By Eric Bradner, Evansville Courier & Press
bradnere@courierpress.com
INDIANAPOLIS - Political theater broke out at the Statehouse last week after Gov. Mitch Daniels delivered his State of the State address.
The Republican governor made a pitch for a new agenda item: Legislation that would end "social promotion" by requiring schools to hold back third-graders who are unable to pass the language arts section of the ISTEP exam.
Tuesday night was the first time this year many lawmakers had heard of the idea. Now it's well-known, thanks in large part to the public spat that occurred afterward.
Daniels said the proposal could be implemented without an extra cent of state funding.
But Senate Appropriations Chairman Luke Kenley, R-Noblesville, noticed that the nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency estimated that the bill's implementation could cost as much as $49 million per year.
He suggested next year, when legislators are writing a new budget, might be a better time to discuss whether ending social promotion should be a priority.
It's not that the idea is bad. Most in the education community agree with state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett's argument that children must learn to read by third grade in order to have the skills necessary to learn afterward.
The problem is the timing.
Last month, the governor announced 3.5 percent across-the-board cuts in K-12 education funding, the last in a series of recent cost-cutting measures intended to help Indiana weather the recession's blows to state tax revenues.
Those cuts are forcing tough decisions in schools across the state. Suburban schools with rapidly expanding enrollment numbers are struggling to employ the teachers necessary to keep class sizes down and course offerings up. Urban and rural schools, which receive more state funding but face special challenges as well, can't maintain the programs they need to meet those challenges.
After writing about the proposal Daniels and Bennett are pushing, I received several e-mails from teachers who complained of yet another mandate schools must achieve, with no resources to help them achieve it. They echoed what Eugene White, the superintendent of Indianapolis Public Schools, had to say.
"It is a mandate. And these mandates become unfunded mandates," White said while testifying before the Senate Education Committee last week. "I don't know where we're going to find money for programs that have good intentions but very little funding."
At the committee's hearing, representatives from Florida - one of three states that currently has legislation halting social promotion in place - discussed the benefits of that legislation.
In 2002-2003, the first school year social promotion was banned, 23 percent of third-graders failed Florida's test and 13 percent were held back a year.
Now, those numbers are nearly halved, thanks to the extra attention to early literacy that legislation brought.
However, in Florida, preschool is universal, and optional full-day kindergarten is funded. White wasn't swayed that Indiana could achieve similar results without a similar investment.
Among the ideas Bennett suggested was bringing in parents as volunteers. For example, he said they might help monitor recess while teachers stayed in with some students for extra reading instruction.
Vincent Bertram, the Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp. superintendent, strongly disagreed with White. He said schools should be able to free up the time to provide an extra 90 minutes a day of assistance to students who need it.
Bertram, Daniels, Bennett and other supporters might be able to convince skeptical educators that anti-social promotion legislation can be enacted at no added cost. Kenley, though, is where they'll have to start.