(Radio Iowa) – Republicans on a committee in the Iowa House are advancing parts of the governor’s education agenda, but her proposal to provide state scholarships for 10-thousand students attending private schools is not included. The bill would require high school seniors TAKE a civics test, but PASSING it isn’t required for graduation. Parents would be able to go online to see what classroom materials teachers plan to use. Republican Representative Garrett Gobble of Ankeny, who is a teacher, says there’s already software available for that.

“Our intent here is not to give arbitrary work to teachers,” Gobble says. “We want this to make it meaningful and show parents how to engage, but we can’t engage for the parents.” Other proposals floating around the legislature would have required teachers to post lesson plans for the entire year before school starts. Melissa Peterson of the Iowa State Education Association says teachers welcome transparency, but they also have a job to do.

Encouraging parental engagement and involvement is absolutely a good thing but we do want to ensure we are not being unnecessarily burdensome to our practitioners,” Peterson says, “distracting them from the important work of working with their students on a daily basis.” The bill, which has been approved by the House Appropriations Committee, does not call for establishing felony charges for teachers if parents allege classroom materials or books in the library are obscene.