The reason these education “reform” bills have been stalling in committee and on the floor is that they are bad ideas that have been tried in other states, don’t work, but do create many other problems. That’s why it is irresponsible to remove them from the education committees and place them in other committees with legislators who are not as informed about them. That’s why it is irresponsible to combine them with funding our schools need in an effort to force their passage. The Chairs of the Education Committees, Steve Abrams and Kasha Kelley, both of Arkansas City, are apparently frustrated that these bills haven’t gone through and are resorting to gamesmanship on issues that are too important to be treated as games.

“Citing the example of Senate Bill 277, a bill that concerns the formula for calculating part of the state’s equalization aid, [Sen.] Schmidt said, ‘That’s the type of bill that Education clearly would have handled in years past.’
[Sen.] Hensley suggested the situation mirrored the way in which the judicial budget had been handled this year.
‘When the judiciary budget came out of Ways and Means,’ he said, ‘Ways and Means took it upon themselves to just fold in three other bills related to policy on the judiciary.’
‘They’re going to take the education budget and they’re going to fold in teacher licensure and some of these other policy-related matters,’ he said. ‘That’s a very poor process.’” http://cjonline.com/news/education/2014-03-22/hensley-questions-education-bills-routed-through-budget-committee