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Democrats Have a New Hope for the Future of the Party

By dianeravitch
January 21, 2017 //
35

A friend in Indiana wrote to say “Not all Hoosiers are morons,” referring of course to one who is a leader on the national scene.

 

She linked to this article in The New Republic about the 35-year-old mayor of South Bend, Pete Buttigieg.

 

He participated in a recent debate among contenders for chair of the Democratic National Committee and impressed the audience.

 

Graham Vyse writes:

 

With their party now decimated at the national and state level, Democrats cling to one refuge for promoting progressive policies in the Trump era: Cities. They still control two-thirds of America’s biggest ones, and mayors nationwide are vowing to defy the new president’s agenda by shielding undocumented immigrants from deportation, pushing their own efforts to fight climate change, and working to preserve their citizens’ healthcare even as the Affordable Care Act faces repeal. Cities are where Democrats can still prove their muster, lead by example, and offer Americans an alternative vision under Republican rule.
That’s part of the appeal of Pete Buttigieg, the 35-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana (pop. 101,000), who was a late entry this month in the campaign to chair the Democratic National Committee. A gay Afghanistan veteran, Harvard graduate, and Rhodes Scholar, he says he’ll turn around his party like he’s turning around his Rust Belt city—promoting progressivism in places where it’s in short supply. Former DNC Chair Howard Dean calls him “the wild card” in this year’s race, and he’s a rising star nationally, promoted by President Barack Obama and hailed by New York Times columnist Frank Bruni as potentially the first gay president.

 

 

Categories Democrats, Indiana

Ed Eiler: How Vouchers in Indiana Are Attacking the Common Good

By dianeravitch
January 7, 2017 //
15

Ed Eiler was superintendents of the Lafayette, Indiana, schools. In this article, he explains how corporatist Republicans have tried to turn education into a commodity instead of a common good that belongs to all.

 

He writes:

 

“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”

 

– Elie Wiesel

 

Three recent newsworthy items deserve our attention. The first is a study in the American Educational Research Journal, which concluded rising income inequality in the U.S. is a primary cause of the growing economic segregation of schools. As the gap grows, affluent families are more likely to segregate themselves into enclaves where there are few poor children in the public schools.

 

The second is a report issued by the Indiana Department of Education that calculated the net increased cost for the state’s education voucher program to be $53.2 million. Some 52 percent of voucher students now have no record of attending a public school.

 

The final report is one completed by the National Conference of State Legislatures addressing educational reform. The report acknowledges there are no silver bullets and the present efforts at reform have failed. The report recognizes the importance of having all stakeholders be a part of the process of improving our schools.

 

Why does any of this matter? All of these reports can be tied to the effort to privatize education.

 

So, vouchers are not being used to help “poor students escape from failing public schools,” since most kids who use vouchers never attended a public school. They are simply an effort to privatize what belongs to the public.

 

Eiler writes:

 

The American public school system has been where students of different economic classes, religious backgrounds and ethnic communities come together to develop a sense of community and a commitment to the common good.

 

Because of income inequality, we are increasingly leading separate lives. Sandell asserts, “Democracy doesn’t demand absolute equality, but does require people to share a common life.”

 

[Michael] Sandell concludes that ultimately this is “… not an economic question. The question is how do we want to live together? Do we want a society where everything is up for sale or are there certain moral and civic goods that markets do not honor and money cannot buy?”

 

That is why all of this matters, why we should oppose privatizing our schools and why we should elect people who support our public schools. I may be powerless to prevent it, but the privatization of education is an injustice, and I must protest.

 

Categories Indiana, Vouchers

Will Indiana’s Choice Program be the Model for the Trump-DeVos Plan?

By dianeravitch
January 3, 2017 //
20

http://www.journalgazette.net/food/the-dish/Indiana-s-vouchers-wow-GOP-16999984

 

Mike Pence is a devout believer in school choice and privatization of public funds. The Indiana state constitution specifically prohibits spending public funds in religious schools but the state courts ruled that the public money went to families, not to the religious schools that actually received the money. Now Indiana is a national model for the privatization movement, although the public was never asked to vote on this dramatic abandonment of public schools.

 

Indiana lawmakers originally promoted the state’s school voucher program as a way to make good on America’s promise of equal opportunity, offering children from poor and lower-middle-class families an escape from public schools that failed to meet their needs.

 

But five years after the program was established, more than half of the state’s voucher recipients have never attended Indiana public schools, meaning that taxpayers are now covering private and religious school tuition for children whose parents had previously footed that bill. Many vouchers also are going to wealthier families, those earning up to $90,000 for a household of four.

 

The voucher program, one of the nation’s largest and fastest-growing, serves more than 32,000 children and provides an early glimpse of what education policy could look like in Donald Trump’s presidency.

 

Trump has signaled that he intends to pour billions of federal dollars into efforts to expand vouchers and charter schools nationwide. Betsy DeVos, his nominee for education secretary, played an important role in lobbying for the establishment of Indiana’s voucher program in 2011. And Vice President-elect Mike Pence led the charge as the state’s governor to loosen eligibility requirements and greatly expand the program’s reach.

 

Most recipients are not leaving the state’s worst schools: Just 3 percent of new recipients of vouchers in 2015 qualified for them because they lived in the attendance area of F-rated public schools. And while private school enrollment grew by 12,000 students over the past five years, the number of voucher recipients grew by 29,000, according to state data, meaning that taxpayer money is potentially helping thousands of families pay for a choice they were already making.

 

Most recipients qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, according to state data, but a growing proportion – now 31 percent – do not.

 

Opponents argue that vouchers are not reaching the children most in need of better schools. They also assert that voucher programs violate the constitutional separation of church and state by funneling public dollars into religious schools, including those that teach creationism instead of the theory of evolution.

 

Indiana’s program survived a legal challenge in 2013, when a judge ruled that the primary beneficiaries of the vouchers were families, not religious institutions.

 

Growing larger

 

The Indiana General Assembly first approved a limited voucher program in 2011, capping it at 7,500 students in the first year and restricting it to children who had attended public schools for at least a year.

 

“Public schools will get first shot at every child,” then-Gov. Mitch Daniels said at the time. “If the public school delivers and succeeds, no one will seek to exercise this choice.”

 

DeVos, who had lobbied for the program as chairwoman of the American Federation for Children, hailed its passage and proposed that other states follow Indiana’s lead. Two years later, Pence entered the governor’s office with a pledge to extend vouchers to more children.

 

“There’s nothing that ails our schools that can’t be fixed by giving parents more choices and teachers more freedom to teach,” Pence said during his inaugural address in 2013.

 

Within months, Indiana lawmakers eliminated the requirement that children attend public school before receiving vouchers and lifted the cap on the number of recipients. The income cutoff was raised, and more middle-class families became eligible.

 

When those changes took effect, an estimated 60 percent of all Indiana children were eligible for vouchers, and the number of recipients jumped from 9,000 to more than 19,000 in one year.

 

The proportion of children who had never previously attended Indiana public schools also rose quickly: By 2016, more than half of voucher recipients – 52 percent – had never been in the state’s public school system.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Indiana, Privatization, Vouchers

Indiana: Teachers in Affluent Districts Get Bulk of Performance Payouts

By dianeravitch
December 22, 2016 //
33

 

 

This is no surprise: Education Week reports that most bonuses for higher scores were paid to teachers in affluent districts. This could have been predicted in advance. Teachers who teach advantaged kids are superstars because the students are well-fed, live in secure homes, have regular medical check-ups and educated parents. Their schools get higher letter grades. Rewards based on test scores ignore the fact that test scores are highly correlated with family income and education.

 

The Indiana Department of Education has announced how it will divvy up $40 million that state lawmakers set aside in 2015 to reward teachers who are rated effective and highly effective. Those bonuses will disproportionally go to teachers in wealthy districts, a fact that has many in the state up in arms.

 

Carmel Clay Schools, where just 9 percent of their 16,000 students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, will get the most— $2.4 million or roughly $2,422 per teacher. Another well-off Indianapolis suburban district, Zionsville Community Schools, where fewer than 5 percent of students qualify for the free and reduced-price lunch program, will receive about $2,240 per teacher. Meanwhile, Indianapolis, the state’s largest district will receive just around $330,875, or $128.40 per educator. So teachers in those wealthy suburban districts will get bonuses nearly 20 times larger than effective and highly effective educators in Indianapolis.

 

Indiana State Teachers Association President Teresa Meredith calls it a “flawed” system.

 

“While educators at well-resourced schools performed well and received a much-deserved bonus, the educators teaching in some of the most challenging districts where socioeconomic factors can negatively impact student and school performance, were left out,” she said in a statement. “We need high-quality educators to teach at our most-challenged schools, and this distribution of bonuses certainly won’t compel them to do so.”

 

Legislators may take another look. I hope they look at the history of merit pay. It has never worked, if worked means better education or higher scores. I have a chapter in “Reign of Error” on the history of merit pay.

Categories Failure, Indiana, Merit pay

Indiana: The Disaster of the Hoosier Online Schools

By dianeravitch
December 19, 2016 //
17

Chalkbeat reports that the Hoosier Academy Virtual Charter School has earned an F again, yet is opening another virtual school.

 

When Indiana education officials released school A-F grades this week, only three schools had received F grades for six years in a row.

 

Two were traditional public schools in Gary and Marion County, and the other was Hoosier Academy Virtual Charter school, which does all its teaching and learning online. For the traditional public schools, the sixth straight F marks the first time the state can potentially close the school.
But for charter schools, the limit is set at four, a milestone Hoosier Virtual surpassed almost two years ago. Despite its poor performance, the state has not taken steps to close the school or restrict state funding to its charter authorizer, Ball State University.

 

Hoosier Virtual was told in March 2015 to figure out a plan to improve. But while school officials did that, they came back to the board in August of this year with something unexpected: Hoosier Virtual had opened a new school, transferring 663 of its students there…

 

Here is the most startling sentence in the story:

 

But Byron Ernest, head of Hoosier Academies’ three schools and also a state board member as of June of last year, said opening the new school, called Insight School of Indiana, was a way for the network to focus on students who needed more help than could be offered in a typical online classroom.

 

And here is another statistic to think about:

 

Hoosier Academies is not alone in its struggle to improve its schools. Every online school in the state that tested students in 2016 — including four charter schools — received an F grade: Hoosier Academy Virtual, Hoosier Academy-Indianapolis, Insight School of Indiana, Indiana Connections Academy, Indiana Virtual School and Wayne Township’s virtual high school.

 

Every study of online schools has concluded that they deliver an inferior education. Even CREDO reported that going to an online charter school is akin to not going to school at all. For every 180 days enrolled in an online charter, students lose 180 days of “instruction” in mathematics, and 72 days in reading.

 

Betsy DeVos, Trump’s choice for Secretary of Education, believes in online schools. Evidence doesn’t matter to her, only privatization.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Failure, Indiana, Privatization, Virtual Charter Schools

Politico: Indiana is the Template for Trump Education Policies

By dianeravitch
November 18, 2016 //
17

Reading politico.com’s daily education brief today is like being trapped in a nightmare and wishing you could wake up. In this case, it is not a bad dream, it is an ugly reality with familiar faces intent on giving public dollars to private and for-profit schools. Add to that the reports of students fearful for their future, and the outlines of an frightening new world emerge.

Politico reports that Indiana’s approach to school reform–based on privatization–will guide the Trump education reformers. The key to Trump reform is diverting public dollars to charters–including for-profit charters and virtual charters–and vouchers for religious schools.

http://www.politico.com/tipseets/morning-education/2016/11/hoosier-policies-head-to-washington-217478

HOOSIER POLICIES HEAD TO WASHINGTON: The same players who sparked intense education battles in Indiana – and transformed schools in the Hoosier State – are poised to enact those policies on a national stage. Just as George W. Bush brought Texas-style accountability to the Education Department and President Barack Obama tapped Chicago basketball buddy Arne Duncan, Donald Trump’s education policies are expected to reflect the Indiana imprint of Vice President-elect Mike Pence. Already, three Hoosiers key in shaping Indiana’s school choice landscape are considered contenders to serve as Trump’s education secretary: Former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, president of Purdue University; former Indiana Superintendent Tony Bennett; and Rep. Luke Messer, a former state representative who served as executive director for School Choice Indiana when the state’s 2011 school choice law was passed under Daniels’ watch. Indiana ties also played a role in Trump’s selection of the campaign staffer who helped him craft his $20 billion school choice plan that encourages vouchers and charter schools: Robert Goad, an aide on loan from Messer.

– Pence used his platform as Indiana governor to aggressively expand a voucher program that allows taxpayer money to flow to religious private schools. Pence also pushed for more charter schools, and choice has now become a defining element of Trump’s vision for education. Indiana’s voucher program allows nearly 33,000 students to go to private school on the public’s dime – making it the single largest voucher program of any state in the country. John Jacobson, dean of Teachers College at Ball State University, said the state’s voucher program hasn’t been around long enough to fully understand the long-term impact. Because of that, Jacobson said, “I would hope they are cautious at the national level.” Has Indiana’s voucher program been a positive change for families? “If you were to ask a parent who received a voucher to a school of their choice, they would say yes,”Jacobson said. “For the general public, I think it’s been difficult for the public to accept, taking public dollars and allocating that to private entities.”

Bennett, you may recall, was at the center off a grade-fixing scandal. The grades of a charter school founded by a major campaign contributor were mysteriously increased by adjusting the formula for calculating grades. Bennett was defeated in his bid for re-election as state chief in Indiana, but quickly hired by Florida as chief (he is a protege of Jeb Bush). He resigned as chief in Florida after the grade-fixing scandal broke.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, For-Profit, Funding, Home Schooling, Indiana, U.S. Department of Education, Vouchers

TFA-PAC Pushes KIPP Teacher for Local School Board in Indiana

By dianeravitch
November 5, 2016 //
22

http://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/in/2016/11/01/teach-for-americas-pac-spends-big-on-a-local-indiana-election-but-no-one-quite-knows-why/#.WBtJgHT3ahC

Here we go again. Teach for America, working through its little-known but well-funded political arm, called Leadership for Educational Equity, is dumping a load of money into a school board race in a small district outside of Indianapolis. It wants to place a charter school teacher on the school board of Washington Township, a district of 11,000 students.

The TFA candidate, Deitric Hall, is a newcomer to Indiana. He moved there from California three years ago. LEE has given him $32,000 to run for school board.

LEE has been active in funding candidates for key state and local positions in other states, on school boards and in legislatures.

Their candidates will of course support TFA, charter schools, and privatization.

Chalkbeat Indiana writes:

It’s a small-scale version of a phenomenon that has played out in urban districts around the country as outside campaign contributions have increasingly influenced pivotal school board races. In Indianapolis Public Schools, outside contributions helped radically reshape the board in 2012 and 2014, when out-of-state funders backed a victory for charter-school supporters.

But unlike in IPS, Washington Township isn’t facing a pivotal election — and Hall’s opponent had raised barely any money until this month. That has raised eyebrows in the area, where locals wonder why LEE, even given Hall’s connection to TFA, would spend so heavily on the race.

A native of California, Hall moved to Indianapolis three years ago for a teaching position through TFA, a national nonprofit that recruits new teachers for school districts with high-needs students.

He landed a position at KIPP Indy Unite Elementary, where he now works with students with special needs. Hall, who doesn’t have children, says his background as an educator will offer valuable insight to the board, and despite being new to the community, he is dedicated to improving the schools.

LEE’s spokesman is Erik Guckian, who previously served as top education advisor the Tea Party Governor Pat McCrory of North Carolina. Under McGrory’s leadership, and presumably with Guckian’s advice, the state shut down its successful career teacher preparation program (North Carolina Teaching Fellows) and shifted its $6 million to TFA.

Three of the five school board seats are up for election in Washington Township. Hall is facing off against one opponent, John Fencl, for an at-large seat representing the entire district.

Fencl has deep roots in the community: He is a parent of two middle schoolers in Washington Township where he also grew up and went to school. Fencl, an accountant, has volunteered as a math tutor and coach in the district. He said his work mentoring middle school boys has given him particular insight into the schools.

“I’m focused on the district, involved in the district,” he said. “I understand what Washington Township schools are about.”

When Fencl filed a fundraising report with the county earlier this month, he had raised just $750, which he said was because he wasn’t sure how competitive the race would be. But when he saw how much money Hall had raised, he shifted into high gear. In just a couple of weeks, Fencl boosted his fundraising to close to $7,500, he said. About $5,000 of that came from a single donor, Washington Township attorney Charles Rubright.

Since it became clear how much money Hall raised, other community members, including parents and even high school students, have become active in the race. They say they are motivated by concern over the role out-of-state funding is playing in Hall’s campaign.

Kristina Frey is a Washington Township parent who leads the Parent Council Network, a longstanding political group that endorsed Fencl. When she learned that Hall had joined the race, she set up a meeting to hear about his plan for the district and she came away uncertain why he was even running, she said.

“My suspicion is that folks in the education reform movement are looking at how they can potentially expand outside of IPS boundaries,” Frey said. “I would not be surprised to see them come back again with more money and try to gain a majority as they did in IPS.”

Will Washington Township vote in a TFA representative with big money behind him or will they elect a parent who is active in the community? We will see in a few days.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Indiana, Politics, Teach for America

Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette Endorses Glenda Ritz

By dianeravitch
October 21, 2016 //
4

The Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette (Indiana) endorsed State Superintendent Glenda Ritz for re-election.

http://www.journalgazette.net/opinion/endorsements/Return-Ritz-15873647

I add my strong support for Ritz, who has shown courage, integrity, and vision on behalf of the children of Indiana, even as Governor Pence and his allies have kept up a relentless attack on public schools and on Ritz personally.

The editorial says:

“In a year [2012] that saw sweeping Republican victories in Indiana, more than 1.3 million Hoosiers chose Democrat Glenda Ritz for state superintendent. No clearer repudiation of the state’s direction in education policy – school choice, high-stakes testing, Common Core, punitive school letter grades – could be found than in the resounding 2012 defeat of Superintendent Tony Bennett, the face of so-called education reform.

“But newly elected Gov. Mike Pence, the GOP-controlled General Assembly and deep-pocketed reform supporters did not get the message. They immediately set to work to diminish Ritz’s authority – at one point establishing a shadow education agency to undermine her work. The state superintendent has spent much of the past four years battling their obstructive efforts, but she delivered on her pledge to challenge the direction Indiana’s public schools were being taken. Today, Ritz remains the best candidate to prevent development of a two-tier system: private schools allowed to choose their own students and public schools left with fewer resources to serve everyone else. She’s best positioned to finally move to a student-centered testing system and to serve as a check on a voucher program with few safeguards.

“Republican Jennifer McCormick, superintendent of Yorktown Community Schools, has a solid record of serving students and public schools. But her promise to put students before politics is diminished by the tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions she’s accepted from the very individuals and interest groups determined to steer money from public schools for private benefit….

“Ritz, a former school media specialist, defends her record, noting improvements in performance at nearly 200 schools targeted for assistance; supporting student success in career and technical education; an increased number of school safety specialists; continuing focus on family literacy; and a strategy to address a growing teacher shortage.

“The reason I speak about outreach so much is because that’s what my job is really about – serving kids in our schools, making sure they get what they need,” she said. “Where people say they have a perception I don’t work with somebody? I work with everybody. That’s the only way I can move things forward.”

“McCormick pledges to improve communication, which she argues is “very splintered, not real timely and not very manageable to try to find what you’re being told.”

“I would argue we don’t have a lot of real leadership at the (Department of Education) to give us the guidance that would be necessary for superintendents and principals and educators,” she said.

“It’s a valid complaint confirmed by other administrators, but it also ignores the full-court defense Ritz has been forced to employ. She would benefit in a second term from appointing an unofficial cabinet of advisers – retired administrators and teachers who can suggest ways to improve procedures for local school districts, particularly in improving the state’s testing program.

“As a district superintendent, McCormick might be better prepared for administrative duties, but she is not prepared for the inevitable political forces. As of Wednesday, she had accepted more than $195,000 – more than two-thirds of her total contributions – from school choice advocates. Some are the same donors who backed Bennett four years ago. The same legislators responsible for laws harmful to public education will return to the Statehouse in January.

“To ensure the votes they cast in 2012 continue to protect Indiana’s public schools and place students first, Hoosiers should choose Ritz once again.”

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Indiana

This Is What You Need to Know About Mike Pence

By dianeravitch
September 27, 2016 //
16

Compared to Donald Trump, Mike Pence seems like a stable, moderate guy. He will be the steadying hand who keeps Trump from going off the tracks and doing crazy things. But you need to know more about Mike Pence, as seen by a constituent, Sheila Kennedy.

RFRA, Pence and Holcomb

“What has been interesting about having Indiana’s Governor Mike Pence on the national ticket has been the research on Indiana’s Governor being done by national media outlets.

“Here in Hoosierland, we know Pence as an avid culture warrior uninterested in the day-to-day administration of state agencies. We know him as an opponent of Planned Parenthood whose disinclination to authorize needle exchanges led to an HIV crisis in southern Indiana, as an adversary of public education responsible for diverting millions of dollars from the state’s public schools in order to provide vouchers for religious schools, and of course as the anti-gay warrior who cost the state economy millions of dollars by championing and signing RFRA.

“The national press has investigated Pence’s previous activities, both in Congress and as editor of the Indiana Policy Review, a (very) conservative publication. What they’ve found won’t surprise anyone who has followed Pence, but the research has confirmed that the Governor has certainly been consistent….

“For example–and despite his disclaimers of discrimination to George Stephanopolous and others–Out Magazine unearthed an earlier article advising employers not to hire LGBTQ folks, and describing homosexuality as a “pathological” condition:

““Homosexuals are not as a group able-bodied. They are known to carry extremely high rates of disease brought on because of the nature of their sexual practices and the promiscuity which is a hallmark of their lifestyle.”

“Another article, from December of 1993, was entitled “The Pink Newsroom” and argued that LGBTQ folks shouldn’t be allowed to work as journalists without being forced to identify themselves as gay publicly, since their LGBTQ status would surely create a conflict of interest when writing about politics.

“Other outlets have reported his efforts while in Congress to defund Planned Parenthood, his speeches warning against the use of condoms, his insistence that climate change is a “hoax,” and his longstanding support of creationism and denial of evolution.

“It’s highly likely that the Trump-Pence ticket will lose nationally in November, relieving Indiana voters of the task of defeating Pence at the polls. In his place, the GOP is running Eric Holcomb for Governor. Holcomb, it turns out, is pretty much a Pence clone. (The link has video from his meeting with the editorial board of the Indianapolis Star.)

“Eric Holcomb had his chance to distance himself from the economic disaster of Mike Pence’s RFRA legacy in Indiana.

“Instead, in a painful 4 minute answer to the Indianapolis Star editorial board, Holcomb doubled down on the same discrimination law that risked $250 million for state’s economy, and threw his weight behind Pence’s failed agenda.

“Holcomb has previously embraced all of Pence’s agenda.

“In November, we’ll see whether Hoosier voters have had enough of incompetence and theocracy, or whether we will vote to endure more of the same.

“This is a very strange political year.”

Categories Accountability, Indiana

Sheila Kennedy: Pence Shows His True Colors

By dianeravitch
August 2, 2016 //
29

Sheila Kennedy, professor of law at Indiana University, writes here about Mike Pence and his lapdog change of stripes since becoming Donald Trump’s veep candidate.

Pence drops his support for free trade and nuzzles Donald’s ear.

She writes:

Pence has always had close ties to ALEC and the Koch Brothers. Other positions he has taken since joining the Trump ticket, however, represent a dramatic change from previous postures. For example, Mr. Conspicuous Piety seems positively eager to support a twice-divorced, foul-mouthed, belligerent buffoon who models behaviors inconsistent with both the culture-war positions for which the Governor was previously known and the civility he actually practiced.

(Speaking of civility: For sheer chutzpah, its hard to top Pence’s recent criticism of Democrats for “name calling.” Psychiatrists have a word for that: projection.)

Categories ALEC, Indiana, Trump
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