A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Masson's Blog

School Vouchers are not to help “poor kids escape failing schools”

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In The Beginning — or at least early on in the school voucher program discussion, the talking points were often along the lines that vouchers would help poor students escape failing public schools. Steve Hinnefeld, writing for School Matters, has a post with numbers showing that if that was ever the real intent (it wasn’t) the structure of Indiana’s voucher program is such that it’s serving a wealthier, whiter population that never went to public schools in the first place and probably wouldn’t have even in the absence of vouchers. Over 1,300 households participating in the voucher program make more than $100,000 per year. Overall:

The state is paying $161.4 million to fund the program, which provides vouchers to pay for private-school tuition for students who qualify by family income and other criteria. Some 36,290 students, about 3 percent of Indiana’s school-age population, participate. Nearly all the 329 participating schools are religious schools. Most are Catholic, Lutheran or Evangelical Christian schools.

Fifty-eight percent of voucher students are white, 21 percent are Hispanic and 12 percent are African-American. Given that three of five voucher students come from what the state classifies as “metropolitan” areas, that suggests white students are disproportionately represented.

This reinforces my view that the real intention of voucher supporters was and is: 1) hurt teacher’s unions; 2) subsidize religious education; and 3) redirect public education money to friends and well-wishers of voucher supporters. Also, a reminder: vouchers do not improve educational outcomes. I get so worked up about this because the traditional public school is an important part of what ties a community together — part of what turns a collection of individuals into a community. And community feels a little tough to come by these days. We shouldn’t be actively eroding it.

(Updated to include a link provided to me by Up North Progressive with notes from an early strategy session with regard to the Michigan “school choice” movement showing that the damage to traditional public schools was premeditated.)

SB 127: Referendum for School Safety Levy

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Idea: Lets allocate more security dollars to low population, high value areas and less to high population, low value areas and see how that works out.

Sen. Holdman has introduced SB 127 concerning the ability of schools to conduct referendums to raise taxes for school safety. Nobody likes taxes, but schools, local control, safety — all of that’s good, right? Unfortunately, this legislation hinges on the presumption that the security needs of a school corporation is somehow correlated with the property values within that district. If anything, my guess is that the relationship is inverse. As a per-pupil calculation, the discrepancy can result in one school district generating 14x as much revenue per pupil than another district. It also ignores the transaction costs involved with conducting these referendums. The legislation provides that “A school corporation may impose a school safety referendum tax levy for the school corporation’s fund in the amount allowed under sections 6 through 19 of this chapter, but the amount may not exceed five cents ($0.05) on each one hundred dollars ($100) of assessed valuation.” It then has language talking about the school safety purposes for which the referendum money can be used.

This works out better for school districts with high assessed valuations and lower student populations and worse for districts with lower assessed valuations and higher student populations. This is counter-productive if it turns out (and I think it does) that school districts with a lot of kids living in areas with low property values end up having more security needs. It also does not seem to have a realistic view of what kind of money it takes to conduct one of these referendums. My second hand understanding is that the expense of paying to have one of these elections can vary quite a bit, but $25,000 – $50,000 is not out of the ball park.

The fiscal note for SB 127 has a nice breakdown of how much could be realized per school district with the $0.05 cap in place. Cannelton School Corporation maxes out at $9,931 per year. Meanwhile, down the river in Evansville-Vanderburgh School Corporation, the revenues could be up to $3.4 million. It’s true enough that Evansville-Vanderburgh has more students than Cannelton, but on a per pupil basis, this plan is maybe even more off-kilter.  Using the 2017 Average Daily Membership numbers,  Cannelton has an ADM of 242, so this would bring in $41 per pupil versus an ADM of 21,930 in Evansville for about $155 per pupil. Mishawaka, with about 5,100 kids could generate about $346,284 for $67.77 per pupil. Meanwhile, Hamilton Community School Corporation up in the northeastern part of the state has about 327 kids but would generate $188,731 for approximately $577 per pupil.

A system where Hamilton Community School Corp can generate 14x as much per student as Cannelton despite having similar population sizes and 8x as much per pupil as Mishawaka despite having, I suspect, fewer security concerns, is not a great system. Cannelton might even lose money on the deal, depending on how much it costs to conduct the referendum. To make matters worse, the legislation prohibits a school that passes a referendum from receiving a grant from the Indiana secured school fund.

If the State is going to tell schools how to spend their education dollars, it should do so in a way that’s equitable and more or less rational. So, if it’s going to provide that tax dollars have to go to security concerns rather than other educational concerns, more money should go to schools with greater security needs, and we shouldn’t have a system where low population, high AV school districts are generating 14x as much per student as other school districts.

Mandatory Trainings for School Employees

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I was browsing the page for the General Assembly’s interim study committee on education (as one does) and came across this memorandum (pdf) from the Indiana Department of Education describing required training for school employees:

CPR (all license holders)
Suicide Prevention (all teachers)
Bloodborne Pathogen Training (all school employees)
Bullying Prevention (school employees and volunteers)
Child Abuse and Neglect training (each employee likely to have direct, ongoing contact with children)
Criminal Organization Activity training (school employees)
Human Trafficking training (employees likely to have direct, ongoing contact with children)
Dyslexia training (reading specialists)
Homeless children & youth training (school corporation homeless education liaison)
School safety training (school safety specialists)
Seclusion and Restraint alternatives training (“appropriate school employees”)
Concussion training (all coaches)
Heat preparedness (specified coaches)
Internal Control standards training (school corporation employees who have duties related to school funds)
Lock out/tag out training (“affected employees” and “employees whose work operations may be in the area”)

Between the testing and the training, it’s a wonder teachers have time to teach.

Superintendent of Education, Dr. Jennifer McCormick Supports Conditions on Receipt of Public Funds; Won’t Run for Re-Election

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Dr. McCormick outlines her legislative agenda and announces her decision not to run for re-election in 2020.

Niki Kelly, writing for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, reports that Superintendent McCormick will not run for re-election. Arika Herron, writing for the Indianapolis Star, reports that Superintendent McCormick believes that “any school that takes public money should be an inclusive place for LGBT students and staff.” It seems pretty clear that she does not see eye-to-eye with her Republican colleagues on what the Superintendent of Public Instruction’s role should be or with how charters and private schools should be held accountable for their receipt and use of public money. This news came as Dr. McCormick discussed the Department of Education’s legislative priorities for the upcoming session. Among the priorities she announced for the Department were providing an inclusive environment for K-12 students, holding charter school authorizers accountable both fiscally and academically, and reducing testing time.

[P]roviding children an early opportunity to learn while ensuring all K-12 students are provided an inclusive environment is pivotal to the well-being of children and Indiana’s success[.] . . . Dr. McCormick will champion for charter school quality by holding authorizers accountable, both fiscally and academically. An aligned assessment system will also live in this area. In an effort to further reduce testing time and align PK-12 efforts, assessment will once again be a part of the legislative discussion.

(emphasis added).

With respect to Dr. McCormick’s decision not to run for a second term in 2020, she said, “We’ve done some great work. When I got into this office my charge was ‘I want to do what’s best for kids.’ I think back, and I was so cute. I was so naive. Now that I’ve learned the governance structure, things are very complicated in Indiana. . . . As a parent, I would not be happy if my state superintendent … were spending time on noise and that’s simply what this has become. For that conversation to keep coming up and suck all of our energies out, to me I’m growing very weary of that, so the best way I can help shut that down is to let people know I’m not running again.” When Dr. McCormick’s Democratic predecessor won the office, the General Assembly and Governor took steps to limited its authority. The State Board of Education has been given more power in recent years, and more dramatically, legislation was passed to make the Office of the Superintendent an appointed rather than an elected position. That transition is scheduled to take effect in 2025, but with Dr. McCormick’s announcement, there is speculation that the General Assembly might try to accelerate the schedule so that the Superintendent is appointed in 2021.

The issue of inclusiveness appears to be a reference to Roncalli’s decision to terminate a long-time, well-regarded guidance counselor when the school was made aware (or forced to acknowledge) that the counselor had a spouse of the same sex. Roncalli is a private school but it’s funded — in part — with public money. The question becomes whether public money should come with conditions and, if so, what conditions should be attached. Obviously, it should and does come with conditions. Voucher money can’t just go anywhere. The voucher school has to look and act more or less like a school. If it was, for example, a tavern that labeled itself a “school,” then Rep. Behning would likely change his position. He says:

If parents have a problem with the school’s practices, employment or otherwise, Behning said they can send their child elsewhere. In that case their tuition will follow, whether it’s paid by the parent or by the state. “Parents are the ones that should be making those decisions,” he said, “rather than the government.”

Rep. Behning is obviously being a little disingenuous here. The government simply wouldn’t let parents make the tavern decision. So, as the joke goes, we’re just haggling over the price. Is discrimination on that basis against an otherwise well-qualified employee because she has a same-sex spouse something we’re willing to fund or not? I obviously fall on the “not” side of that question, and it sounds like Dr. McCormick does as well. My guess is that the General Assembly will be perfectly willing to continue subsidizing Roncalli, notwithstanding its employment practices. (Because, remember, my view of the three goals of the General Assembly when it comes to school vouchers: 1) Hurt the teacher’s unions; 2) direct education money to friends & well-wishers; and 3) subsidize religious education.)

After the Tony Bennett experience, I have to confess I was skeptical of what Dr. McCormick’s tenure might bring. People who follow this sort of thing more closely might be able to enlighten me, but I can’t say I’ve had any real cause for complaint so far.

General Assembly Cracks Down on Freeloading Kindergartners

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Trevor Peters, writing for WLFI, has a story on legislation that passed last year that reduces funding for kindergartners. HB 1001 was initially designed to correct a mistake the State had made, under-budgeting for about 6,000 students they didn’t plan for. In the course of the legislative process, Sen. Ryan Mishler, took issue with the State paying for kindergartners who didn’t turn 5 by August 1 of a year. Superintendent Scott Hanback of Tippecanoe School Corporation explains that there was a waiver process where, in the past, the school was likely to enroll a kindergartner — at the request of a parent — who turned five on August 5 or the 20th or the like.

Mishler was concerned that these kindergartners might double dip. Hang back and get another year of kindergarten on the State’s dime. I can back Mishler up on this. Five year olds are, by and large, a bunch of moochers. So, pursuant to HB 1001, a kindergartner who wasn’t 5 on August 1 of a year can’t be counted as a student for school funding purposes.

This year, TSC is down about 100 kindergartners. Hanback attributes this to the Mishler provision and to a lower birth rate in 2013.

Ready, Fire, Aim: Vouchers Hurt Math Scores for Low Income Students

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Ready, Fire, Aim!

Margaret Fosmoe, writing for the South Bend Tribune, has a report on the study by Mark Berends and Joseph Waddington of Indiana’s voucher program. Math scores dropped for lower income students who used vouchers to go to private schools.

The study was based on educational results of 34,587 students in 871 public schools, and 3,363 voucher students in 265 private schools. The schools and students were not identified in the study.

. . .

Students in the study were generally in about the 40 percentile in terms of math scores before transferring to private schools, then dropped to about the 35th percentile and didn’t improve.

Low income students were the ostensible reason for Indiana’s aggressive voucher policy. I’ve argued for a long time that this was a pretext — the real reason was 1) subsidizing religious education; 2) hurting teachers unions; and 3) diverting money to friends and well-wishers of policymakers — but, if you take lawmakers at their word that this was being done to help low income students, then it looks like we’ve wasted a lot of money and done some harm in the process.

Says State Board of Education member, Gordon Hendry, “The conclusions are somewhat concerning. It demonstrates the need for further study and evaluation so we can have more data about the results of this program.” With all due respect (and at least Hendry responded to the South Bend Tribune), the time for study was before we jumped into the voucher pond with both feet. Successful school systems in the rest of the world don’t do it this way. Other than the pretexts suggested above (which, to be clear, I’m not attributing to Hendry – I don’t pretend to know his motivations) and certain dogmatic ideas about the infallibility of the marketplace, there was no reason we had to try to reinvent the wheel in order to improve our schools.

Charter Schools: Accountability Won’t Happen Anytime Soon

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The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has an editorial entitled Overdue Accountability: Online Charters’ Abysmal Record Scrutinized. The editorial makes the very reasonable suggestion that online charter schools should be held accountable for poor performance and held to the same standards as traditional public schools. This comes in the wake of virtual charter schools generally, and Indiana Virtual School in particular, performing poorly. IVS graduated 63 of 985 students. Says the FWJG:

Nearly a decade later, virtual charter schools represent the very worst of Indiana’s public education system, with the state’s three online schools finishing in the bottom 3 percent statewide for test improvement. Each received F’s under the most recent round of grades assigned by the state. Graduation rates are abysmal: Indiana Virtual School had the worst rate in the state, graduating just 63 of 985 students.

But as a committee of the Indiana State Board of Education reviewed their performance last week, virtual charter school officials cried foul – claiming they haven’t had time to prove themselves and arguing they shouldn’t be held to the standards of other public schools because of the students they serve.

“We should be held accountable in more than just the academic arena,” Percy Clark, superintendent for Indiana Virtual School, told committee members. “Every ill that you want to name plagues our students.”

Public schools will surely be crying a river. That’s not to say that external factors don’t affect a school’s performance. They absolutely do. The socioeconomic status of students going into a school are a great predictor of how the school will perform. Some kids are much easier to educate than others (which is why the money-follows-the-child model of school funding is so problematic.) But, traditional public schools are no strangers to being judged based on socioeconomic factors well out of their control.

Rigorous accountability measures can lead to charter schools doing some good. Massachusetts seems to be the primary example of this.

It appears that Massachusetts’ charter laws are responsible, at least in large part, for the superior performance of the state’s charter schools. Indeed, Massachusetts prohibits for-profit Education Management Organizations (EMOs), and its process for authorizing charter schools is particularly rigorous. According to Alison Bagg, director of charter schools and school redesign at the Massachusetts Department of Education, Massachusetts is one of the few states in which the Department of Education serves as the sole authorizer of charter schools. “You have some states that have hundreds and hundreds of charters schools, all authorized by these districts or non-profits,” Bagg explained to the HPR. In Massachusetts, by contrast, “it has been historically very difficult to get a charter,” and the state has been recognized by the National Association of Charter School Authorizers as “one of the leaders in charter school authorizing nationwide.”

The charter renewal process is also quite rigorous, according to Bagg. The state monitors charter schools closely and has the ability to close charter schools that have achieved poor results—a practice that is not universal across states.

Indiana is unlikely to implement Massachusetts’ approach because the quality of educational opportunities appears to be mostly incidental to the motivations of voucher and charter school enthusiasts in Indiana. Higher priorities seem to be: a) reducing the influence of teachers unions; b) redirecting the flow of education money to friends and well-wishers of policymakers supporting charters; and c) using public money to subsidize religious education. So, I’ll make the bold prediction that the accountability urged by the FWJG editorial board won’t be happening any time soon. (Also, pessimism is often confused for wisdom, and if I’m wrong, I’ll be happy. So, I’ve got that going for me. Which is nice.)

Let the Teens Sleep: Noblesville Schools

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Emma Kate Fittes, writing for the Indianapolis Star, has an article on a plan by Noblesville Schools to basically flip their elementary and high school start times to accommodate research showing that teens are wired to sleep later. “In 2019, elementary schoolers will start their day almost an hour earlier, at 7:50 a.m., and middle and high schoolers will begin more than an hour later, at 8:40 a.m.” This comports with a recommendation by the American Academy of Pediatrics that school start times for adolescents be 8:30 or later.

Studies show that adolescents who don’t get enough sleep often suffer physical and mental health problems, an increased risk of automobile accidents and a decline in academic performance. But getting enough sleep each night can be hard for teens whose natural sleep cycles make it difficult for them to fall asleep before 11 p.m. – and who face a  first-period class at 7:30 a.m. or earlier the next day.  . . . [T]he American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends middle and high schools delay the start of class to 8:30 a.m. or later. Doing so will align school schedules to the biological sleep rhythms of adolescents, whose sleep-wake cycles begin to shift up to two hours later at the start of puberty.

I suspect this move will cue the chorus of people who routinely complain about how we’re coddling kids these days. That chorus, I further suspect, has a significant overlap with the population which isn’t likely to be convinced by “research” and “science.” Their gut says that if we don’t make life hard for kids then we’re ruining them. Making them soft. Also, early start times were good enough for the older generations. (Also, walking to school uphill both ways in the snow, outhouses, leechcraft, etc. Probably.)

One parent asked, “if students would have access to wifi on the bus, to get a jump start on homework instead of waiting until they get home.” This was not part of the article, but . . . about homework: There doesn’t seem to be much evidence that it’s helpful. So, we could probably free up some sleep time by thinning out the amount of homework being assigned. But, again, that probably would offend our cultural sensitivity about the evils of sloth, virtue of work, and weird need to believe that each generation is worse than the last.

Phil Downs on the Cumulative Effect of Vouchers

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We’ll be better off if we make sure that our kids become smarter than we are.

Phil Downs, Superintendent of the Southwest Allen County Schools, has a column in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette that very patiently works through some of the funding issues with the voucher system in Indiana. Generally, he says that overall state funding of education hasn’t kept up with inflation and, in addition, vouchers have an impact on your school even if none of the kids in your school district use a voucher to go to private school.

It is conventional wisdom that the voucher program only affects big cities. While voucher usage is higher in big cities, the financial effect is felt in every school district because the voucher dollars come out of Tuition Support, in effect reducing the dollars supporting students in all public schools.

Recall that vouchers were initially sold as a way for public school kids to get out of struggling schools. From that premise, it has grown to be one of the most expansive voucher programs in the nation. Now we have a system where it’s not necessary for a kid to have ever attended public school and it’s not necessary for the school to be struggling for the kid’s parents to divert money from the public school. (Downs says that, of approximately 35,500 voucher students, only 274 were used to leave an F-rated school). Now, we see it’s not even necessary for kids in your district to flee to voucher schools in order for your district to suffer from the voucher program.  He suggests that Peru Community Schools had no vouchers used within its system and, even so, the state’s voucher program cost Peru $321,000 in funding. This reduced funding does not, by the way, result in a better education for the voucher kids.

It’s no secret that I’m critical of the money-follows-the-child philosophy on which the voucher system is premised. People with no children pay into this system. We fund education to build our communities. We do this, in part of course, by educating the individual students. But our schools are also part of the fabric of our cities, towns, and counties. They help tie us together and make us a community rather than a mere collection of individuals.

HCR 3 – Overt Identification of Free and Reduced Price Lunch Recipients

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Being a kid is hard enough. In this land of plenty, they should at least be well fed.

Rep. Siegrist has introduced House Concurrent Resolution 3 concerning the practices of schools with respect to overt identification of students who receive free and reduced price lunches. The resolution urges the legislative council to study the issue of how to reduce overt identification of these students. It’s not terribly surprising that students (like anyone) perform better when they’re well fed. The problem this resolution seeks to address is that it’s embarrassing to be the poor kid who needs government assistance for food. As a society, we’re way too quick to assign a moral value to poverty or wealth — poverty as evidence of the absence of moral fiber and wealth as evidence of probity. But, even if you subscribe to the economy-as-morality-play view of life, it’s tough to blame a kid for the fact that his or her parents are poor. So, school lunches should be one place where we generally don’t mind trying to make sure the kids are fed and don’t mind trying to make sure that they don’t feel bad if they need financial assistance to make that happen.

The resolution notes:

Whereas, Students would often rather go without an adequate meal than be identified by their peers as being a free or reduced price lunch student; and

Whereas, Although overt identification is prohibited under state and federal law, it often unintentionally occurs in schools, either causing students to skip meals they need to be academically successful or to feel shame for accepting a public benefit;

It goes on to note that the federal government has developed a best practices guide that, among other things, helps avoid inadvertent overt identification and argues that state-level study could build on this federal study to “further reduce overt identification, increase the use of free and reduced price meal benefits and, ultimately, to increase the health and performance of Hoosier students.”

Sen. Stoops has introduced legislation on a similar topic. SB 314 would specifically require schools to provide meals to students even if they owe money unless the student’s parents has specifically asked them not to. It would prohibit schools from requiring a student to dispose of the meal because they owed money. (This is presumably related to reports that some schools would make kids dump their lunch trays if it turned out they couldn’t pay for them.) If a student gets more than four meals into debt, it instructs the school to take specific measures to try to get the kid signed up for financial assistance, if appropriate, and reach out to the parents to see what’s going on. It prohibits the school from publicly identifying or stigmatizing a student who is unable to pay for a meal or has a meal debt, and it prohibits schools from making kids work off the debt.

It’s probably the old debt collector in me, but it seems to me that it might also be appropriate to give schools some additional tools for debt collection against the parents (e.g. allowing addition of attorney’s fees and collection costs if they don’t respond to demands for payment or requests for financial information). I’m all in favor of erring on the side of feeding kids. I’m on record as saying that if we, the public, end up feeding a few extra kids, I won’t be that bothered:

But, I’m just an old softy because, at the end of the day if extra kids get fed with taxpayer dollars, I’m kind of o.k. with that. Because, you know, feeding kids — even kids who are from families that are lower middle class instead of poor — is not the worst way to spend tax dollars.

That said, these meals do cost money. And schools don’t have a ton of that money. Many families simply don’t have enough to make ends meet or, if they do, are living right on the edge. We should not be reluctant to feed kids from those families. But, there are inevitably some parents with sufficient resources who are simply neglectful of their children, and some thought should be given to what recourse schools might have against neglectful parents.