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.

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.

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.