Ga. high court rules in favor of charter schools

ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia's highest court has upheld a Fulton County court ruling that bars Atlanta Public Schools from using tax dollars to pay for its pension obligations before distributing a share of the money to local charter schools.

The unanimous ruling announced today by the Supreme Court of Georgia means the Atlanta school system can't deduct millions of dollars from its revenue to pay for its expenses before distributing the money to startup charter schools.

The justices decided that state law is clear regarding how the money is to be...

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G.O.P. Bill on Schools Would Set Fewer Rules

Coming two days after Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa and chairman of the Senate education committee, released a 1,150-page education bill, the bill by Mr. Alexander, who is the ranking Republican on the committee, will compete with it.

The Alexander bill is described in its introduction as restoring “freedom to parents, teachers, principals, governors and local communities so that they can improve their local public schools.”

At less than one-fifth the length of Mr. Harkin’s bill, Mr. Alexander’s legislation would allow states to devise curriculum standards, tests, school rating systems and consequences for schools that fail to meet state goals with far fewer guidelines than are included in the Harkin bill.

Both bills would amend the half-century-old Elementary and Secondary Education Act that governs public schools receiving federal money to support the most vulnerable students.

“What they are really saying is they don’t trust parents and they don’t trust classroom teachers and states to care about and help educate their children, and they want someone in Washington do it for them,” Mr. Alexander said of Democrats in a telephone interview. “I just completely reject that.”

Congress has repeatedly failed to revise No Child Left Behind, which has been up for reauthorization since 2007. Starting last year, the Obama administration began granting waivers to relieve states from the law’s requirement that all students be proficient in math and reading by 2014. Under that provision, a majority of schools in the country were at risk of violating the law.

Mr. Alexander’s bill continues the current law’s requirement of testing students in reading and math in third through eighth grades and once in high school. All schools must report the scores and show how different racial groups, students with disabilities, those learning the English language and poor students perform on the tests.

The bill would require states to set standards that would allow students to be ready for college or a job “without the need for remediation.”

Neither Mr. Harkin’s nor Mr. Alexander’s bill mandates the content of academic standards. Mr. Alexander’s bill also does not prescribe what should be included in a state’s annual goals for student performance on tests; Mr. Harkin’s bill sets more guidelines.

The Alexander bill encourages, but would not require, states to set up teacher evaluation systems. It also does not mandate any turnaround measures for schools that fail to meet state goals, although it does list options including closing a school, replacing the principal or offering higher pay to recruit new teachers.

Mr. Alexander said he wanted to include a provision allowing parents to take public money and put it toward any public school or accredited private school of their choice. He said that he and Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky would be introducing an amendment to the bill once it reached the Senate floor to give vouchers to families to use federal dollars to attend private schools.

Some who had seen parts of the bill said that leaving all decisions to states and local school districts and allowing them to set goals could disadvantage students who already start school behind.

“The pressures from local superintendents and Realtors and everybody else to just make schools look good are overwhelming,” said Kati Haycock, president of the Education Trust, a nonprofit group that works to close achievement gaps for racial minorities and poor children. “And it is very hard to maintain a real focus, especially on the kids that have been behind.”

Others who had not yet seen the bill but were aware of Mr. Alexander’s preferences said that the law was meant to set conditions for receiving federal money.

“Nobody is forcing a state to take this money,” said Charles Barone, policy director for Democrats for Education Reform, a group that pushes for test-based teacher evaluations and has battled teachers’ unions. “If they are not willing to do this they should just be honest about it and live without the money.””

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College Coaches Use Transfer Rules to Limit Athletes’ Options

Then the transfer process started, producing the latest and perhaps an extreme example of what is occurring throughout the country this time of year as many college athletes try to move to different universities.

The Oklahoma State coach, Mike Gundy, ruled out nearly 40 universities as transfer options for quarterback Wes Lunt, an apparent show of gamesmanship and punishment toward a college athlete who wanted to take his skills elsewhere.

The forces at work were not new, but Gundy, like a growing number of coaches, chose to harness them to eliminate many, if not all, of Lunt’s preferred options and to keep a potential rival from gaining the services of a highly regarded quarterback entering his sophomore season. It was a powerful illustration of the big-business mind-set of college sports and the control that coaches have over players.

When an athlete chooses to transfer, three sets of rules can be involved: those of the N.C.A.A.; those of the conference in which the university competes; and those that accompany the national letter of intent, a contract that athletes sign while still in high school to announce their intention to attend a university.

“It’s entirely slanted to the coach’s side,” said Don Jackson, a lawyer who runs the Sports Group in Montgomery, Ala., and who has represented dozens of athletes attempting to transfer to a university of their choice. “Once the student-athlete signs that national letter of intent, it’s essentially a contract of adhesion. They have limited rights.”

Universities have long sought to block student-athletes from transferring to a rival program. Alabama’s football team, for example, would not be expected to let a star player go to Auburn. But the impulse to limit the student-athlete’s options has been heightened to the point that coaches are now blacklisting dozens of universities.

Proponents of transfer limits say that they are put in place to prevent coaches from continually attempting to lure athletes from other universities, which could create a never-ending recruiting cycle. Critics counter that the rules make it much too easy for coaches to act punitively, penalizing athletes for changing their minds about decisions made when they were teenagers.

Coaches cannot fully prevent athletes like Lunt from transferring to any university they want. But if a coach does not grant an athlete a release, the player must forfeit any scholarship opportunity, pay his own way to the new university and sit out the next season. Meanwhile, Gundy, whose contract pays him $30.3 million over eight years, and other coaches can routinely move from one college to another with minimal consequence, often for bigger contracts after arranging a buyout with the first college.

Lunt, who did not respond to requests for comment, is reportedly deciding whether to transfer to Louisville or Illinois, neither of which was blocked by Gundy, 45, who declined to comment and has not spoken publicly about the restrictions placed on Lunt.

The N.C.A.A. also declined to comment.

When Eugene Byrd worked for the Southeastern Conference, he oversaw the administration of the national letter of intent, essentially a one-year contract between a student and an institution with four yearly options to renew. As an assistant commissioner, he tried to simplify the often confusing process.

Byrd said the national letter of intent no longer served its original purpose, which was to stop the pursuit of high school players once they committed to a university. “It was supposed to end the recruiting once you signed,” he said. “It became a threat to limit the ability to transfer.”

In 2009, Robert Marve, who had started 11 games at quarterback for Miami before being benched, announced his intention to transfer. Randy Shannon, then the team’s coach, blocked him from transferring to any program in the Atlantic Coast Conference, which Miami belongs to; any program in the SEC; and any program in Florida, Marve’s home state.

Jack Styczynski contributed research.

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