From Christel House, an Indiana charter shool's
website:
The Academy is recognized by the Indiana Department of Education as an Exemplary "A" school.
The AP has exclusively obtained frantic emails between Tony Bennett and Heather Neal that show Christel House's (run by Christel DeHaan, an influential GOP donor) grade was changed from a "C" to an A".
Former Indiana and current Florida schools chief Tony Bennett built his national star by promising to hold "failing" schools accountable. But when it appeared an Indianapolis charter school run by a prominent Republican donor might receive a poor grade, Bennett's education team frantically overhauled his signature "A-F" school grading system to improve the school's marks.
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.
Christel DeHaan
has given more than $2.8 million to Republicans, including $130,000 to Bennett.
Bennett has denied that DeHaan's school has received special treatment saying "there was nothing secret about this". A few other schools also had their grades changed but it was the problem with Christel that got the ball rolling.
However, the emails clearly show Bennett's staff was intensely focused on Christel House, whose founder has given more than $2.8 million to Republicans since 1998, including $130,000 to Bennett and thousands more to state legislative leaders.
Other schools saw their grades change, but the emails show DeHaan's charter was the catalyst for any changes.
Bennett rocketed to prominence with the help of former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and a national network of Republican leaders and donors, such as DeHaan.
Bennett is a co-founder of Bush's Chiefs for Change, a group consisting mostly of Republican state school superintendents pushing school vouchers, teacher merit pay and many other policies enacted by Bennett in Indiana.
Though Indiana had had a school ranking system since 1999, Bennett switched to the A-F system and made it a signature item of his education agenda, raising the stakes for schools statewide.
Bennett consistently cited Christel House as a top-performing school as he secured support for the measure from business groups and lawmakers, including House Speaker Brian Bosma and Senate President Pro Tem David Long.
From Bennett's emails to his staff:
'This will be a HUGE problem for us,' Bennett wrote in a Sept. 12, 2012 email to Neal.
Neal fired back a few minutes later, 'Oh, crap. We cannot release until this is resolved.'
'I am more than a little miffed about this,' Bennett wrote. 'I hope we come to the meeting today with solutions and not excuses and/or explanations for me to wiggle myself out of the repeated lies I have told over the past six months.'
There continues a lot of back and forth discussion on how to change the formula for awarding grades to schools, and what the cutoff for an 'A' is, which Christel didn't meet. Bennett countered that they could change the rule.
A week-long behind-the-scenes scramble ensued among Bennett, assistant superintendent Dale Chu, Gubera, Neal and other top staff at the Indiana Department of Education.
They examined ways to lift Christel House from a 'C' to an 'A', including adjusting the presentation of color charts to make a high 'B' look like an 'A' and changing the grade just for Christel House.
It's not clear from the emails exactly how Gubera changed the grading formula, but they do show DeHaan's grade jumping twice.
'That's like parting the Red Sea to get numbers to move that significantly,' Jeff Butts, superintendent of Wayne Township schools in Indianapolis, said in an interview with The Associated Press.
By September 21st the school's grade was changed to a 3.75 and the school's grading director, Jon Gubera, resigned shortly afterwards.
This report raises serious questions about the validity of Indiana's school grading systems which affects how much state funding schools receive, whether schools get taken over by the state and whether students seeking private school vouchers need to attend public school for a year first. Not to mention affecting the real estate values of neighborhoods with the 'better' schools. No word of any public schools' grades being changed.
Links to the emails are here:
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