Archives for category: Indiana
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Phyllis Bush: Calling the People of Indiana to Push Back Against a Legislative Putsch

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2018 //
13

 

Phyllis Bush, a founding member of the Northeast Indiana Friends of Public Education and a founding board member of the Network for Public Education, warns that the legislature is reconvening on May 14 and will consider a law to facilitate state takeovers and the destruction of local control of public education. Don’t ever believe that Republicans defend local control. When they are in power, they undermine and oppose it.

Bush and her colleagues are especially concerned about a bill called HB 1315.

“HB 1315 focuses on the Muncie and Gary school corporations, which are in fiscal distress. This bill would replace the elected school board of Muncie schools with a board appointed by Ball State University and exempt said board from adhering to a host of laws affecting student learning. By setting a dangerous precedent of state takeover, this bill potentially concerns any public school district that might be in fiscal distress in the future. This bill has the potential of negatively affecting local control, teacher input and protections for students in many communities. This is not just about Muncie and Gary. Your school district could be next.

“Northeast Indiana Friends of Public Education’s concern is that legislators are not listening to the voices of their constituents and are not considering the far-reaching consequences of bringing this bill back in a way that is outside of normal legislative procedures. Add your voice.

“Please encourage legislators to oppose HB 1315 in its present form.

“We NEIFPE members invite people across the state to join us in collective actions to make our voices heard. We will start actions on Monday and continue through May 14. Here are our suggestions:

• Host Postcard Meet-Ups to reach out to our legislators. You can create your own meet-up in coffee shops, homes, libraries or wherever you and your friends are comfortable. NEIFPE will provide postcard templates to help you get started.

• Host a “Tweet-Up.” For those of you who are new to Twitter, we will provide information on how to tweet and on how to schedule tweets at your own convenience. We will also provide sample tweets. All you need is a Twitter account and internet access.

• Send emails and place calls to legislators; these are also effective.

“This is your opportunity to host your own gathering. Let our state legislators know you are paying attention. Show them you care about the issues on which they will be voting. Tell them you a want thorough discussion of the proposals.

“These Meet-Up/Greet Up/Tweet Ups will be statewide actions and will tell our legislators, our friends and neighbors: “We are watching this, and we are proud to advocate for public education.””

Categories Education Reform, Indiana

Indiana: Students Who Transfer from Public Schools to Charters Lose Ground Academically

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2018 //
24

 

Researchers at Indiana University reviewed state test scores and found that students who transferred from public schools to charter schools lost ground academically for the first few years. Eventually, if they remained in the charter school, they caught up to their public school peers, but nearly half transferred back to their public school. It may be, as in the case of voucher studies in I Diana, that the weakest students were likeliest to leave the charters.

”Researchers from the Indiana University School of Education-Indianapolis examined four years of English and math ISTEP scores for 1,609 Indiana elementary and middle school students who were in a traditional public school in 2011 and transferred to a charter school in 2012. The main findings were that students who transferred had lower math and English score gains during the first year or two in their new school than if they had stayed in a district school.

“The researchers were able to draw the conclusion by using a type of statistical analysis that enabled them to compare students’ actual score gains at the charter school to potential gains had they not transferred from a traditional school.

“But for the students who stayed in charter schools for three years or more, some of those gaps disappeared, and students caught up with where they would have been if they hadn’t transferred. Both of these results — the dip in score gains after transferring and the increase over time — are consistent with other studies, researchers said.

“Overall, these results indicate that the promise of charter schools as a vehicle for school improvement should be viewed with some skepticism,” said study co-author Gary R. Pike, a professor of education at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis. “Our results suggest that charter school experience for most students does not measure up to expectations, at least for the first two years of enrollment.”

“The researchers also found that of the original number of students who transferred to a charter school in 2012, 47 percent returned to a traditional public school by 2016. Only about a third of students remained enrolled in charter schools long enough to see their scores catch back up. The study called the mobility “problematic,” and suggested other researchers look into it further.”

The study contradicts an earlier CREDO study of Indiana charters.

However, the researchers cautioned not to draw national generalizations from the study of one state.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Indiana, Privatization, Testing

Indiana: Vouchers Drain Money from Every Public School in the State

By dianeravitch
March 28, 2018 //
26

Phil Downs, superintendent of the Southwest Allen County schools in Indiana, explains here how the cumulative effect of vouchers reduces spending in every public school in the state. 

There are about 1,040,000 students in Indiana. There are 35,500 voucher students in the state, most attending religious schools. Most have never attended a public school in the past, and only 274 were issued to students leaving F-rated public schools. Each voucher is worth about $4,258. Basically, the state is using public dollars to subsidize tuition at religious schools (which the state constitution explicitly prohibits but which the state courts approved).

He writes:

It is conventional wisdom that the voucher program only affects big cities. While voucher usage is higher in big cities, the financial effect is felt in every school district because the voucher dollars come out of Tuition Support, in effect reducing the dollars supporting students in all public schools…

The impact of the voucher program is not based on how many vouchers are used in your district. It is based on each year’s voucher program cost to the Tuition Support budget across the state, regardless of the number of vouchers used within the district. For example, Lebanon Schools lost more than $530,000, Plainfield Schools lost more than $770,000, and Carmel Schools lost more than $2,365,000 this year. Currently, there are 23 school districts where no vouchers are used. They are small districts and the voucher program costs them more than $4 million this year combined. Peru Schools is the largest of these districts and it lost more than $321,000.

Here are this year’s losses in Allen County: East Allen County Schools, $1.38 million; Fort Wayne Community Schools, $4.47 million; Northwest Allen County Schools, $1.13 million; and Southwest Allen County Schools, $1.08 million.

To make this complicated issue much simpler…think of a loganberry pie. Indiana has baked a smaller pie and expects it to feed a larger number of people. More kids, fewer dollars.

Put simply, one million students are suffering loss of school funding so that the 35,000 students previously enrolled in religious schools get a subsidy. The one million pay for the others. The one million lose teachers, get larger classes, and have fewer programs. Is that fair? It is certainly not wise.

Categories Accountability, Funding, Indiana, Vouchers

Indiana: Total Confusion on Which Standardized Test to Use

By dianeravitch
March 22, 2018 //
12

 

Shaina Cavazos writes in Chalkbeat that Indiana has pushed back by two years its decision to require all high school students to take a college entrance exam. 

Neither the ACT nor the SAT are designed to measure high school students’ academic progress, and they are not even the best measure of student readiness for college (the four-year GPA is better than either of the tests).

ACT and SAT should oppose this blatant misuse of their tests, if they care more about integrity and professional ethics than profits.

The state is also confused about which standardized test to use in 3-8. Should they use the Common Core-aligned Pearson test? Didn’t Trump say CCSS was a disaster? Where does Pence stand?

”Lawmakers were expected to approve a House bill proposing Indiana use a college entrance exam starting in 2019 as yearly testing for high schoolers, at the same time state works to replace its overall testing system, ISTEP. But the start date for using the SAT or ACT was pushed back from 2019 to 2021, meaning it’s unclear how high schoolers will be judged for the next two years.

“This is the latest upheaval in testing as the state works to replace ISTEP in favor of the new ILEARN testing system, a response to years of technical glitches and scoring problems. While a company has already proposed drafting exams for measuring the performance of Indiana students, officials now need to come up with a solution for the high school situation. ILEARN exams for grades 3-8 are still set to begin in 2019…

”It’s just the latest road bump since the legislature voted last year to scrap ISTEP and replace it with ILEARN, a plan that originally included a computer-adaptive test for grades 3-8 and end-of-course exams for high-schoolers in English, algebra and biology. Indiana is required by the federal government to test students each year in English and math, and periodically, in science.

“The Indiana Department of Education started carrying out the plan to move to ILEARN over the summer and eventually selected the American Institutes for Research to write the test, a company that helped create the Common-Core affiliated Smarter balanced test. AIR’s proposal said they were prepared to create tests for elementary, middle and high school students.”

Fourteen states are now using college entrance exams to assess high school students, even those who want to enter the workforce, not go to college.

Perhaps Indiana should hire Duane Swacker to explain to lawmakers that the standardized tests are not reliable or valid measures of student learning. Or they might read Harvard Professor Daniel Koretz’s “The Testing Charade: Pretending to Make Schools Better.”

 

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Education Reform, Ignorance, Indiana, Standardized Testing, Testing

Tom Ultican: Leader of “Destroy Public Education” Group in Indianapolis Will Go National

By dianeravitch
March 20, 2018 //
5

 

Tom Ultican shows how The Mind Trust has dutifully implemented the rightwing agenda in Indianapolis. Fattened with big contributions from far-right foundations, the Mind Trust has done  a thorough job of undermining public education in that city. Now its leader, David Harris, has decided to create yet another national corporate reform organization, having established his bona fides with the Walton Family Foundation and the Arnold Foundation. Walton loves charters and hates unions. Ex-Enron John Arnold loves charters and hates public sector pensions.

Republicans in the State Capitol must love David Harris. He cleverly uses his Democratic credentials to pursue the Trump-DeVos-Pence agenda of privatization.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Indiana, Indianapolis, Privatization, Walton Foundation

Indiana: NPE Action Fund Endorses Kyle Miller for State Representative

By dianeravitch
March 16, 2018 //
3

The Network for Public Education Action Fund endorses Kyle Miller for State Representative, District 81, in Indiana. 

In the District 81 race for Indiana State Representative, the Network for Public Education Action has endorsed Kyle Miller. Kyle’s number one priority is “fully funding public education and making sure that we return the joy to the teaching profession.”

He said, “We spend so much time trying to figure out different ways to spend public money on education that if we focused all that energy and money on public education, we could have a top notch public education system.”

He highlighted the state’s overgrown voucher system as the single greatest threat facing Indiana’s public schools, and believes that private voucher schools should be held accountable for the tax dollars they spend. He supports a moratorium on charter schools for the same reason, stating “we have allowed these charters to run wild with no accountability.”

Kyle also told us that Indiana teachers are overworked, underpaid and severely underappreciated, which has led to a teacher shortage, and he wants to change that. He affirmed that, if elected, he will “work tirelessly for teachers and public education.”

Please do what you can to support Kyle in his primary election on Tuesday, May 8, 2018.

Categories Indiana, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund

Indiana: The Failure of Vouchers

By dianeravitch
March 12, 2018 //
13

 

The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette succinctly explains that vouchers have failed in Indiana. 

Taxpayers will shell out $153 million this year for vouchers.

Almost anyone can get a voucher, but not many students or families want them. According to the latest report, cited in the Journal Gazette editorial, only 3.11% of the students in the state use them. Only 4.25% enroll in charters. An additional 4.44% attend private schools without a voucher. In traditional public schools are 88.2%, and no one in the Indiana legislature gives a thought to the overwhelming number in public schools or the damage that vouchers and charters do to them.

The Fort Wayne public schools will lose $19 million. The schools of Indianapolis public schools will lose $20 million. In what universe does it make sense to take away money, teachers, and programs from the vast majority of students to subsidize religious schools for a tiny minority of students?

According to their advocates, vouchers were supposed to “save poor children from failing schools.”

Not true.

“Fewer than 1 percent of the 35,458 voucher recipients qualified for the program this year because he or she lives in a public school district with an F-rated school. But 245 students used vouchers to attend Horizon Christian Academy on North Wells Street, one of about a dozen voucher schools earning an F in 2017.”

Vouchers were supposed to save taxpayers money.

Not true.

”That might be the case if every voucher student would have otherwise attended public school. But the percentage of voucher students who never attended a public school grew to 56.5 percent this year, and there is no evidence the families wouldn’t have chosen a private school even without a voucher.”

Vouchers were supposed to be for low-income families.

Not true.

“About 20 percent of voucher recipients came from households earning more than $75,000 a year. Four percent of voucher students came from households earning more than $100,000 a year in income. The state’s median household income is $52,314 a year.”

Furthermore, voucher schools are not open to all, unlike public schools.

“Some of the faith-based schools limit admission on the basis of religion, sexual orientation and gender identity.”

The voucher advocates claimed that vouchers would raise academic achievement.

Not true.

“Nearly $13 million in voucher money flowed to schools receiving a D or F on state report cards. The Indiana State Board of Education just last week granted a waiver to Ambassador Christian Academy, a “D” school. The state board agreed a majority of students showed academic growth over the last school year, even though the same board proposed new accountability rules for public schools that will not give credit for academic growth.”

In sum, Indiana is squandering many millions of dollars on an ineffective voucher program that benefits few students.

 

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Hoax, Indiana

Indiana: CarolMalaysia Writes a Letter to Senator Todd Young About His Support for Guns

By dianeravitch
March 10, 2018 //
6

Reader CarolMalaysia shares a letter she sent to Indiana Senator Todd Young, to be sure he understands that he has blood on his hands.

She writes:

3/10/2018

Corrupt Senator Young, a hero is in the hospital because of your support for assault weapons. He took 5 bullets to save his classmates in Florida

How many more mass killings are necessary before we ban military type assault weapons and criminalize their possession? I hold you responsible for the injury of this brave child of 15 who was shot 5 times and is still in the hospital.

If the point is it’s a great thrill to go to a shooting range and fire an AR-15, make a special permit for the shooting range owners to provide the AR-15, which the visitor uses and leaves at the shooting range.

Here is Anthony Borges’s story: When a 19 year old gunman raged through a high school in Parkland, Florida, on February 14, 2018 a 15-year-old soccer player named Anthony Borges showed extreme courage.

Anthony, who is of Venezuelan descent, apparently was the last of a group of students rushing into a classroom to seek refuge. He shut the door behind him and frantically tried to lock it, but in an instant the gunman appeared on the other side. Instead of running for cover, Anthony blocked the door to keep the shooter out. He held his ground even as the attacker opened fire.

Asked why he would do that, he replied, “What’s so hard to understand about what I did?”

Shot five times in the legs and torso, Anthony phoned his father to say that he had been wounded. He was rushed to a hospital and survived.

Anthony Borges may not yet be able to walk, but tens of thousands of us will be Marching for him, led by his classmates from Parkland, on March 24 in Washington DC and in places all over the country. Hoosiers are going to show that they do not support corrupt politicians like Senator Todd Young who was bought out by the NRA. [$2,896,732] We want meaningful strict gun legislation.

Senator Todd Young, are you going to pay for this young man’s medical bills? You are personally responsible for all the deaths and injury caused by an assault weapon. What about giving Anthony Borges a scholarship? A moral person in your position would accept what he needs to do.

Corrupt Senator Todd Young’s stance:

I believe the “Assault Weapons Ban” of 1994 was bad legislation that needed to be repealed.”

Source: 2010 House campaign website, toddyoungforcongress.com/ , Nov 2, 2010.

Let’s honor Anthony Borges, not just as a counterpoint to corrupt, bought out politicians who leave children in harm’s way, but as a beacon of courage and selflessness for all of us to follow.

Categories Corruption, Courage, Education Reform, Guns, Indiana

Indiana: Teen Registers a Fake School Corporation with State Education Department

By dianeravitch
March 7, 2018 //
25

A teenager decided he wanted to be a school superintendent, so he created his own school corporation, and the state—which loves to encourage choice—registered his corporation.

 

“A boy in LaPorte, Ind. created the fake school– the LaCav Community School Corporation.

“The 13-year-old is part-time seventh grader, part-time superintendent. He applied his fake school district to be registered with the state and he succeeded.

“The Indiana Department of Education gave Leo Cavinder a non-public school number.

“A spokesperson for the department says that number can do nothing on its own and that it was quickly revoked when they realized the LaCav Community School Corporation has no students.

“No funding ever changed hands, but the ability for a seventh grader to be taken seriously as an adult raises some questions.

“I had seen other school corporations and I just thought it was cool to have my own,” said Cavinder.”

Leo showed that Indiana has no standards at all when it comes to approving school corporations. Everyone welcome, including crooks, frauds, and con artists.

Categories Education Reform, Hoax, Indiana

Indiana: GOP Legislator Proposes Total Privatization of Muncie School District

By dianeravitch
February 20, 2018 //
9

 

A Republican Legislator has proposed turning over the Muncie School District to Ball State University and allowing the University to replace the elected board with an appointed one of its choosing. Muncie currently has a large deficit and an emergency manager. The state has starved the schools of adequate funding.

“During a hearing on Thursday, Sen. Karen Tallian, D-Portage, questioned the bill’s author, Rep. Tim Brown, R-Crawfordsville, and the university president about a provision that would exclude a BSU-run MCS from having to follow numerous education laws.

“The bill would allow BSU to govern financially distressed MCS effective July 1 by appointing a new seven-member school board to replace the current five-member elected school board.

“There is a list four pages long, Tallian said, of “a huge part” of the Title 20 education code that the school district would not be required to follow, such as collective bargaining rights for teachers, health insurance, “the entire body of the school transportation law,” accreditation, equal education opportunity, teacher licensing, “the whole body of law about school curriculum” and data reporting.”

Ball State’s record running charter schools is unimpressive, although it’s lab school has high ratings.

“A laboratory school is a school run by a university, like Ball State’s highly rated Burris Laboratory School, which has much less poverty among students and many fewer minority students than the city school district.

“Unlike teachers in Indiana’s traditional public schools, Burris teachers lack collective bargaining rights. Charter schools are not required to participate in collective bargaining with teachers, either.

“A charter school is a public school operating under a contract, or charter, between the school’s organizers and a charter school authorizer, such as BSU, which oversees but doesn’t manage more than two dozen charter schools around the state, nearly half of which are rated D or F.”

So Ball State runs a successful elite school on campus but nearly half its charters are rated D or F.

The people of Muncie are divided about whether this is a good idea.

Ball State thinks it will burnish the university’s reputation. The heads of businesses and law firm like it. Legislators say “it’s a done deal.”

This is how democracy dies. One step at a time.

Categories Democracy, Education Industry, Education Reform, Indiana, Privatization
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