Victory! U.S. Department of Education Rejects Arizona’s Grounds for Charter School Regulation

Big preliminary win for Clint Bolick, who only filed the lawsuit a few weeks ago. When the big government U.S. Dept. of Ed. is telling Arizona that it's regulating schools too much, that's sending a pretty strong message. Not sure why Superintendent of Schools Tom Horne has turned out to be so pro-big government and squelching out competition to our failing public schools. Probably still has Democratic views leftover from his party switch.


The U.S. Department of Education (USDoE) yesterday rejected a critical argument made by the Arizona Department of Education (ADE) in forcing charter schools to align their curricula to state edicts, a policy under court challenge by the Goldwater Institute Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation.

ADE is arguing that failure to align the curricula of all public schools in the state, including charter schools, would jeopardize federal public school funding. But, the USDoE says this is not the case.

In a July 24 letter to Clint Bolick, the Goldwater Institute’s litigation director, USDoE’s legal counsel Kent Talbert stated that nothing in federal law “mandates a state to align its social studies curriculum on a grade-by-grade basis to state standards,” and therefore, “any non-alignment of such curriculum to state standards would not be grounds for withholding Federal funds.”

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Robert Miles will hear oral arguments on August 6 at 11:00 a.m. on the schools’ motion for a preliminary injunction against the curriculum alignment mandate, which is slated to take effect this school year.

Information on Charter Schools v. Horne is available online at http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/litigation/cases.aspx.