Holding public schools accountable

Last week, I received an e-mail from a high school teacher.

I keep in touch with many influential teachers from my earlier years, so my initial reaction was one of excitement to reconnect with an old friend.

However, when I opened it, I was confronted with quite a different message.
In the first line, my teacher urged me, along with dozens of others copied in the e-mail, to stop the “attack on public education ... set forth by our governor and state legislators.”

As a product of public schools, she explained, it was my responsibility to organize my peers against this cruel reform.

Through my involvement in politics, I have witnessed many persuasive tactics.
However, this was a new low — suggesting that, because I attended public schools and became a “success story,” as she put it, I must take action to decry any legislative effort to change Indiana’s public school system.

However, most of the reforms that Gov. Mitch Daniels and the state legislature have proposed are a far cry from an “assault” on public education.

Instead, these efforts are geared at making Indiana’s schools stronger and more competitive with other states and students around the globe.

By all quantitative data assessments, Indiana’s public school system is strong.

In the U.S. Department of Education’s “National Assessment of Educational Progress,” the reading, writing and mathematics test scores of Hoosier fourth and eighth graders are all better than the national average.

Yet, that competitive edge is marginal, and especially as other states across the country dramatically reform their public education systems, we must be vigilant that we are not overtaken by our competition.

Daniels’ proposals for educational reform are not an assault on Indiana’s public education system. They are made of common-sense, market-driven modernizations of an outdated, assembly-line system.

Yet, they will be met with dramatic, emotional opposition from teachers’ unions because of the new competitive pressure they place upon teachers to succeed.
Performance pay for teachers, in which teachers are paid based upon the success rates of their students rather than their degrees held or their number of years of service, is one such reform that encourages teachers to innovate their lesson plans and ensure that students are actually learning the material their state standards require.

This system is already in place in at least eight states across the country (Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Minnesota, North Carolina and Texas).  
Another hot-button legislative proposal supported by the governor and reaffirmed by a recent House vote is expansion of charter schools and increased options for school choice, including a school voucher system.

Also, Daniels wants to give more control to individual parents and community members, who, if certain legislative reforms are passed, will be able to initiate a referendum to ask the state to step in to rectify failing public schools.

However, the most creative and interesting of the governor’s reforms provides students even more educational choice by allowing high school juniors, if they have completed all of the requisite courses, to graduate early and receive a $6,000 scholarship (about how much most public schools receive in per-pupil funding per year) to finance college tuition. 

These reforms are almost universally lauded as forward-thinking, positive additions to Indiana’s education system — by nearly everyone besides teachers and their unions.
Reform is always hard. Injecting competition into a largely uncompetitive educational market will place new pressures upon public educators to perform.

However, it is important to note that competitive pressure nearly always incites expedited success.

Would most pharmaceutical companies spend so much money on secret research and development, curing or assuaging some of the world’s most terrible diseases, without market competition from other pharmaceutical corporations?

Would the Manhattan Project have been able to perfect a new form of an incredibly advanced energy source in less than two years if the United States was not responding to competitive pressures from a similar rumored program in Germany?

Educational competition will bring about positive change. Educators will be held accountable for actually educating students.

Students and their parents will uncover new opportunities to chart their own academic ventures, tailoring their coursework to individual career aspirations and personal passions.

A one-size-fits-all approach to public education in this state is outdated, and Daniels and reform-minded state legislators should be applauded for bravely and maturely attacking a problem that so badly needs it.


E-mail: jkingsol@indiana.edu