Tagged: Indiana Department of Education

Indiana School Superintendent Glenda Ritz and a small group of mayors are making their case for more funding from the state.

Ritz and members of the Indiana Association of Counties and Towns told the Senate Appropriations Committee today the state needs to spend more on schools and roads.

Gov. Mike Pence's budget included a marginal increase in school funding over the next two years while making room for a cut in the personal income tax cut. However, House Republicans rewrote the budget to spend more on roads and schools. It's now before the Senate.

A bill that would require Indiana’s elementary schools to teach cursive writing is on its way to the floor of the state Senate.

The chamber’s Education and Career Development Committee voted 7-4 today to advance the measure sponsored by Republican Jean Leising.

Leising says she’s concerned about a new state education department policy that makes the teaching of cursive writing optional but requires that students become proficient in keyboard use.

Indiana lawmakers are again considering a push to require the teaching of cursive writing by the state's schools.

The issue first came up after the state Department of Education in 2011 dropped cursive writing as a required part of the school curriculum and told school districts that it expected students to become proficient in keyboard use.

Indiana's recently ousted state school superintendent is Florida's new education commissioner.

The State Board of Education selected Tony Bennett, a Republican who lost a bid for re-election in Indiana last month, today in Tampa.

The board picked Bennett from a slate of three finalists.

The others were Murray State University President Randy Dunn, who once served as state superintendent in Illinois, and Arlington, Va., education consultant Charles Hokanson, a former deputy assistant U.S. secretary of education in President George W. Bush's administration.

Indiana Supreme Court justices want to know whether the nation's largest school voucher program primarily benefits students and their parents or religious institutions.

The five justices prodded lawyers for both sides on that point today during a hearing on a constitutional challenge to the 2011 law under which more than 9,000 students have switched from public to private schools with help from state funds.

Enrollment in the Indiana school voucher program, the nation’s largest, has more than doubled since last year.

The Indiana Department of Education says more than 9,300 families have signed up for vouchers for the 2012-2013 school year. That compares with about 3,900 who took part in the program's first year.