Indiana

Call Him Crazy

By Abdul Hakim-Shabazz

The following is a guest post from Robert Enlow.    Enlow is the President and CEO  of the Friedman Foundation which advocates education reform and school choice.

Call me crazy, but I want to know why no one gets upset when the state doles out over $10,000 to Carmel millionaires so that they can send their kids to swish suburban public schools but everyone goes nuts when you ask the state to give $1,000 to poor and working class families so that they can escape poorly performing urban public schools and send their kids to private schools.

Call me crazy, but I want to know why Bradley Balch, the dean of the college of education at Indiana State University, thinks that it is more important that teachers know how to teach math than to actually know the math they are teaching. Don?t you think that it is interesting that the daily newspapers in the two cities with the largest schools of education, Bloomington and Muncie, have editorialized in favor of Tony Bennett?s teacher licensing reforms? They must know something we don?t.

Call me crazy, but I want to know why well-meaning education reformers think that standards and accountability models as they are currently defined work worth a darn. Hands up if you understand what it means if a school is on academic watch or if you think that it makes any sense to wait until a school is on academic probation for six straight years before the state can take it over.

Without true consequences and absolute transparency the accountability system we have had in Indiana for the last ten years hasn?t led to any serious growth in test scores. It must be the kid?s fault or the parent?s fault, right?

Moreover, the kind of accountability system we have now still allows part time school boards to get full health care benefits for themselves and their family and still means that no one really understands school funding unless you have three master?s degrees, a PhD. and the ability to read upside down.

The only way this changes is by having an understandable system of accountability (i.e. judging schools in a manner that even you and I could get), a clear set of consequences for failure (i.e. being free to transfer to other public and private schools), and a truly transparent budgeting process for schools (i.e. publicly available).

At least in Indiana – thanks to Mitch Daniels, Tony Bennett, Brian Bosma and some other key leaders – we have a real shot of getting real reform in the next few years.

Full post as published by Indiana Barrister on August 21, 2009 (boomark / email).