At a glance
The legislative agenda laid out by Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett and Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels focuses on three major areas. Here’s how they describe the changes needed:
Identify and reward great teachers and principals:
• Autonomy for school leaders to make the improvements necessary to bolster student achievement and be held responsible for the performance of their school.
• Promote excellence by identifying and rewarding great teachers and school principals based on their performance rather than seniority or degrees held.
• Reliable, fair, accurate evaluations, which are informed by student achievement or growth data, used to assess teachers and administrators, recognize best educators and identify those who need support for improvement.
• Administrators must use these evaluations to inform decisions about hiring, firing, professional development, compensation, placement, transfers and reductions in force.
• Collective bargaining agreements between school corporations and teachers’ unions should focus on salary and wage-related benefits and should be innovative in recognizing performance through compensation.
• Tenure should be awarded to teachers based on performance instead of seniority.
Accountability and flexibility:
• Hold all schools accountable for achieving results for students
• Swift and dramatic improvement from all chronically failing schools and provide the state all the necessary tools to intervene when local leadership has failed to offer a quality education to children.
• Free school leaders in lowest-performing schools from restrictive collective bargaining agreements between school corporations and teachers’ unions.
• Give turnaround managers adequate time to demonstrate improvement, but also set rigorous annual performance goals and replace ineffective managers as quickly as possible.
• When schools successfully improve student performance, act with care to be sure the school community has the autonomy and freedom to maintain success.
• Create a Parent Trigger. If 51 percent of parents in a school sign a petition, the state can step in early to turn around a failing school.
School options for families:
• Every student should have the opportunity to attend an excellent school.
• Allow students to graduate early and offer them a college scholarship equal to the amount the state would have spent on the last year of high school.
• Ensure state education dollars follow the needs of students so parents can select the best possible educational options for their children.
• Create an Indiana Charter School Board to authorize new charters across the state.
• Allow private higher education institutions to apply to the State Board of Education to authorize new charters.
• Increase accountability for all charter authorizers.
• Expand virtual charter schools to reach under-served students and to fill gaps in the traditional system.
• Eliminate caps on charters and help them access safe and appropriate public facilities.
• Grant schools and communities more authority to convert failing schools to charters
INDIANAPOLIS — Calling for major “structural change” in Indiana’s K-12 schools, Indiana Public School Superintendent Tony Bennett laid out a legislative agenda Wednesday that calls for an end to teacher tenure, merit pay for teachers, more school choice for parents and swifter intervention with failing schools.
At a meeting of the Indiana Education Roundtable, Bennett unveiled a sweeping set of goals that he and Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels wants to see transformed into legislation by the next General Assembly.
Bennett described it as a “bold, intense and student-centered legislative agenda” that would up-end the state’s public school system. He and Daniels have described Indiana’s public schools as woefully inadequate for achieving the ultimate goal: Making every Indiana student career — or college — ready by graduation.
Bennett said recent legislative changes have put Indiana on that track, but said much more was needed.
“We need to put our foot on the accelerator and step on it,” Bennett said.
Among the key items on the legislative agenda: Eliminating the current collective bargaining contracts that tie teacher pay to seniority. In its place would be performance-based pay for teachers and administrators, based on evaluation standards set by the state and implemented on a local level.
Bennett described it as an effort to “recognize and reward the best teachers.”
Also on the list: Removing the current cap on charter schools and creating a “parent trigger” that would allow the state to step in more quickly to take over a failing school if 51 percent of the school’s parents voted to do so.
The Daniels’ plan also calls for legislation that would allow students who complete the state’s high school diploma requirements by the end of their junior year to skip senior year. Those students could take money that would have been spent by the state on their last year of high school and use it to pay for college or other post-secondary education.
Members of the Education Roundtable, which includes business, community and education leaders, endorsed the early graduation proposal, along with a performance-based evaluation and pay system for teachers and administrators.
Under the proposed new system, school districts would be required to implement an evaluation and compensation plan based on measures of content knowledge, instructional skill, classroom management, student academic achievement and leadership effectiveness. Among the Roundtable members voting to endorse the latter proposal were some traditional opponents of education reform measures floated by Daniels and Bennett in the past.
They included Nate Schnellenberger, the president of the Indiana State Teachers Association, who previously had described merit pay for teachers as a “slap in the face” to educators.
Also voting to support it was Patrick O’Rourke, president of the Hammond Federation of Teachers, who called the reform package “long overdue.” Also supporting it was Democrat State Sen. Earline Rogers, a Gary school teacher and the ranking minority member on the state Senate’s education committee.
Roundtable members did raise some concerns about the legislative plan, though, and pressed Daniels and Bennett for more details on what the legislation might look like.
In response to a question about collective bargaining contracts currently in place for teachers that link pay to seniority and degree attainment, Bennett said he didn’t know if those contracts could be voided. Instead, any changes to teacher pay might have to occur after current contracts expire.
Several members alleged that there are school districts that are currently “cherry-picking” students who are allowed by a new state law passed last year to transfer out of one school and into another. Students who are athletically or academically gifted are allowed in, they said, while others aren’t.
They wanted that issue addressed by the Indiana General Assembly. They also raised questions about how school districts would be affected by the potential loss of funding that would result from the early graduation proposal.
They requested that a transcript of their meeting be sent on to chairmen of the House and Senate education committees, which is where much of the legislation is expected to emerge in detail once the General Assembly convenes in January.
Details on Daniels’ legislative agenda were posted on the Indiana Department of Education website at www.doe.in.gov/puttingstudentsfirst.
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