Indiana education in 2014 may come with 'more unknowns' than recent years

And if the state wants to truly move forward in education, Mark Lichtenberg said that must change.

“Teachers are used to being flexible on a daily basis in their classrooms, but deserve adequate support and resources from those who seek to hold them accountable,” he said.

Headed into the 2014-15 school year, Lichtenberg thinks there may be more unknowns than ever before.

Common Core State Standards fall under that category. They have been a hot topic of discussion the past year and will continue to be while the Indiana Department of Education and Indiana State Board of Education debate the development of new Indiana Academic Standards.

Created by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, Common Core State Standards serve as a universal set across the country aimed to focus on college and career readiness for students in PK-12. The plan was to implement it for all Indiana students by 2014 with Common Core testing to replace ISTEP-plus assessments the following year. However the state’s full implementation of it was halted by lawmakers for additional study of the standards that were originally adopted in 2010.

Before his election to the Evansville Teachers Association, Lichtenberg taught instrumental music at Thompkins Middle School and Highland Elementary School. The ETA’s purpose is to keep educators informed and prepare members for any changes in state statutes. It is uncertain, and difficult to predict, the direction Indiana is headed regarding standards and testing, Lichtenberg said.

“If new standards are adopted, be they Common Core or other standards, a new test that assesses progress on those standards will be necessary,” he said. “So it is pretty safe to say that ISTEP-plus will no longer be used. What a new assessment will look like is difficult to predict at this point.”

It’s been a frustrating process, Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp. Superintendent David Smith said, because the decision to adopt Common Core was made years ago. So to have state officials back out and tell school districts to wait after they have made the commitment to develop and begin implementation is difficult because students simply cannot wait.

“Unfortunately I feel for classroom teachers because they’re the ones caught in the middle,” Smith said. “At the end of the day, they’re the ones that instruct, they’re the ones that make it happen, literally. And it has to be incredibly frustrating when those that have the ultimate responsibility for educating our youth are the ones that are left out of the decision making process.”

Indiana is among 45 states to have adopted Common Core standards, which are already fully implemented in kindergarten and first-grade classrooms in the EVSC while other grades are teaching primarily Common Core with some additional Indiana academic standards. The Indiana Department of Education is reviewing Common Core standards and plans to hold public hearings across the state in January, with new standards potentially going before the State Board of Education for final approval in April, according to officials.

While the EVSC has already spent about $6 million on resources — books, materials, extensive professional development for teachers, aligning curriculum maps — to implement and teach Common Core; the debate about it not only has financial consequences for school corporations, but it also affects the time and energy officials have already put into implementation.

High stakes testing is needed to assess what students are learning, Smith explained. However he hopes officials make certain the new assessment is valid and reliable.

Smith said something like a new assessment could be a multimillion dollar investment.

“It is difficult to ascertain one’s growth when the target continues to move,” he said. “Professionally, the debate about Common Core, I think, misses the mark.”

Locally in 2014, Lichtenberg expects a new teacher evaluation system and collective bargaining agreement because the current one expires June 30. He said the new agreement requires complying with state statutes that tie compensation to teacher evaluation and dictate the components of those evaluations. To some extent, Lichtenberg said, performance-based teacher compensation will be required beginning in the next school year.

Per the state, teachers must be evaluated annually and following the evaluation, they are then placed in one of four categories: ineffective, needs improvement, effective and highly effective. Teachers placed in the ineffective or needs improvement categories cannot receive an increase in pay for the next year, even if one is bargained, Lichtenberg said.

The state statute, he said, only allows teacher to receive a maximum 33 percent of any salary increase or increment based on years of service and/or additional training. The remaining 67 percent must be based on at least one of the following: evaluation results, instructional leadership roles and academic needs of students in the school corporation. The actual evaluation must include student achievement and growth as a “significant” portion along with teacher observation, he said.

The ETA and EVSC have been collaborating to create an evaluation system, Lichtenberg said, that complies with state statutes and provides a fair and consistent evaluation of teacher practice.

Although the EVSC has several Teacher and Student Advancement (TAP) schools that have performance metrics in terms of raises, Smith said he has not yet seen research that proves it works in education. He doesn’t believe that it takes into consideration the external factors that influence a child’s education.

“Until the science becomes refined enough for us to winnow out all those external influences and be able to directly point the impact that the teacher had on that child’s education, then I think we should be very cautious about implementing a pay for performance model,” he said.

While Lichtenberg believes legislative actions could have a significant impact on what education will look like across Indiana next year, he said the legislature may still weigh in on recent changes to the teacher retirement system since the Indiana Public Retirement System board has failed to take action on recommendations from the Pension Management and Oversight Committee. Legislators may also act on Gov. Mike Pence’s Roadmap that includes additional support for charter schools, which Lichtenberg said would likely mean less support for public schools and a corporate tax cut that will also siphon revenues away from public education if adopted in the way proposed.

“But, we also hope that teachers will actively and regularly communicate with policymakers, telling their stories of how educators can best be supported in Indiana,” he said.

The new year will see the roll out of the strategic visioning process of the EVSC’s Continuous Improvement Plan that Smith announced at the beginning of the school year during his annual ‘State of Our Schools’ address. The three main priorities of the plan are — student learning, ensuring the focus of teachers is providing a rigorous and common curriculum through differentiated and engaging instruction based on ongoing data cycles; effective teachers and leaders, investing in the development and retention of employees; and infrastructure, to support student success.

Working under the pressures of guidelines that are out of your control isn’t necessarily out of the ordinary for educators, according to Smith. He said certain things should not be tossed into the political arena, and that includes precious time spent on what children will be taught instead of the more important aspect — what children will learn.

“We always deal with the unknowns ... so we have made the conscious decision to focus on what we can control,” Smith said.

But he is optimistic.

“Our future is incredibly bright. We’re going to have issues, but as long as we continue to focus on what matters most, to stay focused on our instructional core, we’re going to continue to make huge gains.”