ANDERSON — Gov. Mitch Daniels’ push for education reform and the national conversation about overhauling America’s system could mean major changes for future K-12 students in Indiana.
Talk of reform has focused especially on the areas of school financing, school choice, teacher roles and accountability, student performance measurements and use of technology.
School financing
Less than two years after the state took over full funding of public school general funds, Daniels announced in December 2009 that he would slash $300 million from the state budget for education.
Since then, districts have scrambled to make up for budget shortfalls, often turning to cost-cutting measures and local tax increase referendums. Two such referendums — at Elwood and Anderson schools — failed in the November’s election.
In Franklin Township in Indianapolis, school officials proposed charging students to ride buses, but the plan was deemed unconstitutional by the Indiana attorney general. The South Madison school district cut a physical education teaching position and began offering academic credit for participating in sports as a means of cutting costs.
Now that students may transfer districts freely, the state’s per-student funding — about $6,000 — follows the student. If a school corporation loses a student, it also loses the state funding to educate that student.
State Rep. Gregory Porter, D-Indianapolis, who chaired the House Interim Study Committee on Education, said he’s not sold on the way Indiana funds K-12 education.
He said the formula in which money follows students to the public schools of their choice fails to equalize education and doesn’t take into account disadvantaged students who need more help.
Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett advocates for massive changes in education, and calls on teachers unions to join the movement. “There has to be a joint acknowledgement that the norms and the structures on which we have built a system of education — that has really not changed in 70 years, while our economy and society has changed drastically — must change, with the focus of the student first.”
In the meantime, schools are left with the burden of keeping doors open while budgets shrink.
Eastern Hancock schools found a way to cut costs while going green. The district has become a recycling collection center after the local waste disposal company agreed to offer a discount for recycled items collected.
While school districts work to save money by doing more with less, some are joining with neighboring corporations to save money.
Bennett said consolidation of districts may benefit some school corporations, but it’s certainly not the solution for all cash-strapped districts.
“We should look first at the opportunities that schools afford children,” Bennett said. “It should be, do children in location A have the same opportunities for academic success as students in location B?”
Tonya Agnew of the Purdue University College of Education is a proponent of consolidation in some cases.
“I definitely see that as ... a way for smaller rural schools to come together and maximize their resources,” she said.
Nate Schnellenberger, president of the Indiana State Teachers Association, thinks further consolidation may not offer the best solution for all rural areas.
“Many of our smaller schools produce our best results,” he said. “In some areas, we would say it might be useful, but in other areas things are working just fine and those smaller schools are doing a great job.”
School choice
Schnellenberger says charter schools will multiply in Indiana, now that Republicans hold the majority in both houses of the Legislature.
“Our concern about charter schools is that there is no empirical research that shows that charter schools do any better job than public schools do,” Schnellenberger said.
Bennett, however, says the state has no specific plans for charter school expansion but is interested in “increasing the motivating and challenging opportunities for students, period.”
Russ Simnick, president of the Indiana Public Charter Schools Association, believes the expansion of charter schools is inevitable.
“As parents become more educated about the options they have, they’re becoming fairly choosy customers, which is great,” he said. “The charter school movement began 17 years ago in Minnesota, and it hasn’t ever gone backwards.”
While public schools have competed for years with private schools for students, a change in the state’s transfer policies has fostered increased competition among public school corporations. Students are now allowed to choose the district of their choice — if the district is accepting transfers — without paying tuition to transfer.
In Anderson, more than 700 students fled to neighboring school corporations, leaving the district with a gaping hole in its 2010-11 budget. Since the beginning of the current school year, 52,023 students in Indiana have transferred to another public or accredited non-public school, according to the state department of education.
Bennett acknowledges that a flaw in the transfer law is that school corporations can choose which transfer students to accept.
“My concern is that school corporations could be setting themselves up for civil suits,” he said.
Sen. Luke Kenley, R-Noblesville, supports the transfer law changes and said the ability to transfer from one school district to another is a privilege, not a right. “It wasn’t considered to be an unreasonable demand for a school to say if you want to come here, you have to show academic performance.”
Teacher accountability
Over the past 40 years, the role that teachers and administrators play in a student’s life has changed drastically.
While going to school used to mean just learning the basics, schools now help provide a range of other services — breakfast, expanded counseling and identification of learning disorders, to name a few.
“Even things like character education we’re expected to do in school now. I didn’t need to go to school to be a good citizen,” Schnellenberger said. “Especially in this economy, as more and more people struggle financially, and they can’t provide those things for children, the school is being asked to do more of that.”
While addressing a student’s nutritional, psychological and emotional needs may not be directly related to learning math and English, it does influence a student’s performance, Schnellenberger acknowledged.
“A hungry kid’s No. 1 area of attention is not going to be that science or math homework,” he said.
As educators work to meet the educational, social and psychological needs of students, the state is considering changes in teacher evaluation and compensation.
Daniels has suggested merit pay. Bennett says the current system, where job retention and raises are generally based on seniority, is simply not effective.
“Let’s talk about teacher and principal quality,” he said. “We have school corporations in our state that have collective bargaining agreement language that takes seniority rights to an absurd level. We have to say to ourselves, is it better for students who have the best available teacher or for students to have the most senior teacher, regardless of quality?”
Teachers argue, generally, that objective evaluation of teaching performance is difficult because of factors — home life, learning disabilities and student motivation, for example — that are largely outside of a teacher’s control.
Student performance
Bennett says Indiana’s education system is in the middle of the middle when it comes to student achievement.
“Indiana is a state that finds itself in the middle of the pack nationally in a nation that’s in the middle of the pack internationally,” he said.
Student success in Indiana is measured largely by standardized tests. Rick Muir, president of the Indiana Federation of Teachers and former head of the Anderson Teachers Federation, says the focus on testing can take away from classroom teaching.
“I’m not just talking about teachers and time away from the curriculum,” he said. “I’ve seen firsthand what this does to the student, the stress level.”
Bennett counters by noting that some schools have found a way to achieve the state’s standards. In southwestern Indiana, Otwell Elementary School of Pike County, for instance, saw 100 percent of its 88 test-takers pass the math portion of the ISTEP exam, he said.
“This is the school that is swinging for the fences every day on behalf of its children,” Bennett said.
A new way of measuring students, the Indiana Growth Model, enables educators to track each student’s progress over the prior year.
Anderson High School teacher Carol Hill believes this is a move in the right direction. “For students with special needs, the Growth Model certainly makes more sense,” she said.
While Muir hopes the state will eventually rely less on standardized testing, Bennett wants to see more of it. “You will see the assessments given three or four times throughout the year.”
Technology
The emergence of new technology will continue to influence the way education is delivered in Indiana, according to Laurie Mullen, associate dean for Ball State University’s teacher education.
Ball State officials are considering adding to the university’s teaching program a certification specifically designed to prepare BSU students to teach online courses.
“We see more high schools and elementary schools moving to fully online schools or hybrid,” she said.
Ball State teaching students must all carry laptops, she said, because teachers must be ready to use technology in the classroom.
Many charter schools, in particular, are already embracing classroom technology.
The Anderson Preparatory Academy, a charter school, has done away with textbooks. Instead, students carry netbooks from class to class and use the portable computers to access coursework online from home on sick days. In Indianapolis and Muncie, students at the Hoosier Academy attend class just two days a week, staying home and completing online courses for the remaining three days of the week.
Where’s the money?
While there is widespread agreement that Indiana’s education system must change to meet the demands of a changing world, the state is left to wrestle with the practical question of how to finance improvements. In this month’s election, 24 new members, all Republicans, were elected to the General Assembly. Many ran on campaign platforms of improvement in education and austerity in government spending.
When the Legislature convenes in January, the lawmakers will wrestle with two objectives that may be at odds.
Rep. Scott Reske, D-Pendleton, who managed to hang onto his seat despite facing an opponent — Kyle Hupfer — with backing from Daniels’ political action committee, says that changing the education system in an environment of austerity will take cooperation from all quarters.
“Everybody wants to improve education, but it’s a multi-leg stool,” he said. “You’ve got teachers, administration, the state, parents and students. I’m more than anxious to start the discussions on how we can do this, but it has to address all those different pillars.”