On Monday, there will be a mass rally at the Statehouse in Indianapolis to protest the assault on public education.
The rally will begin at 2 p.m.
Whether you are a parent, an educator, and/or a concerned citizen, please attend to show the Governor and the Legislature that you oppose the destruction of public education and the attacks on Indiana’s elected State Superintendent Glenda Ritz.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
If you cannot go, e mail and/or call Governor Pence AND the legislators. What is happening is a travesty on our children and the future of our country. Indiana is not the only state with this problem but for those of us who live here, HORRIFIC.
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I wonder if Indiana needs an event similar to North Carolina’s “Moral Mondays” ? I’d like to know if anybody has thought of it…and if not a Moral Monday, then something with a different spin, but the same idea…
Any Hoosiers out there have any ideas of something uniquely Hoosier that could be done to make our voices heard more loudly? Any non-Hoosiers have any ideas?
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RALLY TO SUPPORT GLENDA RITZ (Guest speaker, Glenda Ritz)
Friday, February 20, 2015 @ 4:00 PM
Adams High School
808 South Twyckenham Drive
South Bend, IN
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Another blog post blasting the Indiana GOP for trying to strip Glenda Ritz of her rightful chairmanship of the State Board of Education:
http://neifpe.blogspot.com/2015/02/vics-statehouse-notes-201-february-12.html
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We here in Des Moines Ia are with you and your fight!!. Hit them with all you got!!!
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Thank you, Ginny!
Leslie Kistler
(otherwise known as Bilgewater)
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Vic Smith, a frequent visitor to the Indiana statehouse gave this testimony On Wednesday, February 11, 2015 (link at bottom)
Testimony on SB 470 February 11, 2015
Submitted by Dr. Vic Smith, Indianapolis
I rise in opposition to SB 470. After all the talk that helped the voucher bills pass about private schools being accountable using ISTEP and school letter grades, now that vouchers are in law we see a proposal to allow voucher schools to ignore the ISTEP test and gain exemption from school letter grades. That is an amazing step backward for accountability, and I hope the Senate will turn it down
in the name of the accountability that was promised when the voucher bills were narrowly passed by the Senate in 2011 and 2013.
When taxpayer money is used for programs, there should be full transparency and public access to information. This proposal is going in the wrong direction toward less transparency. Because of this, this bill should be a non-starter as far as the notion that voucher schools do not have to be accountable in the same way public schools are accountable.
The public dollars being spent on private school vouchers is growing every year. The days when vouchers saved the state money ended after two years when vouchers were expanded in 2013, giving voucher eligibility to large numbers of students who had always been in private schools and had never before been in the count for state funding. In the most recent financial report issued June 17, 2014, the data for 2013-14 showed that 39% of the 19,809 vouchers went to students who had never enrolled in an Indiana public school and had always been in a private school. This created an
outright fiscal cost of $16 million in 2013-14.
For the current school year of 2014-15, we have only been told that the number of vouchers has gone up to 30,000. If the same total of 39% of vouchers again went to students who had always been in private schools, the projected new fiscal cost for this current year would be about $24 million. Governor Pence’s budget proposals would add at least another $4 million to this total.
If taxpayers are paying out anywhere between $16 million and $24 million for vouchers, they expect to know how the schools and teachers are performing just as they do in public schools.
Since 2011, vouchers have created an intensely competitive marketplace of schools in Indiana. All schools are judged in this competition by their performance on ISTEP and school letter grades. Now this bill would remove voucher schools from the ISTEP program and deny the public the information needed to consider the performance of all schools on a common test. That is wrong, and the Senate should reject this bill.
In summary, this proposal is both surprising and disappointing. I hope this committee and the Senate will turn down SB 470 as a giant step backward on accountability.
Thank you for listening to these concerns.
https://drive.google.com/a/phm.k12.in.us/file/d/0B6mEXsmcLXeCNzJ6RjNwcnk4Wlk/view
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I would like to support public schools but as long as they stay in step with the Common Core how can I? The pressure placed on the teachers has trickled down to the students and it has become a toxic and oppressive environment for both teacher and children. A mass exodus of public schools may be the only way to send a message to the government that the Common Core is a Uncommon Crime.
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Charters and Private Schools are not subjected to the same scrutiny and therefore teachers are less apt to put pressure on the children to perform better on tests. As long as the Common Core reigns Charters and Privates will continue to be the number one choice of most parents.
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David Coleman and the other Professors from America’s most elite schools have really done a disservice to Public Education. Who will explain this to them?
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I meant the Professors from elite American Schools who participated in the writing of The Common Core.
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Connect the individual state lawmakers to the public schools in THEIR districts.
It doesn’t matter if they’re Republicans or Democrats, they ALL have many, many public schools in their districts. They know the names of the public schools in their districts. Tie their name to the individual school they’re harming.
Not “public education in Indiana” but “Rep. Mary Smith – Lincoln Elementary in Goshen”
Make them accountable for their actions regarding individual public schools in their districts.
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