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“Audits for Thee, Not for Me,” But More Attacks on Online Ed. Option to Come

Despite what you may hear, legislative “gridlock” isn’t always a bad thing. In fact, it quite often can be a good thing. Case in point comes from this story yesterday in Ed News Colorado:

Colorado’s top senator says he’ll introduce legislation to “rein in” online schools after his request for an online education audit was rejected Tuesday on a party-line vote by the Legislative Audit Committee.

The gridlock in question is yesterday’s 4-4 audit committee vote, which prevents Senate President (and Congressional candidate) Brandon Shaffer from making a selective attack on K-12 online providers and the families that choose their services for a full-time educational program. At least through the audit process, that is. Ed News writer Nancy Mitchell explains that opponents of Shaffer’s request proposed a more comprehensive audit:

Rep. Cindy Acree, R-Aurora, immediately questioned the scope of the audit, asking why all K-12 schools weren’t included.

“I can tell you I think there is tremendous problems right now in all of our public schools, regardless of whether they’re online or not,” she said. “So I’m concerned at why we need to do this audit.”

Hey, how about an audit of school districts granting taxpayer-funded release time to unions with little or no accountability? Among other troubling revelations, we have seen many union leave days used to lobby at the State Capitol during the school day. My Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow wrote a paper documenting the abuse.

The problem is “gridlock” would probably eat up any such commonsense audit request — unless perhaps it could be included in the comprehensive K-12 audit request? Now there’s an outcome I would be reluctant to bet any of my precious piggy bank pennies on.

And so we’re left with a case of Audits for thee, but not for me, and a state senate president still bent on regulating the online education option to death when we know that’s just a terrible idea.

How many more nights of sound sleep for little Eddie until the legislative session starts?

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