Carol Kellerman, president of the Citizens Budget Commission, a local watchdog group, said that it would have been unfair for the city to remove closing schools from the bonus program, but suggested that the department raise its standards for reaching improvement targets.
The new guidelines permit state officials to boot private schools from the voucher program if they demonstrate "gross or persistent lack of basic academic competence".
Thankfully there are some departures in schools from the usual "programs".
She said she would like to limit the number of credits students can earn through credit recovery and prevent low-performing schools from running the programs.
Although the Environmental Protection Agency has distributed $50 million to the states to help finance removal of asbestos from schools, the program has been delayed because contractors can't find insurance to cover workers removing the toxic stuff formerly used as insulation.
A ninth-grade teacher, she is the first national winner from a charter school in the program's 65-year history, and the first from Massachusetts.
Refusing to teach evolution also isn't grounds for rejecting a school from the voucher program.
Do I, as a taxpayer, want my taxes to support that as a proper education in science?" One school participating in Louisiana's program notes that its students "will be expected to defend creationism through evidence presented by the Bible versus traditional scientific theory". Refusing to teach evolution also isn't grounds for rejecting a school from the voucher program.
The report covers the first school year of the program, from fall 2007 to spring 2008.
Schools spend more on each athlete than they do on each student, Think Progress reported in January, and money for sports teams is more likely to come from school subsidies if the program is not profitable.
Instead, students were shown DVDs until the school was "ejected from the program.
