Number 18 -- A barely-hanging-on Blogoversary

Blogoversary #18

SEPTEMBER 14, 2006

I started this blog while I was still teaching, in 2006. I had just begun my 31st year as an educator.

Just like in previous years, however, I was stressed out and irritated about the standardized testing situation in Indiana. I needed to vent.

I focused the blog on testing. 2006 was in the middle of the “No Child Left Behind” unpleasantness when schools were labeled good if they catered to wealthy, upper-middle, or middle-class students and bad if they were filled with children living in poverty. This is simply because, then as now, test scores mirror a family's economic status. Rich kids, with educated parents and well-staffed and well-supplied schools score high. Poor kids, with parents who work two or three minimum-wage jobs and understaffed and underfunded schools score low. Adding injury to insult, NCLB made punishment of the so-called bad schools part of the plan.

BAD TO WORSE

Things have gone from bad to worse in the last eighteen years. Recently, I’ve complained less on these pages, only because I’ve written less due to personal health problems (only ten posts in 2022, three in 2023, and just five so far this year -- counting this one). Still, I worry about the future of public education...

• Testing is still misused and overused.
• Politicians (mostly Republicans), Indiana's included, still use every excuse to whine about the sad state of our public schools, how awful teachers (and their unions) are, and how our children are being shortchanged.
• There is still a crisis of teacher shortages around the country.
• Children are still being murdered in their schools because the nation is too afraid of the gun lobby to stand up to gun fanatics.
  
• Vouchers and charter schools still drain money from public schools at increasing rates despite the fact that they do no better than public schools.
• Teachers are still undervalued and underpaid.
• Public school libraries are being attacked by right-wing activists who want to censor our nation's history, black and LGBT+ narratives, and other books that most of them haven't read.
  

...because "reasons" -- including...

1) Teaching is a predominantly female career and women don't get the pay or respect men get.

2) We, as a nation, talk a good game but we really just don't give a damn about our children and their future.

3) The nation is in political turmoil trying to recover from COVID and its resulting economic impact. This has led to an increase of right-wing attacks on America's tax-supported institutions...including public education.

MOVING FORWARD

I regularly badger my local representatives about public education, but, being Republicans, they either are too afraid of their leadership to speak out in favor of public schools or, as I suspect is true, don’t really care about public schools. In their mind it’s “socialism” and we can’t have that, now, can we? I sometimes feel like they don't hear me either. My state representative is (or was, I can't recall) a board member for our local Lutheran schools (voucher recipients -- no conflict of interest there!), and my state senator is a doctor who introduced a bill forbidding parents from providing gender-affirming care for their children. So much for "parental rights."

I’m not giving up. I’m hopeful that the young people of the nation take charge, insist that schools are fully funded, and insist that teachers are given the credit and pay they deserve. With luck, our former superintendent of public instruction will become Indiana's new governor and things will start to change for the better. Note that this is a very red state (aka "the Mississippi of the Midwest") so, while I'm hopeful, I'm not holding my breath.

In the meantime, make sure you register to vote. Here are a couple of good posts to get your blood flowing and motivated to vote for pro-public education candidates...

Fixing Public Schools Again and Again

School reformers have a bad habit. Over the past century, they have skipped from one big policy fix to another without analyzing what happened the first time around. Or even whether the reforms succeeded or failed.

ALEC Has A New Voucher Push

...the current voucher pitch-- we're no longer trying to sell them as refuge for students stuck in "failing" schools, because we now know that the data shows that vouchers aren't better at all. And voucherites have fully adopted the goal of universal vouchers because A) it gets them closer to full privatization and B) rich, well-connected people make way better political allies than poor people.

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In Case You're Listening -- Annual Blogoversary Post

SEPTEMBER 14, 2006

I started this blog while I was still teaching, in 2006. I had just begun my 31st year as an educator.

Just like in previous years, however, I was stressed out and irritated about the standardized testing situation in Indiana. I needed to vent.

This was a place where I could express my frustration about the condition of public education in Indiana and the US. I didn’t care who read it…if anyone. I just wanted to put my thoughts down and complain. I suppose I should have titled the blog “The Complaint Department” or something like that since that’s what it mostly consisted (and consists) of...complaints about how public education, and education in general, is treated in the US.

I focused the blog on testing. 2006 was in the middle of the “No Child Left Behind” unpleasantness when schools were labeled good if they catered to wealthy, upper-middle, or middle-class students and bad if they were filled with children living in poverty. This is simply because, then as now, test scores mirror a family's economic status. Rich kids, with educated parents and well-staffed and well-supplied schools score high. Poor kids, with parents who work two or three minimum-wage jobs and understaffed and underfunded schools score low. Adding injury to insult, NCLB made punishment of the so-called bad schools part of the plan.

BAD TO WORSE

Things have gone from bad to worse in the last seventeen years. I’ve complained less, only because I’ve written less due to personal health problems (only 10 posts in 2022 and just one this year).

Testing is still misused and overused. The NAEP is regularly misinterpreted by folks who know nothing about education and testing and who conflate the terms “proficiency” and “grade level.” States still force schools to test for ranking purposes...in ignorance of the real purposes of educational testing.

Politicians, Indiana's included, still use every excuse to whine about the sad state of our public schools, how awful teachers (and their unions) are, and how our children are being shortchanged. All that public school bashing has led to a crisis of teacher shortages around the country. It turns out that it's hard to convince young people to enter a profession where they are insulted, their expertise questioned by people who don't know anything about education, underpaid, overworked, called names like "groomer," and blamed for all the ills of society.

Never mind that those same politicians are the main cause of most of the problems facing our public schools.

Never mind that the growth of vouchers and charters has sucked funding from real public schools.

Never mind that money is still inequitably spent so that the rich get richer and the poor still don't get enough.

Testing is still a problem. Teachers and schools are still judged by their test scores despite the fact that poverty is the real problem.

Vouchers and charter schools drain money from public schools at increasing rates despite the fact that their test scores also reflect the income of their students’ families.

Teachers are still undervalued and underpaid. My anecdotal reasons for this are 1) teaching is a predominantly female career and women don't get paid as well as men and 2) because we, as a nation, talk a good game but we really just don't give a damn about our children and their future.

It's almost like they (politicians, pundits, and privatizers) want to destroy public education...

MOVING FORWARD

I still regularly badger my local representatives about public education, but, being Republicans, they either are too afraid of their leadership to speak out in favor of public schools or, as I suspect is true, don’t really care about public schools. In their mind it’s “socialism” and we can’t have that, now, can we? I sometimes feel like they don't hear me either. My state representative is (or was, I can't recall) a board member for our local Lutheran schools (voucher recipients -- no conflict of interest there!), and my state senator is a doctor who introduced a bill (currently on hold pending litigation) forbidding parents from providing gender-affirming care for their children. So much for "parental rights."

Physically, I’m doing better so I’ll try to post more (I hope). And I’m not giving up. I’m hopeful that the young people of the nation take charge, insist that schools are fully funded, and insist that teachers are given the credit and pay they deserve.

With any luck, I’ll celebrate the successes of our nation’s support for public education over the next few years. In the meantime here are a couple of good posts to get your blood flowing...

Raising the Bar on Kindergartners: A Nation at Risk Lives On

Kindergarten has never been so high pressured, even after Covid, and it has been this way for years despite little proof children are born with evolved brains requiring faster instruction so they can grow up and beat their peers in other countries.

How must children feel while being made to carry the weight of the future economy, and if they don’t enter first grade learner ready, they could be marked for life!

And corporate remaking of kindergarten thus far, over forty years, with all its pressure, hasn’t produced a good enough child, or adult, for those who still worship A Nation at Risk.

Local Parents, Educators Face ‘Attack’ on Public Schools from Indiana Lawmakers - Limestone Post Magazine in Bloomington, Indiana

Republican legislators came to embrace the concept that state education funding should “follow the student.” If parents sent their child to a public school, a private school, or a privately operated charter school, that’s where the money would go.

This year, they expanded the private-school voucher program to families that make up to 400 percent of the limit for reduced-price school meals, $220,000 for a family of four; and they eliminated pathways that students had to follow to qualify. That makes it essentially a universal program, open to an estimated 97 percent of students.

“I’m excited to see Indiana once again stand behind our Hoosier families who want the ability to choose the best school that meets their child’s needs regardless of their zip code,” House Speaker Todd Huston, R-Fishers, said in a news release. “We’re now on our way to having the best school choice program in the country.”

As students leave public schools for private schools, however, state funding follows, leaving public schools with fewer resources. Instead of the “general and uniform system of common schools” prescribed by the state constitution, Indiana now funds three K-12 systems: traditional public schools; over 100 charter schools, most of them privately operated; and private schools that rely on vouchers.

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Random thoughts, July 12, 2016

THE TEACHER SHORTAGE AND MORE...

• Why don't politicians who think "anyone can teach" all become teachers?

• The nationwide shortage of teachers is likely caused by media and politicians bad-mouthing public schools and public school teachers. Legislatures are trying to find ways to increase the number of teachers, but there are fewer and fewer young people going into the profession. Diane Ravitch suggests that "The best way to increase the supply of teachers is to raise salaries and reduce class sizes."

So, I guess we're stuck with the shortage given that our legislators don't like spending money. We need to change our ways and make our children a priority.

• Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn said about teaching, "Anybody can do it" and claimed that teacher training programs were "the dumbest part of every college." In his mind, it follows that "teachers are trained in the dumbest parts of the dumbest colleges in the country." That attitude along with salaries more than 20% lower than other similarly trained college graduates, might have something to do with the teacher shortage. Prospective teachers either believe what they hear, or don't want to enter a profession whose practitioners are overworked, underpaid, and regularly insulted.

VOUCHERS: FUNDING RELIGION

• Instead of fully funding public education, legislators fund those who fill their campaign treasuries. Last school year Indiana sent nearly a quarter million BILLION dollars ($241.4 million) to private, mostly religious, schools in the form of school vouchers. But Article 1, Section 6 of the State Constitution says that "No money shall be drawn from the treasury, for the benefit of any religious or theological institution." Luckily for the religious schools, the state supreme court ignored the concept of church-state separation.

• Speaking of church-state separation, here are quotes from two American politicians about the topic...

Lauren Boebert said in a speech last month,

I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk — that’s not in the Constitution. It was in a stinking letter and it means nothing like they say it does.

Thomas Jefferson wrote this in 1802 -- the letter that Boebert says "means nothing,"

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.

Does the phrase "separation of church and state" mean nothing?

NO MORE STALE IDEOLOGIES

• It seems that the Florida legislature wants to keep tabs on the number of post-secondary students and faculty who believe in a "stale ideology." Does the new law, approved and signed by Governor DeSantis, define what a "stale ideology" is, or who decides what's stale and what's not? Stale colleges and universities might be punished by funding cuts. What's next? Loyalty oaths? A Florida House Un-American Activities Committee?

Does this mean that the funding from the right-wing Charles Koch Foundation to various Florida universities (see here for example) will have to end? Does it matter that Governor DeSantis gets campaign contributions from Koch Industries?

CIVICS EDUCATION

• Sheila Kennedy wrote about the lack of civic knowledge in the United States.

America’s political culture is the most toxic it has been in my lifetime– and I’m old. There are lots of theories about how we got here—from partisan gerrymandering and residential sorting to increasing tribalism to fear generated by rapid social and technological change and exacerbated by dishonest partisan media. But our current inability to engage in productive civic conversation is also an outgrowth of declining trust in our social and political institutions—primarily government. Restoring that trust is critically important —but in order to trust government, we have to understand what it is and isn’t supposed to do.

I would add that we've also lost the ability to see things from the "other's" point of view which makes coming to a reasonable compromise impossible. We have allowed ourselves to fall into a Gingrichian, all-or-nothing mentality that defines compromise as impossible. Currently, the loudest politicians in the country are those who see winning or losing as the only options. They see governing as a zero-sum game, a false dichotomy, a "my way or the highway" mentality. They don't understand that a free society cannot function without cooperation and compromise (think traffic laws, for example). We don't have to agree with each other, but we need to open our minds and at least listen to other points of view.

AND A COUPLE OF TRIVIAL THOUGHTS

• I love baseball...and don't care that it's a "slow" game. The pace of baseball gives fans time to do something that doesn't happen often enough -- engage in conversation -- and specifically, engage in conversation about the game. The digital revolution has damaged our attention spans. We're losing the ability to concentrate for an entire baseball game to social media like TikTok, Twitter, and texting. IMHO, the length and speed of a baseball game is a feature, not a bug.

• Watch your dog when you yawn...chances are he'll yawn, too...and vice versa.

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SCOTUS Takes on Vouchers

AMERICA'S PUBLIC SCHOOLS ARE (STILL) NOT FAILING

Charter and voucher schools, while touted as panaceas for the "sorry state" of America's education system, don't do any better than public schools when based on similar populations of students. In fact, the so-called "sorry state" of our public education system is pretty darn good when you realize that we work to educate everyone who walks in our public school doors.

Back in 2017 Steven Singer, who blogs at Gadfly on the Wall, told us that our public schools are among the best in the world. He wrote...

Let me repeat that in no uncertain terms – America’s public schools are NOT failing. They are among the best in the world. Really!

Here’s why: the United States educates everyone. Most other countries do not.

We have made a commitment to every single child regardless of what their parents can afford to pay, regardless of their access to transportation, regardless of whether they can afford uniforms, lunch or even if they have a home. Heck! We even provide education to children who are here illegally.

Now is a good time to remind ourselves of that fact...especially after the difficult experience of "pandemic education" (or are we still "during?").

We should also remember that private, voucher schools don't have to accept everyone. They can pick and choose who gets to attend their school. In Indiana, more than 95% of our voucher schools are run by religious organizations. They can refuse service to religious "others", low achievers, and students with special needs.

And they can do all that while still filling their sectarian wallets with your money...and my money...which, in the past, had been earmarked for public schools, for the common good.

In other words, when supporters say that they need vouchers so they can "choose" private schools, what they mean is, they'll take our public education tax dollars and let private, religious schools "choose" which students get to attend. Your children might be able to attend because they're white, they have high test scores, or they belong to the same religion. Someone else's children, on the other hand, might not be able to attend because they are not the same religion, not white, or are more expensive to teach because they have some high-cost learning need.

Public education reflects society. The so-called "sorry state" of public education is not in our schools, it's in our commitment to the support of the public good.

Supreme Court likely to drop school voucher bombshell

Schools in traditionally operated school districts are not allowed to violate Maine’s anti-discrimination laws, but a school run privately by a religious organization may be able to under such a ruling. The Supreme Court has in recent years laid the legal groundwork for courts to require authorizers of charter schools to allow religious organizations to be granted charters without regard to their religious status.

“The Supreme Court is just a few small steps away from transforming every charter school law in the U.S. into a private-school voucher policy,” [Kevin Welner, director of the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder’s School of Education] writes. “Further, the nation may be facing a future of religious organizations proselytizing through charter schools that have been freed from obeying anti-discrimination laws — with LGBTQ+ community members being the most likely victims.”

The particulars of the case before the Supreme Court underscore why we need to prioritize public education. When a state, Maine in this case, doesn't support a system of public education (in direct violation of their state constitution), substituting private, religious schools, does not necessarily support the common good.

PAUL WELLSTONE ON EDUCATION

The late Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone spoke to the concept of the common good when he said...(emphasis added)

That all citizens will be given an equal start through a sound education is one of the most basic, promised rights of our democracy. Our chronic refusal as a nation to guarantee that right for all children, including poor children, is a national disgrace. It is rooted in a kind of moral blindness, or at least a failure of moral imagination, that we do not see that meeting the most basic needs of so many of our children condemns them to lives and futures of frustration, chronic underachievement, poverty, crime and violence. It is a failure which threatens our future as a nation of citizens called to a common purpose, allied with one another in a common enterprise, tied to one another by a common bond. -- 3/31/2000

The primary mission of public schools is not to teach individual students what their parents want them to learn. It’s to prepare the next generation for the task of running our society. It's for the benefit of all of us...the common good.

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2021 Medley #10 - I'm Back Edition

New York Times and Disclosures,

First Responders, COVID-19, and why I missed a month of blogging,

Textbooks in Voucher Schools,

Keep out of my air-space,

Know your rights

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST AT THE NEW YORK TIMES

Leonie Haimson: Columnists at NY Times Report on Gates Projects While Benefitting from Gates’ $$$

I yesterday's post, It’s not as though we don’t know what works, I discussed an editorial in the New York Times about standardized testing and the low test scores achieved during the current (and ongoing) pandemic.

This morning, Diane Ravitch posted twice on her own blog about the New York Times and the financial conflicts of interests with some of their journalists. In the first she lets us know of the close ties between writers and both the Gates Foundation and the Aspen Institute. Readers of my blog know of Bill Gates and his foundation's close ties to privatization. The Aspen Institute is also among the cheerleaders of privatization.

The second post, quoted below, reiterates the conflicts of interest, but also includes important information for news-reading/watching public school advocates about the Gates Foundation. This doesn't mean that every Gates Foundation-funded organization will be pro-charter and anti-public schools. I have personally been assured by members of the Chalkbeat staff that they are not influenced by their donors. On the other hand, I still read their posts with the understanding that they get funding from not only Gates, but the Walton Family Foundation, EdChoice, and other privatizers.

In the quote below, Schwab refers to Tim Schwab, a writer for The Nation.

The Gates Foundation provides millions of dollars to many journalistic enterprises, which Schwab argued in an earlier 2020 piece helps to explain the kid glove treatment the Foundation has received over the last twenty years. The media outlets that get funding from Gates and regularly cover his education projects and investments include Chalkbeat, Hechinger Report, The 74, and Education Post, as well as K12 school reporting by NPR, Seattle Times, and others. The Foundation also helps to fund the Education Writers Association, which frequently features speakers friendly to various policies favored by Gates.

IN WHAT UNIVERSE DO FIRST RESPONDERS GO UNVACCINATED AND UNMASKED?

Cops must get vaccinated. Full stop.

I noticed this post on Fred Klonsky's blog and it reminded me that, depending on where you live, "all city workers" -- who are the subject of the Chicago Mayor's vaccine mandate -- doesn't mean all first responders. At the same time I'll explain why this blog went quiet for a month without any warning.

Late last spring I began to feel sick -- suffice it to say that I needed minor surgery (which for someone my age means major recuperation time). I was taken to the nearby hospital by ambulance. (The following is a retelling of my spouse's story since I can't remember) When the two EMTs walked into our house they were unmasked. One began to work on me, and the other was peppered with questions from my panicky spouse: "Why aren't you wearing masks?" "Are you vaccinated?" The EMT who was not tending to me put on his mask and answered that yes, he was vaccinated and vaguely reassured her. The man tending to what we assumed at the time was an emergency never answered the question, but he did don his mask.

I will assume that all the EMTs in my house (several more arrived later, masked) had recently been tested for COVID-19, but I don't know that for sure. I am immune-compromised with several health issues, and I was and still am, susceptible to COVID-19, or any virus for that matter. Furthermore, it's easy to see just by looking at me that I'm old enough to be seriously ill if I contracted the virus.

Masks and vaccinations should be required for all first responders...anyone who might have emergency contact with members of the community.

What could possibly be a reason that vaccination and proper medical procedure (masks, for example) should not be required for first responders, whether in a practice, or at a treatment facility or at an emergency scene, whether working with patients or sitting at the front desk, or driving the emergency truck? Other than the fact that I live in Republican, anti-science, Indiana.

Maybe Illinois isn't that different.

[Chicago's] Mayor Lightfoot issued the order yesterday that all city workers must be vaccinated.

The response by Fraternal Order Of Police president John Catanzara was predictable.

“We’re in America g-----n it. We don’t want to be forced to do anything. Period. This ain’t Nazi f---ing Germany (where they say) ‘Step into the f---ing showers. The pills won’t hurt you.’ What the f---?”

The language of this Trump loving fascist comparing vaccination mandates to gassing Jews by the Nazis has nothing to with mandating or union bargaining.

WHAT'S IN YOUR TEXTBOOK?

Vouchers And Disinformation

Here in Indiana, and in many other private-school-voucher-allowing states, kids are learning that humans lived with dinosaurs and that slaves were immigrants...using public funds.

The textbooks reviewed by the Guardian are used in thousands of private religious schools–schools that receive tens of thousands of dollars in public funding every year. They downplay descriptions of slavery and ignore its structural consequences. The report notes that the books “frame Native Americans as lesser and blame the Black Lives Matter movement for sowing racial discord.”

As Americans fight over wildly distorted descriptions of Critical Race Theory–a manufactured culture war “wedge issue” employed by parents fighting against more inclusive and accurate history instruction- -the article correctly points out that there has been virtually no attention paid to the curricula of private schools accepting vouchers.

...The U.S. Constitution gives parents the right to choose a religious education for their children. It does not impose an obligation on taxpayers to fund that choice, and we continue to do so at our peril.

KEEP OUT OF MY AIR-SPACE

Your Liberty To Swing Your Fist Ends Just Where My Nose Begins

A famous quote, or groups of quotes, which in today's world might read...

"Your liberty to not go unvaccinated and not wear a mask thereby possibly spreading COVID ends where my air-space begins."

John B. Finch, the great constitutional amendment advocate, was wont to settle this point by a single illustration. He said, “I stand alone upon a platform. I am a tall man with long arms which I may use at my pleasure. I may even double my fist and gesticulate at my own sweet will. But if another shall step upon the platform, and in the exercise of my personal liberty I bring my fist against his face, I very soon find that my personal liberty ends where that man’s nose begins.”

KNOW YOUR RIGHTS

Know Your Rights! A Tale Of Two Prayer Policies, One Forced And One Free

Americans United for Separation of Church and State have issued information about the rights of students, teachers, and parents in public schools. This post and the next are some examples of what they stand for.

I was glad to be free of compulsory prayer and school-sponsored religion. And even though I knew little about the law back then, I had an instinctive understanding that it was simply wrong for public school teachers and staff, who are agents of the state, to sponsor or pressure anyone to take part in religious activity.

Yet I also knew that our school was no “religion-free zone.” One of my favorite classes was an elective I took about World Religions. The approach was strictly objective, and there was no proselytizing. This was the first time I had been exposed to the doctrines of non-Christian faiths. It was an eye-opener.

Know Your Rights! How A Fourth Grader’s Request Sparked A Classroom Lesson On Tolerance

But when the Pledge ended, the students instead started asking questions – first, to Michael, about his decision to sit, his faith and why he couldn’t say the Pledge of Allegiance. And then they started asking me questions too: about the Pledge, why we do it, and what it means. After talking for 20 or 30 minutes, all of us – my students, Michael and I – had a greater understanding of what the Pledge was, why we said it and what it meant to each of us.

Dissent, in the form of religious difference or non-religion, can be scary. It can feel uncomfortable or disorderly. But that day in a class of fourth-graders, I saw how creating space for those with non-majoritarian beliefs doesn’t just protect those believers (or non-believers). It also presents us all with an opportunity to reflect on and gain a greater understanding of our own views and traditions. In other words, the rights of dissenters protect all of us. And I’m proud to work at Americans United, where through our Know Your Rights campaign and other vehicles, we protect those rights every day.

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More Money, More Privatization

INDIANA's NEW BUDGET BILL -- MORE PRIVATIZATION

The Indiana General Assembly has passed the 2021 budget bill, and once more, the Republican super-majority has done its best to line the pockets of religious schools with a large increase for unaccountable school vouchers.

This year, they have added money to the privatization piggy bank in the form of Educational Scholarship Accounts (ESAs), a plan fraught with fraud possibilities (and actualities) that have already been tried in various states across the country. ESAs allow parents to purchase unaccountable "educational services" from essentially anyone who says, "Here, buy my educational service" with no accountability for how the money is spent. Meanwhile, public schools must account for every penny of the public dollars they spend.

In order to pacify the Indiana State Teachers Association (ISTA) with the increase in vouchers, the legislature included a substantial pay increase for teachers. In their report, ISTA mentions the increase in vouchers without editorial comment but focuses on the pay issue. They also share the "positive" news that the ESAs, which are only for students with special needs, are funded separately from the rest of the education pot.

I'll make a prediction right now that within five years the ESAs will be available to anyone, and will drain money from the state's education budget just like any other voucher. This is just a "foot-in-the-door" plan like the original voucher plan was in 2011. For those who don't remember, to qualify for a voucher in 2011 a student had to have spent at least a year in a public school (no longer required), be low-income (about $45,000, as opposed to the new $145,000 for a family of four), and attend a "failing school."

[NOTE: "Failing school" equals a state-neglected school filled with low-income, mostly students of color, who score low on standardized tests.]

ISTA is happy over the teacher pay increases which are well-deserved. Indiana has had the slowest growth of teacher salaries in the country since 2002. The actual funding increase, however, merely brings the state budget for education up to the same level it was in 2012!

Indiana blogger Steve Hinnefeld writes...

A budget glass half empty

While Holcomb and Republican legislative leaders are praising the budget as “transformational” and suggesting it solves Indiana’s K-12 funding woes, the truth isn’t that rosy. A preliminary analysis by Ball State economist Michael Hicks finds the budget gets Indiana’s inflation-adjusted school spending more than halfway back to where it was a decade ago, but not nearly all the way.

And the vouchers...

My main beef with the budget is that it radically expands Indiana’s already radical private school voucher program and creates a new, voucher-like K-12 education savings account program.

The positive revenue report means the voucher expansion will start this July rather than being phased in over two years. Families that make up to 300% of the limit for reduced-price school meals – about $145,000 for a family of four – will qualify for tuition vouchers worth about $5,500 per child or more.

Nearly all voucher schools are religious schools, and they are largely unregulated. They can turn away students on grounds of religion, disability, language, sexual orientation or gender identity. They can, and do, use tax dollars to teach religious dogma. They can teach that humans shared the earth with dinosaurs, enslaved people were happy, and the New Deal was a “half-way house to Communism.”

WHAT'S THE POINT?

The point is that...

• It doesn't matter that we're giving hundreds of millions of tax dollars a year to unaccountable schools run by churches and religious organizations.

• It doesn't matter that the earlier promise to "save poor kids from 'failing schools'" has morphed into providing entitlements to families that can already afford private schools.

• It doesn't matter that private schools don't provide a better education than public schools and voucher kids don't get a better education (see here, here, and here).

The goal of privatization isn't better schools for kids and communities, it's privatization. Period.

Charles Siler, a former lobbyist for the pro-voucher Goldwater Institute, talked to Diane Ravitch and Jennifer Berkshire. He, like Ravitch, used to believe in school choice until he saw that equitable schools and improved education weren't what the choice proponents were really after. Here he explains the goal of the Republican majorities in the various states (at around 23:40 in the video)...

Diane Ravitch in Conversation with Jennifer Berkshire and Charles Siler

The purpose isn't to improve education by expanding school choice and giving people more opportunities, it's to dismantle public schools.

What they're trying to do is to implement a model of competition...telling the public schools that they need to race against charter schools and race against these private schools...then what you do is you weigh down the public schools with all these regulations and other burdens.

...then you complain about the administrative costs of all the things that you've burdened the public schools [with]...and talk about how inefficient they are...it's intended to cripple the public schools so that they can't compete.

...the most important thing to remember is that they are trying to destroy public schools and that is done by crippling them and making them ineffective as much as possible.

Privatization will continue to chip away at our public schools, year after year like it has since 2011. The privatization lobbyists have the money.

All we have are the voters.

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No Pause in Indiana's Push for Privatization

Should we give a cheer that the Indiana Senate eased up on the offensive expansion of vouchers that the Indiana House passed in its 2021 Budget bill?

THE HOUSE VERSION

The House version gave nearly 40% of all new education money to the less than 5% of the state's students in the form of increased voucher spending, including money for unaccountable ESAs (educational savings accounts).

It also provided an increase in voucher availability to a family of four making nearly $150,000 a year. This House plan was not the "save poor children" voucher plan that Mitch Daniels proposed ten years ago. It very definitely expanded voucher money for wealthier students.

It's probably good that Indiana Republicans are no longer trying to pretend that their voucher program is so that "poor kids can escape from terrible schools." Instead they're all but admitting that public schools don't interest them. Privatization is the goal no matter what that pesky state constitution says. At least now they're being honest about it.

THE SENATE VERSION

The Senate still included an increase in vouchers so they're not backing off entirely. Families of four with six figure incomes would be able to get a 90% voucher allowing their kids can enroll in mostly segregated private schools that teach creation science and that slavery was a good investment. This assumes of course, that the school will have their child since private schools can reject students for nearly any reason.

The Senate version, while not as extreme as the House, still contains a significant increase in voucher support, including a foot-in-the-door new ESA plan that lets parents use tax dollars to buy "educational" services without public oversight or accountability. Hmmm...I wonder if they might try to increase money for that in years to come?

HOUSE WILL BE "AGGRESSIVE"

The bill now goes to a conference committee where House members will try to put back what the Senate took out. Speaker of the House Todd Huston, whose campaign contributions include $35,000 from Betsy DeVos's Hoosiers for Quality Education (see also here), said that the house will "be negotiating very aggressively" to get back what was taken out so they can satisfy their lust for privatization.

One might even think that the plan all along was for the House to propose an extreme expansion of vouchers, then have the Senate back off a bit to pacify public school advocates (and more than 170 school boards around the state), and settle on a more "modest" increase in voucher money and an ESA plan.

It's still an increase in Indiana's ever increasing move towards total privatization.

For Further Reading

New Indiana budget proposal scales back private school voucher expansion

After a chorus of opposition from public school districts and advocates, Indiana Senate Republicans significantly scaled back an expansion of the state’s private school voucher program under their budget proposal Thursday.

The Senate plan would not extend private school vouchers to as many middle-class families as suggested in the House budget proposal and other legislation discussed this session. It also would dramatically curtail a proposal for education savings accounts, which would give stipends to parents of children with special needs who do not attend public schools.

Senate budget would dial back voucher expansion

...the Senate budget would partially roll back the ambitious expansion of Indiana’s private school voucher program that was included in the House budget.

Like the House budget, it would create a new K-12 education savings account program, but it would limit participation and costs. Also important: It would remove a House-approved cap on the complexity index, the funding formula feature that favors districts and schools with more disadvantaged students.

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2021 Medley #5 - Vouchers, Testing, and Reading

Vouchers, Testing, and Reading

VOUCHERS

Scholars show how to challenge voucher discrimination

How many ways can we say it? School choice is not about parents choosing the school for their child. It's about schools choosing which students to allow through their doors. Private schools get to choose their clients.

The law may state that private and religious schools must not discriminate in order to receive state funds, but the actual real-world actions of schools accepting vouchers shows that private schools can, and often do reject certain students based on various characteristics such as religion or sexual preference (or the sexual preference of their parents). Under other circumstances, this discrimination wouldn't be a problem. Religious schools should be allowed to require their teachers and students to follow certain theological teachings. However, it becomes a problem when public funds are used to further such discrimination.

The simple fact is that private schools, and religious schools in particular should not be allowed to use public funds because they are not required to accept all students. Public tax dollars should go to public schools which accept all students -- gay and straight, faithful and faithless, white or black. Using tax dollars to support religious schools that discriminate is contrary to the intent of the founders. Jefferson wrote,

...to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical; that even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness...

Using tax dollars to support private and religious schools which discriminate based on religious beliefs is forcing taxpayers to pay for something they might not believe in. It's "sinful and tyrannical".

Green, the lead author, said supporters promote vouchers to expand opportunities for students and families. But, as the programs expand, state officials often enable them to deny those benefits to entire groups of students.

“Vouchers were sold as program that all could benefit from, but the anti-LGBT provisions give the lie to that statement,” Green said.

Voucher programs come in a variety of forms, but all provide ways for states to provide full or partial tuition funding to private schools for qualifying students. Indiana’s program, established in 2011, serves over 36,000 students in more than 300 private schools, nearly all of them religious schools, at a cost of $172.8 million. Lawmakers want to expand the program and extend it to upper-income families.

Vouchers Are About Abandoning Public Education, Not Freeing Parents

Public education is a public good, like roads, water systems, and libraries. It benefits everyone.

Vouchers are not about freeing or empowering parents. They are about empowering private interests to chomp away at the giant mountain of education money in this country. They are about dismantling any sort of oversight and accountability; it's striking how many of these voucher bills/laws very specifically forbid the state to interfere with the vendors in any way, shape or form.

Think of voucher programs this way.

The state announces, "We are dismantling the public education system. You are on your own. You will have to shop for your child's education, piece by piece, in a marketplace bound by very little oversight and very few guardrails. In this new education ecosystem, you will have to pay your own way. To take some of the sting out of this, we'll give you a small pocketful of money to help defray expenses. Good luck."

...Voucherization is also about privatizing the responsibility for educating children, about telling parents that education is their problem, not the community's.

TESTING

Lawmakers Backing Standardized Tests Should Practice What They Preach

Forcing students to waste time taking standardized tests this year (and, actually, any year) is absurd. It is a waste of taxpayers' money -- even more than during normal (aka non-pandemic) times.

Educators are scrambling to teach safely and most lawmakers stand aside unsure how to help.

We can’t figure out which students to assist, they say, without first giving them all a batch of standardized tests.

It’s absurd, like paramedics arriving at a car crash, finding one person in a pool of blood and another completely unscathed – but before they know which person needs first aid, they have to take everyone’s blood pressure.

I mean come on! We’re living through a global pandemic.

Nearly every single class has been majorly disrupted by it.

So just about every single student needs help – BUT SOMEHOW WE NEED DATA TO NARROW THAT DOWN!?

Our duly-elected decision-makers seem to be saying they can only make decisions based on a bunch of numbers.

Does Education Secretary Cardona Recognize the Two Huge Problems with High-Stakes Testing?

Following the pattern of previous Democratic and Republican administrations, the Biden administration's Secretary of Education has determined that the most important thing the Federal Government has to do for public schools throughout the country is force them to take wasteful standardized tests. Arne Duncan would be proud.

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona insists that federally mandated standardized testing will go on as usual in this COVID-19 dominated year. While his decision feels particularly impractical, intrusive, complicated and disruptive in the midst of COVID-19, the decision is of much deeper concern for two reasons.

One would like to think that Dr. Cardona is familiar with the huge debate that has consumed education experts and also many parents who have been opting out for years now. But when Dr. Cardona explained why testing must go on as usual, he didn’t even bother to offer a rationale that addresses any of the reasons experts have insisted he should cancel the tests once again this year. Instead he said we need the tests so that the Department of Education can ensure that federal investment goes to the school districts that need it most. That is such a lovely thought, and if tests were designed and used to gauge needed investment in the poorest communities, it would be wonderful.

READING

The Reading Helper

Halfway through my career I moved out of my general education classroom and became, what Russ Walsh calls, a Reading Helper.

In this post, Walsh reminds us that the most important aspect of being a teacher is the relationship between teacher and student, not standardized tests...not state standards...not grades.

I have a teaching certificate that says I am a qualified Teacher of Reading, and Reading Specialist and Supervisor, but from the time I got a certain Valentine's Day card from a student in 1993 I have thought of myself as a Reading Helper. That card was from a second grade vulnerable reader named Danielle who had been my student since that September. The cover of the hand made card was full of many colored hearts and flowers and said, of course, "Happy Valentine's Day." Inside was a message that I will never forget and which has defined my work ever since: "Thank you for hleping me read. Love, Danielle" Yes, exactly, "hleping." Danielle still had some spelling reversals crop up from time to time. But the message could not have been clearer. I was being thanked for helping and it meant the world to me.

Why Do So Many Children Have Dyslexia? What is it Exactly?

The word “dyslexia” literally means “difficulty with written words”. In my experience -- more than forty years as a paraprofessional, teacher, and retiree volunteer -- there are as many different types of dyslexia as there are struggling readers — every child is different! Parents define it based on their own child’s (or children's) struggles. Teachers define it by what they've seen in their own isolated classrooms. I’ve watched arguements between parents and teachers exposing the conflict as “that’s dyslexia,” “No, this is dyslexia”. The arguments about reading programs are even worse. There is no one perfect program that works for every single student. There is no panacea.

Nancy Bailey is absolutely correct in this post, that we need to stop worrying so much about the label and find out what works for each individual child. If a parent wants to call their child’s struggles dyslexia, so be it, but we still need to figure out what works for the child.

This post is followed by an interesting discussion in the comments. Many of the comments prove the points that Bailey makes in her article.

It’s important to continue to raise questions about reading problems and to seek school programs that help children learn to read.

But we should also be asking why so many children present such problems when they show up to school.

No matter what causes reading problems in children or what the label, schools, and teachers must continue to provide students with the individual help they need. There is no one perfect reading program for all children. Schools need to provide rich reading environments and extra phonics for students who need it.

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In Which I Think of Ways to Respond to My Legislators

Indiana is ready to add more public money to the state voucher program for private -- mostly religious -- schools.

House Bills 1001 and 1005 would give nearly a third of the state's increase in education funding to the 5% (10% if you count charters) of the students who go to private schools. I had written to my local state rep, Dave Heine, but received no reply. He voted to approve the increase along with all of his Republican friends in the state House of Representatives. The bills are now before the state Senate, so I wrote my state senator, Dennis Kruse (IN-S14), and asked him to vote against increasing the vouchers.

I received responses from Senator Kruse this week. I'll send a reply to his emails, though I doubt it will change anything. Here is what he wrote (different paragraphs are from his response on House Bill 1001 or House Bill 1005) followed by some of what I might say.

Kruse: Thank you for reaching out about House Bill 1005. I value the opinions of my constituents and I value your individual opinion.

Me: Do all politicians start their letters this way? I've talked to this man in person and I know full well that, while he might "value" the opinion of some of his constituents, he doesn't really value mine. Every election cycle, Senator Kruse gets donations from a group called Hoosiers for Quality Education a group funded by former Secretary of Education, and billionaire privatizer, Betsy DeVos. The goal, it seems, is to privatize Indiana's education system.

Kruse: I am committed funding education for Hoosier students. The Indiana 2019-2020 state budget increased $750,000,000 more to K-12 Education than the previous fiscal cycle. That is the largest single increase in state education funding in our 200-year history as a state. This legislative session has just begun. I am excited for the opportunity to review Indiana's current practices and potential amendments.

Me: He says, look at how much money we're spending on education in this state. Am I supposed to be impressed by this? We have given around a billion dollars of public funds to private/religious schools since the voucher plan was put into place in 2011. How was that money spent? No one knows. Who kept track of that money? Maybe the money was spent on new steeples, football fields, or church expansions. There's no way to know because that money is unaccountable.

Kruse: While I believe that Indiana public schools should receive an increase in funding, I also believe that parents have the right to choose where their child should be educated. House Bill 1005 creates a grant for students with disabilities or for students with parents who have disabilities. Accordingly, this bill allows parents of children with disabilities to make a choice about where their child attends school. Some public schools are not equipped with the proper resources or staff to address the individual needs of students with disabilities. Therefore, I want to ensure that parents can receive a meaningful education for their child by supporting House Bill 1005.

Me: Do parents choose to send their children to a private school? Some do because some private schools will accept some of the students. But all private schools restrict some students. Students of a different religion, gay students, transgender students, students who struggle with learning, students with behavioral issues, are all targeted for rejection by some private schools. Whose choice is it to attend a private school? A parent can apply to send their child to a private school, but it's up to the school to accept them.

Should taxpayers fund schools that discriminate against certain students?

What about students with disabilities? Some private schools don't accept any students with disabilities. Others only accept certain disabilities (such as students needing speech therapy). Private schools often reject students by telling the parent that "we aren't equipped to deal with their particular needs." Finally, public schools are required by law to provide services to children with disabilities. Private schools are under no such obligation. Do these bills require schools to take students with disabilities? Do these bills preserve the rights of students with disabilities?

Kruse notes that "some public schools are not equipped with the proper resources or staff to address the individual needs of students with disabilities." So instead of dealing with this problem directly by increasing funds to ensure that all public schools are properly supported, we're going to just forget about that and send the money to private schools instead? Why are we sending tax money to private and religious schools if we aren't even able to fully fund our constitutionally mandated public schools?

Kruse: The decision about what school to send your children to is a challenging one for every parent. Choosing not to attend a public school, for most parents, is an opportunity to select the best fit for curriculum for their children.

Me: I'm glad he mentioned the curriculum. Why should taxpayers provide funds for schools that teach religion instead of science or history? Should taxpayers fund students' field trips to the Creation Museum? What about schools whose curriculum materials "whitewash slavery" saying things like, "The majority of slaveholders treated their slaves well"?

Should tax dollars go to schools that teach religion? The Indiana Constitution (Article 1, Section 6) says "NO."

No money shall be drawn from the treasury, for the benefit of any religious or theological institution.

In 2013, despite the Constitutional restriction, the Indiana Supreme Court upheld the state voucher program. They were wrong.

Kruse: While I support school vouchers, I also strongly support public education. Indiana's total state budget designates 61% of funding toward education. 50% of the budget is directly utilized in k12 education, for an annual budget of $9 Billion of the total annual state budget of $18 Billion...

Me: Again, the money he's talking about includes money for private schools and charter schools which he votes to increase every year. Indiana Republicans always, always say that "more than 50% of the budget goes to education." That's true, but hidden in that more than 50% is the money, taken off the top, for private schools. That money should be going to public schools, because the state constitution mandates a system of public schools. It says nothing about supporting a system of private, religious, or privately run schools. Indiana, indeed, no state in the country, can afford to fund three separate school systems (public, charter, and voucher).

Kruse: Accordingly, this legislative session we are currently working to draft the budget proposing an increase to school funding by $438 million. This proposal would result in an approximate $800 raise for teachers over the next two years. I will support this increase and any opportunity to raise public school teacher salaries.

Me: I'm all for increasing Indiana's teachers' salaries. Indiana teachers' salaries have dropped by around 15% (when adjusted for inflation) since 2000. The amount that Senator Kruse notes, though, isn't enough. With another $800 a year, the average salary for Indiana teachers would still be less than all the surrounding states. Now, if he means to increase the salary by $800 a month (for the 10 month school year), that would put the teachers just slightly below where the Governor's Next Level Teacher Compensation Commission, said we needed to be. Finally, and once again, that $438 million increase to school funding includes voucher increases!

Kruse: I am committed to finding ways to support the education of Hoosier students at both private schools and public schools. I believe that school vouchers do not contradict public education. Instead, I believe that parents should have the ability to send their children to the school of their choice.

Me: I know he is committed to finding ways to support private schools. I can't think of one voucher bill that he's voted against since 2011.

The truth is that school vouchers DO harm public schools. Public dollars should go to public schools.

Period.

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2021 Medley #4 - Indiana Still Hates Public Ed

School "reform" in Indiana

In April of 2019, I wrote,

This year, just like in the past, the state of Indiana, ruled by one party with a supermajority in the legislature, has worked to disrespect public schools and public school teachers. The only way to fight this, aside from the daily grind of contacting legislators about every single damaging piece of legislation, is to elect people who don't hate public schools and public school teachers.

One would think we'd be able to get the teachers, themselves, on board with this...

Sadly, nothing has changed and my fellow Hoosiers, including many of my former public school colleagues, continue to send the same anti-public education folks to Indy. In this year's session of the Indiana General Assembly the Republican supermajority, like Republican legislators across the country (see here, and here, for example) are doing everything they can to damage the public schools of the state.

They are attempting to divert more money for the state's already expansive voucher program...despite the studies that have shown that vouchers don't improve education. They will likely succeed. The state, of course, hasn't looked into the success or failure of the voucher program because it is no longer about "saving poor children from 'failing schools', the reason the program was begun in 2011. Now, it's just about "choice." This means that private schools get to choose which students they want, and once the new bill passes the Indiana Senate (which it likely will), those students will be more likely than not, white, and not-poor.

The objections from public education supporters have been loud and strong, but the supermajority doesn't care or need to listen.

Do the voters in Indiana (again, including many public school teachers) even know what the General Assembly is doing to our system of public education? Is Indiana so fiercely partisan that its citizens are willing to give up its public schools because their "tribe" wants it to? Ninety percent of the state's children attend public schools (94% if you include so-called "public charter schools"). Why do we keep electing the same anti-public school state legislators?

2021 INDIANA GENERAL ASSEMBLY ON EDUCATION

Indiana voucher plan could take 1/3 of school funding boost

The Speaker of the Indiana House said that the state should "fund students, not school systems." Unfortunately, he is ignorant of the Indiana Consitution which requires the legislature to fund a "uniform system of Common Schools."

From the Associated Press

More than one-third of the proposed state funding hike for Indiana schools could go toward the state’s private school voucher program under a Republican-backed plan that could boost the program’s cost by nearly 50% over the next two years.

The estimated $144 million cost for the voucher expansion and a new program allowing parents to directly spend state money on their child’s education expenses is included in legislative budget projections — but is more than double what House Republicans discussed in releasing their state budget plan last week.

How Indiana has cut funding for students in poverty, hurting urban schools

Over the past few years, the state has cut into any extra funding for high poverty school systems because...economic segregation, racism, greed, political expediency...choose one or more.

From Chalkbeat, Indiana

Even though the state boasts an increased education budget each year, Indianapolis Public Schools receives $15 less per student today in basic state funding than it did seven years ago.

That’s because IPS’ gains in funding for each student have been eaten up by a sharper decline in state support for students in poverty, district officials say.

In recent years, Indiana lawmakers have prioritized across-the-board increases for schools over support for disadvantaged students, favoring budget strategies that buoy more affluent districts while higher-poverty schools say they’re left without enough resources to serve disadvantaged students.

Commentary: Money, mouths and education reform

My local Senator told me (and a small group of public education advocates) a few years ago that the Senate was tired of all the "reform." He indicated that we needed to evaluate what we've done before we do more. That hasn't happened and he has gone along with the continuous increases for "reform."

From By John Krull in TheStatehouseFile.com

The self-proclaimed education reformers make it sound as if their efforts will have nothing less than a transformative effect on schools and students, improving scores and performance at an astounding rate.

The evidence suggests, though, that they just do not believe that.

If they did, they would be compiling evidence that students in voucher and charter schools were doing much, much better than their counterparts in traditional public schools. They would be testing the students receiving state funds to study in settings other than traditional public schools and the educators teaching them to build their case that choice works.

That the education reform movement works.

But they don’t do that.

At almost every stop, they take measures to make sure their plans and programs cannot be tested, cannot be assessed, cannot be held accountable.

And they do this while insisting traditional public educators and schools be held to rigid standards of accountability.

Former state superintendents united in their opposition to voucher expansion bills

For the last hundred and sixty-plus years, the State Superintendent of Public Instruction has been elected by Indiana voters. The last two Superintendents (one Democrat and one Republican) have spoken out against education privatization. That was enough for the anti-public education legislature. They decided that they couldn't take a chance any more on the voters choosing someone who might disagree with them, so they changed the law and the new "Secretary of Education" is, along with all but two members of the State Board of Education, appointed by the (also Republican) governor. The other two state board members of appointed by the leaders of the House and Senate (also Republican).

Neither the Indiana Secretary of Education nor any members of the State Board of Education are elected. Apparently, Indiana's legislature doesn't want to give the voters a say in education matters. The state's voucher program, which currently costs the state more than $170 million each year, was instituted in 2011 by the Republican-dominated Indiana General Assembly without the benefit of voter approval.

The following letter from three retired State Superintendents speaks loudly, though the supermajority doesn't really care about what they have to say.

From Suellen Reed Goddard, Glenda Ritz, and Jennifer McCormick in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette

Education Scholarship Accounts will divert adequate and equitable funding from public school students and open the door to unacceptable practices. Hoosiers all lose when children are not well educated and public tax dollars are not accounted for responsibly.

In Indiana communities, public schools have been and will continue to be the hub for vital services supporting the well-being of the whole child. Passing HB 1005, SB 412 or SB 413 would divert significant money away from public schools, enhance the opportunity for a lack of oversight related to the intended educational purpose of such funds, further exacerbate insufficiencies tied to Indiana's teacher compensation, and increase the risk to student growth, proficiency and well-being...

Vouchers undermine education for all kids

I disagree with this writer. I don't think that the supermajority hopes "no one notices" what they're doing to education. I think they don't care since they can do whatever they want.

The concept of "common good" is all but gone.

From Robert Stwalley in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette

The Republican supermajority in the Indiana General Assembly is attempting to quietly gut public education and hope no one notices...

School choice advocates would have you believe that money should follow the child because this platitude is simple and seems to make sense on the surface. However, this is completely untrue and detrimental to the overall concept of a tuition-free public school system.

Taxes are collected from everyone to support government activities. Public schools are government entities designed to improve society by providing a practical education for the young citizens of tomorrow. Everyone is better off with an educated populace.

If you need more evidence that the Republican majority hates Indiana's public education, here are some more. There's still a chance that the State Senate will reject the increase in vouchers and the development of Education Savings Accounts, but I don't think the odds are very good of that happening. I hope I'm wrong.

Our Opinion: Failing grades for Indiana voucher expansion bills

Viewpoint: Three bills would do harm to public schools, Indiana's economy

Lawmakers need to choose schools over 'school choice'

Teachers Singled Out in Indiana Union Membership Bill

An Opposition Letter from Public School Supporters to Members of the Indiana General Assembly and Governor Holcomb

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