State of Education in Indiana

I had the opportunity to attend the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce Pancakes and Politics discussion on the State of Education. This panel discussion had Dr. Tony Bennett, Superintendent of Public Instruction; Senator Dennis Kruse, Chair of the Senate Education Committee; and Dr. Eugene White, Superintendent of IPS. The moderator from the education practice at Baker & Daniels worked hard to cover many topics with these three aggressive and passionate panelists.

While I attended this discussion as an architect representing an architecture firm that specializes in K-12 design, I also attended as a father of two boys who will be starting school in a couple short years. Dr. Bennett’s opening comments ended on the need to increase “competition, freedom and accountability” among schools to drive rewarding improved performance and identifying underperformers to be held accountable to improve. Sen. Kruse committed to changing the tenure plan many educators enjoy and requiring 3rd graders to successfully read prior to advancing to 4th grade. Dr. White jumped on Sen. Kruse’s requirement for reading proficiency prior to 4th grade with the need to start child education earlier than the 7-years old that parents can wait to enroll their child. Earlier education can only be accomplished with State support of pre-school and kindergarten requiring earlier organized education. While many parents want the money to follow the child, Dr. White points out that equity and equality are not the same; until we can break a circle of poverty through education, there won’t be any improvement of the whole.

The biggest issue facing K-12 education is funding. As the Indiana legislature gets started in the afternoon following the program with Organization Day at the Statehouse, Dr. White and Dr. Bennett are bracing for K-12 cuts as the State again tries to balance the budget with diminishing tax revenues. We hope Sen. Kruse and his fellow Senators and their counterparts in the House understand that maintaining and increasing the funding of our future through the education of our citizens is more important than almost anything completing against it. Indiana’s current budget indicates a 1% increase in funding this year, but that is expected to be cut to 0% if not worse. 37 other states have already cut education spending; Indiana needs to take the opportunity to advance in this time of national decline. Nationally, the US spends more in one week of war than we spend sending support to education programs. As Dr. White stated, “We continue to fund our failure in war at the cost of our future.” Nationally, Obama has a program titled “Race to the Top” where Indiana has the opportunity to complete with states our same size for additional education funding. The program has already led to changes in other states to meet the requirements of national standards for assessment, development of a longitudinal data system to track students’ progress and growth, turning around low performing schools, and improved teacher quality. As Dr. White pointed out, the Race to the Top program funding for the year is equal to our expenses in one week of continued war in Iraq.

The next point attacked was teacher licensure. As had been in the news for the past few months, Dr. Bennett is attempting to bring license reform to allow professionals with an education in a particular subject matter to teach at the K-12 level. The loosened licensure should be coupled with performance evaluations to verify the teacher performs, or they are removed. Dr. White disagrees with this approach to changes; simply knowing your subject matter doesn’t prepare you to teach, pedagogy and the skills to prepare a student to learn is invaluable. Even after training in pedagogy some teachers will not be successful, but without that basic education on educating the students will suffer. Not to say the teacher education system is perfect, it could probably be made more efficient. There isn't an easy solution to the need for high quality teachers.

While this program didn't get into the topic of referendums for public education operations and, closer to me, capital improvement projects, it was promising as a parent to see the passion of our top leaders in education. Thanks to the chamber for the opportunity to hear from our local leaders.

--UPDATE--

11-23-2009
I have learned a lot about perceptions of Dr. Bennett since I posted this article. For starters, most people didn't know he was elected... in the 2008 General Election he won with 51% of the vote, Richard D. Wood(D) trailed with 48.99% of the vote, a 51,140 votes difference, per thegreenpapers.com. He will be eligible for reelection in 2012. The Superintendent of Public Instruction is an executive branch office as head of the Indiana Department of Education. His current controversy over teacher licensing is certainly a touchy subject where change is probably needed, but I haven't met anyone in the education field that agrees with his plans for change. It will be interesting to see where this debate goes from here!