Why School Vouchers are Bad for Indiana

7 Reasons Why Public Dollars Should Stay with Public School Students

and Should NOT Be Diverted To Help Private Schools

#1 PUBLIC SCHOOLS ARE OPEN TO ALL - Public schools proudly take every student who comes to enroll.  Private schools can pick and choose among applicants and can reject any student without an explanation.  The inclusiveness of public schools requires support and resources.

#2 PUBLIC SCHOOLS ARE THE BEDROCK OF DEMOCRACY - Public schools have been the key institution responsible for teaching about and perpetuating our democracy.  Public schools are required by law to provide good citizenship instruction (IC20-30-5-6), to display the flag, and to “provide a daily opportunity to for students of the school corporation to voluntarily recite the Pledge of Allegiance in each classroom”, while in private schools, these matters are optional and unregulated.

#3 PUBLIC SCHOOLS NEED FINANCIAL STABILITY - Public schools need stable support to maintain and improve programs.  Any incentive created by the General Assembly to use public funds to attract students to private schools will mean less money for the public school since the money follows the child.  This dollar drain undercuts the stability of public school programs.

#4 PUBLIC SCHOOLS ARE CENTERS OF THE COMMUNITY - Public schools bring the entire community together.  Shifting to a publicly funded set of small private schools will fragment the community along religious and philosophical lines.

 
#5 PUBLIC SCHOOLS SERVE ALL INCOME LEVELS - Claims that vouchers are being directed to low income families ring hollow; the private school tax credit enacted in 2009 provided scholarships to families earning up to $81,586 for a family of four.  House Bill 1003 would raise that limit to $101,982 for a family of four.  Few would consider this to be “low-income.”

#6 PUBLIC SCHOOLS HAVE STEADILY IMPROVED - Claims that Indiana’s public school performance is declining are simply untrue.  Steady improvement over the past 20 years in Indiana’s public schools has been clearly documented.  Currently, Indiana’s public schools stand at or near their highest marks in history on attendance rate, SAT math, ACT, National Assessment, ISTEP+, and percentage earning Academic Honors diplomas and Core 40 diplomas.  Indiana outperforms Florida on 4^th & 8^th grade math, 8^th grade reading, and 4^th & 8^th grade science on the National Assessment.  Of course, more improvement is needed to meet global economic competition, but outsourcing students to private schools will undercut support and hamper further improvement in public schools.  Parents who press leaders to fund improvements for their public schools will simply be told to take their child to a private school if they don’t like their public school.

#7 PUBLIC SCHOOLS ARE NOT SECTARIAN - Regarding school choice, of course many families would choose religious schools for their children for religious reasons.  Taxpayers, however, should not be obligated to send students to parochial schools even if that is the choice of the parents.  That is why the Indiana Constitution says: “No money shall be drawn from the treasury, for the benefit of any religious or theological institution.”  Our public policies must avoid financial entanglements with religious schools. School choice should be offered within the arena of public schools, through neighborhood schools, magnet schools, tuition transfer to nearby districts, virtual schools and the 62 charter schools now available.

...Let your voice be heard!  Call or write your legislator.

Fighting Bad "Reform" in Indiana

For those interested in public education, two new groups have formed: Indiana Coalition for Public Education (see message below) and Indiana Democrats for Education Reform (http://www.indfer.com/
 contact: larrygrau@gmail.com)


____________________________________________
Dear Friends,

Will parents, educators and community members who are advocates for public education show up at the Statehouse to fight the biggest privatization of public schools ever proposed in Indiana?

We’re about to find out.



House Bill 1003 has been introduced, and it could shift as much as $110 million from public schools to private schools. It would make Indiana the Voucher Capital of the US. The Star called the proposal “the most expansive publicly funded school voucher program in the nation.”

It will be given a hearing one of these Wednesdays at the regular 8:30am meeting of the House Education, perhaps even this Wednesday, Jan. 26th. We don’t know yet. Are you ready to come to the Statehouse to testify and to talk with your legislators?

Here, in brief, are some of the major provisions:

• The current tax credit program for private school tuition (established in 2009)

• would get as much as $12.5 million per year in tax money, up from the current $2.5 million

• would gradually rise to an 80% tax credit for donors, up from the current 50%

• would be available to a family of four earning $101,982, up from the current $81,586

• would be available to students who had been in a public school the previous two semesters

• The new voucher program (using average amounts cited by LSA; actual voucher amounts vary by districts)

• would give a family of four making less than $40,793 a voucher of $4.964 for private school tuition.

• would give a family of four making less than $81,586 a voucher of $2,758 for private school tuition.

• would give a family of four making less than $101,982 a voucher of $1,379 for private school tuition.

• would include private schools that do not give ISTEP but give norm-referenced tests.

• would have no limits except the limits on seats available in private schools, estimated to be 20,000.

The fiscal note from the Legislative Services Agency estimates that the reduction in tuition support for public schools will be $5.5 million per year for every 1000 students who transfer from public to private. Multiply that figure by the 20,000 potential transfers based on seats available, and the total amount that could potentially transfer from public schools to private schools is $110 million.

Is there any righteous indignation left out there in the public school community?

Indiana has many religious families, and if the state will pay for a religious education for their child, of course they are going to take up the offer, even if they are currently happy with their public school. Paying for religious school tuition, however, is not what our Constitution envisioned.

Will you tell your legislators to oppose this bill?

Perhaps years of demeaning the public schools with the flawed AYP measures of No Child Left Behind have left the public confused about public schools. If this voucher plan doesn’t put public school folks into gear, nothing will. If you would want to come to the hearing, whenever it is, to testify against this bill, you might want to review the attached page entitled “7 Reasons Why Public Dollars Should Stay with Public School Students.” Testimony should be short and to the point. Bring your passion.

I hope to see you in the Statehouse whenever the House Education Committee holds a hearing on HB 1003.

Best wishes,

Vic Smith: vic790@aol.com
Indiana Coalition for Public Education

How the "Logic" of Reform Works in Indiana

Good, thoughtful critique of Tony Bennett's mode of operation: misinformation, selective memory, and hyperbole in order to further an ideological agenda.  She's right, we have to rebut these efforts of bad information and speak with our neighbors and colleagues; we have to continue to tell the other side of the story.

STEPHANIE SALTER: Another batch of my status-quo-defending misinformation on schools

The Tribune-Star

TERRE HAUTE — The day after state schools chief Tony Bennett responded to my three-column education series, a longtime friend and veteran teacher called.

“I just read the superintendent’s rebuttal in the Tribune-Star,” my friend said. “All I can conclude from it is that you are a dumbass. Welcome to the club. Anybody who doesn’t buy into his vision of education reform is considered a dumbass.”

The superintendent didn’t use such a coarse term in his opinion piece, but my friend is right. Ignorance (or worse) was implied throughout Bennett’s column. Among the charges: My series “completely misinterprets” the Indiana Department of Education’s “efforts to provide all Hoosier students with quality education opportunities.”

For those who missed it, I wrote what thousands of Indiana teachers know in their heart — that Bennett and his boss, Gov. Mitch Daniels, play fast and loose with statistics and anecdotal evidence in their committed campaign to paint Hoosier schools as “a mess” in need of radical reform. The last of the three columns consisted entirely of quotes from teachers, all over the state, who responded to the first two pieces.

Although Bennett accused me of repeatedly spreading “both inaccurate information and fear,” he provided not a single example of either. If the errors were in my Dec. 5 piece — a fact-filled attempt to counter a few of the gross misrepresentations offered by Bennett and Daniels — the superintendent didn’t say. If the alleged misinformation was in the fact-filled Dec. 5 sidebar by retired educator Vic Smith, none of that made Bennett’s essay, either.

In another omission, Bennett waxed poetic about a large, Dec. 9 gathering of educators at Deming Elementary in Terre Haute. He said he left with “an overwhelming feeling of optimism regarding IDOE’s efforts to provide all Hoosier students with an academically rigorous and globally competitive education.”

Sounds like a real join-hands-and-sing-Kumbaya scene, right? Typical of his (and Daniel’s) selective memory, Bennett left out the part about the thunderous ovation Vigo County schools superintendent Dan Tanoos received that night when he feistily challenged the state chief to “make us feel like you are advocating on our behalf instead of against us.”

Neither did Bennett mention West Vigo High School Principal Tom Balitiewicz’s refusal to wear the mantle of stumbling failure that Bennett and Daniels seem determined to hang around every school district’s neck.

Bennett also chose not to recount a stellar point made by Patty Curley, who has taught in Vigo public schools since 1984. Describing stints at two schools with very different socio-economic makeups, Curley said that if she had been judged as a teacher based on students’ test scores — as Bennett and Daniels advocate — she would have been deemed a bad one at the lower economic school and a “very highly effective teacher” at the wealthier school. Her teaching skills would not have changed, Curley said, only the situation in which she employed them.

Bennett did offer one curious example in his essay to indicate that I choose to short-change children so I can “defend the status quo.” Twenty of Indiana’s “consistently low-performing schools are at risk of facing state intervention at the end of the school year,” he wrote. Acknowledging that those 20 schools make up “only about 1 percent of all Indiana schools,” Bennett nonetheless scolded me and my ilk, saying, “we must not forget the thousands of real students held captive in those classrooms.” My series, he wrote, “ignores the plight of children in desperate need of better schooling.”

See the way the logic works?

I show in print how the governor and schools chief wrongly portray all of Indiana public education as an oil spill in need of a Herculean cleanup — the BP disaster metaphor is Bennett’s, not mine — and that makes me a compassion-challenged misinformation peddler who cares nothing for thousands of kids in a handful of schools that really are failing.

I show with numbers, studies and legitimate context that Indiana public education, overall, is pretty much in the middle of the nation’s pack — not ready for life support as Daniels and Bennett seem to imply every time they get near a PowerPoint — and I become another selfish, change-resistant defender of the status quo.

Another dumbass.

Like many elected and appointed leaders these days, Daniels and Bennett have an education agenda — and it looks like major restructuring better suited for a failing mega-business than for a public school system. The cruel irony is, some of the system’s thorniest problems are the result of often conflicting standards and benchmarks foisted upon educators by state and federal legislators who could not survive one day in a real classroom.

To sell such reform to taxpayers, bad news must be emphasized (or presented out of context), good news must be ignored, and people who question wholesale change for everyone must be vilified.

As I learned from scores of e-mails, letters and phone calls, many of Indiana’s most dedicated public school teachers and administrators feel beaten down by the Bennett-Daniels’ campaign to reform them. These teachers contend with social and economic problems that educators of my era could not have imagined in their worst nightmares. Whether it’s numerous students with severe learning disabilities or kids whose parents sell their teacher-donated clothes to buy methamphetamine, 21st century public schools demand that teachers use everything they’ve learned in college — and in life — every day.

A recent, telling statistic: In 2006, 36 percent of Hoosier students qualified for free or reduced-price lunch, the litmus for what we now call economic hardship. This year, the percentage is more than 45 percent. Do you suppose that factor influences a kid’s ability to pass ISTEP?

Here’s a more encouraging statistic, regarding graduation rates, which frequently are cited as dismal by Daniels: Hoosier rates tumbled in 2006 to 76.4 percent from 89.5 percent, when the state recalibrated its method of graduation accounting. They have been rising ever since, recovering to 84.1 percent this year. The increase includes the Indianapolis Public School system, which still has an alarmingly low rate (58.3 percent), but has risen 10 percent in four years.

As a Fort Wayne Journal Gazette editorial put it: “The figures show steady and encouraging progress statewide — without the influence of vouchers, merit pay or teacher evaluations tied to test scores.”

After my series, message after message included a request to “keep telling our side of the story.” I understand the urgency, but even if I were not taking the next few months off, I couldn’t counter the misinformation about public education that flows from Indianapolis and Washington. Teachers, principals and district superintendents have to find a way to do that.

Teachers, let your unions bargain for your contracts, but hire or draft a team of knowledgeable spokespeople not connected to the unions who can rebut skewed sound bites and twisted statistics every time one is uttered. Speak up to your neighbors, your church members, your students’ parents and your local newspaper when you hear another politician accuse you of something you know isn’t true — like the governor’s repeated claim about how poorly Hoosier students perform on national reading and math tests.

The best defense is a good offense. Make certain all those incoming members of the Indiana General Assembly understand that if they rubber-stamp unproven, radical education reforms — instead of funding proven approaches such as full-day kindergarten — they will pay in the next election.

Parents and other taxpayers, at the very least, exercise some skepticism. A clear picture of education requires context. Examine statistics; find out whether an accuser is talking about 20 failing schools or an entire state system. Beware of open-and-shut vilification. Don’t accept a one-size-fits-all solution from either side of the issue. If you are confused or concerned about a politician-reformer’s charges, ask a teacher you trust to weigh in.

In the meantime, if someone implies you’re a dumbass because you think the majority of Indiana’s public educators are doing a good job and want to do even better — smile. You are in excellent and plentiful company. Welcome to the club.

LINK:

Vouchers in Indiana

"In the cities, vouchers would quickly solidify a two-tiered educational system consisting of nonpublic schools and pauper schools.  That development would impoverish us all, because it would represent an abandonment of efforts to improve education for disadvantaged youngsters, who are already a majority in most US cities."
-Mary Anne Raywid, Public Choice, yes; Vouchers, no! 1987

Mitch Daniels Voucher Plan
"The voucher proposal — backed by state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett — is sure to be controversial but is expected to be well-received by a majority of Republicans in the Indiana House and Senate. Two years ago, Republicans won approval for a much more modest program that provides tax credits to individuals who contribute to private school scholarships."


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