A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Masson's Blog

State Impact Indiana on Challenge for Rural Schools with Inadequate State Funding

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Indiana General Assembly school vouchers

The “money follows the child” model of school funding can have a negative impact on local communities.

Claire McInerny, writing for State Impact Indiana, has a good article on challenges faced by Wabash County and City Schools due to the State’s approach to funding and the loss of students in their districts. The State takes a “money follows the student” approach to school funding which leads to problems when students move elsewhere. Efforts to keep the schools going have resulted in Wabash City Schools closing schools. Now their gifted program takes place in a former storage room.

Scenarios like this exist across the state. Over the last decade, almost all rural school districts lost students. And because state funding is based on enrollment, when students leave, so does cash.

On top of this, consolidation and school closures upset parents, who may elect to move their children, which means even less money.

I’ve argued against money-follows-the-child funding on any number of occasions. It’s misguided because children are not widgets — some cost more than others to fund. It’s also misguided because the public dollars aren’t an entitlement for individual students. After all, lots and lots of people without children pay into the system. Those dollars are ultimately investments communities are making in themselves. Recognition should be given to the fact that public money is ultimately paying for a public good — a public good that both educates the children and creates a public institution that makes the community a better place to live.

It looks like, under the current funding model, Wabash City and Wabash County are looking at County-wide consolidation.

The Hits Keep Coming for Indiana Voucher Schools

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Indiana General Assembly school vouchers

A bus load of money being taken from public schools to subsidize families who never would have sent their kids there.

The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has an editorial critical of Indiana’s largest-in-the-nation voucher program following an in depth NPR report by Cory Turner (transcript of Morning Edition interview here.)

A couple of months ago, there were new studies showing that vouchers did not improve education. Those studies followed on one that showed Indiana’s weak to non-existent accountability and audit requirements for use of vouchers. (See also, the investigation into waste of state money at Todd Academy.)

The most recent NPR investigation revealed that most Indiana voucher money was funding kids who had never been to public school and never would have gone. Roughly 40% of private school students receive a voucher. 306 of the 313 schools receiving voucher money were religious. “Religious environment/instruction” was the number one reason given for enrolling kids in private schools. Not to put too fine a point on it, Indiana’s vouchers are a subsidy for private religious schools; not “choice” for low-income public school students. This is not happening in a vacuum. This money is coming from our public schools. The state education budget has not recovered from the Great Recession in 2009. “Indiana spends less per pupil, after adjusting for inflation, than it did in 2009. Meanwhile, it’s spending $146 million on private school vouchers this school year.”

Additionally, there is the fact that vouchers are misguided since some kids simply cost more to educate than others. Students are not interchangeable widgets. And, it turns out, those with special education needs are being turned away from private schools. In Fort Wayne, for example, special needs students make up 15% of the general population but only 6.5% of the private school population.

This is key to understanding Indiana’s voucher program. Public schools are required to accept all students, regardless of disability. Voucher schools are not. In many cases, it’s not the students who choose the schools but the schools that choose the students.

Of the NPR study, the Journal Gazette summarizes:

• A price tag of $146 million a year and growing

• Fewer than 1 percent of voucher students transferred from a public school identified as failing

• Voucher-school enrollment policies that discriminate against special education students

• Little financial transparency for the public dollars flowing to private interests

• Per-pupil education spending, adjusted for inflation, less than 2009 as the state picks up tuition bills for more families who always intended to send their children to religious schools

• Early research finding voucher students show no gains in reading and “statistically significant average annual losses in mathematics” compared with their public school experience

And all of this comes even before we get to the impact on the community. As I argued in a Journal Gazette column of my own:

The concept of citizens and the public are closely aligned. Public education isn’t important merely because it serves the public; it is important because it creates the public. The school’s role as a public institution is something that often gets left out or ignored when the subjects of “school choice” and vouchers are brought up. Disregard of the public schools’ role in creating the public is a fundamental flaw in the “money-follows-the-child” model of funding education.
. . .
The more we turn ourselves from members of the public into an atomized collection of individuals, the weaker our communities and democratic institutions become. Dressing up these decisions in the language of “choice” does not change this fact.

There is a note of hope in the Journal Gazette editorial. State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Jennifer McCormick said, “You know, we’re spending roughly $146 million on a program and not really reviewing it. That is irresponsible.” That’s a start at least. But, as my favorite Upton Sinclair quote reminds us, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” I don’t know enough about Superintendent McCormick to cast that aspersion on her, but there are members of the General Assembly of whom I am more skeptical. Judging from how voucher money is being spent, the rhetoric about providing “choice” to low income students at failing public schools seems to have been more in the nature of pretext than a serious policy goal.

Knocking on Doors

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This blog has not, for years, been on any kind of reliable publication schedule. Sometimes, it’s three times per day, then I go a week without anything. That probably explains the longevity — I’ve not put any kind of pressure on myself. It hasn’t done much for readership levels. If I wanted a lot of readers, I’d post 3-5x per day on Daylight Saving Time, class basketball, and why this or that politician is truly a monster.

Anyway, I’m going through one of my ebbs — which is coming at an inopportune time since this we’re getting toward the end of session when the General Assembly tends to get into most of whatever pernicious nonsense it decides to bring upon itself. So, I thought I’d mention what was occupying me instead of seeing what the General Assembly was getting into in terms of abortion, religion, following the “education choice” will-o-the-wisp, and whatever else.

Under the state’s funding formula, West Lafayette is in the bottom 2% of schools in terms of state funding. In fact, since 1993, the state’s school funding choices have worked against West Lafayette schools at almost every turn.  However, we’re a community that values its education. So, in 2010, the people of the community stepped up and passed a local school funding referendum. Partially as a result of this, we have one of the best (arguably the best) school districts in the state. Under the state’s school funding referendum model, a community has to keep passing these things every 7 years or so if it wants to keep the funding in place. So, I’m taking part in an effort to keep the local funding in place. One of the things this requires is knocking on a lot of doors. I’ve never actually done any canvassing before. Turns out, it’s pretty enjoyable. It helps a lot that I believe in the cause and most people in the community seem to be supportive. Getting out and talking to people is, for the most part, energizing. And, this morning, I brought my daughter along as my wingman. She seems to have an aptitude for it. (I warned you all this was coming when she was two.)

So, that’s eating up quite a bit of free time. Coaching the kids’ soccer teams starts up next week, so I wouldn’t be surprised if things are a little quiet around here in April. For those of you in the West Lafayette School District, I encourage you to vote “yes” to the school funding question on May 2. If you want to learn more, volunteer, and/or spruce up your lawn with a sign, head on over to SupportRDP.com.

Another Study: Vouchers are not improving education

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Indiana General Assembly school vouchers

Who are you going to believe, a comforting ideology or “experts” with their “analysis of available evidence”?

A new study out of Stanford concludes that voucher programs do not improve educational outcomes. (Unfortunately, I read this immediately after reading a piece that said contrary evidence will cause ideologically committed people to adhere even more firmly to their factually unsupported beliefs. So, maybe I’m doing more harm than good by sharing the Standford report.)

Studies of voucher programs in several U.S. cities, the states of Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, and in Chile and India, find limited improvements at best in student achievement and school district performance from even large-scale programs. In the few cases in which test scores increased, other factors, namely increased public accountability, not private school competition, seem to be more likely drivers. And high rates of attrition from private schools among voucher users in several studies raises concerns.

. . .

In the only area in which there is evidence of small improvements in voucher schools—in high school graduation and college enrollment rates—there are no data to show whether the gains are the result of schools shedding lower-performing students or engaging in positive practices. Also, high school graduation rates have risen sharply in public schools across the board in the last 10 years, with those increases much larger than the small effect estimated on graduation rates from attending a voucher school.

. . .

The report suggests that giving every parent and student a great “choice” of educational offerings is better accomplished by supporting and strengthening neighborhood public schools with a menu of proven policies, from early childhood education to after-school and summer programs to improved teacher pre-service training to improved student health and nutrition programs. All of these yield much higher returns than the minor, if any, gains that have been estimated for voucher students. (Emphasis added)

The report also notes that voucher evaluations often do not reflect the hidden costs — such as erosion of the quality of the teaching profession by private school practices such as hiring younger, lower cost teachers and not compensating them at a long-term level necessary to sustain them throughout their career. This depletes the level of experience available in the pool of teachers. It also notes that voucher schools are able to avoid retaining higher cost students and that there are administrative costs associated with managing voucher programs. It also argues that there is a cost to voucher programs in the form of distracting from potentially more successful strategies like early childhood education and nutrition programs.

“School Choice” is like diverting money from parks to backyard swingsets and calling it “recreational choice”

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There is more to the “public” part of public schools than merely government funding. It denotes a population with a common interest. We are not merely a collection of individuals, workers, consumers, or taxpayers. The concept of citizens and the public are closely aligned. Public education isn’t important merely because it serves the public, it is important because it creates the public. The school’s role as a public institution is something that often gets left out or ignored when the subject of “school choice” and vouchers are brought up. Disregard of the public school’s role in creating the public is a fundamental flaw in the “money-follows-the-child” model of funding education.

Consider other institutions that help form the public such as parks and libraries: Parks give all of us green space and places to come together where we can interact with others in the community. They help define and shape the look and feel of communities and neighborhoods; they provide environmental, aesthetic, and recreational benefits to citizens; they help enhance property values; and they attract people to the community. A lot of that value would be destroyed if lawmakers decided to divert park money to individual citizens so they could spend it on backyard swing set projects, bowling alleys, and green space at their churches. You can expect proponents of such an idea would market it as “recreational choice.” Who doesn’t like choice?! Even if money was going to citizens who never used the parks in the first place to fund projects they had previously funded out of their own pockets, proponents would divide up the cost-per-citizen and claim that “recreational choice” is saving us money.

Similarly libraries are more than just books, videos, and computers. They are places where patrons can come together face to face, often for the purpose of engaging in civil discourse. Libraries help build communities. Haves and have-nots have access to information and librarians who can assist in navigating that information. Local libraries maintain collections specific to the community. They promote democratic values and are often housed in architecture that is notable in its own right. The public library was an American innovation. As David Morris noted, “Europeans had subscription libraries for 100 years before the United States was born. But in April 1833, the good citizens of Peterborough, New Hampshire created a radically new concept—a public library.”  “Media choice vouchers” that citizens could spend on books and videos at Amazon or at their church libraries wouldn’t be the same. Maybe citizens could get access to the same books and videos. Perhaps they could get more of them at a cheaper rate. But the public would, nevertheless, be diminished.

The more we turn ourselves from members of the public into an atomized collection of individuals, the weaker our communities and democratic institutions become. Dressing up these decisions in the language of “choice” does not change this fact.

Vouchers do not improve education

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Indiana General Assembly school vouchers

School vouchers are an example of embracing ideology over evidence.

Kevin Carey, writing for the Upshot, has a column about recent studies that indicate vouchers are not improving educational outcomes. There has really never been strong evidence showing that voucher students do better than students attending traditional public schools. And, recent studies, show that they probably do worse. Given that traditional public schools add value to the community over and above the individual educations they provide to the students who attend, we should conclude and begin unwinding this voucher experiment. To improve public schools, we should look to systems in other countries that are outperforming ours and seek to emulate those things they are doing better.

The first results discussed by Mr. Carey came from Indiana where:

Researchers examined an Indiana voucher program that had quickly grown to serve tens of thousands of students under Mike Pence, then the state’s governor. “In mathematics,” they found, “voucher students who transfer to private schools experienced significant losses in achievement.” They also saw no improvement in reading.

The next came from Louisiana where:

They found large negative results in both reading and math. Public elementary school students who started at the 50th percentile in math and then used a voucher to transfer to a private school dropped to the 26th percentile in a single year. Results were somewhat better in the second year, but were still well below the starting point.

Finally, Ohio, where a study financed by the pro-voucher Waltons concluded, “Students who use vouchers to attend private schools have fared worse academically compared to their closely matched peers attending public schools.” Massachusetts seems to have a more successful program than Indiana, Louisiana, and Ohio, but it is marked by “nonprofit public schools, open to all and accountable to public authorities. The less “private” that school choice programs are, the better they seem to work.”

In Indiana, the motivating impulse for voucher enthusiasts seems to be a combination of: a) undermining the influence of teachers’ unions; b) subsidizing the preferences of those who would want a private religious education; and c) providing access to that sweet, sweet education money to friends and well-wishers of voucher proponents.

We’re not going to free-market our way out of our educational problems. Again, we don’t need to re-invent the wheel. Other places are having better success with their educational systems. We need to identify methods that are successful and copy them.

HB 1228 – Vouchers for Underperforming Schools

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Indiana General Assembly school vouchersRep. Candelaria Reardon (1-800-382-9842) has introduced HB 1228 which is an interesting proposal that I don’t see getting a hearing. It says that, if a voucher school gets a lower performance grade than the public school in which a student lives, then the student can’t use the voucher at the voucher school. If the kid was already at the voucher school, the student can keep attending.

If the purpose of “school choice” is for students to be able to get out of failing schools and move to a better school, then this proposal makes a lot of sense. If the point of the exercise is to subsidize parochial education, to bust unions, or to divert public education money to friends and well-wishers, then obviously this proposal would not be met with favor.

Whether this would save the state money or cost it money is tied to the question of how many students that attend voucher schools would otherwise attend public schools. There seem to be a fair number of kids who were going to attend the voucher schools anyway but are now being subsidized by taxpayers to go to these schools. (“[M]ore than 50 percent of students accepting vouchers had never attended a public school.”) So, in terms of financial impact to taxpayers, the question is whether, if their private school underperformed the public school and they were no longer eligible for a voucher, the kids would stay at the private school or go to the public school in their area.

Indiana’s Voucher Program is One of the Most Expansive

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Claire McInerny, writing for StateImpact Indiana, has an article about a study done by Indiana University’s Center for Evaluation & Education Policy. The study is entitled, “Follow the Money: A Comprehensive Review of the Funding Mechanisms of Voucher Programs in Six Cases (pdf).” Indiana’s voucher program is compared to those in Ohio, Wisconsin, Arizona, D.C., and Louisiana. McInerny writes:

CEEP researcher Molly Stewart says the report found that Indiana had by far the largest number of students attending private schools using state money that had never attended a public school in the first place.

“More than 50 percent of current voucher recipients in Indiana have not attended a public school in the past,” Stewart says. “That is a huge number.”

Stewart says this number is also so large compared to the other states because Indiana doesn’t have a cap on how many vouchers it gives out. The only limit that exists in the Indiana program comes from available spots in private schools.

According to the report, “in 2014–2015, approximately 80 percent of new students in the Indiana program had no record of attending an Indiana public school.” Indiana, unlike the other states, also does not have fiscal accountability or audit requirements for voucher funds.

No Time to Lose: How to Build a World-Class Education System

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I’m posting this as a bookmark to myself as much as anything else. The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) and its Study Group on International Comparisons in Education produced a report on what we can learn about improving our own education systems in the United States by comparing it to high-performing systems in the rest of the world. One member of the group was Indiana state representative Bob Behning. Some take-aways from my initial scan of the report:

  1. The U.S. is falling behind when compared to the rest of the world. This can’t be explained away by hand waving about apples-and-oranges.
  2. The good news, of sorts, is that there are now lots of countries doing better than we are, so we don’t have to re-invent the wheel. We can see what works and copy it.
  3. There needs to be a support structure in place so that kids come to school ready to learn. In other places, that can take the form of government support to families with young children or extended family structures or the community generally. The upshot is that the kids are healthy and the kids are being educated before they get to school. Extra resources are devoted to struggling kids once they get to school.
  4. Access to elite teachers. The system recruits high quality educators; implements a rigorous system of preparation and licensure; pays them well; develops a mentor system; gives them a professional environment to work in; selects high quality administrators; and develop standards benchmarked to other countries.
  5. Develop a Career and Technical Education path for those students preferring more of an applied education rather than a more academic approach. This shouldn’t be an educational backwater like so many vocational programs. It should be geared to boosting  the national economy and providing a higher standard of living for a broader base of the population.
  6. These reforms should be part of a comprehensive plan. It will probably be the case that not all problems can be tackled at once, but the plan implementation should not be erratic or arbitrary.

The report then profiles Finland, Singapore, and Ontario as examples. The study group also apparently studied Albert, Estonia, Hong Kong, Japan, Poland, Shanghai, and Taiwan.

Indiana Bicentennial 4.4: School Law of 1852 & the Fugitive Slave Act

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School Law of 1852

The newly adopted state Constitution required the election of a Superintendent of Public Instruction and the creation of a system of Common Schools. In response to those requirements, the General Assembly adopted a school law in 1852. The law created the State Board of Education. The Superintendent of Public Instruction was to be the President of the Board and the only member directly involved in education. The other members were the Governor, the Secretary of State, the Treasurer, and the Auditor. In 1855, the Attorney General was added to the list. “The Board was directed to meet annually for the purpose of promoting education through conferences, interchange of views, introduction of uniform schoolbooks, establishing township libraries and determining questions that might arise in connection with the public schools.” William Larrabee was the first Superintendent. Caleb Mills, so instrumental in creating the position, was the second.

The School Law  also provided that that schools would be supported through state taxation but delegated the responsibilities of erecting school buildings and hiring school teachers to the township trustees. The law declared each civil township a township for school purposes as well.  The old district schools became property of the townships. The quality of these facilities varied wildly, and sometimes there were no buildings available at all.

Many cities and townships raised taxes of their own. However, in 1858, the Supreme Court, in the case of Jenners v. Lafayette, a tax for a township in Lafayette (50 cents on the hundred dollars) was struck down as impermissible. (“This decision deprived the schools of most of their revenue and caused almost a complete shutdown of the schools. This decision was as unpopular as the Dred Scott Decision. “) The Court reasoned that the new Constitution’s prohibition on special laws regarding public education forbade local units of government from taxing themselves to pay for schools.  For several years, this decision ground school progress to a halt. Some cities tried to muddle along with private donations. Others simply gave up. The General Assembly subsequently passed legislation saying this was permissible, but the Supreme Court continued to strike down such measures through the 1850s and 60s. The General Assembly finally wore down the Court and an 1885 decision found one of these measures acceptable.

Fugitive Slave Act

In 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850, the U.S. Congress adopted the Fugitive Slave Act. This law placed all black people, free and fugitive alike, at risk. The standard of proof for a slave catcher was trivial — he simply had to swear an oath to a justice of the peace and received the legal authority to carry a black person away into bondage. Federal commissioners had the power to deputize private citizens to assist in the capture of fugitives. The commissioners received $10 for each person they returned to bondage.

John Freeman – 1853

In 1853, John Freeman, a wealthy black man who lived in Indianapolis was accused of being a slave. Freeman had come to Indianapolis from Georgia in 1844. By 1853, he had acquired about 4 acres in the vicinity of what’s now Capitol and Michigan Street. He worked as a painter and also owned a restaurant in town. That year, a Methodist minister from St. Louis came to town with an affidavit claiming that Freeman was his slave who had run away 17 years ago. Being the rare black man with the wherewithal and social connections to fight this kind of thing, some of the city’s best legal talent came together to litigate the matter. However, while the charges were pending, the law did not authorize bail. So Freeman was stuck in jail for 9 weeks.

Freeman’s side located witnesses who knew him as a free man in Georgia during the relevant time period and even seem to have located the real runaway slave who was up in Canada (and, for obvious reasons, would not come to Indiana to testify.) However, the minister’s side came up with three people willing to testify that Freeman was the runaway (after Freeman was compelled to let these witnesses view him naked). During the course of these proceedings, local sentiment was aroused against the minister and the marshals enforcing the Slave Act. The minister fled the area before the trial took place.

Even though Freeman’s lawyers did not charge him for their services, he still took a substantial financial hit from the experience. He was forced to pay for his own jailing ($3 per day), and the costs of transporting witnesses from Georgia were substantial.

Freeman attempted to recoup his losses by filing civil suits against the minister and against the federal marshal. The suit against the marshal was dismissed on a technicality (the suit was filed in Marion County but the marshal lived in Rush County.) Freeman obtained a judgment against the minister in the amount of $2,000, but he fled further — selling his house in St. Louis and making himself scarce. Freeman’s finances were decimated, but, comparatively speaking, his was a fortunate outcome. There is no telling how many black northerners were falsely accused and lacked the resources to fight the accusation. (Though, given the immorality of slavery, a truthful accusation doesn’t make the federally-assisted intrusion of the South’s peculiar institution much more palatable.)

Calvin Fairbank – 1851

Of some note, in part because it involved the signing of an arrest warrant by Governor Wright, was the matter of Calvin Fairbank.  He was a Methodist Episcopal minister, educated at Oberlin, who had become an abolitionist after a woman who had been a slave told her story of being separated from her family as a child. Fairbank had been sentenced to jail and released previously for his work helping slaves escape. He was enlisted to help with the escape of a Kentucky slave named Tamar and was in Clark County after having successfully assisted with Tamar’s case. On November 9, 1851, Fairbank was arrested by the Sheriff of Clark County on a warrant signed by Wright, acting on a request from Kentucky’s governor. However, the sheriff allowed Fairbank to be taken by men from Kentucky, apparently in violation of the law on how such extradition was to take place. After that, he was run through a sketchy legal proceeding in Kentucky where he wasn’t allowed to call witnesses on his own behalf, and then subjected to some brutal treatment at the hands of the Kentucky penal system — flogging and overwork being the primary methods of punishing Fairbank. He was said to have sustained over 30,000 lashes in the 12 years he was imprisoned in Kentucky.

West – 1857

There was also the case of a slave named West in 1857. A slave catcher  had taken West in Illinois and was passing through Indianapolis, waiting to catch a train back to Kentucky. (Railroads were growing during this period — by 1853, the Monon Railroad had extended from the Ohio River to Lake Michigan.) Abolitionists in Indiana initiated a trial, accusing the slave catcher of kidnapping a free black man, hoping – if nothing else – to drive up costs for slave owner in an amount that exceeded the value of West to the slaveowner. They hoped that, if the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze, maybe slavers would stop operating in Indiana.

One issue in the case was whether a cause of action could be instituted by a black man, such as West, who had entered Indiana after the new Constitution in contravention of the new Article XIII. Fairly early on in the proceedings, the kidnapping charge was dropped, but then a new proceeding was instituted on whether a warrant under the Fugitive Slave Act was appropriate. Lawyers for West scrutinized every undotted “i” and uncrossed “t.” For example, they challenged the affidavit that spoke of West’s status as a slave in “Kentuck.” Of course – they argued, “Kentuck” is not a state, so the affidavit should be stricken and the cause dismissed.  When the evidence showed pretty clearly that West was, in fact, a runaway slave; his counsel shifted gears and offered up abolitionist sermons designed to arouse the public:

The fugitive act is a godless law, it is an unutterably infernal law and if its provisions are carried out, it will drag God Almighty from his throne, and inaugurate the reign of the devil upon the earth. There is not a doctrine taught by Jesus Christ which is not derided and trampled under foot by the law.

When these appeals to the federal commissioner were unsuccessful, West’s attorneys tried filing for a writ of habeas corpus in the federal court. The federal judge denied the petition because his jurisdiction was concurrent with that of the federal commissioner, and he had no authority to second guess the Fugitive Slave Act or the commissioner’s decision under the circumstances.  After that, there was a brief, failed escape attempt followed by the process of transporting West from Indianapolis to Louisville. The crowds surrounding the train were ugly, and a great deal of security was required. There were at least two attempts to block or derail the train by blocking the tracks. The whole undertaking had cost West’s purported owner a great deal, and angry sentiment had been aroused in the people of Indianapolis.

If you read the Southern articles of secession, when the individuals purporting to secede from the United States are not talking about how they are seceding to preserve slavery; very often, they are talking about their dissatisfaction with northern compliance with the federal Fugitive Slave law. I mention this, not because it’s so important to Indiana history, but because modern revisionists seeking to slap some lipstick on the pig of Southern motivations at the time, offer up nonsense about how secession was really about a deep commitment to state’s rights and federalism. Their commitment to the Fugitive Slave Act exposes this as nonsense. In any event, it’s clear that sectional tension over the issue of slavery was a festering wound in the country during the 1850s.

Next time: More on Governor Wright and the Election of 1854.