It looks like former Indiana and current Florida schools chief Tony Bennett's career is not going to survive reports that, during his time in Indiana, he raised the grade of a charter school run by a major Republican donor from a C to an A.
Bennett is reportedly resigning Thursday.
The effort to raise the charter school's grade was not subtle:
Emails obtained by The Associated Press show Bennett and his staff scrambled last fall to ensure influential donor Christel DeHaan’s school received an “A,” despite poor test scores in algebra that initially earned it a “C.”
“They need to understand that anything less than an A for Christel House compromises all of our accountability work,” Bennett wrote in a Sept. 12 email to then-chief of staff Heather Neal, who is now Gov. Mike Pence’s chief lobbyist.
That's right, "accountability" here meant artificially raising the grade of a school that represented the policies Bennett was pushing and that was run by a Republican donor. That's about the speed of corporate education "reform" efforts.
Bennett's time in Indiana was cut short by the voters last November, but as is so often the case, he arguably failed upward, being hired by Florida to be the state's education commissioner. And there's a decent chance that, after he keeps a low profile for a while, he'll reemerge with a new job pushing the same old policies.
Just because Bennett is resigning doesn't mean this story is over. Sign the petition demanding the Indiana attorney general investigate former Indiana schools Superintendent Tony Bennett for changing the grade of a charter school for his donors.