Important Indiana election

Given the importance of the neck-and-neck race for the presidency, readers might be forgiven for relegating more local concerns to the back of their minds.

On the off-chance you haven’t been following the surprisingly close Indiana School Superintendent race, an office that the IDS is certain you at least knew existed, allow us to recapitulate for you terrible citizen.

Incumbent superintendent Tony Bennett is engaged in stiff competition with challenger Glenda Ritz.

Bennett is pretty unpopular due to past policies such as linking teacher salaries to student performance, constricting teachers’ unions and expanding private school voucher programs. 

Bennett has revealed that there is a significant improvement in Indiana schools, according to a brand-new system of evaluation introduced by Bennett and his allies and ratified by the current state board.

Ritz has already called foul and demanded an outside evaluation, a request which has gone largely ignored.

Call us cynics, but we can’t help but be intensely skeptical of the new grading system which has recently been unveiled by the Indiana schooling system.

Superficially, it looks magnificent.

There are no schools slated for government takeover this year, a number of failing schools — those earning a grade of F ­— have increased to either a B or A during the course of a single year, and 60 percent of all Indiana schools are currently earning either a B or A.

Certainly those in previous generations would be thrilled to earn such grades, if only so their parents wouldn’t beat them.

While it seems the mark of a highly desperate man to announce such skewed policies in the midst of a near election, it raises a troubling implication.

The most immediate problem with the new grading system is that instead of evaluating improvement or failure in each school, it compares the performance of each grade with other schools state-wide.

It should be obvious that the schools located in better regions will be better funded, have fewer social problems and naturally produce better prepared students.

This means schools located in high poverty regions such as inner city Indianapolis will be labeled as problem schools because the predominately disadvantaged and ethnic students lack both the means and opportunities to compete with considerably wealthier school districts.

For failing to live up to the standards of other schools in the state, these impoverished schools will be penalized further, contributing to the hardships their students face, regardless of whether the school itself is improving.

If there is magic formula for evaluating schools, we would have already discovered and published it.

However, we’re pretty certain that the answer doesn’t lie in further oppressing the students that already face the most challenges.

Regardless of your partisanship or how little you care about regional politics, think about your vote. Everyone who attended an Indiana public school was once subject to this system.

Don’t we owe it to all current and future students to make certain that the system is fair and equitable?