Vic’s Statehouse Notes #136– April 22, 2013

Dear Friends,

Sadly I must report that today the House passed the bill saying that neither a teacher license nor a superintendent license are needed to be a superintendent in Indiana, House Bill 1357. The final vote was 55-40. Since the House concurred with the Senate version, the bill now goes to the Governor for his signature.

House Bill 1357

The Senate added the requirement that to be a superintendent, the candidate must hold a Masters degree in any subject. The House had passed the first version of the bill 58-40 allowing anyone to be a superintendent, even those with no college degree.

The deconstruction of the education profession in Indiana continues. Principals can now brace for evaluations by superintendents who have never been a principal. University programs set up to train high quality superintendents are likely to die on the vine. Look for excellent superintendents to leave the state to find a climate which respects the special training needed to be a successful superintendent.

I happened to see Sen. Leising after the vote. She recounted the story that she had to leave the Education Committee meeting on the day of the vote on HB 1357 in order to present a detailed bill she was sponsoring in another committee. The bill ended up passing the committee 6-5. She said she would have voted “no” making the sixth vote against the bill and killing it 6-6. The bill survived for a floor vote several days later, which turned out to be a 25-25 tie, leading to a rare tie-breaking vote by Lt. Gov. Ellspermann to pass the bill 26-25. Of course, such details won’t matter in the days ahead when Indiana’s reputation will be established nationwide as a place that doesn’t respect the need for training to be a superintendent.

House Bill 1338 – Now the Home of One Version of A-F Revision Language

The conference committee meeting was held this morning (Monday) on HB 1338, charter school administration. The major news is that Rep. Behning offered amendment #17 as the basis for a conference committee report which inserted his version of the revised A-F system to grade schools. The revision would put the “A” through “F” labels for schools in law. Currently, the State Board of Education decides on the names for the categories and puts them in rules. Copies of the amendment were not distributed to the audience and I could not get a copy later today, so further analysis of the A-F proposal will have to wait until a copy is available.

It should be noted that even though the main part of the bill is about charter school changes, the proposed A-F system would apply to all schools.

Sen. Kruse, the Senate conferee, quickly said he would agree to Rep. Behning’s proposal. Rep. Vernon Smith, the House Democrat conferee, objected to putting the A-F labels in law, noting that State Superintendent Ritz has another plan which involved two grades, one for proficiency and one for growth. He urged her participation in determining the next set of metrics for school grades. Sen. Rogers, the Senate Democrat conferee, strongly opposed the codification of A-F labels, saying that her constituents do not understand the A-F labels and she wants a system that has bipartisan support as we had in 1999 at the outset of the Public Law 221.

The Senate version of the A-F revisions is found in HB 1427, which outlines a two part grade for both proficiency and growth in an amendment written by Sen. Kenley. State Superintendent has had some input on the language of the Senate amendment. HB 1427 has not been scheduled for a conference committee yet. It also includes language on a review of the Common Core. Since time is marching on, it is possible that Rep. Behning’s language on A-F in HB 1338 will become the only game in town on that topic.

House Bill 1003 – Voucher Expansion

One story that I heard today is that Speaker Bosma wants to finish all work on Thurday, April 25th, a day earlier than he announced in press reports last week. If this is true, it seems hard to see how the voucher expansion bill will have time to go back through both houses in a new form. The more likely scenario is that the House will decide to take a concurrence vote on the Senate version, which would only take one more vote.

Given this possibility, your messages opposing voucher expansion should focus on House members. The bill has changed in the Senate, and House members may not agree with the changes summed up in the following points:

• For the first time, the voucher program uses the seriously flawed A-F system to pass out vouchers. That is wrong.

• It entwines federal special education money with private school special education services and new regulations for monitoring such services. Yet state regulation of private schools is illegal under the 2011 voucher law. The current language will be vulnerable to lawsuits.

• The final product could seriously undermine tuition support payments to public and charter schools, with estimates of the loss ranging from 19% to 90%. This is totally unacceptable. However much legislators may support the concept of vouchers, they should not let these major unpredictable cuts go through to hurt public and charter schools.

• All of these issues should be studied in an interim study committee and not implemented at this time.

The passion that you bring these points to House members in the next two days will make all the difference in the final outcome.
 
These talking points should be shared with the 57 Republican Representatives who voted yes: Representatives Arnold, Baird, Behning, Braun, T. Brown, Burton, Carbaugh, Cherry, Crouch, Culver, Davis, Davisson, DeVon, Eberhart, Friend, Frizzell, Frye, Gutwein, Hamm, Harman, Heaton, Heuer, Huston, Karickhoff, Kirchhofer, Kubacki, Lehe, Lehman, Leonard, Lucas, Lutz, Mayfield, McMillin, Messmer, Morris, Morrison, Negele, Niemeyer, Ober, Pond, Price, Richardson, Slager, Smaltz, M. Smith, Speedy, Steuerwald, Thompson, Torr, Turner, Ubelhor, VanNatter, Washburne, Wesco, Zent, Ziemke and Speaker Bosma

Thanks for your work on behalf of the one million plus public school students of Indiana!

Best wishes,

Vic Smith

ICPE is working to promote public education and oppose privatization of schools in the Statehouse. I keep hearing reports that some public school supporters read these “Notes” with great interest but don’t translate that interest into joining ICPE. To keep our outstanding lobbyist Joel Hand in place, who is working hard against voucher expansion during conference committees, we need all members from last year to renew and we need new members who support public education. Please join us! Thanks to all who have joined or sent extra donations recently!

Go to www.icpe2011.com for membership and renewal information.

Some readers have asked about my background in Indiana public schools. Thanks for asking! Here is a brief bio:

I am a lifelong Hoosier and began teaching in 1969. I served as a social studies teacher, curriculum developer, state research and evaluation consultant, state social studies consultant, district social studies supervisor, assistant principal, principal, educational association staff member, and adjunct university professor. I worked for Garrett-Keyser-Butler Schools, the Indiana University Social Studies Development Center, the Indiana Department of Education, the Indianapolis Public Schools, IUPUI, and the Indiana Urban Schools Association, from which I retired as Associate Director in 2009. I hold three degrees: B.A. in Ed., Ball State University, 1969; M.S. in Ed., Indiana University, 1972; and Ed.D., Indiana University, 1977, along with a Teacher’s Life License and a Superintendent’s License, 1998.

Education Issues 2012 #2

Testing, Corporate Reform, Teacher Evaluation, Job Qualifications, ALEC, Arne Duncan,
Fiction vs. Non-Fiction

(Click on the titles below to read the complete articles.)

Testing isn't teaching

To understand how tests and learning become enemies, imagine the impact on teachers whose job security suddenly depends on the inappropriate application of a statistical model that almost all assessment experts warn cannot validly measure teachers' performance.

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Coming Soon to a School Near You: Big Ed

Corporate America has given us Big Banks - banks too big to fail. Corporate America has given us Big Pharma - a pharmaceutical industry too big to fight. Coming soon to a school near you, courtesy of corporate America: Big Ed - a centralized education system too big to question its self-serving, profit-driven, intellect-destroying priorities.

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Stephen Krashen on Teacher Evaluations

Stephen Krashen, professor emeritus at the University of Southern California, responds to a USA Today article about evaluating teachers using test scores.

A number of studies have shown that rating teachers using test score gains does not give consistent results. Different tests produce different ratings, and the same teacher's ratings can vary from year to year, sometimes quite a bit.

In addition, using test score gains for evaluation encourages gaming the system, trying to produce increases in scores by teaching test-taking strategies, not by encouraging real learning. This is like putting a match under the thermometer and claiming you have raised the temperature of the room.

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The Tragedy of Education Transformation: Leadership without Expertise

Professional degrees in education and experience in the classroom don't matter. So say some politicians who have no professional degrees in education or experience in the classroom.

South Carolina's Superintendent of Education Mick Zais makes several claims in The State (March 25, 2012) that build on one central argument: "The most important information about teachers isn’t the degrees they have or their years of seniority. Their effectiveness in the classroom matters much, much more."

Like Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Zais has no experience teaching children in K-12 public education. This complete lack of teaching experience and degrees in the field of education is a suspect position from which to claim that these two characteristics do not matter. In fact, political appointees and elected officials sit in unique positions often above both accountability (the mantra du jour of the political elite regarding education) and qualifications—unlike the real world markets they often praise.

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Lobbyists, Guns and Money

ALEC isn’t single-handedly responsible for the corporatization of our political life; its influence is as much a symptom as a cause. But shining a light on ALEC and its supporters — a roster that includes many companies, from AT&T and Coca-Cola to UPS, that have so far managed to avoid being publicly associated with the hard-right agenda — is one good way to highlight what’s going on. And that kind of knowledge is what we need to start taking our country back.

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Condi Rice-Joel Klein report: Not the new ‘A Nation at Risk’

The report cites lots of statistics that paint public schools in the worst possible light, and continues the trend of comparing America’s educational system with that of high-achieving countries — but doesn’t note that these countries generally don’t do the kinds of things these reformers endorse. Its recommendations would lead to further privatization of public schools and even more emphasis on standardized testing.

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Flunking Arne Duncan

Diane Ravitch gives US Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, a report card.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan loves evaluation. He insists that everyone should willingly submit to public grading of the work they do. The Race to the Top program he created for the Obama Administration requires states to evaluate all teachers based in large part on the test scores of their students. When the Los Angeles Times released public rankings that the newspaper devised for thousands of teachers, Duncan applauded and asked, “What’s there to hide?” Given Duncan’s enthusiasm for grading educators, it seems high time to evaluate his own performance as Secretary of Education.

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Fiction vs. Non-Fiction

Does non-fiction help children learn to read better than fiction? Maybe if you define "learn to read" as "passing a standardized test."

See also Keith Oatley's Scientific American article (Nov. 2011) Fiction Hones Social Skills.

The first article below touts a study showing that non-fiction helps students learn to read better than fiction.

Nonfiction Curriculum Enhanced Reading Skills, Study Finds

Children in New York City who learned to read using an experimental curriculum that emphasized nonfiction texts outperformed those at other schools that used methods that have been encouraged since the Bloomberg administration’s early days, according to a new study...

Howard Gardner, professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, responds.

Reading Curriculums

To the Editor:

Re “Nonfiction Curriculum Enhanced Reading Skills, Study Finds” (news article, March 12): It is instructive to know that second graders who received a Core Knowledge curriculum performed better than comparison groups on measures of reading. But every choice of curriculum — and, more important, every choice of an assessment measure — entails a value judgment.

Those educators who selected a reading program that valued fictional works presumably thought that was an appropriate emphasis. It is now up to those educators to provide measures that might reveal better performances on their curriculum — for example, richer imaginations by students or a greater likelihood of reading books of any sort outside the school environment.

HOWARD GARDNER
Cambridge, Mass., March 12, 2012

...and Neuroscience responds...

Your Brain on Fiction

Reading great literature, it has long been averred, enlarges and improves us as human beings. Brain science shows this claim is truer than we imagined.

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