Governor Mike Pence was elected last fall with fewer votes
than State Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz. Ritz,
you may recall, beat Tony Bennett, despite his 10-1 advantage in
money. Bennett was the author of the state’s A-F grading system,
which fell into disrepute when it was revealed by the Associated
Press that Bennett rigged the grades to favor a politically
connected charter school. Bennett was also a staunch advocate for
charters, vouchers, for-profit charters, cyber charters, and
anything else that would privatize and undermine public education
in the Hoosier state.
Since the election Pence has made it clear
that he will stop at nothing to strip away the powers of the state
superintendent.
This is a summary of the latest power grab, as
reported by the Indiana State Teachers Association:
It appears as though there are no bounds to the State
Board of Education and the Governor’s march to power-over and
over-power Indiana’s duly-elected state superintendent of public
instruction, Glenda Ritz.
Today’s lengthy SBE meeting began and ended with twin power grabs
targeted squarely at Ritz.
The first resolution offered by member Dan Elsener called for him to chair a
new committee that is tasked with setting the goals for Indiana’s
education system-something that has always been within the purview
of the State Superintendent’s office-who also happens to be the
lawful chairperson for the State Board of Education. The
publicly-funded “Elsener Committee” will contract out with outside
consultants, spending additional taxpayer dollars along the way to
do the Department of Education’s work. Elsener did not give Glenda
Ritz, as chairperson, the courtesy of prior notice of his
resolution and then called for action on the resolution even though
it was not part of the meeting’s agenda. Ritz suggested Open Door
Law issues with this and then abstained from voting.
After over six hours of handling bona fide agenda items,
the power grab continued with another resolution (again, with no
prior notice to Ritz) indicating that the State Board of Education
was hiring its own executive director, its own general counsel, and
will use the Governor’s new Special Assistant, charter school
advocate Claire Fiddian-Green as its “technical advisor.” Ritz was
the sole opponent to this move.
“Both of these resolutions are thinly-disguised vehicles to wrest authority over
public education policy-making from Indiana’s duly-elected state
superintendent and they not only disregard Glenda Ritz but the 1.3
million voters who supported her,” said ISTA President Teresa
Meredith. “These attempts at discrediting,
diminishing, and disrespecting Glenda Ritz and the agency she leads
are partisan arrogance at the least and voter nullification at the
worst,” added Meredith.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
So now you have a glimpse of how the folks in Indiana are kept in the dark about what’s going on around them–I am willing to bet that this will not be covered as you have written it here by the neocon press of Indiana.
They barely covered Bennett. One TV station in Fort Wayne did not speak of it, but rather, had the news on the ticker underneath the bubble-headed bleach blonde who happens to be married to Rep. Long (but you won’t hear that, either, on that station, not even when they are interviewing Rep. Long on the air.)
The Times of Northwest Indiana has done a great job of reporting about this issue. Every unfortunate thing that has been inflicted upon Glenda and the Indiana public schools has been written up by Dan Carden. Thanks, Dan, for keeping us informed!!
Karen Francisco, an editor in Fort Wayne has done a great job staying on top of this as well.
At what point does the word “conspiracy” stop being used as a weapon against us and start being used to actually refer to what is going on? This is just sad.
On the other hand, it seems like Indiana citizens at least get to vote on who their commissioner of education is — unlike those of us in Rhode Island.
I can see why the neoliberals would want to keep those pesky voters out of the loop as much as possible.
Dolphin, Hoosier teachers know what’s been going on for far too long. The problem is that far too many still vote “R” despite the relentless attack on their profession. The rest sit silent on the sidelines “out of fear” that their jobs would be in danger. Meanwhile, their entire profession is put in jeopardy, along with the education of Indiana children.
Nothing will change until teachers began to take the fight to the enemy, which in this case is every Republican legislator in our state.
Christopher, it takes more than just the teachers being informed. The public needs to know what is going on in order to vote the bums out. With the lack of comprehensive press coverage across the state, the public is unaware of what is happening in Indianapolis.
I hear you on the “fear factor” . Fear has been a useful tool to silence opposing views.
Thank you, Ms Ravitch, for keeping a spotlight on this travesty. Karen Francisco, writer at the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, continues to provide excellent coverage of the issue. Her latest in a series underlines how much bigger than Mike Pence or Tony Bennett the schools-for-profit money grab has been:
http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20130904/BLOGS13/130909787
Keep up the good work.
“He also proposes working with the archdiocese. During the voucher push, Bennett and Mitch Daniels personally went to the Indianapolis diocese to meet with Catholic school officials and sell them on the plan.
Huston’s overall strategy worked, of course. The GOP-controlled legislature fell obediently into line; diocesan school officials were on board, the Friedman Foundation rallied its troops. Huston’s time outlining strategy and meeting with the GOP heavyweights over scotch and steaks at Fleming’s was a success.”
The move to vouchers in school reform is interesting, because vouchers are unpopular and reformers denied they were headed in that direction for so long. Now they’re pushing vouchers everywhere.
I wonder if vouchers are a necessary part of the business model, because charters pull students from religious schools. If the religious schools aren’t to disappear, reform proponents have to provide them with a state subsidy. The reform business model probably doesn’t work long-term without a subsidy for private schools, because the private school system will collapse in cities like South Bend.
One can already see that reformers like the mayors of Chicago and Philadelphia making absolutely no distinction between private schools and public schools, and there won’t be any distinction, once they’re all publicly-funded. We simply won’t have “public schools” anymore. We’ll have publicly-FUNDED schools. It’s very sad to me to contemplate that my 5th grader may be part of the last US generation to attend a truly public school.
You’ll also note the same type of thing going on with Indiana’s school for the Deaf (ISD) and the fact that the governor just appointed a committee to take over Deaf Education in the state without bothering to consult the community which it serves. (none of his appointees had any experience in working with the Signing, Deaf Culture that ISD is such a centeral part of- and instead appointed persons who are actively ANTI- Deaf Culture and ANTI- American Sign Language which is the primary mode of education and communication at ISD). Seems this is a nasty trend in Indiana and as bad as Florida is I’m glad to not be working under this mess anymore!
I’m sure they couldn’t contain some self satisfied smirks as they continued to wrest control from the hands of the citizens of Indiana.
We’ve got to be careful for who we vote for! We’ve got to get education friendly candidates in every single Office. We are less than a month away from voting for a new US Senator in Alabama. It was easy for me to find information on-line regarding each candidate’s view regarding health care. Finding out their views on education was a different story. I had to e-mail everyone of them and ask specific questions to learn about their positions regarding education.
“indicating that the State Board of Education was hiring its own executive director, its own general counsel, and will use the Governor’s new Special Assistant, charter school
advocate Claire Fiddian-Green as its “technical advisor.” Ritz was the sole opponent to this move.”
One of the dumbest parts of ed reform is stuff like this, where they set up a parallel system of executives, administrators, consultants and lawyers to focus on and promote the publicly-funded charter system.
Is anyone looking at what this costs, and what it takes out of the classroom? It’s ludicrous. We’re going to end up with two entire school systems, one privatized and the other public, one board appointed and the other board elected, with twin sets of executives, administrators, consultants and lawyers.
Did anyone tell these geniuses they probably can’t improve on a democratic model of governance by supplementing it with what amounts to a separate corporate board?
If I were advising a college student I’d tell them to go into school privatization consulting. They’re hiring! How much has “school reform” added to the ranks of people who never set foot in a classroom but work in “education” in Indiana? They’re firing teachers and hiring lawyers. I am a lawyer and I think it’s moronic and wasteful. I can’t imagine how the general public would receive this, were they aware money was flowing out of their kids classrooms and into ed reform consultant’s pockets.
Just think of the money that goes to all the testing and the hours lost so that these politicians can intimidate the public school’s creditability. Now that I am retired, when talking to parents about what is happening in the schools, all I hear is shock. Maybe its time for “town hall” meetings to get the truth out there.
This kind of under-handed activity by the state board of education is normal in Indiana. When Bennett lost, they were taken by surprise and had to push through their teacher licensing reforms as quickly as possible at their last school board meeting. These reforms included allowing anyone with a bachelor’s degree in anything who could pass a content knowledge test to be fully licensed. The board members got much of the lengthy document on which they voted 5 minutes before the vote, in violation of state law. They passed the changes but the Indiana Attorney General invalidated the votes because they had no idea on what they were voting for. They are a bunch of sheep who do whatever the governor (Daniels, now Pence) tells them to do. At all the board meetings, educators from around the state spoke out vehemently against most of their actions and they were ignored. At times, the board placed rules that forbid any public comments and people who moaned or made sounds of displeasure were removed from the room. Self-serving arrogance doesn’t even begin to describe that board.