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petitions were successfully challenged on grounds they included unregistered voters and had other discrepancies.
• Walker has said that believes the complaint was politically motivated.
• Attorney General Marty Jackley announced in May that he would investigate several nominating petitions submitted by U.S. Senate candidates, including Walker and Republican Annette Bosworth.
• Bosworth, a Sioux Falls physician, lost the June 3 GOP primary with 6 percent of the vote. Bosworth was charged with election law violations the next day and later indicted. She pleaded not guilty last week to 12 counts of perjury and filing false documents.
• Among other things, Bosworth is accused of fraudulently claiming she was gathering voter signatures when she was really on a Christian mission trip to the Philippines.
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SD gets year extension on No Child Left Behind
CARSON WALKER, Associated Press
• SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) -- The U.S. Department of Education has granted a one-year extension to South Dakota and five other states waiving them from provisions of No Child Left Behind so they can instead check student progress using their own systems.
• Congress passed the act in 2002 and it's been due for reauthorization since 2007. President Barack Obama said in 2011 his administration would grant waivers from parts of the law to qualified states that set student expectations, create accountability for underperforming schools and come up with teacher and principal evaluations that factor in student growth.
• Mary Stadick Smith, spokeswoman for the South Dakota Department of Education, said Monday the state already has previously received waivers that have helped educators come up with ways of evaluating school and student performance beyond just test scores.
• "We're still going to be looking at those test scores because they're an indication of how we're doing. But we worked with people in the field to come up with other indicators," she said.
• Among them: attendance and graduation rates and ACT college entry scores. In the coming years, academic growth will also be measured, which is whether a student is improving, Smith said.
• Before the state was granted a waiver, school report cards listed on the state Education Department website were based on test scores but now include those (Continued on page 18)
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