Sorry, I couldn’t find “Louisiana Hold ‘Em”
(Guest post by Greg Forster)
Two Wisconsin enactments while I was travelling a week ago – expanding Milwaukee vouchers and creating a new voucher program in Racine – brought my ongoing humiliation of Jay Mathews to a total of 13 school choice enactments (new programs or expansions of existing programs). And that’s not even counting Oklahoma’s “expansion” of its special ed voucher program (the program was “expanded” to include students who were eligible to participate but were being illegally denied access by rogue school districts).
Governor Jindal just doubled us down by signing into law Lousiana’s expansion of its educational tax deduction, bringing us to 14 enactments on a bet that we wouldn’t reach seven.
Here’s the tally so far:
- UT Carson Smith expansion
- Douglas County, CO new voucher
- AZ new ESA
- DC voucher expansion
- IN new voucher
- IN new tax deduction
- IN tax-credit scholarship expansion
- OK new tax-credit scholarship
- FL tax-credit scholarship expansion
- FL McKay voucher expansion
- GA tax-credit scholarship expansion
- WI Milwaukee voucher expansion
- WI new Racine vouchers
- LA tax deduction expansion
Matt wants to know if there’s a mercy rule for wonk bets. As Ned Flanders once said, “Mercy is for the weak!”
Jay P. Greene's Blog 
As Eddie declared, this is the Year of School Choice:
http://www.ediswatching.org/2011/06/wisconsin-makes-it-a-lock-2011-is-definitely-the-year-of-school-choice/
More are on the way- stay tuned!
There’s a Dead Pool going on at the Weasel Times and Stoat Intelligencer.
Here’s a reverse Dead Pool (although it would take a long time to determine a winner). I’ll bet that the last State to restore competition to the education industry will be the socialist backwater I call home: Hawaii. I don’t see how wretched districts like the Detroit Public Schools can survive with successful models next door. So Hawaii will be last.