Home-school scholarship plan defeated
Josh Verges covered this morning’s hearing about the plan to let home-school students get the state’s Opportunity Scholarship with a 26 ACT, in between the 24 needed for students to get the scholarship with a rigorous courseload and a 28 needed for traditional students to get it without the necessary courses.
“HB1128 is about equality for all South Dakota graduates,” said Monica Tanner, a board member with South Dakota Christian Home Educators.
But state education officials said the proposal would be unfair to students who graduate from traditional high schools.
Education Secretary Melody Schopp said students have to do a lot to get the scholarship using the original criteria, and there’s no way to ensure home-schoolers are performing comparably because the state has little oversight.
“We can’t verify to see what grades they get on that. We can’t verify their GPA. We don’t know what their curriculum is,” she said. “This bill certainly causes a huge amount of inequality.”
The bill, which deadlocked in the House and then passed after a compromise amendment watered the bill down, was killed by the Senate Education Committee on a 4-2 vote.
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