thus, this bill will not apply to “any school district that has territory in a county with a charter form of government and with more than six hundred thousand but fewer than seven hundred thousand inhabitants or in a county of the first classification with more than seventy-three thousand seven hundred but fewer than seventy-three thousand eight hundred inhabitants.”
Comment by Dave Roland — April 17, 2009 @ 3:32 p.m.