IDOE

Teachers To State: New Licensing Rules Stinko (The Rochester Sentinel, 10/28/09)
(This article, by Christina M. Seiler, was originally published in The Rochester Sentinel on October 28, 2009.)

Roughly 200 educators converged at Rochester High School on Tuesday with this message to the Indiana Department of Education: We don't like your proposed new licensing rules.

Not one who spoke said they liked the proposed rules.

The comments will be passed along to the Indiana Professional Standards Board.

The rule-making process began in June and should be finished by June 2010, said Risa Regner, one of the Education Department representatives.

Nearly 100 people signed up to speak. Some left before doing so. Originally scheduled for 10 a.m. to noon, the hearing was continued after a lunch break and lasted until nearly 3 p.m.

The overwhelming message was that the changes would be bad for Indiana.

Speakers said the proposals would place more emphasis on content than pedagogy - the science of teaching - in the teacher licensing process, give administrators the ability to approve continuing education and thus license renewal, allow noneducators to become school administrators, and would change and reduce present licensing categories.

"REPA (Rules for Educator Preparation and Accountability) is a bad idea for Indiana schools," said northwest Indiana educator Greg Keen. "It will cheapen the quality of Indiana's educators. Allowing licenses without background in pedagogy and methodology will create more licenses."

He said half of Indiana's first-year teachers leave the profession within their first year. Teaching is a calling from the heart, he said. "Now we're having a conversation about dumbing down and devaluing public educators in the state of Indiana."

Said state Rep. Chuck Mosely, D-Portage, "Rather than making decisions for professional educators in this state, make decisions with professional educators in this state."

"I view teaching as a profession and these rules will take that away," said Cindy Fontaine, of Westville.

Many urged the Education Department to slow down and take its time.

"Students will see consequences of this, either intended and positive or unintended and negative," said Larry Stilton, president of the School City of Mishawaka board of trustees. "Real work must be accomplished through a number of collaborative sessions. Change is needed, and a long time coming, but let's get it right."

Indiana State Teachers Association Vice President Theresa Meredith asked for extended hearings so more teachers can testify without having to leave their classrooms.

Regner said those who can't attend a hearing - others follow in Scottsburg on Thursday and Indianapolis on Monday - may submit their comments via the Internet. There's a link on the Education Department's Web site, www.doe.in.gov.

Some common concerns from Monday's speakers:

Less pedagogy training

The proposed new rules emphasize teachers' content knowledge and call for elementary education major programs to include no more than 30 credit hours of pedagogy, minor programs to include no more than 18 hours and programs for secondary teachers to require a bachelor's degree consisting of a content major and education minor.

Debra Porter, Portage, noted today's classrooms are filled with diversified groups of students and teachers have to reach all of them. "Content knowledge is important but it's also important to be able to translate my knowledge to my students."

"We need to make sure our teachers have an understanding of child development, an understanding of child psychology. We need to know they have skills that allow them to use different teaching strategies with kids with diverse backgrounds, diverse needs," said Pat Pierce, Indiana Council of Administrators of Special Education.

Administrator control of licenses

The proposed rules give administrators more of a role in teachers' professional development. The building level supervisor could determine what type of training a teacher needs to renew their license.

Administrator control of licenses renewal concerns Mark McBride, of New Carlisle. "Will teachers be left scrambling at the last minute to get the hours they need to meet the principal's fancy?" he asked.

Carol Jones, Calumet, has 37 years of teaching experience. "Now, being an education specialist, I have been told I have not done enough. Why are you punishing me? Why should it be up to a principal who may or may not have a teaching license?" she said.

Jim Beard, a member of the faculty at Indiana-Purdue Fort Wayne, said giving administrators the ability to determine license renewal is a conflict of interest. "It will control teachers' ability to work in that building, and in the state of Indiana and in reciprocal states as well," he said.

Licensing changes

The proposed rules set three teacher licensing categories: prekindergarten through grade six, grades five to 12 and prekindergarten to grade 12.

Older elementary kids learn differently than preschoolers, and vice versa, said Christina VanAlsdahl. "Combining licensure will result in less qualified teachers. ... Compare the difference between 5-year-old and a 10-year-old," she said.

The rules will especially affect those with content-area licenses, like music, special education or family and consumer sciences, critics fear.

"When conversion takes place, the Department of Education will have to decide to eliminate content area, create a pile of licenses or give them a license in an area they're not required to teach," Beard said.

Alternative routes

The rules allow someone from outside the education field to become an administrator. Educators also talked about alternative routes into teaching.

"Being a successful engineer does not make you a good math teacher," said Joseph Shepherd, a novice music teacher. He believes the proposal will cause future teachers to cut corners. "I would never work for a school where the superintendent doesn't have a teaching license."

"A proposal that allows a school board to select a person of choice for a building principal is quite alarming," said state Rep. Vernon Smith, D-Gary.

The hearing draws fire

"It was wrong and intentional that these public hearings were held during an educator's work day," said Jason Zook, a South Bend seventh-grade science teacher and teachers' union president.

Teacher Steve McBride, Triton, agreed: "People who are having a lot of angst with this are people who are working right now."

He also called the Education Department to task for sending two of its panelists into the hallway to speak with the media. "You're basically telling people your half hour with the media is more important than your time with (us)."

Ulterior motives

And there was question about ulterior motives for the changes. Pat Walter, Crown Point, voiced it: "You doing this means there's something to gain elsewhere. I would appreciate it if you could put on your Web site what that is. There's something we don't know."

Education Trend Targets Training For Principals (IED, 5/22/10) - "It’s axiomatic in education these days that effective schools require effective principals...That’s why three Hoosier universities—Notre Dame, Marian and Indiana—are moving to launch programs that seek to apply MBA-style training—systemic thinking, change management, statistical analysis, etc.—to the unique demands of schools. 'What we’re looking at is, how do you create cultures, school cultures, that lead to high-quality outcomes?' said Lindan Hill, dean of education at Marian, a small Catholic college in Indianapolis...(T)he timing of these programs couldn’t be better in the eyes of Tony Bennett, Indiana’s superintendent of public instruction. He will have the power next year—for the first time in state history—to take over as many as 23 failing public schools and install new leadership to turn them around. 'Turnaround leaders are different kinds of leaders. We’re now looking at how we attract, how we train those types of leaders,' Bennett said..." (more)

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How Hard Is It To Fire A Public School Teacher, Really? (Indianapolis Business Journal, 11/7/10)
(This article, by J.K. Wall, was originally published in the Indianapolis Business Journal on November 6, 2010. Bold type and highlighting have been added by the Webmaster.)

Eugene White stunned education professionals this spring when he told Indiana schools chief Tony Bennett that 60 percent of teachers at five Indianapolis high schools were ineffective and should be dismissed.

But White, the superintendent of Indianapolis Public Schools, doesn’t blame the teachers—or their union contracts—for the mess. Instead, he blames IPS administrators.

“The teachers’ unions do get blamed for bad teachers,” he said. “But the real, real, real fact of the matter is that bad teachers exist because administrators fail to properly supervise them.”

White’s views point up a long-simmering debate about the perceived difficulty of firing teachers for poor performance. Teachers agree with White, saying the required process is rigorous but doable. At the other end of the spectrum, education reformers like Bennett say it’s nearly impossible and needs to be changed.

Some third-party studies find truth in both claims and say that cultural and political factors actually protect bad teachers more than laws and contracts.

The debate is anything but academic. With education reform sweeping the country—and with pro-reform Republicans poised to take control of the Indiana Legislature—the debate could lead to new laws about teacher tenure and job protections.

“Most of the times, their hands get tied by either the contract language or the statute language,” Bennett said of school administrators, whose ranks he was part of until he became Indiana’s superintendent of public instruction two years ago. “We have to take a look at the process used, and the complexity of the process, to really remove poor principals and poor teachers.”

Bennett won’t say whether teacher tenure is on his legislative agenda for 2011. But at the very least, he wants to change state law to allow teachers and principals to be evaluated—and rewarded or removed accordingly—based on students’ year-to-year growth on standardized tests.

“Once we have a consistent and fair way to evaluate educators, we should use those evaluations to reward, remediate and even remove teachers as appropriate,” Bennett said Aug. 23 in his “State of Education” speech. “For this reason, our legislative agenda will be aimed at recognizing and rewarding Indiana’s great teachers and school leaders.”

Bennett wants to use student scores to evaluate principals, as well. But his persistent focus on improving teacher quality—the central focus for just about every education reformer—makes many teachers feel like Bennett’s attacks on the tenure rules are aimed squarely at them.

“It feels like he’s on a witch hunt, and he sees all the teachers wearing pointy hats,” said Lou Schwitzer, a sixth grade teacher at IPS School No. 67.

Tenure debate

Teachers’ unions insist they have no tenure. But that’s only semantically true.

Tenure has been recognized in Indiana since 1927 beginning with the state Teacher Tenure Act, which created a “permanent” status level for teachers.

Permanent status comes after five years of experience, semi-permanent after two.

To fire a permanent or semi-permanent teacher for poor performance or incompetence, state statute requires schools to follow several steps:

1. Notify the teacher 30 to 40 days before the school board votes to dismiss.

2. Provide a written list of reasons for dismissal.

3. Offer to the teacher a right to a hearing within five days of the teacher’s request. At the hearing, the teacher can produce testimony, evidence and witnesses.

4. The superintendent must recommend whether or not to fire the teacher.

5. The board must approve the dismissal by a majority vote.

On top of those statutes, union contracts have requirements to ensure that teachers are dismissed only for “just cause.”

As an example, the contract at Washington Township Schools in Indianapolis includes an 11-page procedure for school administrators to follow in documenting teachers’ performance.

First, an administrator must work with the teacher on a performance-improvement plan. The administrator must identify specific performance expectations not being met, establish a “reasonable” time line for improvement, and determine the indicators that will show improvement.

Then, if the process yields no results, a teacher is placed on probation, called conditional status. Then an administrator must develop a more detailed plan for improvement, monitor the teacher more closely, and provide needed resources and support.

The administrator, also called the evaluator, must document that he or she has:

1. “forewarned the teacher that failure to correct deficiencies could lead to non-renewal of the contract.”

2. “made recommendations for corrective action and improvement.”

3. “provided assistance to the teacher to help in correcting deficiencies.”

4. “made classroom visitations or other observations and held follow-up conferences.”

Nate Schnellenberger, president of the Indiana State Teachers Association, the state’s largest teachers’ union, said the laws and contract provisions protect teachers from administrators who would fire teachers over personal dislike or some other subjective reason.

“Do they have to jump through some hoops? Yes. But that’s to protect against arbitrary administrators,” Schnellenberger said. “It’s a copout for a building administrator to say, ‘Oh it’s too hard or it’s too cumbersome.’”

Dismissal process

In their first two years, teachers can be dismissed relatively easily. And it’s in that early phase that school administrators say the real work must be done.

“A lot of administrators give people the benefit of the doubt and hang on to them,” said IPS’ White. “What we’re trying to do is, any time there is a concern with a teacher, if it’s a first- or second-year teacher, we don’t want that teacher coming back.”

Steve Baker, a principal at Bluffton High School near Fort Wayne, likes to start even earlier: during the hiring process. “Ten hours at the beginning of it can save 100 hours later,” he said.

But Baker acknowledged that the teacher evaluation process can be time-consuming. He oversees 30 teachers at his small high school and tries to make five observations of each teacher every year. With only 180 days in a school year, that means Baker has to do at least one classroom observation—which must be announced in advance—nearly every day.

“It can be done, but you have to work at it,” he said. “I can have a student walk into my office at 7:30 in the morning, and if there’s a situation, my whole day is consumed with that. Then I can’t get into classrooms and evaluate.”

In 12 years as a principal, Baker said, he has started the dismissal process with only two teachers. Both left before it was completed.

Teachers themselves are divided on the process for dismissing teachers.

Lou Schwitzer, the IPS teacher, supports the current procedures.

“The process that’s currently in place is designed to keep people from having a knee-jerk teacher dismissal,” he said. “If an administrator really feels that a teacher needs to go, they can move through that administrative procedure pretty quickly.”

But Mary Nolan, a language arts teacher at Shortridge Middle/High School Magnet for Law, Public Policy and Social Justice, said the system has its problems.

“I feel like that’s not the best system, and that the union sort of stands in the way of moving teachers out,” she said. “On the other hand, like in the charter school system [where teachers are not unionized], if a teacher crosses the administrator in the wrong way, she can be fired. That’s not a good system, either. There needs to be some middle ground.”

Many feel that Bennett’s system of injecting quantifiable measures into teacher evaluations—based on student test scores—would be the middle way Nolan is looking for. But she doesn’t see it that way.

“Anything that sets up a system where teachers are working against each other, or where they’re competing against each other, or where they’re not supporting each other, is a bad system,” she said. “Because teachers need each other.”

Timid administrators

Indeed, educators’ bent toward consensus and collaboration might be the biggest hurdle for reformers like Bennett, according to Rick Hess, an education policy analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C.

Hess conducted a study of the teachers’ union contracts in the 50 largest school districts in the country—none of which were in Indiana. What he found, however, echoed sentiments of Indiana education leaders: There’s more wiggle room in those contracts than is commonly believed.

What keeps administrators from exploiting that wiggle room is a combination of culture, politics and the training administrators go through.

“Partly, it’s the kind of people that come into education. People who are coming into it come with a gentle disposition,” Hess said.

But, Hess is quick to point out, there’s not as much room for maneuver as teachers’ unions like to make out. His point is that there’s enough room for aggressive administrators to accomplish what they want.

As one example, he points out Michelle Rhee, the former chancellor of public schools in Washington, D.C., who aggressively fired poor-performing teachers. To no surprise, Hess noted, firings almost always proves unpopular with parents and voters.

“There’s very little upside for a school or district leader to step up,” Hess said. “School boards don’t like superintendents who cause a ruckus. More aggressively removing teachers cannot be done calmly or peacefully with stakeholders.”

A more collaborative example might be the one White and the teachers’ union at IPS worked out. Over three to four years, they created a new process for teacher evaluation that White says can reduce the time it takes to dismiss a permanent teacher from 1-1/2 years to as little as one semester.

IPS rolled out the new teacher evaluation system this school year after pilot-testing it last year. White hopes it helps thin out ineffective teachers. But it will take time, he said, to turn around IPS’ poor evaluation practices of the past.

“Over the next two to three years, we hope to make substantial changes at the secondary level,” White said. “But when you talk about 15, 20, 25 or 30 years of good evaluations and then we turn around say, ‘No you’re not good, you’re incompetent,’ we have to prove that.”

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UPDATED "After School with Dr. Bennett" – Newspaper articles (11/23/10)(Updated 12/10/10)(Updated 12/16/10)

Currently State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tony Bennett, is in the midst of conducting regional meetings with educators and school board members from around Indiana. Among the topics being presented are: the growth model, educator evaluations and metrics for A-F grading as well as a Q&A. time.

Yesterday evening a session was held in Lafayette and reported on in today’s Lafayette paper. The entire article includes:
-During the meeting, Bennett stressed local control and his desire to divorce the federal No Child Left Behind law -- which he believes will not be reauthorized in 2011 -- from state accountability standards.
-Bennett also tried to alleviate concern over changes to teacher compensation, which he said he didn't anticipate being put in place until at least 2013. He said that the system would never base teacher compensation on just one instance of testing.

A session recently held in Seymour and reported on by the local paper included:
-Bennett reiterated several times that people must be open about reforms and listen to all ideas.
-Referring to merit-based teacher salaries and standards of gathering data, “Whether we want to admit it or not, it needs to change,” Bennett said. He added, “It hasn’t changed in 70 years.”
-In addition, targets for high schools will include 25 percent of graduating seniors having at least three college credits, having passed an AP or IB exam or having an industry certification.
-“There will not be an effort to repeal Public Law 217,” Bennett said firmly.
(Entire article)

Another session was held in Ft. Wayne and a local paper reported:
-Bennett spent more than an hour…talking about his latest initiatives, including developing a “growth model” that uses test scores to measure student improvement and his push to tie teacher evaluations to student growth as demonstrated on tests.
-During the presentation, Dayle Chu, a member of Bennett’s team, called for a “fundamental culture shift” in regard to teacher evaluations. He called most current teacher evaluation processes “infrequent, unfocused, undifferentiated, unhelpful and inconsequential” and urged districts to give annual evaluations of “significance.”
-While no such growth model exists at the high school level, Bennett hopes to have one in place for the 2014-15 school year.
(Entire article)

This evening a session is taking place in Indianapolis. It is assumed this will be reported tomorrow in the Indianapolis Star.

December 9th a session was held in Terre Haute and the local paper reported:
-“I am sorry to our good teachers who feel like they have been lumped in with bad teachers,” (Bennett) said. To those who believe they’ve been unfairly criticized, “I apologize from the bottom of my heart.”
-About 200 people, including teachers, school administrators and some community members, attended...
-Near the end, Vigo schools superintendent Dan Tanoos told Bennett he believes the state superintendent of public schools should be an advocate for public schools. “We need you to step up and make us feel like you are advocating on our behalf instead of against us,” said Tanoos, who received a standing ovation for this comments.
-Bennett said he views his role differently. He believes his job is to advocate for excellence, challenge the educational system to improve and to “go at those who are not performing.”
-He praised the accomplishments of the Vigo County School Corp. and Tanoos’ leadership, but he also said, “That’s not everywhere” and not all school districts are as successful.
-Bennett also acknowledged, “I’m just not a real warm and fuzzy guy.” He said he has a sign on his nightstand that says, “Gentle pressure, relentlessly applied, yields results.” That is his guiding philosophy, he said.
(Entire article)

December 14th a session was held in Evansville and the local paper reported:
-New systems of analysis for elementary, middle and high schools were proposed. Metrics from multiple years of data would be pulled, and emphasis would be given to both outright performance and growth, ultimately culminating in a letter grade for the school based on a four-point grade point average.
-The details of the systems are still being adjusted, but Jeffery Zaring, state board of education administrator and Bennett's primary policy adviser, said he expected substantial differences between the formulas used to assess high schools and middle and elementary schools.
-(Bennett) corrected confusion related to collective bargaining agreements. "There is no legislation we have written that repeals collective bargaining," he said. Bennett said he felt changes should be made, especially concerning seniority clauses. Ultimately, Bennett argued that changing times requires changes to education.
-Bennett's proposal will continue to be vetted across the state ahead of the upcoming session of the Legislature to solicit feedback.
-Although Bennett said he expects the changes to be uncomfortable or even difficult for some people, he expects the payoff to be worthwhile.
(Entire article)

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Have You Heard Indiana's Schools Are Failing? It's A Lie (Opinion, The Tribune-Star, 12/5/10)
(The following opinion by Stephanie Salter of the Terre Haute Tribune-Star was originally published December 5, 2010. Bold type and highlighting have been added by the Webmaster.)

TERRE HAUTE — In Gov. Mitch Daniels’ recent state budget PowerPoint, he put up a comparison chart: The percentage of Indiana public school students who’ve attained an advanced level of math achievement versus “the world.” Hoosiers lag behind the national average, trailing such states as Massachusetts, Oregon and New York, and such nations as Poland and Latvia.

The chart is just the sort of pithy and memorable comparison the governor and his state superintendent of schools favor in their ongoing public relations campaign for radical education reform. Never mind that the chart’s data are from 2006, that Indiana is flanked by Kansas and Delaware and trailed by many other states, or that Latvia and Poland have different testing benchmarks.

Never mind, especially, that current Hoosier students are doing better than the U.S. average in regular-level mathematics.

The chart is typical of Daniels’ and Superintendent Tony Bennett’s modus operandi: Pick out the flaws and weak points — or at least those that appear flawed and weak without real context — and offer them, repeatedly, as representative of a public education system Bennett calls a “mess” and compares to the BP oil spill.

It is a shrewd and effective strategy because education measurement — on which consensus is often patchy — is all about context. Accurate measurements are based on decades of analyses and bona fide comparisons of similar systems, not sound bites or apples-to-ice-skates match-ups. They take time to present and are mind numbing to non-educators.

To compound the task, legislative majorities, governors, presidents and U.S. secretaries of education come and go, and education standards shift accordingly in the political winds. Measurement standards are a moving target and differ among states and the feds.

If Daniels and Bennett want to persuade the public that Indiana students are dismally behind such states as Florida — with all its charter schools — in reading, it’s simple: They pull out a sliver of a National Assessment of Educational Progress report, focus on scores for fourth-graders and pronounce Hoosier kids’ efforts “stagnant” because the report shows that the percentage of Indiana fourth-graders who’ve managed basic reading levels has hovered between 64 and the current 70 percent since 1992, while Florida’s percentage has zoomed.

Never mind (again) that the entire national percentage is not only lower than Indiana’s, but also it’s “stagnant.” Never mind that Indiana’s eighth-graders out-performed the nation’s eighth-graders — and Florida’s — in reading.

When Daniels and Bennett speak of Indiana’s diverse, 292-district school system, they often use the kind of terms (and propose the kind of remedies) that apply to genuinely broken urban districts such as Baltimore, which had to choose radical reform in 2007 to rescue its failing system.

In truth, Indiana schools are “in the middle of the pack,” according to Terry Spradlin, director for education policy at the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy at Indiana University. “This is not a failing system,” he said.

Low-keyed, objective and overflowing with data from CEEP analyses, Spradlin knows a ton about Indiana public education and its place in America. He articulates the system’s problems and strengths. Of unproven reforms he cautions, “We have to be careful and not go too far … Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. We’re not awful. We’re not bad. We’re mediocre to good.”

Most people agree that Hoosier schools can and should improve, Spradlin said, “The debate is always about how to drive school reform — and the debate will go on. There is not one silver bullet, not one panacea.”

Another alleged outrage offered by Indiana critics are “ghost students,” no longer enrolled in their former schools but costing Hoosier taxpayers $94 million last year. If you look no further than Bennett’s version of the story, you wonder who should be sent to jail first. But there is method in the seeming madness of “de-ghosting” the ghosts.

The process was adopted years ago to help schools and school districts in poorer areas absorb the funding shock from students who leave — for example, as a neighborhood’s fortunes go south or when a big factory shuts down and scatters families. Rather than cease the funding for a lost student or students — and negatively affect the courses and activities the diminished school can offer — de-ghosting spreads the pain over a period of years in districts serving the highest levels of students in poverty. First it was five years, now it’s three.

Maybe the practice is outdated or needs to be retooled, but that is not Daniels’ and Bennett’s approach. They offer it — without its history, intent and built-in limits — as a glaring example of the mindless waste that supposedly permeates the current school system.

Lies and statistics

To understand why it is so difficult for people who work within public education to defend against sound-bite vilification, one only need study numerous reports and performance analyses, as I have done since opening the door to this subject a couple of weeks ago.

Added to the alphabet soup of IEP, AYP, ISTEP+, NAEP and ACT is a disorienting landscape of shadowy numbers, the world Alice found down the rabbit hole. Take the subject of “student instructional expenditures.”

Daniels and Bennett want the Legislature to require all Indiana school corporations to increase the percentage of those expenditures — the money spent in the classroom — from 61 percent to 65.

Sounds so reasonable and easy to execute, doesn’t it? Which is exactly how Daniels has presented his modest proposal.

“Only 61 cents of every dollar spent in our schools makes it to the classroom, even under liberal interpretation of what counts,” he said two years ago, when first proposing the idea. “Each one percent of improvement would mean over $100 million new dollars to hire more teachers, pay them better, make class sizes smaller, reduce the cost of textbooks, and so on. That’s a huge opportunity, and we must seize it.”

Who could argue with that?

Well, the Indiana Association of School Business Officials could, and for good reason. The IASBO is made up of the chief financial officers and other numbers crunchers in the state’s school districts. A detailed association position paper not only took issue with Daniels’ “only 61 cents” condemnation, but it pointed out that redirecting money from the state’s other education expenditure areas would be, largely, illegal.

Once again, some context is necessary.

There are four spending categories for public schools: Student Academic Achievement; Student Academic Support; Overhead and Operational; and Nonoperational.

The first two categories include money for teachers and aides, instructional materials, textbooks, principals, attendance monitoring, social workers, counselors for guidance, health and psychological issues, speech pathology, audiology and curriculum development, among other things. Money for these two categories is what Daniels means when he refers to what “makes it to the classroom.”

However, the other two categories, Overhead and Operational and Nonoperational, include some things that are fairly crucial to an education: The operation and maintenance of school facilities, security, pupil transportation, food services, technology, school district budgeting, payroll, accounting, acquisition and construction of new facilities, non-teaching equipment and debt service obligations.

As the IASBO report makes clear, state law prohibits most of the money in the latter two categories from being pulled out and shifted to “the classroom.” Further, the latter two categories are still funded through property tax revenues, which no longer may be used to fund the first two instructional/classroom categories. Change the law to allow monies to be shifted from the latter to the former, and you’ll have to make up the void in the latter with additional property tax levies.

Also, for the record, the percentage of monies spent “in the classroom” that is taken from the Special Education Preschool Fund and from what is, by far, the biggest education funding pool — the schools’ General Fund — is 85 percent, not 61 percent. The governor chose to use the low-ball figure even though it’s based on all funding pools, including those that can’t be shifted to the classroom.

You’re exemplary but you fail

Finally, here is an astounding but common example of what public school teachers and administrators are up against in the propaganda war declared upon them. Cinda Taylor, the principal of Terre Town Elementary School, wrote to me last week about the Kafkaesque Catch-22 created for her school by Congress’ controversial Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) standards and those of Indiana Statewide Testing for Educational Progress (ISTEP+).

Taylor’s reference to “P.L. 221” regards Public Law 221, passed in 1999, which made ISTEP scores the dictator of all things good and bad for Indiana public schools.

“Terre Town Elementary is considered by the federal government of the United States of America as a ‘failing’ school or ‘on improvement,’ based on the spring ISTEP+ results,” Taylor wrote. “Our school made AYP in every category except Special Education (English/Language Arts and Math). Recently, we received our P.L. 221 category placements based on the spring ISTEP+ results. In actuality, Terre Town Elementary School’s scores fall into the Exemplary Progress category, however, our placement has been capped! Due to our Special Ed. subgroup not meeting the [federal] target scores, the state says we cannot be placed in any category higher than Academic Progress due to our AYP results at the Federal level … How can a school be considered ‘Exemplary’ at the state level and ‘Failing’ at the federal level because of one subgroup? (Please keep in mind the same scores from ISTEP+ are being used to calculate both classifications.)”

If you got lost in the alphabet soup, this is how Taylor and her staff were sabotaged:

Congress says a specific percentage of a school’s students must pass the school’s state measurement test (ISTEP+ in Indiana) or be designated “failing” or “on improvement.” The test pool includes any “subgroups” of 30 or more kids, such as an ethnic minority, recent immigrants who don’t speak English, or special education students who are cognitively disabled. This year, the federal pass percentage is 72 in English, 71 in math.

Everybody but the special education students at Terre Town excelled, scoring in the 90-percent-range Exemplary category on ISTEP. But the school’s overall federal success was doomed when less than 72 percent of scores from its large group of special ed kids was passing.

That’s the Kafka. Here’s the Catch 22: Indiana law says that if a school’s federal AYP mark is not met, then it doesn’t matter how well most of the student body performed on ISTEP. The entire school cannot be rated any higher than dead center, or “Academic Progress.” Next year, when the new Tony Bennett labeling system of A,B,C,D or F replaces Exemplary, Academic Progress, etc., all of Terre Town’s hard work and high ISTEP scores would rate it nothing more than a C.

Taylor closed her note: “It is absolutely heart wrenching to see my staff in tears upon hearing the AYP results!!!! They work diligently to provide quality educational experiences for our students. Is it logical to classify a school as ‘failing’ because our Special Education students cannot meet the same target scores as a student in the regular classroom?”

As I delve deeper into the world of public education measurement, I see that logic often has no bearing at all on what is done to the system in the name of “the children.”

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Indiana Third-Graders To Be Held Back If They Can't Read (Richmond Palladium-Item, 2/9/11)

"INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — The state Board of Education approved a plan that would require third-graders to pass a new reading test before being promoted to the fourth grade.

Gov. Mitch Daniels is expected to approve the plan the board endorsed Tuesday, according to the Indianapolis Star. If approved, it would take effect for students finishing third grade in the spring of 2013. Daniels pushed for the end of so-called 'social promotion' of third-graders in his State of the State address last year...

...A new statewide third grade reading test will be a new test developed by the same company that produces the ISTEP statewide exams. About a third of third grade students fail the English and language arts ISTEP test each year, but the new exam will be designed with the expectation that all students who can read will pass the test...

...Under provisions adopted by the board Tuesday, students who do not pass the test on the first try could attempt the test again during locally-offered summer school, and could move to fourth grade if they pass on that attempt. All students would have to pass the exam to advance unless they qualified for one of the plans’ three exemptions: one for special education students, one for English language learners and one for students that have been retained twice prior to fourth grade.

School districts won’t get any extra money to implement the changes. State education officials say districts may have to reallocate money to focus on reading if they struggle to get students to pass the exams, but don’t know the exact amount that could be shifted...

...The board’s reading proposal applies all schools that have students in kindergarten through third grade, including charter schools." (more)

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(Muncie) Central High School Slammed In IDOE Report; Principal Chris Smith Reassigned (The Star Press, 2/20/11)
(This article, by Reporter Michelle Kinsey, was first published on Thursday, February 17, 2011 in the The Star Press of Muncie, IN. Bold type and highlighting have been added by the Webmaster.)

MUNCIE -- Unacceptable.

That word was used to describe Central High School's overall performance in a Quality Review, conducted by the Indiana Department of Education.

The 20-page report was based on a two-day visit by the IDOE and was delivered to school administrators last week...

...Leadership, or the lack of it at Central, was one of the issues highlighted in the review. "Muncie Central is a building that is managed, not led," the report noted.

But that wasn't the school's main issue.

Discipline.

That, the report stated, "is the number one issue cited by school personnel and students in focus groups, in classrooms, and in informal interviews in the hallways."

"Data clearly shows that the techniques, policies, and consequences around school discipline are ineffective," the report claimed...

...Smith, in the report, said that the school deals with an average of 64 discipline referrals each day. So far this school year, Smith estimated that there have been 138 out-of-school suspensions and 1,136 in-school suspensions...

..."That school has a lot of work to do," said LeeAnn Kwiatkowski, director of School Turnaround at IDOE. "We are looking at substantial change, not just dancing around the edges." Kwiatkowski spearheaded the team that visited Central in December. The visit stemmed from the school's Public Law 221 (PL221) results. PL221 is the state's accountability system for K-12 education. Based on those results, in November Central was given the state's worst designation -- "academic probation" -- for the fourth year in row, which triggers the IDOE to send a technical assistance team in for review...

...The subsequent quality review report -- the IDOE has conducted 27 since implementing the visits last school year -- then focuses on the strengths and areas for improvement relative to three areas: readiness to learn, readiness to teach and readiness to act. In each domain, a school is given one of four overall ratings -- unacceptable, poor, fair or acceptable. And in each area, Central's readiness was deemed unacceptable. In addition to leadership and discipline, the school was stamped unacceptable in the areas of addressing the needs of at-risk students; communicating with parents; innovative classroom instruction; monitoring teacher performance, and fostering community partnerships... (more)

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104 Schools In 2012 Could Be Eligible For State Takeover If...; Parents In 236 Schools In 2012 Could Petition For State Takeover If... (11/30/11)
(The above title is by the Webmaster. The following article is by Vic Smith, a lifelong Hoosier, who has been an educator in Indiana since 1969. He has served as a social studies teacher, curriculum developer, state research and evaluation consultant, state social studies consultant, district social studies supervisor, assistant principal, principal, and educational association staff member. He has worked for Garrett-Keyser-Butler Schools, the Indiana University Social Studies Development Center, the Indiana Department of Education, the Indianapolis Public Schools, IUPUI, and the Indiana Urban Schools Association, from which he retired as Associate Director in 2009. He holds three degrees: B.A. in Ed., Ball State University, 1969; M.S. in Ed., Indiana University, 1972; and Ed.D., Indiana University, 1977, along with a Teacher's Life License and a Superintendent's License, 1998.)

Vic’s Statehouse Notes #95– November 16, 2011

Dear Friends,

The astounding news from the November 7th State Board of Education meeting is that East Noble High School, North Daviess Jr-Sr High School, and Huntington North High School could be eligible for state takeover if they get a D or an F in 2012, along with many others.

Also on the same potential takeover list are Concord Junior High School, Mitchell Junior High School, and Jennings County Middle School.

As are Sunman Dearborn Middle School, Southwestern Middle School in Tippecanoe County, and North Harrison High School. All three of these schools appear on my “Don’t Deserve a D” list, because they scored above 75% on the tests (80% is a B) and they showed positive year-to-year improvement.

Dozens of other schools are suddenly on the bubble for state takeover as well.

What’s going on here?

The State Board of Education passed near the end of the November 7^th agenda an unpublicized, eye-popping proposed rule. If confirmed after public hearings, it would make 104 schools in 76 districts eligible for state takeover if they get a D or F in 2012.

This is overreach.

In the past week, Libby Cierzniak and John Ellis have sent out alerts to this new initiative which would speed up state takeovers. Let me add my voice to this concern.

I will defer my concerns about the state board A-F model with its highly questionable quotas for high growth to the next edition of Statehouse notes. In this message, I will focus on the effort to fast-track eligibility for state takeover.

Here are the details of a proposed rule which should be of concern to all advocates of public education.

LSA Document #11-562

After a lengthy discussion and passage of the new version of rules to give schools letter grades, Jim Larson presented another set of proposed rules. The agenda simply identified the item as “Approval of proposed amendments to 511 IAC 6.2-8 and 6.2-9”. Of the seven proposed rule changes on the agenda, this proposal was the only one that had not been available to the public prior to the meeting. Therefore what rolled out was a surprise to me and to many others.

Jim Larson is the Director of School Turnaround and Improvement in the IDOE. He said that they have been trying to “meaningfully intervene” in 5% of the schools in alignment with statements made by Secretary of Education Duncan, and now they are looking at the next 6% to 10% of schools. He said they “need to get at more schools.” He said the new proposed rules would provide a “shorter timeline.” State intervention could occur after a school is rated F in four consecutive years (instead of six) or after “any combination of 5 years of D or F”. He said the rules contained a “parent trigger” which would allow parents to petition for state intervention after a school has received an F for two years. Then he said the rules would specify that after schools complete the turnaround process they would become “independent schools” to be run by a seven-member board.

After his brief description, Dr. Bennett called for a motion to approve the rule proposal. It was approved in a unanimous voice vote with no questions or discussion by state board members.

Yes, you read this correctly. There were no questions or comments by state board members.

Speeding up the state invention process, the essential concept of this rule, was proposed in the 2009 General Assembly, but legislators rejected the idea. In that session, the House and the Senate were led by different parties. In the 2011 session, when Republicans had large majorities in both Houses, another bill to fast track state intervention in PL221 failed to pass the General Assembly.

Now, without benefit of legal authority, Dr. Bennett is trying it again through the rule-making process. The law still reads that the process to state intervention will be six years. Apparently, Dr. Bennett believes that the 2012 General Assembly will change the law to allow intervention after four years, and by starting the rule-making process now, the rules can be passed and in place in time to intervene in the additional schools by next August.

How many additional schools will be affected? Libby Cierzniak ran the data after the November 7^th meeting and here are the results:

· 104 schools in 76 school corporations will be eligible for state intervention if they get a D or F in 2012. The list is attached.

· Parents in 236 schools in 124 school corporations could petition for immediate state intervention if the school gets a D or F in 2012. That list is also attached as the second part of the file with the first list.

· Some reports say the proposal wouldn’t affect 2012 but would take effect in 2013. While nothing in the proposed rule indicates a delay to 2013, this slower timeline would put 131 schools in 87 school corporations on the state intervention bubble if they get a D or F in 2012 and 2013. This list is attached separately.

Making a D no better than an F

To me, the huge impact of this proposal is that getting a D has been effectively equated to getting an F. A five category system has been reduced to four. D schools that never make an F could now be subject to state takeover.

And is the grading distribution fair? Do all D schools actually deserve a D?

· The newly proposed A-F rules would give D’s and F’s to 24% of Indiana’s schools.

· At the high school level, the new grading plan gives D’s and F’s to 16%.

These results were announced during the November 7^th state board meeting. Results at the elementary and middle school level were not announced, but applying our beloved algebra tells us that if the high school count is 16% (of 389 schools) and the statewide count is 24% (of 1842 schools), then the elementary/middle school count getting D’s and F’s is 26%. Are Indiana’s elementary and middle schools 10% worse than our high schools, or is the grading scale flawed?

Last year’s grades gave D’s and F’s to 20% of Indiana’s schools. Have we declined this year, or should we doubt the grading scale?

When Dr. Bennett advocated that Indiana give letter grades to schools in the spring of 2010, he used Florida as his model. Florida at that time gave D’s and F’s to 7% of its schools. Are Indiana’s schools that much worse than Florida’s, or is our grading scale flawed?

Actually, objective data can answer that question. National Assessment (NAEP) data clearly show that Indiana students outscore Florida students on 4^th and 8^th grade math and on 8^th grade reading. Indiana schools should not be demeaned compared to Florida, and our schools should not be graded worse than Florida’s schools.

This looks to me like a statistical method to expedite more schools, as many as 10% of our schools as stated in the meeting, into the state takeover pipeline. The end in sight is to give more private corporations contracts as turnaround operators of public schools. This path of privatization does not have a proven track record in other states, has a slow start in the first three months in Indiana, and should not be fast-tracked in Indiana.

Here is the irony of the week: Dr. Bennett went to Guion Creek Middle School on November 14^th to honor Wilson Reyes, winner of this year’s coveted Milken Award. I’m guessing that Dr. Bennett did not discuss the state board’s November 7^th actions on this proposed rule as he addressed the school staff. You see, Guion Creek Middle School is on the list of schools that could be eligible in 2012 or 2013 for state takeover.

Join the Indiana Coalition for Public Education

The Indiana Coalition for Public Education stands in support of public education. We need every advocate for public education to stand with us. We have established a legal fund to receive donations for legal costs related to fighting private school vouchers in court. Please join us and please consider adding a donation to the legal fund on the form below. We need every taxpayer who supports public education to be in our membership. Thanks!

Best wishes,

Vic Smith    vic790@aol.com

WE NEED YOUR HELP NOW!       We oppose new laws that---

·         allow your tax dollars to be diverted from public school students to fund tuition for religious schools, now challenged as unconstitutional in a lawsuit.
·         allow for-profit companies to take over public schools.
·         allow tax breaks for home school textbooks but not for public school texts.

Join the INDIANA COALITION FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION

THE ICPE IS A BIPARTISAN NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION OPPOSING SCHOOL VOUCHERS AND PRIVATIZATION.

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"Mission Statement - Caston School Corporation is committed to providing each student with the knowledge, skills, and abilities to function as tomorrow's exceptional citizens. Teachers, administrators, staff, and the at-large community are dedicated to seeing that the students develop to their full academic, vocational, and personal potential in order that they may take pride in themselves, their accomplishments, and their school. It is our goal that each individual at Caston School Corporation will do his/her utmost to teach, assist, counsel, and encourage one another in making our school the best center for a lifetime of learning."
(Policy # 2105)