The Associated Press reports that Indiana’s former superintendent Tony Bennett may have violated state law by using state offices and staff for political activities.
“INDIANAPOLIS — Former Indiana schools chief Tony Bennett kept multiple campaign databases on Department of Education servers and ordered his staff to dissect a speech by his Democratic opponent for inaccuracies last fall in apparent violations of Indiana election and ethics laws, documents obtained by The Associated Press show.
“Bennett on Wednesday denied instructing his staff to do campaign work and told The Associated Press one of the lists was used to make “thank you calls” on his own time after the election.”
Is this why he was so fast to resign as state commissioner in Florida? It is very puzzling.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Isn’t that the proper way to run education in your state and say you know what is best. Yes, best for you and your friends.
Drip, drip, drip…what’s next Tony?
Buffalo of course!
I dunno, Barbara Byrd Bennett is about wearing out her welcome here in Chicago, and Rahm has no shame – he’d take Tony Bennett in a heartbeat.
What’s funny is that Tony Bennett and his kind accused teachers of campaigning during school hours. I guess there was a reason he was so suspicious and it had nothing to do with the teachers.
But, but, but Rick Hess exonerated him didn’t he?
What’s more, taxpayers need an investigation into how Tony funneled state and federal education contracts to his reform insiders including Wireless Generation. Millions were wasted on corporate nonsense while teachers are forced to buy classroom resources out of their own pockets.
Tony is more interested in developing databases of donor contacts, for-profit charter schools and how he can work for Jeb’s “Chiefs for Change” than helping students in public schools succeed. According to the AP FOIA documentation, he was obsessed with using his former Indiana public education employees to further his personal ambitions.
There’s an ad in our Chicago papers that Nebraska is looking for a school chief.
Perhaps Tony will try out there–watch out!
If he shows up in the Cornhusker State, send him packing!
Does this guy really think people are going to fall for his “thank you” list routine? What a joke. No doubt, it was more like, “thanks and gimme more.”
Or how about the proposition that monitoring and analyzing his primary POLITICAL opponent was just fine for his employees at the Department of Ed? On your own computer, on your own time and from your own pocket, Buddy. No politicking assigned as work for government employees on the taxpayer dollar.
Yeah, no wonder he resigned so quickly, rather than wait for the other shoe to fall…
Education “reform” consists of both political welfare recipients and corporate welfare recipients, who feel entitled to public dollars to support them, regardless of whether that’s legal or not, while denying adequate funding to the very people most in need and for whom those monies are earmarked, our nation’s children. How sick is that?
Tony’s bff in TN, Kevin Huffman is getting heat from superintendents:http://www.tennessean.com/comments/article/20130911/NEWS04/309110178/School-leaders-call-action-against-Huffman
I’m glad the TN superintendents are speaking out against Huffman. Many of the superintendents in Indiana (with the notable exceptions of Tony Lux from Merrillville and Daniel Tanoos from Terre Haute) didn’t raise their voices above a whisper while Bennett went on his rampage.