To round out the week, here's a look back on this week's school choice news from around the country:

• In South Carolina, state senators are poised to vote on a proposal that would provide tax-credit scholarships and tax deductions intended to offset private school tuition costs, says an article in The State. Under the bill, families could receive up to $4,000 in tax deductions for private school tuition. Families that homeschool could up to a $2,000 tax deduction under the proposal, and those families sending their children to a public school outside of their home district could receive a $1,000 tax deduction. The bill would also create a tax-credit scholarship program to raise money for private school tuition. Some believe the vote on the legislation could be close, although in the past, similar efforts has been killed by moderate Republicans who joined with Democrats to oppose such legislation.

• The Utah State Charter School Board has come out with evaluations of the state's 81 charter schools for the first time. In an effort to increase oversight of charter school performance, the state charter school board has graded each of the schools on their academics, finances, and governance, according to an article in The Salt Lake Tribune. This is the first year the board has undergone the evaluations, and they are intended to provide a baseline for future years charter performance, the board has said. For that reason, the board cautioned against making comparisons between schools.

• Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley introduced an executive amendment to a controversial bill that would allow tax-credit scholarships for students assigned to "failing" school districts to attend "non-failing" public or private schools in the state, called the Alabama Accountability Act. Bentley, a Republican, has proposed delaying the tax-credits for two years in order to allow the schools classified as "failing" to implement new flexibility plans allowed under the bill and improve their status.

• A proposal in North Carolina to provide vouchers for students with disabilities to attend private schools has passed the House of Representatives. The bill provides $3,000 per semester for students with disabilities to apply toward private school tuition. The Winston-Salem Journal reports that Democrats in the House argued that $6,000 was not enough for low-income families because private school tuition is often much higher and therefore the proposal will only impact middle-income families. The bill now heads to the Senate.

• And finally, in Texas, a bill to expand the number of charter schools has passed the House of Representatives. The bill would allow 10 additional charters to open within the next two years, and then 10 more each year after that, with a maximum of 275. The Senate version of the bill would allow greater expansion—up to 305 charter schools to open by the fall of 2019. Among other differences between the House and Senate bills are that the House provision would include charter schools that target dropouts in the total charter school count, reports the Dallas Morning News. (Those schools are excluded from the count in the Senate bill.) Also, the House bill keeps the state board of education as the authorizing agency for new charter schools while the Senate bill would shift that responsibility to the commissioner of education.

In anticipation of the House's vote, the National Association of Charter School Authorizers released a statement on Thursday urging lawmakers to "do charters big in Texas, but do them right." The national organization also advised legislators to set high standards for charter schools, make performance a central focus, and to implement policies that would replicate high-performing charters—while closing failing charter schools.

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The fallout from the Louisiana Supreme Court's ruling that the funding mechanism for the state's new voucher program was unconstitutional is now hitting state legislators.

Lawmakers in the state are scrambling to identify a way to pay for the program, which cost roughly $25 million, about three-quarters of which has already been paid out to voucher schools, says an article in the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

In addition, the court decided to nullify the 2012-13 minimum foundation program (the state's per-pupil allocation) because the Legislature did not follow the proper procedure, automatically reverting the state's MFP funding back to the previous year's formula. Reverting to the 2011-12 formula increased education costs overall by $29 million, the state's superintendent, John White, announced on Wednesday.

As the Senate Education Committee works with the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to hammer out the MFP funding formula, John White has said that the Senate's budget bill will add a line item for the voucher program, drawing the funds from the general fund instead of the MFP to ensure its funding is constitutional.

About 8,000 students have already been matched with voucher schools for the 2013-14 school year, Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal has said.

In addition, the course-choice program, part of Gov. Jindal's sweeping education reforms that included the voucher program and would allow students to take up to five classes outside of their home school with taxpayer money, will continue as planned. The state supreme court ruled to let the program stand. However, state superintendent White announced that the state's education department will finance the program itself rather than going through the state's legislature.

So far, about 3,000 courses have been chosen, totaling about $2.1 million in expenses, says the Times-Picayune article.

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Many charter schools in Pennsylvania are not complying with the state's right-to-know law, which requires them to disclose certain information to the public, says the leader of the state's office of open records, according to an article on Philly.com.

Terry Mutchler, the executive director of the Office of Open Records, said her office has received 239 appeals after charter schools have failed to answer requests from the public for budget, payroll, or student roster information, says the article. Those schools could be brought to court and potentially fined, said Mutchler, but the office does not currently have adequate funding to pursue the widespread problem.

Ken Kilpatrick, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools told Philly.com that it was the first he had heard of the concerns.

The right-to-know law, which requires state-related institutions to disclose certain records and information to the public, was passed in 2008 and took effect on January 1, 2009. The law moved the burden of proof from citizens requesting public information to government agencies that want to withhold certain records. The Office of Open Records seeks to enforce and implement that law.

There is currently legislation forming in the state Senate's government committee that could provide revisions to the 5-year-old law. Debates about the revisions are what initially shed light on the charter school failures to comply, which Mutchler called "a cancer on the otherwise healthy right-to-know law."

Charters are public schools, funded with taxpayer dollars, that traditionally are overseen by entities other than school districts and operate with varying degrees of autonomy from them. There are currently about 175 charter schools operating in Pennsylvania, educating about 118,000 students. Charters make up about 6 percent of the student population in that state.

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A poll conducted by the Associated Press found that the number of Texas students on charter schools' waitlists is thousands fewer than the estimate from the Texas Charter Schools Association, due in part to varied polling techniques and duplications.

A Texas Charter Schools Association survey conducted between August and September of last year found nearly 102,000 students on waiting lists for charter schools across the state. (See an analysis of the survey by PolitiFact Texas here.)

But the AP found that out of eight of the ten charter operators surveyed by the Texas Charter Schools Association, which made up 87,000 of the 101,000 students on the waitlists, only 79,000 students are currently on the waitlist—a difference of about 8,000 students.

Part of that discrepancy could have to do with the timing of the poll, the AP. The AP survey was done in April, and since some charter schools wipe their waitlists and start over every January, the charter schools' waitlists might not be as long compared to a survey done later in the year. In addition, some larger charter operators have implemented new waitlist standards yielding more accurate numbers, said the article.

In addition, neither of the polls can account for families who apply to be on the waitlists of multiple charter schools, allowing those families to be counted multiple times. (Because of privacy laws, the names on the waitlists are confidential, making it impossible to cross-reference the lists and remove duplicate names.)

The fluctuation in the number of students waiting to get into charters comes as Texas lawmakers debate whether to allow an expansion of charter schools through legislation sponsored by Sen. Dan Patrick, a Republican. Patrick's bill has passed the Senate but faces a tough road in the House, according to the Houston Chronice, where charter school legislation has died in the last two legislative sessions.

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A new collection of articles about charter schools explores charter growth in suburban districts, charter school incubation in urban centers, implementing blended learning into charters, and the potential cost savings of blended learning in both charter and regular public schools.

The articles have been released in the seventh edition of "Hopes, Fears, and Reality," a report edited and published by the Center for Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington. Support for the report was provided by the National Charter School Research Center, which is funded by the U.S. Department of Education.

The report's authors range from Jeffrey Henig, a professor of political science and education professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, to Michael Horn, the director of the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation (formerly the Innosight Institute).

In the introduction to the report, Robin Lake, the director of the Center for Reinventing Public Education, chides charters for being "sluggish" to prepare for the Common Core State Standards. "The charter school sector will continue to evolve," she says in the report. "The question is only how fast and in what directions. If charter leaders rest on their laurels, the movement may miss out on important opportunities to expand more quickly, use resources more productively, and, most importantly, improve student success."

The report takes on a wide range of charter school trends and challenges encountered in 2012 within the context of the charter school movement as a whole. And clocking in at 73 pages, it makes a good weekend read.

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Indiana Governor Mike Pence has signed into a law changes to the state's ambitious voucher program that are expected to expand its reach to include even more students.

The hotly contested bill expands the voucher program to allow students in F-rated districts who meet income eligibility requirements without requiring those students to spend one year in the school system first. It also expands the program to students with special needs and siblings of students currently participating in the voucher program.

More than 9,000 students are currently participating in Indiana's voucher program, which was launched in 2011. The average voucher value for each student is roughly $4,000, according to the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice.

Indiana's original voucher law drew nationwide attention when it was signed into law two years ago by then-Gov. Mitch Daniels, a Republican, in part because it sought to set relatively loose eligibility rules that would allow some middle-income families to participate.

Gov. Pence, a Republican, signed the bill at Christian Calvary School—one of the private schools that receives students using taxpayer funds to attend non-public schools.

Indiana's voucher expansion comes as another state's far-reaching voucher program faces an uncertain future. On Tuesday, the Louisiana Supreme Court that found the funding mechanism for the state's high-profile voucher program was unconstitutional.

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The Louisiana Supreme Court has ruled that the current method of funding the state's far-reaching voucher program is unconstitutional, in a blow to one of the most sweeping private school choice efforts in the country.

The voucher program, championed by Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal, would have diverted part of each student's per-pupil funding to go toward private school tuition. That funding model violates the state's constitution, according to the state's supreme court justices, who said that per-pupil money flow must go toward public schools only.

The ruling, which passed in a 6-1 vote, upholds a decision by a lower court in November that also ruled the funding of the voucher program unconstitutional.

The resolution passed to create the funding mechanism, Senate Concurrent Resolution 99, was also declared unconstitutional by the court, the majority of whose members found that it failed to gather the amount of votes needed for approval. The court also ruled that the measure was introduced too late—on the 85th day of the legislative session—and that all laws must be introduced by the 82nd day of the session.

The court's decision does not necessarily put an end to the voucher program, but voucher proponents will have to come up with a new funding method to move it forward. So far, Jindal has not specified where the funding might come from.

State superintendent John White said today that "we will find funding and keep fighting this," according to a press release from the Center for Education Reform, a school choice-advocacy group.

He reiterated his stance in a tweet earlier today:

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Charter school advocates are promoting their cause through National Charter School Week over the coming days.

I recently spoke with Mashea Ashton, a longtime charter school advocate who has worked to create and support charter schools since their inception. Starting as the national director of recruitment and selection for the Knowledge is Power Program, Ashton next moved to the New York City Department of Education where she oversaw the charter school program, helping to open nearly 50 charter schools as part of the city's effort to create 200 small schools.

Ashton also served as the executive director of the New York program and senior advisor for charter school policy at New Leaders for New Schools, and most recently, she is the chief executive officer of the Newark Charter School Fund.

She and I spoke about charter schools in New Jersey, what challenges charter schools face, and how to strengthen the relationship between charter and regular public schools. Questions and answers have been edited for space and clarity.

Please explain the role of the Newark Charter School Fund in helping to improve charter schools in New Jersey.

Ashton: The Newark Charter School Fund was started in April of 2008 with the primary goal of supporting the quality growth and sustainability of Newark's charter schools. We primarily educate key stakeholders including parents and policymakers around what charter schools are and the role that they have in the overall effort to create quality school options. We advocate for high-impact policy changes, making sure that the environment both at the Newark and the state level really supports the growth of quality charter schools. And the third [aspect of what we do is] we are a private foundation, so we provide grants to improve individual schools' effectiveness in a startup phase or even for schools that have been up and running for a number of years. We build the capacity to move from good to great by strengthening their leadership or teacher pipelines or board member capacity. And the last thing that we're really taking an active role in the past two and a half years is supporting a positive collaboration between district schools and charter schools which we have launched as part of our Newark Charter Compact.

How, if at all, has your experience working with charter schools in New Jersey differed from your experiences working with charter schools in New York? What did you learn from your experiences in New York that have helped inform your work in New Jersey?

Ashton: Particularly in my role in New York, one thing that is absolutely critical is the authorizing. The role that the charter authorizer plays in both approving, supporting, and holding schools accountable is absolutely critical in New York. There were multiple authorizers which I actually think really pushed the standard around quality. Fortunately when I was in New York, there was a lot of synergy around the authorizers. We collaborated and spoke with all of them, which creates a healthy, competitive environment. In New Jersey, there's one authorizer, and we've been fortunate because in the over five years that I've been in Newark, we've had a pretty favorable authorizer, and an office that really did focus on quality and making sure that throughout the various stages, there is a relentless focus on quality.

[A similarity between New York and New Jersey] is the leadership. The schools as well as elected leadership has been aligned in both New Jersey and New York. You have a governor, mayor, commissioner that supports quality growth and taken action in different ways, passing policies and incentives so that charter schools were welcome. ... It sends the public message that charter schools are going to be part of the reform movement, and it raises the standards in terms of quality. That clear alignment around quality really forces the traditional public schools as well as the charter schools to be accountable.

What do you think are the biggest challenges facing charter schools today? What would you like to see happen to address some of those challenges?

Ashton: One is a need for an education campaign on charter school 101. A lot of parents, a lot of key stakeholders don't understand that charters are free, public schools. There are misconceptions about charter schools about whether there's an election process, who they serve, and that's something we're really working on—eliminating the us vs. them mentality. When you talk to parents, they don't care what the name of the school is. They just want a great school for their kids.

The second issue is that we've been pretty fortunate for charter schools in Newark and New Jersey that there's been a relentless focus on quality and making sure that the ... authorizers provide that autonomy to provide the accountability. We don't want to be the system that we're trying to be better than in some ways.

And then the last challenge is that almost 20 years into chartering, equal access to funding and facilities is still a major barrier for quality charter school growth. We've got to continue to fight even in this kind of economic environment for equal funding and equal access to facility funding. It definitely has an impact on the quality of charters.

What role do you think policymakers can play in helping to ensure high-quality charter schools? What policies do you think best support charters' ability to innovate while still holding charter schools accountable for student achievement?

Ashton: There are policy changes at the federal, state, and local level that can positively provide charter schools equal access, whether it's through funding or facilities. The second is really thinking through how we provide greater incentives. Our Newark Charter Compact is creating the right incentives for our charter school community to commit to our four principles—data transparency and accountability, sharing best practices, innovating to serve the neediest students, and eliminating the us vs. them [mentality].

And there has been a commitment to closing low-performing schools on the charter and district side. How as a charter sector do we really have the right resources to serve the neediest students? That is the last critical element of our compact. If you don't commit to those principles, you don't get access to resources. If you do commit to those, there are financial incentives by being part of a network that's committed to those. At the federal, state, and local level, how could they provide policy changes and incentives for all schools to be committed to those four principles?

Do you think regular public schools have been able to learn from charter schools and implement strategies to better serve students? If yes, please give examples of how this has happened, and if not, how might charter and regular schools strengthen their relationship?

Ashton: This is a huge priority going forward. [In Newark,] we're working on creating a centralized enrollment system for both the charter and traditional public school sector. We're learning from our peers in New Orleans and Denver and Philadelphia—the idea being that parents right now have to go door-to-door to see what options exists, but if there was one system where all the information was housed, they could apply, and there would be a random lottery, and parents would have greater access to all of the resources.

The challenge is we need to provide more quality schools. This system is not a cure-all, but we think that it will centralize the process and force charter schools and traditional public schools to be quality and compete.

Charter schools are supposed to innovate and share best practices and that hasn't been done. I think there are best practices that the charter school sector has helped shape and form across the traditional public schools—ideas around governance, autonomy, and accountability—but this is where we've got to build bridges. There are innovations and best practices that are happening in the traditional public schools, and it needs to go both ways.

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A letter from the U.S. Department of Justice says that the state of Wisconsin must ensure that private schools receiving students using public funds through the nation's oldest voucher program are complying with the federal Americans With Disabilities Act and not discriminating against students with special needs.

The letter came in response to complaints filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Wisconsin, and Disability Rights Wisconsin in June 2011 after several families complained of discrimination based on disabilities in Milwaukee's voucher program.

Those organizations and individuals had argued that the voucher program in Milwaukee, which educates about 21,000 students in the city's private schools using public funds, was creating two separate education systems in the state by not allowing students with disabilities to be admitted to the voucher-funded private schools or by expelling students with disabilities from those schools without providing reasonable accommodations for them. While the percentage of students in the voucher program who had disabilities hovered around 1.6 percent, nearly 20 percent of the student body in the 81,000-student Milwaukee Public School system were classified as such in 2010-11.

In response, the U.S. Department of Justice, in the letter to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, said the state department of public instruction "must do more to enforce the federal statutory and regulatory requirements that govern the treatment of students with disabilities who participate in the school choice program."

The letter requires that the department eliminate discrimination against students with disabilities in the school-choice programs in Milwaukee, Racine, and any other school voucher programs. It also mandates that state officials establish a procedure for logging and communicating disability-related discrimination in the school voucher program, and collect data and information about how students with disabilities are being served by schools participating in voucher programs. That information includes how many students with disabilities are being served in voucher schools, how many are denied admission, how many leave those schools, and the number of students with disabilities who are expelled or suspended.

The education department will also be required to educate families of students with disabilities about their rights in the school-choice program, monitor voucher-participating schools for signs of disability discrimination, and provide training about the Americans with Disabilities Act to schools participating in the voucher program.

"We have said for years that the state of Wisconsin cannot ignore civil rights laws—including the Americans with Disabilities Act—in setting up and running a private school voucher system. We're glad to see that the Department of Justice agrees with us," said Karyn Rotker, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Wisconsin, in a statement.

Milwaukee's voucher program was established in 1990. Since then, 21 states and the District of Columbia have created private school choice programs through vouchers, tax-credit scholarships, and education savings accounts, affecting nearly 1.1 million students in the U.S., according to the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, which tracks such information.

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A charter school advocacy organization has laid out its case for state lawmakers to pass policies that support using independent authorizers of those schools, an approach that it says is the best one for bringing both accountability and autonomy to the sector.

The report, written by Alison Consoletti, the vice president of research for the Center for Education Reform, a Washington-based pro-charter advocacy group, pushes for state policies that create charter authorizing entities independent of state or local education agencies.

"States that have definitively independent and preferably multiple authorizers afford schools a high degree of autonomy with accountability and consequently nurture high quantities of high quality schools," she writes.

The analysis criticizes charter school authorizers in Idaho, Maine, and New Mexico, which the center says have become mired in politics, slowing down the charter school approval process. Maine and Washington's charter school commissions, which are tied to state and/or local education agencies, "offer no evidence of success, have been subject to more political oversight and bureaucratic interference than any other chartering institutions, and have shunned many charter applications," the report says. (Although Washington state only recently passed laws to allow charter schools there, and no charter schools have yet been open in the state, the legislation around authorization suggests the process could become bogged down, according to the report.)

Other states, such as New York, Michigan, and Indiana are listed under the "best-practice model authorizers" for those having policies which allow universities to authorize charter schools independently of state or local education agencies.

While the CER report applauds states that pass laws allowing for multiple, independent charter authorizers, pointing to the significant growth of charters in those states as evidence of those laws' success. The report says that states with multiple charter authorizers have three and a half times more charter schools than states that restrict authorization to local school boards. (Others, of course, would almost surely argue that the performance and quality of approved charters is a better indication of their success than the sheer number of open charter schools.)

The CER report acknowledges that some states that allow multiple, independent authorizers have encountered challenges, drawing accusations about a lack of credible authorizing, but insists that by tweaking the process, those states have done "remarkably better."

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