National School Choice Week is ending in Missouri with a flurry of proposals that would sharply increase the number of charters, establish scholarships to private and parochial schools, solve the dilemma over students in unaccredited districts transferring to nearby schools and carve the Kansas City school district into pieces annexed by surrounding districts.

Whether the reshaping of schools passes — and whether the St. Louis Public Schools win approval to sponsor two charter schools this fall — is now up to the Missouri legislature and the state Board of Education. State Sen. Jane Cunningham, the Chesterfield Republican whose bill would bring about the most drastic changes, says if lawmakers don’t act to settle what has become known as the Turner case, the courts will.

Her bill, introduced Thursday and set for a hearing next week, would go much further than just the provisions addressing Turner. It would include these changes to Missouri education law:

• Establish the Passport Scholarship Program, to grant financial assistance for students up to the age of 21 who live in unaccredited public school districts for use at a non-public elementary or secondary school. Taxpayers could contribute to a qualified educational assistance organization and claim a tax credit for what they give.
• Allow an accredited school district or cooperative association of accredited districts to sponsor or operate a charter school in or for an unaccredited district.
• Remove the two-year waiting period between the time a district loses accreditation and the time the state may take it over; under the bill, the takeover could happen immediately after accreditation is lost.
• To change the current Turner situation, require an unaccredited district to pay tuition and transportation for resident students to attend an accredited district in an adjoining area. Receiving districts could establish criteria for how many students they would accept, based on the availability of “highly qualified teachers in existing classroom space.” Receiving districts would not have to include the test scores of transfer students in their assessments for up to five years.
• In what is called the Hinson Plan, after the superintendent of the Independence School District outside Kansas City, require that if a district outside St. Louis or St. Louis County loses accreditation, surrounding accredited districts must divide up its territory, annex it and draw up new attendance boundaries.
• Direct the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to establish a clearinghouse to help students in unaccredited districts transfer to an accredited district, a charter school, a virtual school or a nonpublic school using a Passport scholarship.
• Require student performance to be a factor in teacher evaluations.
• Give school principals the right to select teachers for their schools who have shown they are qualified and effective.

For the rest of the article, go to Proposals could bring dramatic changes to Missouri schools