Indiana declared war on its public school teachers when Mitch Daniels was Governor. The war against teachers intensified ubderGo Ernie Mike Pence. Now districts across the state are experiencing teacher shortages.
This is what Daniels, Pence, and the Legislature wanted. They drove down the cost of education. They placed their bets on school choice. They call it Reform. They are destroying the teaching profession and public education in the state. And they call it Reform.
In a survey this year, Indiana State University researchers asked Indiana school superintendents if they faced a teacher shortage — and how bad the problem was.
“It’s killing us,” one respondent wrote.
“This situation is getting worse each year,” another said. “Scares me!”
“Indiana’s war on teachers is winning,” a superintendent commented.
Out of the 220 districts that responded to the survey, 91 percent reported experiencing a teacher shortage, with most feeling the pinch in science, math, and special education.
Eighty-five percent of the surveyed districts applied for emergency permits for people who don’t have teaching licenses, or educators who are hired to teach subjects outside their licensure.
Superintendents overwhelmingly said it was difficult to find qualified job candidates, and many mentioned high teacher turnover rates. They often pointed to low pay as the cause, competing against other higher-paying districts or the private sector.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education and commented:
Shock! Not surprised at all.
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This is how Indianapolis (a ‘portfolio district) grades schools:
“A-F grades for schools across Indiana were released Wednesday, but in the state’s largest district, the grades aren’t necessarily an easy way to compare schools.
An increasing share of Indianapolis Public Schools campuses, last year about 20 percent, are being measured by a different yardstick than others, creating a system where schools with virtually identical results on state tests can receive vastly different letter grades.
The letter grades aim to show how well schools are serving students by measuring both how their students score on state tests and how much their scores improve. But as Chalkbeat reported last year, new schools and schools that join the IPS innovation network can opt to be graded for three years based only on the second measure, known as growth. Schools in the innovation network are part of the district, but they are run by outside charter or nonprofit operators.”
“At the same time, traditional neighborhood and magnet schools with growth scores as good as or better than the scores at A-rated innovation schools received Bs, Cs, and even Ds.”
The scoring system favors privatized schools. A public school can turn in the same performance as a charter school and the public school will get a “D” while the charter gets an “A”.
The portfolio system is designed to disfavor public schools and promote charter schools.
When a public school converts to a charter their score immediately goes up.
Public schools can’t win in systems run by ed reformers. The goal is to eradicate the schools they disfavor and they’ll go so far as to use a blatantly deceptive scoring system to favor charters over public schools.
https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/in/2018/11/15/why-its-hard-to-compare-indianapolis-schools-under-the-a-f-grading-system/
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These reformers are all about applying market-based principles to education, but one that they selectively apply is the “Law of Supply and Demand” in regards to salaries.
Whenever there’s a big expose of charter CEO salaries — Eva Moskowitz in NYC is not a $800,000 and climbing — reformers like Campbell Brown and Peter Cunningham say stuff like, “Look, she’s worth every penny. If we’re going to attract leaders of her caliber, to get them to choose to work in the charter sector, we have to pay competitively with what they’re getting in the private sector.” (I remember someone did an expose on the insane salaries that Massachusetts Charter Chain CEO’s were pulling down, and Cunningham wrote dismissively in the comments section (or tweeted, I forget) “What a silly article.”)
However, when it comes to teacher salaries — in particular, in response to teacher salaries — the “reformers” aren’s so keen on the “Law of Supply and Demand.” When someone says, “Well, raise the pay (and also improve working conditions, but that’s another story) and you’ll get a larger, more qualified and talented pool of teachers from which to hire,” the response is, “Oh no. To get a wider pool, we need to lower the qualifications. That’s all.”
The word is out among college students that, thanks to the reformers, teaching is being degraded to the level of fast food worker, or retail cashier, or office temp. College tuition these days ain’t cheap, after all.
When teachers try to improve their salary, the propaganda that reformers throw against them is vicious beyond belief: “Those greedy teachers … how dare they abandon their students … we need to break the back of those striking teachers” and on and on …
Peter Greene said something like, “If certain people are only willing to spend $1.98 for a car, and those folks are then unable to purchase one, that’s doesn’t mean there’s a ‘car shortage.’ “
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When you read ed reformers pushing “portfolio districts” and they use Indianapolis as a selling point, be sure and check their information. They’re inflating the grades of the charter schools to sell the schools to parents and using a different, tougher measure for public schools.
It’s deceptive. By design. The charters all get a trophy and the public schools all get a demerit. To increase market share for charters to the detriment of public schools.
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Indiana and Ohio stuck with the status quo ed reform last election.
It’s a shame. They re-hired the exact same people who have been running ed reform in those states for the last 20 years. The public education systems will continue to decline but the ideological goals will all be met!
The two states are utterly captured by ed reform lobbyists. Public schools are a dead-last priority, behind charters and vouchers. Public school families have no advocates in state government. We’re looking at another lost decade as we zealously pursue and promote charter schools and vouchers and no one on the public payroll can be bothered with the public system. It’s an absolute raw deal for public school students.
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The same is true for Florida. There will be little improvement as ed reform marches forward.
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“Mission Accomplished!”
Mission Accomplished!
Send in computers
Teachers are vanquished
Bots are our suitors
Contracts were written
For software and hard-
Teachers were smitten
By Gates and his guard
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yes; the arguments across the nation about how to ‘find’ or ‘retain’ teachers misses the point that bigger forces have very little use for teachers…
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Finding so-so s
To replace
Virtuosos
They erased
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I do not get the cause/effect relationship between teacher retention and school choice. No one becomes a teacher to become rich. Nevertheless, any school system, public or private, must be prepared to pay a market wage, in order to secure qualified applicants.
If the public school systems of the Hoosier state, wish to solve the teacher shortage, the public will have to be willing to put up adequate salaries/benefits to attract the type of teachers that they want.
Kentucky has helped ease their shortage, by offering scholarships to promising students, to obtain teaching degrees/credentials. In return for accepting the scholarship, the grantee must agree to teach for a minimum period of time, in a Kentucky public school. My sister accepted a grant, and when she finished her academic training, she was assigned to teach in a public school.
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Please define market wage, Chas. Thanks.
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see
https://www.shmoop.com/labor-wages-unions/market-theory-wage-determination.html
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In my case, and I believe in way too many cases it is not low pay which most teachers decry the most but the constant political inference in EDUCATION, politicians too ignorant to know what they are doing. Not that we ALL would not like better pay to benefit our own children but the “profession I joined no longer exists”,
People who are in the firing line and really care about children are sickened by the kinds of things these politicians foist on the education community.
Counterproductive.
We should have learned what the Japanese, – remember when we were told to emulate the great Japanese school system – to their horror learned, students who were pushed so hard that the children had learned two things, how to pass tests, they had not learned the material, only to regurgitate on paper what they were told as truths without thinking, to pass the tests – and most importantly to hate school and learning.
Too, the Japanese tradition of working together was in tatters as they had to compete with each other to have higher test scores.
Inanity exemplified.. ,
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