Time to check in once again on Hoosier education.
Monday, supporters rallied at the Indiana Statehouse in support of state schools superintendent Glenda Ritz, who’s likely to lose much of her authority if bills currently making their way through the Republican-controlled Legislature are successful. Given the super-majorities the party enjoys in both House and Senate, it appears likely those bills will become law.
Meanwhile, her principal opponent, Gov. Mike Pence, wants to give new authority to Ritz — and quickly. Ritz, the only Democrat who holds statewide office and who handily defeated Pence ally and then-superintendent Tony Bennett in a battle of opposing ideologies, apparently needs a new law that grants her authority to shorten ISTEP test times, which have grown gigantically this year. That’s at least partly from the Pence decision to back away from the Common Core curriculum, as well as changed federal requirements.
The bill to grant Ritz the necessary authority to act is being fast-tracked by legislative leaders, and there’s little time to get it done.
ISTEP testing is supposed to start for 350,000 Hoosier students in about a week and a half.
It would be an understatement to describe the entire situation as in a bit of a jumble.
Meanwhile, in a show of independence from the governor’s control, the Legislature is working on a two-year budget plan that would provide Indiana schools about twice as much money as Pence would like.
The plan calls for 2.3 percent increases for each of the two budget years, a combined increase of almost $470 million. The Pence recommendation was for only $201 million.
A lot of that extra money, though, will cover expenses that conservatives can get behind. According to House Ways and Means Chairman Tim Brown, a Republican, much of the money would be used to revise the state spending formula to give more money per student to mostly fast growing suburban schools, where a lot of conservatives live. There are serious disparities in spending now, true, but it doesn’t hurt that many of the beneficiaries of the new money will be suburbanites.
Under the Legislature’s plan, Indiana’s public schools would see a $469 million funding over two years . That money includes an additional $40 million in grants for charter schools, also big on the conservative wish list. And there’s a bit of money that would remove the current $4,800 cap in per student funding for the state voucher program, money Pence specifically asked for, that subsidizes families to send their kids to private schools. That’s a program also high on the conservative agenda.
Much of that agenda is likely to move forward in Indiana, given the current makeup of the Legislature. Democrats don’t much like it, but can do little to stop it.
After all, with the mandate voters gave their party in the last election, Republicans surely feel now is the time to make things happen.
But how, then, to account for the beating Ritz laid on Bennett in the last election?
She stood for all that Bennett would oppose — strong teacher support and the traditional classroom. No money for vouchers, none for charters — both of which many public school teachers and educators see as real threats to the traditional public school. And testing — there’s too much of it, and it’s used for the wrong reason, to grade (and many believe to punish) teachers, rather than as a valuable teaching tool.
That’s pretty much in direct opposition to a conservative vision, which you’d think voters who threw out the Democrats would also embrace. Apparently, not so much. Ritz collected more votes than any other candidate on the state ballot, including Pence.
Next time around, voters should remember the way Republicans ignored the electorate regarding their choice for superintendent. Maybe the electorate doesn’t see education in terms of ideology but effectiveness, a trait that the conservative way has yet to reveal.