Arizona passes school choice legislation
All students in Arizona will be eligible to use public dollars for private education under a bill that Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, signed into law Thursday, creating one of the nation’s most expansive school-choice programs. Advocates for vouchers and other alternatives to public schools, including Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, hailed the measure for extending choice to more families.
Critics said it would weaken Arizona’s public schools by siphoning away students and needed funds, and would be more likely to subsidize affluent families’ private-school tuition than to help poor children access new opportunities.
All 1.1 million students across the state will be eligible for the money, though not all will be able to enroll. Under a deal negotiated to ensure the legislature’s approval, 5,500 additional students will be able to enroll each year, up to a cap of 30,000 in 2022.
Arizona becomes only the second state in the nation to offer universal eligibility for ESAs. Nevada first approved a universal ESA in 2015, but the state’s supreme court found the funding mechanism unconstitutional in 2016, a problem the legislature has not yet fixed.
Baltimore consent decree
BALTIMORE — A federal judge approved the proposed consent decree between Baltimore and the U.S. Department of Justice on Friday, turning the police reform agreement into an order of the court.
U.S. District Judge James K. Bredar denied a Justice Department request that he not sign the agreement for at least 30 days while new agency leaders under the Trump administration assess the deal — which was reached in the last days of the Obama administration.
“The case is no longer in a phase where any party is unilaterally entitled to reconsider the terms of the settlement; the parties are bound to each other by their prior agreement,” Judge Bredar wrote. “The time for negotiating the agreement is over. The only question now is whether the Court needs more time to consider the proposed decree. It does not.”
The consent decree was reached in January after the Obama Justice Department conducted a sweeping investigation of the Baltimore Police Department and found what it said was widespread unconstitutional and discriminatory policing in the city — particularly in poor, predominantly black areas.
Fake news fact-checking
Google, the world’s largest search engine, is rolling out a new feature that places “Fact Check” tags on snippets of articles in its News results.
The Alphabet unit had already run limited tests. On Friday, it extended the capability to every listing in its News pages and massive search catalog.
Also in the nation ...
Two Camp Pendleton, Calif., Marines have been disciplined for posting disparaging remarks in an online forum about one of their colleagues, the first such action taken in the wake of the Defense Department’s announcement that it was investigating reports that hundreds of Marines had shared nude photos of female service members on a secret Facebook page. ... H-1B visa applications have reached the program’s annual cap of 65,000 in just five days, officials said, as corporate America’s demand for employing skilled foreign workers in the U.S. remains strong. ... Hackers late Friday struck the sirens Dallas uses to alert residents to take shelter from inclement weather, triggering intermittent false alarms for about an hour and a half.