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West Lafayette School Board: My Recommendations – Springer, Witt, and Lyle

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Three school board seats are up for election.

I have not been mysterious about who I support in the West Lafayette School Board race. If you live in the district and read this blog, there is a fantastic chance you already know. But I’ll go ahead and be clear that I would recommend folks vote for Karen Springer, Rachel Witt, and George Lyle. There are three seats at issue, and they are all “at large.” So, everyone in the District gets three votes. Karen and Rachel are both incumbents, running for re-election. Alan Karpick, the third incumbent who would otherwise be up for election has decided not to run again. George would be a good choice to fill his vacancy.

I have personal connections with Karen and Rachel. I count them as friends. But a lot of those personal connections started with the School Board. So, it’s not so much that I think they’ll do a good job on the board because they’re my friends. In a real sense, they became my friends because they were already doing a good job on the board. (With Rachel, there are other connections as well — our kids were in the marching band together. More on that in a bit.)

Aside from the personal connection, however, there remains the fact that West Lafayette has the best school district in the state. Let me repeat that: West Lafayette has the best school district in the state. As the man said, “dance with who brung ya.” That’d be Karen and Rachel. New blood and fresh eyes are a good thing, and from that perspective, I think George would be a good choice. He has young kids in the district, a quick mind, an even keel, and no agenda other than a general willingness and desire to do right by the community.

George Lyle

Let’s start with George. I don’t know him as well as I do Karen and Rachel. What I have seen has all been good. Professionally, he’s a lawyer and an works with Purdue’s IT security team. He is a father to young kids with a future at West Side. He is sharp and willing to work with others. He’s got a great sense of humor, a laid back demeanor, and seems able to get along with anyone. With George, I sense a guy who will seek to learn fast but recognizes what we have in West Lafayette and will proceed with caution in those areas where he is still learning. George would bring a fresh and different viewpoint to the board. As a white guy, I can’t talk much about race without getting it wrong, but representation does matter. There was so much discussion around diversity back during the 2020 election that it’s a little odd that George’s background and perspective hasn’t received more attention. As a friend put it, “he has a diverse educational and experiential background, cares for the community and for students, and I think he’d be an asset to the board.” On his website, George emphasizes that “every student should have the opportunity to see where their talents can take them, no matter what those talents might be.” That’s a valuable point of emphasis for a place like West Lafayette which has a reputation for being rough on students who don’t fit a particular mold.

Karen Springer

I know Karen quite a bit better. She has been on the board for a long time now, serving from 1996 – 2004 and 2006 to the present. I started getting to know her when I was briefly on the Board in 2015 and 2016. Karen has helped West Lafayette navigate a lot of ups and downs: the backlash to decisions about remodeling the junior-senior high school, the firing of Stella Batagiannis and her subsequent lawsuits against the school, the State’s takeover of school funding, the State’s subsequent slashing of public education funding in 2010 in the wake of the Great Recession, two school referendums, the rise of vouchers and charter schools, the pandemic, and so forth.  West Side’s present strength owes a great deal to Karen. I helped out with a policy review committee over the course of several years where we did a decennial review of all of the School Corporation’s policies and put them online. Karen’s institutional knowledge, consistent preparation, and attention to detail is remarkable. She is a pleasure to work with. She volunteers for the community in any number of ways: Global Fest, Food Finders, the Tippecanoe County Public Library, and Music Boosters, among other things. Finally, she received the 2022 Outstanding Boardsmanship Award from the Indiana School Board Association indicating an extraordinary level of respect on the state level. She is a real asset for the school and our community.

Rachel Witt

Of the candidates, I know Rachel best. We have kids of a similar age with similar interests, and our paths have crossed in any number of ways over the past decade.  With respect to her service as a school board member, I’ll observe that knowledge of state and federal education law, municipal finance, and all of the rest of the bureaucracy that goes into running a school is not something you are born with. Serving since 2014, Rachel has diligently built up that foundation to complement what I already regarded as her strength in terms of knowing the ins and outs of how the school looks to parents and students on the ground. She has brought several children up through the ranks of West Side with abilities, interests, and needs that — from what I can tell — have run the spectrum. In a community that’s chock-a-block with professors, it’s good to have Rachel’s perspective as a single mom who is the art programming coordinator at Westminster. My experience is that Rachel often sees issues and concerns for students and parents of which I am, frankly, oblivious (until she points them out.) That’s the type of synergy that complementary perspectives create. It’s not something you get by combining similar or antagonistic perspectives. A few weeks ago when I recommended “voting for the builders,” Rachel is one of the people I had in mind. This is true literally — she was a key driver in the design and construction of a 20 foot tall horse for the Sound of West Side’s State Fair marching competition. But it’s also true in the metaphorical sense — she is always contributing to the schools, helping with seemingly every play, involvement with marchathons, turning lockers doors into book spines, etc. etc.

The remaining candidates

As for the other candidates, I don’t see a need to go on at length or in public about my reservations. I’ve already mentioned my concern about Laurence Wang supporting charter schools and the Indiana General Assembly’s proposals that teachers post curriculum a full year in advance and restricting teacher’s ability to teach “divisive concepts.” From what I’ve heard at public forums, he also seems to be making more of a set of SBOA audit findings than the circumstances warrant. I think Mumford and Janes have overstated their claims about the school’s financial state, and while speaking about “transparency,” they have been coy about their use of a Facebook group, ostensibly a “community forum,” and related web page as campaign tools. The Facebook group, in particular, has been corrosive.

If your mind is made up or you are friends with someone I’m not recommending, go ahead and disregard this. But, if you’re still persuadable, I definitely think West Lafayette Schools will be well served if you vote for Springer, Witt, and Lyle. Also, tell your friends. This election is important.

DON’T PANIC (about school finance)!

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One thing you’re looking for in an elected leader is steadiness and the ability to differentiate between a bump in the road and a cliff. If it’s a cliff, maybe you risk steering the car into the ditch to avoid it. If it’s a bump in the road, you’ve just wrecked the car for no good reason. In a complicated world, it’s easy to alarm the public and undermine valuable institutions through careless rhetoric. This is true even where the rhetoric is well-intentioned. Intemperate claims are all the more tempting in the middle of a political campaign or in the quest for clicks and eyeballs.

Should we panic?

Like a Lannister, West Side always pays its debts.

Which leads me, as all things do these days, to the West Lafayette School Board campaign. Claims are being made that West Side is drowning in debt. Its finances are precarious. Every student owes $40,000! We’ve lost $50 million because the school has no financial controls! The more extreme claims are not from candidates themselves, but rather social media reactions from people who have been spooked by less inflammatory but still overheated campaign rhetoric. We have debt to be sure. We built a new elementary school, renovated another elementary school, constructed a science wing, constructed a performing arts center, replaced a failing pool in a way that opened up space in the high school, and constructed a new aquatic center. Turns out those aren’t free. But we aren’t drowning. We’re strong swimmers (I just mentioned the aquatic center).

Overview

The short version is that in the first half of the 2010s, West Side was getting close to retiring bonds for construction from building we did in the 90s. The school developed a priority list of building projects it wanted to complete. Back in 2016, the school corporation’s debt service tax rate of $0.5375 per $100 of assessed value (are you asleep yet) could sustain a debt burden of about $50 million. The old debt was about to be retired, the school corporation had building needs, and the school wanted to do as much as it could while maintaining a steady tax rate. In the years since 2016, West Lafayette’s assessed value has gone up so that the school corporation is able to assume more than $50 million debt without raising the tax rate. Ultimately, the school borrowed quite a bit more than $50 million, kept the tax rate steady, and was able to get deeper into its priority list. The candidates trying to knock out the incumbents are looking to make hay out of the school spending more than $50 million — which is fair game — but they’re doing it by steadfastly ignoring the tax rate and intimating that the school is on the precipice. Not incidentally, this is the same argument made unsuccessfully during the 2020 campaign. (I wrote a blog post addressing many of those issues* as part of my own 2020 campaign — which was also unsuccessful, I’m sad to say.) Back then, as I recall, they were saying that the school was going to run out of money in 2022. The school’s municipal building corporation — something standard in Indiana municipal finance — was characterized as a “shell corporation” which tells you that generating heat was at least as important as generating light with that campaign rhetoric.

In 2016, the Capital Improvement Program had three related but independent variables: Project list, tax rate, and overall price.

I served on the school board for a year or so filling out someone else’s term in 2015-2016 and was part of the vote in 2016 that resulted in the issuance of about $47 million in bonds. Minutes from October 2016, reflect the priority list, the $50 million, and the $0.5375 tax rate. Quote from those minutes:

If bids come in over $50 million, then the administration will set priorities based upon the following criteria:
1) New elementary school at Burtsfield
2) Additional classrooms, internal systems’ improvements (HVAC, plumbing, etc.), media center/cafeteria improvements at Cumberland & Jr/Sr HS (includes Jim Guy Wing)
3) Aquatic center – Jr/Sr HS; external components at Cumberland
4) Performing arts center – Jr/Sr HS; Early Childhood/Kdg. Center – old HH site
5) Straley Field (athletic improvements)
The administration believes that in the coming years WLCSC’s A/V will dramatically increase. So the same debt service tax rate that now generates just under $50 million will generate additional revenue in 2018 without increasing the debt service tax rate. If this holds true, additional bonding can occur without increasing the school district’s tax rate.

(Emphasis added). Given the actual construction prices for these projects, I don’t think getting through that entire list was realistically on the table for $50 million.  My sense is that, at the time, the folks involved thought we’d be able to get further than we did. But, for example, I don’t think anyone was seriously talking about being able to improve Straley Field back then or being able to build a new early childhood center at Happy Hollow without funding sources other than that original round of debt. There may have been hope that we could get some of the high school renovations done through a combination of lower construction costs and private donations. For my own part, I recall having the sense at the time that I’d be inclined to skip the aquatic center if construction prices forced us to choose. Then I lost the 2016 election and that became someone else’s decision. Also, as it turned out, getting rid of the old pool was part of the plan to open up more academic space, so ultimately the decision was not as simple as “pool or no pool.”

After 2016, the assessed value in the school district grew, allowing the same tax rate to sustain a higher overall price and allowing the school to accomplish more on its project list.

In any case, part of the discussion getting lost in the current election rhetoric is that, even according to the October 2016 minutes, the calculation was that the tax rate would support a debt burden of $50 million but also, the school anticipated that assessed valuation would go up and support additional debt without raising the rate. Since 2016, the school has, in fact, issued additional debt  supported on the $0.5375 debt service rate and, with the additional money, the school worked its way down the priority list. It also bears mentioning that decisions made in 2015 and 2016 are not cast in stone. In the intervening years, we’ve had new elections, new board members, new challenges, and new decisions. Schools, like any other organization, adjust and adapt.There’s nothing inherently wrong about deciding that maintaining the tax rate and getting further down the priority list was more important than sticking to a price point that wouldn’t provide the schools with the facilities they need.

According to a Winter 2021 update from the school, the amount of debt ultimately issued was $83 million. Bonds were issued in 2017 ($47 million), 2018 ($15 million), 2019 ($15 million), and 2020 ($7.5 million). According to that same Winter 2021 update, the new elementary school (grades 4-6) came in at $29 million, renovations to our K-3 facility came in at $15 million, the Aquatic Center and Cafeteria came in at $12 million, James R. Guy Academic Wing (our new STEM area at the high school) came in at $13 million, the Bob Kelly Performing Arts Center came in at $8 million, and stair tower/second floor classrooms at $1 million. That’s $84.5 million in bonds and $78 million in construction. I think there is some bond money left over and there may be other renovations I have missed.

Growth in West Lafayette and Tippecanoe County is strong. The increased assessed value and a steady tax rate are adequate to support West Side’s bond payments.

The school’s September 2022 fiscal plan, reflects that revenues from the existing debt service tax rate will continue to meet bond obligations.The take aways: we spent more than $50 million, the tax rate has remained steady, we are financially stable, and we have good facilities for our students. And let’s not minimize that last point. We got something for our money. Adequate facilities are important to education and to the community. The candidates criticizing the expenditures were doing so at a candidate forum held in a room built with that money.

Predicting the future is fraught, but growth in West Lafayette and Tippecanoe County is strong. All indications are that assessed value will increase in our school district — in part because people want to move here because we have good schools with good facilities — and that rate will generate more revenue than the bond obligations require. Meanwhile, the existing bonds were obtained at favorable rates and, while in recent years, construction costs have escalated, it’s anyone’s guess whether they will decrease any time soon. In other words, the time to act on the improvements that West Side needed was in the past few years. Waiting likely would have made the process more expensive.

Debt Service revenue is not available to pay teachers or fund other operational costs.

The way the tax caps work in Indiana, spending less and reducing the school’s debt service tax rate below $0.5375 probably wouldn’t reduce taxes for most people, at least not on residential property with a 1% cap. (Landlords and owners of more expensive homes may have a beef, however.) For residents with less expensive homes, reducing the school’s debt service rate would mainly just mean that more of the money under the 1% cap would go to the other taxing units in the school district (e.g. city, county, library.)

Finally, the commentariat makes the predictable suggestion that we could spend more on teachers or other operational costs if only we had not wasted so much money on facilities. That’s not how these funding sources work.  The education fund and the debt service fund revenues come from different sources, so money not spent from the debt service fund could not be spent on teachers or other operational costs.

That’s my take on the situation anyway. I took the hint from my last run and am not on the ballot, so you don’t even have to vote for me!

West Lafayette School Board Race: Support for “Transparency” and “Divisive Concepts” Legislation

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I went with the General Assembly image because a picture of a turd in a punch bowl would be gross.

Cast your memory back, gentle reader, to February of 2022. In some ways, it was a simpler time. Reproductive rights were still mostly legal in Indiana. Russia mostly had not invaded Ukraine. And pretty much every person I knew who was involved with the educational system in West Lafayette agreed that HB 1134 concerning “transparency” was a terrible idea.

I know I’ve been critical of the General Assembly for its approach to educational policy over the years, but its really outdoing itself with the fire hose of shit it’s directing at our local schools this year.

The biggest turd in the punch bowl is HB 1134. Let’s start with its “transparency” requirements. (Transparency is good, right? Can’t be against transparency any more than you can be against God, Mom, and Apple Pie!) The new IC 20-30-17 requires school corporations to post a ton of curricular material for classes in the August preceding the school year. I’m not sure you can tell exactly what’s required because, IC 20-30-17-5(b), which really seems like it’s going to be the critical bit of that chapter does not seem to be written in a complete sentence. Not later than August 1 of each year, the school corporation is required to post, in a manner that is disaggregated, in a manner that is accessible, and in a manner that shows bibliographic information, …. something. It’s not clear what. The next subdivision says that a summary of educational activities (which is a broadly defined term) has to be posted as far in advance as possible, but it’s not at all clear what has to be posted by August 1. In any case, this is just another administrative burden heaped on the shoulders of teachers and administrators that is extremely unlikely to have any real world benefits. If a parent has questions about their kids’ education, how about just asking?

A similarly misguided effort at transparency or parental input or some other glittering generality would mandate a “Curricular Materials Advisory Committee.” Right out of the gate, it’s clear that the advisory committee has no jurisdiction over standardized tests. That could obviously cut into the College Board’s bottom line, and that just wouldn’t do. The advisory committee is directed to have more parents than educational professionals and to have a majority of people who don’t work for the school corporation. The advisory committee is charged with making sure educational materials “are representative of the community’s interests and aligned with Indiana academic standards.” Most communities have a wide variety of interests that sometimes conflict with one another, so that’s not terribly helpful guidance. They also will make recommendations about how to comply with the incomplete sentence about posting curricular materials.

Then there is the “CRT” inspired provisions that I discussed in an earlier blog post. All sound fairly inoffensive taken on their face (e.g. no one should be taught or forced to embrace the idea that a person can be racist simply by virtue of their race). But it’s more than suspicious that these bills are reactive to efforts to teach, for example, that racism has resulted in structural inequality that persists regardless of anyone’s individual intent. Politically, I think the right has deemed it advantageous to take advantage of a panic among parents that little Johnny might be taught to believe that he should feel guilty about being a racist because he’s a white boy. Regardless of the underlying substance, I’m on record as not liking the General Assembly dictating curriculum. Additionally, there is a provision that would create an incentive to bring suits by awarding attorney’s fees to a prevailing plaintiff (which could be an out of district advocacy group) while not awarding such fees to a school that successfully defends against a suit. (To get fees, the school would have to prove that the out of district advocacy group or whoever was litigating in bad faith — which is a very heavy lift.)

Finally, there are provisions limiting a school’s ability to provide social-emotional support to students. Candidly, I do not understand the nuances of these provisions. I don’t know the support services and recommendations schools are currently providing, how they are objectionable, and what schools would be permitted to do in terms of addressing social emotional problems that are affecting the students’ educational progress if this legislation passed. Friends of mine seem to indicate that this is sparked by questions of sex and gender.

One of our local journalists, Dave Bangert (whose Substack I would recommend to anyone in Tippecanoe County) asked the six candidates for the West Lafayette School Board their opinion.

Question: The Indiana General Assembly debated a pair of bills in spring 2022 that would have provided more oversight of classrooms, including asking teachers to post lesson plans at the start of the year so parents could review them and limiting how schools teach what were termed “divisive concepts.” Do you back those proposals. Why or why not?

Laurence Wang: Those proposals make sense to me. Communication and information sharing are two major ways to improve classroom transparency. Parents are ultimately responsible for their children’s education. When parents are more comfortable with what their children are taught in classroom, they will be more willingly to send their kids to our school. I believe classroom transparency will help WLCSC’s enrollment.

(Emphasis added). Perhaps not incidentally, Wang was also one of those who expressed support for charter schools. So, I differ strongly with him. Also, the idea that West Side’s enrollment is suffering because teachers are not posting their curricular material in August strikes me as not aligning well with the available facts. I’d say our biggest challenge in that regard is that we are landlocked. Unlike, say, our neighboring Tippecanoe School Corporation, there aren’t any cornfields waiting to be turned into subdivisions that will add more students. And, not for nothing, but teachers hated HB 1134 with a white hot passion. If you want to see teacher retention plummet, start embracing those sorts of policies.

Learning Loss from School Privatization

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“School choice” was always a pretext in Indiana. Also, it hurts educational outcomes.

The original rationale for “school choice” in Indiana was to empower parents with limited resources to take their kids out of “failing schools” and improve their education by putting them in better schools. Advocates for public funding of alternatives to traditional public schools barely even nod toward those original rationales anymore. Vouchers are available to even families that are relatively well-to-do. There is no requirement that the student has ever been in a public school, failing or otherwise. And, the evidence reflects that, on the whole, student outcomes are worse when they are moved out of the traditional public schools. Steve Hinnefeld has an excellent post on the subject today.

[T]horough evaluations of large-scale voucher programs – in Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio and Washington, D.C. – found overwhelmingly negative effects on learning as measured by test scores.

“We’ve seen some of the biggest drops in test scores that we’ve ever seen in the research community for people who take vouchers and go to private schools,” he said.

The impact on math scores, in some cases, was twice as large as the test-score decline associated with the pandemic, he said. It was on the scale of what New Orleans students lost when Hurricane Katrina shut down schools and forced families from their homes.

“They suffered that badly, in terms of their test scores,” he said. “We’re talking about nine or 10 months loss of learning. It’s massive.”

As always where Steve’s posts are concerned, I recommend reading the whole thing. So, if they’re actively hurting student outcomes, why do we keep throwing money at charters and private school vouchers instead of devoting that money to our public schools? Because, and I’d advise you to sit down dear reader, it was never about helping poor kids get out of failing public schools. “School choice” is about 1) subsidizing religious education, 2) weakening teacher’s unions, and 3) diverting public funds to friends and well-wishers of school choice advocates. Many have suggested that it’s also about re-segregating the public schools. But that wasn’t part of my original big 3, so I’ll just mention it in passing.

Charters can complement traditional public schools with tight regulation like what we’ve seen in Massachusetts. Maybe vouchers can too. But that’s not what Indiana will ever do because that’s not the point of the exercise. From the local level on up to the federal level, it’s important to vote for people who categorically support our traditional public schools. It’s important because 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. And, as it turns out, school choice doesn’t help improve educational outcomes in any case.

West Lafayette School Board: Anti-Incumbent Candidates Receptive to Charters

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Charters are bad for traditional public schools in Indiana. Do not vote for candidates who embrace them.

On Thursday night, West Lafayette City Councilman David Sanders hosted a forum for the six candidates running for the West Lafayette School Board. It was not a lengthy affair. Opening, closing, and two questions that all of the candidates answered. One of the questions was fairly anodyne – what do you want to accomplish if you are elected? The second question, however, was a bit of a curve ball. He asked if the candidates supported charter schools. This really should have been a bunny of a question. If you’re running to be on the board of a traditional public school as strong as the West Lafayette Community School Corporation, there is no upside to embracing charters. You should be committed to keeping a good thing going.

The two incumbents, Witt and Springer, are categorically against charters. They’ve been in the trenches for many years and have seen how the Indiana General Assembly has used charters and private school vouchers to undermine the traditional public schools in Indiana. While it may work in other places, it’s a non-starter here. (As I’ve pointed out on this blog, Massachusetts has managed to make some productive use of charters, but it has a regulatory structure that the Indiana General Assembly will never, ever embrace.) A third candidate, George Lyle, seemed to recognize that as well, nodding toward the theory behind charters but not supporting the way they’re implemented here.

On the other side of the fence, we have an anti-incumbent group of three candidates. That this group is receptive to charter schools is a matter of concern. Wang and Mumford said clearly that they support charter schools. Janes who answered the question later in the line up and perhaps sensing the mood of the crowd, hedged quite a bit before ultimately landing on the the position that West Lafayette was not the place for them. [Update 9/26/2022: I’ve received feedback from people who disagree with my characterization of the Janes’ response. My recollection was an answer that spent most of the time allotted speaking to why parents would want charter schools before, as I said, ultimately landing on the position that West Lafayette was not the place for charter schools. I do not recall the opposition to charters being stated in the beginning of the answer or hearing anything that alluded to concerns about how the State has used charters to undermine public education in Indiana. I guess the quibble was with me calling this a “hedge.” Fair enough. If a video of the forum surfaces, I’ll take a look at it to see if my recollection is faulty. Memories being what they are, it’s possible I conflated some of her response with the Mumford answer since the two seem aligned on most issues.]

So, what’s wrong with charter schools? In a Facebook post, one of our teachers said she couldn’t support a candidate who supports charters. A person in the thread respectfully disagreed, arguing that competition is good. Well, what’s wrong with that? Isn’t competition good? Not the way things are set up in Indiana. In the Massachusetts example, the charters are tightly regulated with a lot of good oversight  by its state board of education so that charters and traditional public schools complement each other. In Indiana, on the other hand, it’s the wild west for charters. They don’t “compete” by the same rules. They fracture the school system, divert money from traditional public schools, and there is no evidence that students perform better in those charters — the outcomes are either the same or worse.

In Indiana, recently, the Indiana Virtual School and Indiana Pathway Academy were chartered by the tiny Daleville School corporation which received a fee of 3% of the charter schools’ state funding. The result was that they inflated their numbers to double what they could prove and, according to a State Board of Accounts audit spent more than $85.7 million with vendors who were connected with school officers or employees but failed to provide appropriate paperwork.
It used to be that a school board member’s attitudes about charters was not a matter of direct concern. To be sure, a candidate’s attitudes about charters is a pretty good proxy for their awareness of the challenges faced by traditional schools in Indiana and their level of concern for those challenges. If you think that what the Indiana General Assembly has been doing with charters is just a matter of providing a little “healthy competition,” you either haven’t been paying much attention or the stresses that state policy has put on our local schools isn’t a matter of great concern for you. But recent changes in the law have made this more of a direct concern for schools. Pursuant to IC 20-40-3-5, public schools are authorized to transfer money from referendum tax levies to charter schools operating in the school’s attendance area. West Lafayette’s current referendum tax levy will come up for re-authorization during these school board members’ terms of office. When that happens, we do not need members on the board who are at all sympathetic to charters.

School Matters: Indiana vouchers cost nearly a quarter billion dollars; Up 44% over the previous year

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Vouchers were sold as a way to give poor kids in failing schools a chance for something better. We got swindled.

Steve Hinnefeld does a very good job of covering education in Indiana. In a post today, he goes over some numbers showing how vast the expansion of Indiana’s voucher program has been and how its advocates no longer even give lip service to the goals they pretended to have when starting the program. In the beginning, school privatization was sold as an opportunity for poor students at failing public schools to seek a better education. Now kids from wealthy families who never had any intent of going to public schools and who live in school districts that are doing well can divert public money to private schools that aren’t providing an education any better than what’s available at the traditional public school.

Steve gives me a nod by noting my assertion that the real goals of Indiana vouchers are to subsidize religious education, punish teacher’s unions, and divert public money to friends and well-wishers of lawmakers who favor school privatization. I really wish that I was getting a mention for how wrong I was because vouchers were proving so successful in providing better educational outcomes for students from poor families. But, of course, that’s not what is happening.

A few of the things Steve notes:

  • Indiana awarded $241.4 million in the 2021-22 school year to pay tuition and fees for students to attend private schools. That’s 44% more than the state spent on vouchers the previous year.
  • Some 20% of voucher households last year had an income of $100,000 or more.
  • In 2021-22, 70% of voucher students had no record of having attended a public school in the state.
  •  [A] family of five making $172,000 can receive vouchers worth over $5,400 on average per child.
  • [T]he number of voucher students exploded: 44,376 students had vouchers in 2021-22, up 24.3% from the previous year.
  • Nearly 60% of voucher students are white, an overrepresentation considering the program is most pervasive in urban areas, where there are many Black and Hispanic students. Only 10.5% of voucher students are Black, compared to 13.5% of Indiana public and charter school students.

And again, the studies that have been done reflect that the education kids are getting at these private schools isn’t any better than at traditional schools and it may be worse. Anyway, I urge you to go read the whole post.

Education = Economy = Quality of Life

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Felt like I should have a chart.

I’m not an economist. When I see a lot of charts and numbers about the economy, they tend to wash over me. On an individual level, for example, I don’t tend to care what my house is worth as long as I’m comfortable living in it. That view extends to my opinions on public policy where the economics numbers tend not to penetrate for me unless they offer insight as to whether the economy is helping to people to live happy, meaningful lives. In my estimation, that’s ultimately what an economy is for.

Fortunately, Michael Hicks is an economist, and he writes things that help me understand the relationship between Indiana’s economy and the well-being of its people. You should go read his recent Substack post, “Chasing Smokestacks Isn’t Working.” In it, he makes the case that our lawmaker’s economic policy choices have not been working well for Indiana. In particular, chasing and subsidizing manufacturing jobs has not done much to help Hoosiers over the last decade or so. Despite a great deal of effort and money to incentivize factory jobs in Indiana, “A factory job today pays no differently in Indiana than it did in the Clinton Administration, and a new factory job pays a bit less.” The manufacturing jobs we’re adding are low wage and “low skill (or at least low formal education.)” Workers in Indiana have experienced a declining share of GDP in terms of wages and benefits.

Meanwhile — and these parts jumped out because discussions of education policy are like catnip to me — “[s]pending on public education is well down from 2010 levels, spending on higher education much lower than in 2010, and on a per student basis declining faster than at any time in state history. … Indiana just doesn’t have the educated workforce the modern economy needs. Educational attainment means higher wages for everyone.” And I’ll just block quote and bold this next bit because it’s important:

The link between educational attainment and per capita income is not a mirage conjured by some faculty member. Rather it is one of the most continually regular empirical facts in the social sciences.

So, we’re chasing low paying factory jobs associated with low educational attainment, eroding our investment in public education, producing fewer educated Hoosiers, and losing more of the kids we do educate here. Consequently, the firms with the high-skill, high-pay  jobs that require higher education are less likely to locate in the State. An eroding school system is exacerbated by limited options for local communities to make themselves into places where people wish to live. This is not from Professor Hicks, but some of the challenges faced by local government arise from fairly strict limitations on the taxes they are permitted to levy and dictates from Indianapolis tying the hands of local officials on any number of issues. In a different publication, Prof. Hicks (and colleagues) argue that improving quality of life in communities, not just limited to the ability to do business in the community, is key to rejuvenation and prosperity. Low taxes and mere employment are not enough.

Communities should aspire to strong schools and they need to have recreational opportunities, cultural activities, and solid transportation infrastructure. Again, this is me speaking, but if you own a company or are important enough as an employee to drive location decisions for the business, are you going to move your family and the families of your executives or in-demand employees to some sad, dying town with no prospects and nothing to do? Of course not. Even if you might be willing to plop down a factory where it’s not too important who’s manning the machines to pump out a few widgets. Maybe you’ll even visit once a quarter. If you’re a decision maker or someone with pull, you’re going to make damn sure that your kids are able to go to a top-notch school. (I think a non-trivial reason that West Lafayette has been doing well is that, in addition to Purdue, it has the West Lafayette schools — consistently ranked highly in the nation and at or near the top in Indiana.)

Once again, I’m reminded of the “No Time to Lose” study by the National Conference of State Legislatures from six years ago about lessons we can learn from world-class education systems. (Spoiler: vouchers and privatization isn’t something that any of the best school systems in the world do.) On the subject of manufacturing, the study discusses developing 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. From the study:

Singapore and Switzerland, in particular, have built strong systems of CTE with close ties to industry. Singapore uses a school-based model and Switzerland uses an
employer-based model. In these countries, CTE is not perceived as a route for students lacking strong academic skills, but as another approach to education, skills development and good jobs. CTE is well funded, academically challenging and aligned with real workforce needs. It is hands-on, attractive to students and parents, and can lead to university for students who may seek professional and managerial positions later. For other students, CTE is a pathway to good jobs, by building technical skills that can be achieved much earlier than the traditional academic experience.

If you followed the education shit show from this most recent installment of the General Assembly, even though ISTA managed to persuade the General Assembly not to enact the worst ideas, you know that our state is not taking seriously the lessons of world-class educational systems in other countries. More teaching by untrained, unlicensed teachers? Permit lawsuits from people who are made uncomfortable by what they’re taught? Post a year’s worth of lesson plans prior to the school year? These are not the proposals of people serious about making sure our schools can compete against the best in the world.

I’m just repeating myself from other posts over the years, but we need to beef up our education schools, attract the best students to them, pay them commensurate to our expectations, give them the respect of upper echelon professionals, and rely on them to teach the kids. We need to properly fund our traditional public schools and stop fragmenting the system with vouchers and other privatization schemes. We need to invest in local public infrastructure and amenities. And, we need to trust that these investments will create a virtuous feedback loop that will offer returns in the form of an improved quality of life that outweighs the money spent on the investments.

I think the General Assembly hates our public school system.

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The General Assembly is in session. A bus load of terrible education legislation is coming your way!

I know I’ve been critical of the General Assembly for its approach to educational policy over the years, but its really outdoing itself with the fire hose of shit it’s directing at our local schools this year.

The biggest turd in the punch bowl is HB 1134. Let’s start with its “transparency” requirements. (Transparency is good, right? Can’t be against transparency any more than you can be against God, Mom, and Apple Pie!) The new IC 20-30-17 requires school corporations to post a ton of curricular material for classes in the August preceding the school year. I’m not sure you can tell exactly what’s required because, IC 20-30-17-5(b), which really seems like it’s going to be the critical bit of that chapter does not seem to be written in a complete sentence. Not later than August 1 of each year, the school corporation is required to post, in a manner that is disaggregated, in a manner that is accessible, and in a manner that shows bibliographic information, …. something. It’s not clear what. The next subdivision says that a summary of educational activities (which is a broadly defined term) has to be posted as far in advance as possible, but it’s not at all clear what has to be posted by August 1. In any case, this is just another administrative burden heaped on the shoulders of teachers and administrators that is extremely unlikely to have any real world benefits. If a parent has questions about their kids’ education, how about just asking?

A similarly misguided effort at transparency or parental input or some other glittering generality would mandate a “Curricular Materials Advisory Committee.” Right out of the gate, it’s clear that the advisory committee has no jurisdiction over standardized tests. That could obviously cut into the College Board’s bottom line, and that just wouldn’t do. The advisory committee is directed to have more parents than educational professionals and to have a majority of people who don’t work for the school corporation. The advisory committee is charged with making sure educational materials “are representative of the community’s interests and aligned with Indiana academic standards.” Most communities have a wide variety of interests that sometimes conflict with one another, so that’s not terribly helpful guidance. They also will make recommendations about how to comply with the incomplete sentence about posting curricular materials.

Then there is the “CRT” inspired provisions that I discussed in an earlier blog post. All sound fairly inoffensive taken on their face (e.g. no one should be taught or forced to embrace the idea that a person can be racist simply by virtue of their race). But it’s more than suspicious that these bills are reactive to efforts to teach, for example, that racism has resulted in structural inequality that persists regardless of anyone’s individual intent. Politically, I think the right has deemed it advantageous to take advantage of a panic among parents that little Johnny might be taught to believe that he should feel guilty about being a racist because he’s a white boy. Regardless of the underlying substance, I’m on record as not liking the General Assembly dictating curriculum. Additionally, there is a provision that would create an incentive to bring suits by awarding attorney’s fees to a prevailing plaintiff (which could be an out of district advocacy group) while not awarding such fees to a school that successfully defends against a suit. (To get fees, the school would have to prove that the out of district advocacy group or whoever was litigating in bad faith — which is a very heavy lift.)

Finally, there are provisions limiting a school’s ability to provide social-emotional support to students. Candidly, I do not understand the nuances of these provisions. I don’t know the support services and recommendations schools are currently providing, how they are objectionable, and what schools would be permitted to do in terms of addressing social emotional problems that are affecting the students’ educational progress if this legislation passed. Friends of mine seem to indicate that this is sparked by questions of sex and gender. (HB 1134 also has the provisions directed at school librarians discussed in connection with SB 17, below.)

SB 83 would mandate the right of members of the public to yell at school boards; something that’s not guaranteed with respect to any other public body. It’s dressed up as preserving the right of the public to provide input to their elected officials. And, I think a lot of us have a sort of Norman Rockwell vision of the informed citizen participating in the civic process. But, you’ll note that this legislation is borne out of a series of school board meetings where angry patrons sought to intimidate school boards away from implementing mask mandates as the pandemic was surging. The Public Access Counselor was asked what boards could do to maintain civility at these meetings as necessary to do their jobs. He observed, “[G]overning bodies can choose whether to extend the courtesy of a comment forum, and therefore revoke it if misused. Tumult, disorder, and disturbance on the part of the audience should not be tolerated by a board, council, or commission.” That discretion is removed only in the cases of school board meetings. And, what’s more, the provision is incredibly vague, the meeting must “be open at all times for the purpose of permitting members of the public to provide public comment.” It doesn’t say anything at all about what the public comment must look like. Can the Board limit the comment period to 30 seconds? Prohibit repetitive comment? No idea! Presumably if angry anti-maskers are allowed to remain in close proximity to make hostile noises at the members of the school board, the spirit of the law will be satisfied.

HB 1251 and SB 356 provide for “adjunct teachers.” The “adjunct teacher” doesn’t have to know much about how to teach, just has to have experience in the content they are going to teach. At root, this is a declaration that teaching is not a profession. Understanding how different kids learn, knowing how to assess their current level of understanding and communicate the new information based on learning styles and existing sets of knowledge, etc. is incidental. Any geek off the streets who’s spent 4,000 hours reading John Grisham novels, can be a reading teacher. Not incidentally, this looks like a way to water down collective bargaining contracts. There is also a provision that directs the Department of Education to study “parent-teacher compacts” which seem to be some sort of individual contract between teachers and parents that would potentially entitle the teacher to get paid through the state and access public teacher retirement benefits.

SB 17 removes protections for school librarians that currently exist with respect to material alleged to be “harmful to minors.” The public commentary on this has been a little overwrought since “material harmful to minors” is defined by IC 35-49-2-2 and basically tracks the definition of obscenity: appeals to prurient interest, patently offensive to prurient interests, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. So, the likelihood of schools having much in the way of qualifying material seems pretty small. But, by the same token, the utility of removing bars to prosecution of school librarians is nil. It’s a political move to exploit a panic among parents that naughty stuff might be in the school libraries. Probably comes from the same folks who were certain that there was Satanic ritual abuse of children in the Comet Ping Pong basement. And, now that I type it, I suppose there’s a group of people who similarly imagine that our public schools are immoral corrupters of children.

HB 1072 would reward traditional public schools for the hard work of promoting and securing passage of a referendum tax levy public question by diverting the resulting funds to charter schools. This is pernicious because, among other things, the traditional public school can identify the nature of its needs and educate the public on how the referendum will address those needs (e.g. continue to support music, sports, extracurricular activities, smaller class sizes, etc.) but cannot make any such commitment on behalf of the charter schools. And, as we’ve seen from recent scandals, charter schools in Indiana are more likely to suffer from lack of oversight, conflicts of interest in contracting, unreliable student counts, opaque spending, and no discernible advantage in student outcomes as compared to traditional public schools.

I’m sure there is more oozing about in various bills, but that’s enough for a Sunday afternoon. If someone with more knowledge wants to correct or expand upon what I’ve written, I’d appreciate it. There’s a *lot* floating around out there, and I just took a crash course by reading a lot of the legislation. I don’t pretend to have a lot of deep knowledge.

In any case, you’ll note that none of this is particularly geared toward making our kids smarter, wiser, more productive, or better citizens. Mainly they’re just cultural proxy wars where teachers, school boards, and liberals are the enemy and students are collateral damage.

 

 

HB 1040: Grab Bag of Educational Grievances

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There is some irony in requiring public schools with free busing to instruct kids that socialism will lead to the destruction of our way of life.

Rep. Prescott has introduced HB 1040 which has a little bit of everything: red-baiting, CRT panic, pro-COVID measures, sex. All in a school setting! This has at least elements that show up in other bills that are circulating through the General Assembly. So, even if this bill doesn’t advance, the likelihood is that you’ll see at least pieces of it moving in other legislation.

It repeals IC 20-19-5 which requires the Department of Education in cooperation with the Department of Child Services, Department of Correction, and the Division of Mental Health to develop and coordinate the children’s social, emotional, and behavioral health plan that is to provide recommendations concerning (A) comprehensive mental health services; (B) early intervention; and (C) treatment services. The plan is supposed to include, among other things:(1) procedures for the identification and assessment of social, emotional, and mental health issues; (2) procedures to assist a child and the child’s family in obtaining necessary services to treat social, emotional, and mental health issues; (3) procedures to coordinate provider services and interagency referral networks for an individual from birth through twenty-two (22) years of age; (4) guidelines for incorporating social, emotional, and behavioral development into school learning standards and education programs; and (5) that social, emotional, and mental health screening be included as a part of routine examinations in schools and by health care providers. The cynical part of me says he wants to get rid of this because “social, emotional, and mental health aren’t *real* issues.” Hopefully I’m doing the Representative a disservice and there’s something more innocuous and sensible going on with this repeal.

Next, we’re on to the Critical Race Theory part of the bill. (The Wikipedia entry makes it clear that the definition of CRT is pretty fuzzy. That entry has it as a cross-disciplinary and intellectual movement based on critical legal studies holding that, among other things, “racism and disparate racial outcomes are the result of complex, changing, and often subtle social and institutional dynamics, rather than explicit and intentional prejudices of individuals.” In common discourse, the definition can get even fuzzier. But as I discuss a little below, I don’t think the debate club objections to the definition or lack thereof end up being very persuasive.)  In any case, the bill prohibits schools from promoting the following concepts:

(1) One (1) race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex.
(2) An individual, by virtue of the individual’s race or sex, is inherently privileged, racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or subconsciously.
(3) An individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment because of the individual’s race or sex.
(4) Members of one (1) race or sex cannot and should not attempt to treat others without respect to race or sex.
(5) An individual’s moral character is determined by the individual’s race or sex.
(6) An individual, by virtue of the individual’s race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex.
(7) An individual should feel discomfort, guilt, or anguish or another form of psychological distress solely because of the individual’s race or sex.
(8) Meritocracy or traits such as hard work ethic are racist or sexist, or designed by a particular race or sex to oppress members of another race or sex.
(9) Indiana or the United States was founded as a racist or sexist state or nation and is fundamentally or irredeemably racist or sexist.
However, notwithstanding the above, this legislation dictates that it does not prohibit instruction of the history of an ethnic group; the impartial discussion of controversial aspects of history; or  the impartial instruction on the historical oppression of a particular group of people based on race, ethnicity, class, nationality, religion, or geographic region.

First of all, I don’t like the General Assembly dictating curriculum. Second, it contains a private enforcement mechanism which creates a bounty in the amount of $5,000 plus attorney fees for successful prosecution. Regardless of the merits or lack of merit of the substance of the law, it creates incentives that will be an absolute shit show and will very much disincentivize schools from teaching, for example, historical oppression of a particular group even though the law specifically permits such instruction.  The boundaries between the permissible and impermissible will be permeable enough to lead to expensive litigation.

As to the substance of these provisions, I don’t want to #BothSides the issue, but I’m gonna #BothSides the issue. I think politicians and policymakers on the right-wing are cynically exploiting fears people have about their kids by turning a molehill into a mountain. I think the left-wing commentariat is disingenuously trying to tell people that the molehill doesn’t exist. When this came up in the context of the Virginia elections, folks on the left often responded by adopting a very technical definition of what constitutes Critical Race Theory and saying it wasn’t taught anywhere and/or claiming that this was an effort to, for example, eliminate teaching that slavery was part of American history.  There was little effort to grapple with the notion that curriculum informed by Critical Race Theory or Critical Theories generally might be making its way into course work, school support services, or other aspects of the educational system — even if Critical Race Theory itself was not taught. (As it happens, in West Lafayette an anti-racist advocacy group has presented the school board with a demand to “add a course in critical race theory to the core curriculum.” The demand, presented in the Summer of 2020, predated the Virginia election campaigns.) On the right, there seems to be a deliberate effort to misunderstand how racism in the past can lead to structural inequality in the present. Caught in the middle are people who don’t have any particular interest in the power struggle but who are open to working with others to make things more equitable.  As with so many things these days, there are some fairly loud people demonizing people on the other side, so it is easy to ignore people of good will quietly trying to figure out the best way to make things better. This bill will absolutely not be productive to people of good will. But, maybe it will help people screaming at each other to get elected.

And then we move on to the pro-COVID provisions. Basically, it lets anyone – student or teacher – opt out of a mask requirement. It also prohibits requiring a student or school employee to be vaccinated against COVID as a condition of attendance. The traditional move is to characterize this as a pro-liberty move. But, as Jeremy Bentham observed, “rights and obligations, though distinct and opposite in their nature, are simultaneous in their origin, and inseparable in their existence. According to the nature of things, the law cannot grant a benefit to any, without, at the same time, imposing a burden on some one else[.]” In this case, the right to be mask-free necessarily requires others to breathe more of the virus-laden air expelled by the person exercising that right. There’s always going to be tension when balancing individual rights with the well-being of the community. In the middle of a pandemic, this is not the right balance to strike. For the most part, we should leave these decisions in the hands of our public health officers who can respond in a manner that’s both better informed and more agile than what can be done by the legislature.

But, Doug, you may ask — does this bill fight communism? Yes, dear reader. Of course it does. This bill is a floor wax *and* a dessert topping. Students must receive instruction that socialism is incompatible with the principles of freedom upon which the United States was founded and that if it were to replace our current form of government, “the government of the United States would be overthrown and existing freedoms under the Constitution would no longer exist.” Never mind that most Americans wouldn’t know socialism if it deposited a social security check into their FDIC-insured bank accounts. This instruction isn’t limited to socialism but also applies to “Marxism, communism, totalitarianism, or similar political systems.” Not sure if this totalitarianism or ‘similar political systems’ would encompass fascist or nationalist ideologies.

Onto sex. A school has to get parental consent before providing instruction on (1) abortion; (2) birth control or contraceptives; (3) sexual activity; (4) sexual orientation; (5) transgenderism; or (6) gender identity. (Is being transgender an ‘ism’?) This is well-trodden area in the culture wars. I’ll just mention that the best way to reduce the need for abortions is to provide good sex education and access to contraception.

And now “transparency.” There’s an incredibly burdensome online posting requirement for books, lectures, and “all materials presented to students in connection with an educational activity.” This will require a great deal of effort on the part of the school, and very little of the material will be reviewed. Of the material reviewed, I suspect a good chunk of that will be associated more with political axe grinding than any real effort to engage with the school on improving the quality of instruction received by students. The cost/benefit analysis of these provisions is heavy on the “cost” side and light on the “benefit” side.

Finally, there is a prohibition on providing students with mental health services without parental consent. The legislation singles out counseling with respect to abortion and gender identity for special attention but seems to require consent even for behavioral evaluations, personality analyses, mental health surveys, and assessments for the purpose of providing multi-tiered systems of support and positive behavior interventions. Seems like this will hamstring schools seeking to adjust educational approaches based on particular behavioral needs of the students.

 

SB 83: Mandatory Public Comment at School Board Meetings

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Sen. Leising (the quixotic cursive crusader) has introduced SB 83 which mandates the opportunity for public comment at school board meetings. This is a reaction to the measures taken by school boards to deal with pro-COVID parents who objected to the idea of having to work with the community to limit the spread of COVID. Some members of the public not only disagreed with mask policies, they turned abusive and belligerent. When the Public Access Counselor was asked about how public bodies could comply with the Open Door Law and still get business done when civility broke down, the PAC observed that public comment was not required by the Open Door Law and eliminating the public comment period was one tool that boards could use when necessary.

[N]othing in the Indiana Open Door Law guarantees or even mentions the right  to participate in the proceedings of a governing body much less interrupt…[G]overning bodies can choose whether to extend the courtesy of a  comment forum, and therefore revoke it if misused. Tumult, disorder, and disturbance on the part of the audience should not be tolerated by a board, council, or commission.  This office does, and will always, advocate for a meaningful public comment opportunity  at public meetings, if practical. Ultimately, however, a public comment forum during a  meeting is a privilege and a courtesy extended by a governing body to the public.

Sen. Leising’s bill does not have much to say about the public comment period she would require school boards to provide. Certainly, it does not give schools any tools to deal with interruption, tumult, disorder, or disturbances. This legislation could be read as a sanction for using such tactics as a means by which to influence public policy. By the same token, however, the legislation says nothing about rules the school board could use to regulate the public comment period. “You have ten seconds and comment must be germane to agenda items. Go!”  Any rules on public comment used to ensure order is maintained will no doubt be decried as tyranny. But, I suppose once everything is tyranny, then nothing is tyranny.