Wonk Wire: Online master’s degrees could transform higher education.

“The idea of forcing children to attend school is outdated and should be scrapped in favor of a system that encourages learning by choice, state Sen. Aaron Osmond (R) said in calling for an end to compulsory education in Utah,” the AP reports.

“Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.”

— Michigan state Rep. Lisa Posthumus Lyons (R), quoted by the Detroit News, voicing opposition to a proposal that would offer employment assistance to staff members of closed schools.

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Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant (R) said that America’s educational troubles began when women began working outside the home in large numbers, the Washington Post reports.

In response to a question about how America became “so mediocre” in regard to educational outcomes, he said: “I think both parents started working. The mom got in the work place.”

“A Louisiana law that allows public school science teachers to use supplemental materials in their classrooms will remain on the books, despite criticism that it’s a back-door way to teach creationism,” the AP reports.

“It is not our job to see that anyone gets an education.”

— Oklahoma state Rep. Mike Reynolds (R), in an email exchange with state Rep. James Lockhart (D) who requested help from his
colleagues.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) plans to battle teacher unions again, this time over a plan to expand vouchers to nine school districts, the Madison Capital Times reports.

“And influential former GOP leaders are suiting up to lobby for Walker’s plan to make more public school districts offer a voucher option, in which parents can get state funds to help send their children to private schools.”

John Aravosis reports that voucher schools in Louisiana and Indiana are using a U.S. History textbook in their eighth grade classes that teaches that the “hippies” of the 1960s were draft dodgers who were rude, didn’t bathe, and worshipped Satan.

Tennessee state Sen. Stacey Campfield’s (R) new version of his “Classroom Protection Act” allows counseling of students on homosexuality, but calls for notification of a youth’s parents when counseling occurs, the Knoxville News-Sentinel reports.

The bill also prohibits in grades kindergarten through eight “classroom instruction, course materials or other informational resources that are inconsistent with natural human reproduction.”