Dear concerned citizen: Over the past three-plus months, local and state print media have picked up on the value of a dialogue around the future of education in Indianapolis. A slew of commentaries, blogs, and stories from a wide variety of sources including NUVO, the Indianapolis Star and now even the Ft. Wayne Journal-Gazette are providing readers a variety of view points to help them make informed decisions about the future of public education. In particular is the commentary on local education issues from someone outside Marion County by a Ft. Wayne newspaper editor /blogger. Black & Latino Policy Institute/ Parent Power / Education-Community Action Team September 6 “The problem is not parents” Here’s the link to a commentary “The problem is not parents; it's a crisis in democracy” by Councilor Jose Evans published in NUVO’s Perspectives on Education. September 9 “Daring to trust parents” Here’s the link to Indy Star columnist Dan Carpenter on the issues surrounding Local School Council proposal he titled, “Daring to trust parents…” September 12 “Coming to a school near you…” The Ft. Wayne Journal-Gazette editorial writer Karen Francisco published a blog she titled: “Coming to a school near you…” September 13 “Our schools can benefit from self-government” Here’s the link to the Letter to the Editor published in the Star regarding the Local School Council proposal he presented: “Our schools can benefit from self-government” August 22 “A grassroots approach to school reform” NUVO article on the Local School Council Plan In mid-June, NUVO began an on-line forum for written commentaries regarding education called “Perspectives in Education. “ June 14 : Here’s the link to the first Perspectives on Education by community activist Wes Bernard, “What is the purpose of education?” where is argues that education is really all about skillfully drawing out of what is inside the student, establishing and fortifying the students' identity and competence and their place in community and society. June 21: Here’s link to comments by educator Jeffery C. White on urban education reforms around the idea that the cluster of incompetent administrators in IPS warrants significant change right now. June 28: Here’s the link to essay from local writer Doug Martin concerning those who study the corporate school movement realize that "autonomy" is merely a code word for letting charter school leaders do anything they desire to collect a hefty profit. July 5: Here’s the link to teacher Annette Magjuka’s essay on the issue of how we provide free public education for all citizens, so even poor children can compete. But unfortunately, all public education is not equal. July 12: Here’s link to the essay by IPS teacher Mary Noland on how it is terribly frustrating to hear people who are NOT teachers talk about reform, and add to that the term "accountability." August 16: Here’s the link to a commentary from our local NAACP encouraging participation in a new round of talks on education, adhering to the philosophy that "if you are not on the table, you are on the menu." The essay encourages a wide variety of citizens respond to the “What’s possible?” conversations so that solutions to the problems that we did not create should not be left to the politics of power, status, and wealth. June 8: Here’s link to NUVO story on “In the Mind Trust we trust? August 15: Introduction letter to the Local School Council proposal by Jose Evans The Local School Council proposal: www.indy.gov/eGov/Council/Documents/Local%20School%20Councils%20in%20IPS.pdf |
Showing posts with label mindtrust. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mindtrust. Show all posts
Monday, September 24, 2012
A Timeline of the Battle in Indy
Monday, January 9, 2012
Good Points on the MindTrust Plan
Dan Carpenter does a nice job here of pointing to some of the logical problems with this plan. It is fundamentally anti-democratic, notably saying to the parents and communities of IPS that they're not capable of electing a school board. Don't get this wrong however; there's a lot to be desired in the IPS school board and its superintendent and changes are needed. But Carpenter is right that this plan is part of a corporate strategy to make money off of so-called reform.
Who's the board? It's the people chosen, for better or worse, without suburban supervision, by residents of the Indianapolis Public Schools territory to educate more than 30,000 children.
A better question: Who is "We," and who elected "Us"?
It wasn't We the People, but We the People get most of the bill. The $700,000 study that produced an IPS overhaul plan enjoyed a $500,000 grant from Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett, a champion of non-public education and the state's co-leader with Gov. Mitch Daniels in channeling public money into privatization.
The wholly unsurprising makeover/takeover plan, with its emphases on charter schools, the gelding of the IPS central office and the disempowering of central city voters as well as the teachers union, fits the pattern of the prevailing "reform" movement but hardly strikes this writer as a blueprint for better times in and of itself.
Site-based decision-making was tried in IPS, and collapsed in the face of relentless pupil mobility. Mayorally appointed school boards have been tried in other cities, without notable success. Charter schools, for-profit and nonprofit, have not outperformed traditional public schools.
Yet these are the power relationships that eclipse pedagogy in the made-up minds of business-model reformers. Get the administration, the board, the union, the messy local politics "moved out of the way," and impose a simplified education market in which families' choices will be limited to consumer choices. And first, by all means, declare the system broken.
If the system is not broken, but merely running unsatisfactorily (like many of its neighbor systems), then reformers have a problem. They must find ways to help, not merely people and structures to discard. They must acknowledge strengths (of which IPS has many). They must address the low profile given school board races in the election process. They must answer for their own funding cuts, to education directly and to the demands of the monster at its doorstep called poverty.
If, on the other hand, class size and hunger and crime and families fighting to survive can be portrayed as excuses on the part of complacent incompetents who stand in the way of efficiency, the stage is set for a handover of control.
This is a national, even international, phenomenon. Check the rightwing American Legislative Exchange Council. Check the Milton Friedman brigade out of the University of Chicago and the Indianapolis-based Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. Your Republican lawmakers, and some key Democrats as well, are listening to them. Are the people who own the public schools too few, and too small, to be heard?
Carpenter is Star op-ed columnist. Contact him at (317) 444-6172 or at dan.carpenter@indystar.com.
- Should a mayor who won re-election with 16 percent of the potential vote be given control of schools because of low turnout in school board elections?
- Is the answer to too little democracy, in other words, less democracy?
Who's the board? It's the people chosen, for better or worse, without suburban supervision, by residents of the Indianapolis Public Schools territory to educate more than 30,000 children.
A better question: Who is "We," and who elected "Us"?
It wasn't We the People, but We the People get most of the bill. The $700,000 study that produced an IPS overhaul plan enjoyed a $500,000 grant from Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett, a champion of non-public education and the state's co-leader with Gov. Mitch Daniels in channeling public money into privatization.
The wholly unsurprising makeover/takeover plan, with its emphases on charter schools, the gelding of the IPS central office and the disempowering of central city voters as well as the teachers union, fits the pattern of the prevailing "reform" movement but hardly strikes this writer as a blueprint for better times in and of itself.
Site-based decision-making was tried in IPS, and collapsed in the face of relentless pupil mobility. Mayorally appointed school boards have been tried in other cities, without notable success. Charter schools, for-profit and nonprofit, have not outperformed traditional public schools.
Yet these are the power relationships that eclipse pedagogy in the made-up minds of business-model reformers. Get the administration, the board, the union, the messy local politics "moved out of the way," and impose a simplified education market in which families' choices will be limited to consumer choices. And first, by all means, declare the system broken.
If the system is not broken, but merely running unsatisfactorily (like many of its neighbor systems), then reformers have a problem. They must find ways to help, not merely people and structures to discard. They must acknowledge strengths (of which IPS has many). They must address the low profile given school board races in the election process. They must answer for their own funding cuts, to education directly and to the demands of the monster at its doorstep called poverty.
If, on the other hand, class size and hunger and crime and families fighting to survive can be portrayed as excuses on the part of complacent incompetents who stand in the way of efficiency, the stage is set for a handover of control.
This is a national, even international, phenomenon. Check the rightwing American Legislative Exchange Council. Check the Milton Friedman brigade out of the University of Chicago and the Indianapolis-based Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. Your Republican lawmakers, and some key Democrats as well, are listening to them. Are the people who own the public schools too few, and too small, to be heard?
Carpenter is Star op-ed columnist. Contact him at (317) 444-6172 or at dan.carpenter@indystar.com.
Monday, January 2, 2012
The Mind Trust and a Local Control Ruse
This post from School Matters nicely gives some counter voice to the local gushing over the Mind Trust's plan to gut Indianapolis Public Schools. It is important to note how much taxpayer money is already going to these folks and how much this "gift" as the Indy Star puts it positions them to receive in the future. We're not going to say that some of these ideas aren't good but this is shady politics and it's time that the public pay much more attention to the money trail. Finally, the idea that mayoral control is more democratic is preposterous (just ask community folks in DC, New York, New Orleans, or Chicago).
The Mind Trust’s plan to redesign IPS
Posted on December 20, 2011 by stevehinnefeld
The Mind Trust, an Indianapolis-based nonprofit that promotes education reform, released an ambitious proposal Sunday for remaking Indianapolis Public Schools. It certainly has people talking.
Here are some initial thoughts:
– A key feature of the plan involves killing off the IPS school board and turning control of the district over to the Indianapolis mayor and city-county council. Whether this is a good or bad idea, it’s certainly undemocratic. As Heather Gillers points out in theIndianapolis Star, it means “telling voters who live in IPS that they are the only ones in the state who will not be allowed to elect their school board.”
More significantly, the city of Indianapolis and IPS cover very different geographical areas –- the mayor of Indy isn’t the mayor of IPS. The mayor and city-county council are elected by voters from throughout Marion County, but IPS is only one of 11 school districts in the county. About three-fourths of public-school students in Marion County attend non-IPS schools.
The argument for mayoral control is that the mayor will be “politically accountable” for the schools. But even if the mayor screws up, IPS residents may not have the votes to punish him at the polls.
– More than 80 percent of IPS students qualify for free or reduced-price school lunches. No other public school district in Indiana comes close to that level of poverty, except for some districts in Lake County (Gary, East Chicago). The Mind Trust plan barely mentions this fact, or the challenges it presents for any scheme to dramatically improve performance in IPS schools.
Sure, poverty can’t be an excuse for failing to do everything possible to improve schools. But as Helene F. Ladd and Edward B. Fiske wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed, pretending poverty doesn’t matter only gets in the way of serious attempts at reform.
– The Mind Trust plan envisions converting all IPS schools to what it calls “opportunity schools,” with the freedom and flexibility that are usually associated with charter schools. All would be “schools of choice”: parents could send their kids to any school in the district, subject to the IPS somehow playing traffic cop.
It’s the standard market-based ideology of education reform: “Great schools” will thrive because parents send their children there; “failing schools” will close for lack of enrollment. The models for this approach are New York City under Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
The Mind Trust claims it will be possible to reallocate 80 percent of IPS administrative costs to the schools, leaving the district’s central office to be a low-level provider of services. This seems like a stretch. But even if it isn’t, a whole lot more responsibilities also would flow to the schools. Principals would apparently be responsible for hiring and firing teachers, establishing curriculum, selecting textbooks, arranging for school meals, lining up transportation, securing special-education services, handling the paperwork for federal Title I funds, etc., etc.
Oh, and also finding time to be great instructional leaders.
– According to the Star, the Mind Trust paid $700,000 to have its plan produced by Public Impact, a North Carolina consulting firm. That seems like a hefty price for a product that appears to involve no original research, and with its executive summary packed with reformist jargon about bold visions, reinventing education, empowering parents, great leaders, great teachers, ad nauseum.
Some $500,000 came from the Indiana Department of Education, the Star reports – a lot of public money to spend at a time when state government is cutting services.
– For those of us who don’t live in Indianapolis, it’s probably hard to comprehend the hunger that many civic-minded people must feel for something, anything, that will turn IPS into a great school system. It’s common to hear that “IPS is broken and can’t be fixed,” or words to that effect. Superintendents have raised hopes but produced disappointing results, at least when it comes to test scores. So it’s not surprising that the Mind Trust plan has won praise from folks on the left, right and center.
But as education historian Diane Ravitch often warns, there are no “silver bullets” in education. There are no miracle cures for poverty. Making a difference in the lives of children is hard work that takes time, resources, dedication and sustained focus.
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