Unlike many in politics here in Purplest Indiana, our Republican Governor, Mitch Daniels, is not an idiot. All right, I'm sorry, not a complete, total, 100% copper-bottomed idiot. This distinguishes him from the national Republicans, and evidently disqualifies him from running for President, as many had hoped he would do.
Why do I say that he is not a complete idiot? Because he has a few, very few, actual ideas about helping the people of Indiana and doing something about its long-term economic prospects. In one word: education.
Not just more of No Child's Behind Left, although there is that. Not just cutting taxes for schools, although there is that, too. Not just more Tea Party trash talk, although there is that, too.
Hmm, damned with faint praise, isn't he? Well follow, follow, and see for yourself.
On The Issues rates Gov. Daniels 70% Conservative on economic issues, and 40% Liberal (=60% Conservative) on social issues. This places him as far Left as a Conservative can be, by their definitions, which is also as far Right as a Moderate can be. Antediluvian on civil rights, crime & punishment, taxes, guns, religion, but progressive on renewable energy (except for supporting "clean" coal fantasy), including jobs. Moderate for a Republican on abortion, allowing it for rape, incest, or medical danger.
Gov. Mitch Daniels explains his plans for education in Indiana
With sizeable Republican majorities in both houses of the Indiana General Assembly, Gov. Mitch Daniels has the opportunity to push an ambitious education agenda. His proposals, outlined below, include rewarding teachers based on how well the kids do; measuring schools and systems based on their performance for the kids; and empowering parents to make the educational choices they think best for their kids.
The teachers' unions are against performance-based pay, because there are too many ways to fiddle the measurements. Do teachers assigned to the best classes automatically get paid more, and all teachers in underperforming schools get paid less? This has happened far too often. In fact, super-performing teachers like Jaime Escalante routinely get fired. How about special needs teachers? Does this principle apply to gym teachers? (Not until fitness gets into the NCLB tests, along with art, music, history, civics,...)
Principals? Superintendents? School boards? The Governor? The Legislature? I didn't think so.
We could discuss a rational method of basing pay on multiple measures of real performance. The questions to be asked could include results relative to other teachers with comparable classes and resources, or greatest improvements in student performance overall, or with emphasis on those furthest behind. If we were talking about real measures of student achievement, not NCLB. If there were anybody to have a rational discussion with.
Parental choice is long-established code for keeping children away from any other children with infectious cooties of the body or mind, including any and all oppressed minorities, immigrants, Darwinists, Feminists, Gays, and Libruls in general. You can't do all of that overtly any more, but there are more subtle methods for keeping people "in their place" and suppressing dissent.
Way back in the 1960s I attended a half-white, half-black high school, Weequahic High School in Newark, NJ. It was once one of the best schools in the country, then became one of the worst, and has lately come back under Principal Ronald Stone. There is a documentary you can get on DVD about the whole history, called Heart of Stone.
I mention this because at the time I attended WHS, there were many half-white, half-black classes (but not Advanced Placement classes, where I remember precisely one Black student), which were nevertheless totally segregated. Black students, even though sitting mixed in with White students, knew better than to open their mouths unless explicitly called on by one of the White teachers. Black/White friendships were OK in the neighborhood, at least on your own block, but not cool in school. Forget dating.
A wave of change and reform has finally begun moving across American public education. Across the political spectrum from President Obama rightward, people now agree that our children must learn much more than they are learning now, and that major change is necessary to enable them to do so. Only the most selfish special interests still insist on defending the status quo.
Note the standard slur on President Obama, that there is nobody to his Left.
Special interests: more code, in this case for teachers and of course Libruls with their Secular Humanist, Darwinist, Gay agenda whowantAmericatofail.
Note the completely ahistorical narrative, ignoring more than two centuries of political and education reform in the US since Thomas Jefferson and even before, and the decades since other countries outside Europe first pulled ahead in one area or another, most famously the Sputnik surprise.
Indiana has led the nation in many areas lately. Fiscal responsibility, a pro-growth business climate, property tax reduction and infrastructure are good examples,
Bad examples, that is, once you penetrate the code and check the facts. A "pro-growth business climate" in Republicanspeak is one that is pro-corporate, pro-rich, anti-consumer, anti-labor, and anti-taxpayer. Fiscal responsibility and tax reduction are mutually exclusive in this economy.
Indiana just passed a property tax limitation amendment to its Constitution, similar to California's infamous Prop. 13. However, schools are no longer supported from property taxes, but from state general revenues. Which are also being cut. And Indiana is one of only three states that charge students rent for textbooks.
As for infrastructure, let us examine Indiana's report card. Oog. No, let's not. Bridges, dams, roads, drinking water, wastewater, yuck. A billion dollars here, four billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money that we can't invest because of people who hate "spending" that might help someone else.
but we can make no such claim about K-12 education. Only one in three Hoosier eighth-graders is able to pass the national reading and math tests; if we compare their scores to those of children in foreign countries, they look even worse.
It's not that we have made no headway. We have doubled the number of our 5-year-olds with access to full-day kindergarten, although a quarter still do not have it.
Look, people, the Governor just gave you an arithmetic problem that many of you can't solve! According to his figures, how many children had "access" to full-day kindergarten before this change?
And how many took advantage of that "access", that is, how many were in kindergarten, and how many are now? Can't work that out by arithmetic. You have to know where to look up the numbers. (Hint: Google is your friend.) This turns out to be old news.
The Indiana General Assembly increased the state grant funds for full-day kindergarten from $8.5 million for 2006/07 to $33.5 million for 2007/08. Following the increase in funding, the Indiana Department of Education and the Indiana State Board of Education requested assistance from Regional Educational Laboratory Midwest to analyze Indiana administrative data so that the agencies could report to the legislature on changes in full-day kindergarten enrollment and funding. This technical brief describes Indiana’s full-day kindergarten enrollment patterns before and after the legislation (in 2006/07 and 2007/08) both in the state at large and in individual school corporations (equivalent to school districts) for all kindergarten students and disaggregated by student and school characteristics.
Snapshots of Indiana's Full-Day Kindergarten Programs Before and After the State's Funding Increase for the Program
Bah! Bureaucratic bafflegab.
Statewide enrollment in full-day kindergarten increased from 41 percent of kindergarten students in 2006/07 to 61 percent in 2007/08.
In 2006/07 Indiana enrolled 79,516 kindergarten students, 32,356 of them in fullday kindergarten. In 2007/08 it enrolled 76,171 kindergarten students, 46,409 of them in fullday kindergarten.
"Doubling of access" by quadrupling funding thus results in only 20% added to real enrollment.
We have strengthened the ability of teachers and principals to maintain classroom discipline by immunizing them from lawsuits. We have ended the "social promotion" of third-graders who cannot read to the fourth grade and almost certain failure in high school and life.
But not the failure of the third grade itself, which has no excuse for not teaching reading adequately.
But we are behind other states in modernizing the basic structure of education, and the almost dictatorial limits it places on principals, the best teachers and parents. 2011 is the year we can redesign K-12 education around the children and their learning rather than the interests of adults and "the system."
We must have rules for bad teachers, but leave the good teachers free of all restraint. Because lack of restraint always has such good results.
More code. Deregulation good! No, new regulations good! Adults bad! Parents good! System bad! Teachers bad! No, only bad teachers bad! Good teachers good! Politicians good! No, only Republican politicians good! Doubleplusgood!
Comedy. Yes.
I have encountered some bad teachers in my life, but none who were incapable of teaching well. Rather than punish teachers and students for the failures of our teacher education system, perhaps we could discuss improving teacher education, and also remediation for teachers who missed out on it.
The framework for truly student-centered education in Indiana includes:
Effective teachers
If there is one fact that every expert and all the data confirm, it is that the single most important predictor of a child's academic success is the quality of the teachers he or she encounters. Routinely, 99 percent of Indiana teachers are rated as "effective," but student outcomes and common sense tell us this cannot be true.
We have never either evaluated or rewarded our teachers based on the only question that matters: Did the children learn and grow?
In Indiana, teachers receive more money and more job security based on methodological credentials and seniority, not on whether the children in their classes actually progress. Amazingly, and embarrassingly, our schools have been prohibited by state law from considering student achievement as even one factor in teacher evaluations.
This must change, now. We must join the many other states requiring that student progress be a major factor in deciding what a teacher is paid, and which teachers will enjoy the greatest job protection. Our best teachers must be paid more, and be able to earn their tenure based on performance, not just by living an extra year.
Yes, dammit! No Teacher's Behind Left, either.
Accountability and flexibility
Starting next spring, the State Board of Education will move to a simple A through F rating system for each Hoosier school, something every parent and taxpayer can understand instead of the gobbledygook labels of the past. Also in 2011, the worst schools in the state, those that have failed the most dismally for six straight years, will be transferred to new management. At long last, accountability for student results is coming.
The record of putting schools under new management is mixed at best. Who are the new managers? What are their stated goals? What are the actual political goals? What are the rules? Who has oversight? Do they do anything with it?
But as we begin to hold schools responsible, it is only fair that local school boards, superintendents and principals be given full flexibility to run their schools in whatever ways they believe can produce better results.
In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made School Boards.
Mark Twain, Following the Equator; Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar
Today, statutes, regulations and contracts tell school leaders how many fire drills they must have, when and how long faculty meetings are permitted to be, the color the teachers' lounge must be painted, who can collect lunch money or monitor recess, and so on.
I have directed the state board to repeal any mandate or paperwork requirement not directly related to student learning, and we will ask the legislature to do likewise regarding the many laws we have piled on schools over the decades.
Freedom for families
It is not merely bad policy, it is heartless and cruel, that we dictate to parents what school their child must attend.
No, it is only heartless and cruel to provide schools that are so unequal. Most parents would prefer that the choice not matter, and that they could send their children to the neighborhood school without fear.
Anyway, we only dictate to the poor which schools they must attend. The prosperous can move to a better school district, and the rich can send their children to private schools.
In the explosive new movie "Waiting for Superman," poor parents weep when their children's name is not drawn in a lottery for scarce slots in a charter school.
Wider options have begun to come to Indiana. When our property tax cuts of 2008 moved school operating costs entirely to the state budget, removing them completely from the property tax, it meant that a new student seeking to transfer from a different school district would bring with him or her the same amount of money as any existing enrollee.
It has been fascinating to watch school districts put up billboards and send direct mail ads into nearby areas touting their higher test scores or graduation rates and competing for new students.
We need to extend our parents' freedom of choice. Special interests have worked for years to choke off the growth of charter schools; it is time to take the wraps and the handcuffs off.
Here's another new option we should provide. A high percentage of today's high-schoolers finish, or could finish, their graduation requirements well before the end of 12th grade. As I talk with seniors on my school visits, they often tell me candidly that they are just marking time. We should offer students who choose to complete graduation requirements ahead of time the money, or most of it, we would have spent on their senior year, so long as they use it for some form of higher education.
When we asked today's students their opinion of such a new choice, 73 percent said they approved. At a time when college is so expensive, it's no wonder.
[sigh] All right, I lied. Daniels has one, count it, one good idea on education. But he did have a hand in transferring school funding from property taxes to the state budget, which has equalized funding. It removes much of the lingering basis for Separate but Unequal.
Our state's future prosperity depends greatly on major improvements in today's educational attainment. It's really the only factor for which we get a low mark when the experts size up the most promising states for new jobs. But in the end, this is not about economic or material goals; it's about the duty we have to see that all young Hoosiers get the chance they deserve in life. Let 2011 be the year Indiana goes from the back row to the head of the class in putting children at the center of our educational efforts.
If only. It is not only death and taxes that are certain in this life. There is also political bloviation.
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.—H. L. Mencken
You can't test in quality at the end.—IBM
DISCLOSURE: I work in education, on things like Free Software and Free, GPL or Creative Commons licensed digital learning materials. I am promoting the idea that netbook computers now cost less than printed textbooks, so we should convert completely, thus improving education and saving money at the same time.
It would be a no-brainer, except that the Right isn't actually interested in saving money, just in complaining when it is spent to help those they don't approve of. Equal education for all, with all students, even (gasp) furriners(!), having equal electronic access to each other, is the last thing they want to hear about.