MADISON, Wis. – The push to pass a School Accountability Bill is a mess. Talk to legislators and the stakeholders involved and they’ll all for the most part agree.

This played out in a very public way this week with the introduction of a substitute amendment for Assembly Bill 1, the Assembly version of accountability. The bill was introduced Tuesday and a vote in the Assembly Education Committee was scheduled and then cancelled.

According to most media accounts, the vote was cancelled in order to open up a new avenue of negotiation with Sen. Paul Farrow who seemed to signal a new openness to school sanctions in a newspaper quote. This is mostly true, although Farrow will dispute how open he was to entertaining sanctions. But the other reality is that the vote was cancelled because the bill did not have enough Republican support to clear the Assembly Education Committee.

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The cancelled vote and failed negotiating session caused Farrow to issue this very pointed statement late on Wednesday.

“I am extremely encouraged by the decision made by my counterpart in the Assembly to cancel his Executive Session on Assembly Bill 1. As legislators we are charged with discussing and crafting legislation that will become effective public policy for the betterment of our citizens and the state as a whole. Assembly Bill 1 and the proposed substitute amendment, in their current form, are flawed and not ready for primetime. It should not be put on the fast track strictly for political purposes.”

 It doesn’t take a keen political observer to realize that the Accountability Bill efforts are stalled once again. The events this week failed to move the ball forward in any meaningful way, and probably did long term damage to the effort.

The Senate and the Assembly simply can’t seem to agree on the appropriate level of sanctions for schools. And for that there are a myriad of reasons that range from the philosophical to outright pettiness.

This, in and of itself, is not a catastrophe. Embarrassing? Yes. Frustrating? No question. But the seriousness of school accountability requires conservatives in both chambers to find a way to agree. And if that requires more time, so be it. They must get it right.

Unfortunately, some are getting impatient. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos told WKOW in Madison late Thursday that without an Accountability Bill there can be no statewide expansion of school choice. And in order to pass an Accountability Bill, there very well could be a shake-up on the Education Committee in order to ensure that it gets to the Assembly floor.

Without weighing in on the merits of either bill, this particular path is not wise. Not at all.

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First, shaking up the Education Committee to pass this one bill would be a major mistake. Those conservatives who have stood on principle in opposition to AB 1 deserve some credit, not derision.

Second, to assume that AB1 would simply pass in the Assembly in current form is likely a stretch. There are very real concerns about the bill and it deserves more scrutiny, not less.

Third, to pass a bill that has no chance of passing the State Senate while holding the statewide expansion of school choice hostage would simply be pointless. If this is the path being considered I hope leadership are familiar with Pyrrhus and his legendary “victories.”

Outside of Right to Work, the statewide expansion of school choice is perhaps the second most important conservative reform that could occur this session. To see conservatives even consider scuttling this expansion in a new legislative session that features expanded Republican majorities would be nothing short of outrageous.

Authored by Collin Roth
Originally published here

Published with permission