Panel discusses issues regarding Indiana public schools

Indiana public schools were hit as hard as anything by the economy.  

A panel met Tuesday at the Indiana Memorial Union to discuss some of the educational issues currently facing Indiana.

It was sponsored by the Bloomington Rotary Club with support from the IU School of Education.

The panel included Gerardo Gonzalez, dean of IU’s School of Education; Terry Spradlin, associate director for education policy at IU’s Center for Evaluation and Education Policy; Terry Thompson, superintendent of the Metropolitan School District Wayne Township; Taji Gibson, an English teacher at Bloomington High School North; and John Burnett, president of the Community Education Coalition.

Chuck Carney, director of communications and media relations for the School of Education, moderated the panel.

The panel began with a picture recently featured in the Herald-Times. It showed a devastated Gibson after learning she would no longer have a job at Bloomington High School North.

In the picture, Gibson was sitting on a student’s desk with a blackboard in the background looking at the ground.

“It was devastating. I’d been teaching for 14 years,” Gibson said. “I had no idea that I was going to get that news.”

Gibson was reinstated, but she said she doesn’t know if she’ll have a job next year.

The panel said these types of stories are not uncommon due to cuts in funding.

“It certainly impacts teacher morale,” Thompson said.

He said teachers who are unsure of their job security are becoming more common even though enrollment in public schools is increasing.

The average age of a teacher in Thompson’s district used to be 48 years, he said. It has dropped to 38 and is expected to drop again to 35.

Carney asked Gonzalez if these changes have been hard for the School of Education.
Gonzalez said the current financial state has impacted the number of students who pursue a teaching career.

Burnett said businesses and the community must be engaged in education to know what is going on with funding and assessments.

Businesses and communities have the ability to help raise money, leverage funds and speak to government officials on behalf of the schools, Burnett said.

Spradlin said the current economic state of Indiana is going to hurt the schools in the near future despite attempts to increase funding.

Three Indiana schools have recently sued the state because their funding is not increasing even though their enrollment is, Spradlin said.

“The problem this year is that there will be no money,” Spradlin said.

He said federal funding and reserve money for Indiana is very low, and the state is down from its usual funds by a couple billion dollars.

Spradlin said the two methods to counteract this are to increase taxes or to cut spending. Since the economy is still recovering, few are in favor of increasing taxes, he said.

That leaves a cut in spending, and since public education accounts for about 50 percent of state spending, it will likely take a hit.

Burnett, who moved back to Indiana to raise his children in this education system, said education is important for economic development. He said companies deciding where to locate or stay look at the quality of the area’s education system.

The panel also discussed a new form of student assessment. Similar to the legislation passed during the time of the George W. Bush administration  — the No Child Left Behind Act — the new growth assessment would also factor in which educational level the student started at when assessing growth.

The panel agreed this new method should not be used to assess teachers. However, Spradlin said administrators need to be given tools to assess and dismiss poor teachers rather than doing so on a national or state level.

Parent involvement in education was also discussed. Carney said it is agreed by most researchers that parents should read to students, help them with their homework and find other ways to engage them educationally at home.

Gonzalez said the problem with this usually arises not because parents are uninterested, but because they are uneducated. In the past, a college degree wasn’t necessary for a well-paying job, he said.

“We need to reach out to that generation of parents,” Gonzalez said.

It is also difficult for parents in low-paying jobs, Thompson said. Parents who work two or three minimum wage jobs might have interest in their children’s education but lack the time and energy to become engaged.

“Times will probably get worse before they get better for public education,” Spradlin said.