Indiana lawmakers will look at expanding what is already the nation's largest school voucher program when the General Assembly gets to work Monday despite concerns that the program is hurting public schools in big cities.
During Republican Tony Bennett’s tenure as superintendent of public instruction, Indiana became the poster child for school choice. But with Bennett’s surprising election loss to Democrat Glenda Ritz this month, the future of charter schools and private-school vouchers is murkier.
Attorneys responded to pointed questions and knotty hypothetical scenarios thrown at them by the five justices on the Indiana Supreme Court during a legal battle Wednesday morning over Indiana’s school-voucher program.
Incoming state school Superintendent Glenda Ritz says she intends to remove herself as a plaintiff in a lawsuit that seeks to overturn the state's popular school voucher program.
The Indiana Supreme Court will decide whether the nation's largest school voucher program violates the state constitution.
School voucher advocates are pushing to get as many Indiana children as possible into the state's burgeoning program that helps pay private school tuition. The application deadline is Friday.
Struggling Indiana public school districts are buying billboard space, airing radio ads and even sending principals door-to-door in an unusual marketing campaign aimed at persuading parents not to move their children to private schools as the nation's largest voucher program doubles in size.
A state lawmaker plans to sponsor a bill seeking to close a loophole that bars the children of some military families from taking part in Indiana's school voucher program.
Private Indiana schools that accepted students from low- to middle-income families using state-funded vouchers last year experienced a small drop in their passing rates on the state's ISTEP test this year, a newspaper's analysis of test scores shows.
Indiana's school voucher program has finished its first year with enrollment on the rise and supporters trumpeting the program's successes.
Striking down Indiana's school voucher program because some schools are affiliated with churches would amount to unnecessary government interference into religion, the law's supporters argue in court documents.
For all the arguments in favor of school vouchers, there are opponents who say vouchers erode public schools by taking away money, violate the separation of church and state by giving public dollars to religious-based private schools, and aren't a proven way to improve test scores.
Indiana's public schools would be required to teach cursive writing and be largely prohibited from starting their school years until late August under bill approved by a legislative committee.
A proposal that would make thousands of current private school students eligible for Indiana's school voucher program has been endorsed by a state legislative committee, although cost concerns might block its chances of advancing this year.
A Marion Superior Court judge affirmed Indiana’s school voucher law on Friday, rejecting opponents’ arguments that the largest such program in the nation unconstitutionally uses public money to support religion.
Dayana Vazquez-Buquer is among 3,919 students from low- to moderate-income Indiana families who qualified for an Indiana Choice Scholarship this year. She praises the General Assembly for creating the voucher program.
Private schools that saw enrollment swell this year because of Indiana's sweeping school voucher program fear they could see some of those gains erased next year as parents paying their own way instead enroll their children in public school so they can qualify for a voucher the following year.
An Indianapolis judge says he'll decide within 30 days whether Indiana's sweeping new school voucher law violates the state's constitution.
Nearly 4,000 students who formerly attended public schools are receiving tax money to help pay the cost of private school under Indiana's school voucher program, which is believed to be the nation's largest, officials say.
A memo that sparked concern among Indiana's school districts by saying they would begin losing funding this month under the state's new private school voucher law was sent "prematurely" a state education official says.
