education Archives - Page 10 of 14 - A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Phil Downs on the Cumulative Effect of Vouchers

March 25, 2018 by Doug Masson 1 Comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

January 11, 2018 by Doug Masson 1 Comment

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

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

The resolution notes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SB 18 – Notice to Parents of Right to Skip Student Immunizations for Religious Reasons

December 30, 2017 by Doug Masson 5 Comments

Indiana General Assembly needle exchange program

Needles are scary.

Sen. Jim Tomes has introduced SB 18 which requires schools to send every student’s parent, every year, a notice of the student’s right to not to receive immunizations or related testing if the parent objects on religious grounds or if a physician certifies that such immunizations might be detrimental to the student’s health.

This one is a twofer: an additional burden on schools and a sop to the antivaxxers. The administrative burden is unnecessary. If skipping vaccinations is such a core tenet of your religious belief that you’re willing to put the rest of the community at additional risk to honor those beliefs, you won’t need reminding of your options by the public school system.

At the heart of my complaint is my skepticism about whether we should allow exemptions to vaccinations based on religious objections. There is some risk to the individual from any vaccination. But that risk is outweighed by the benefit to the community and the individual him or herself. However, the calculation potentially changes if everyone else in the community gets vaccinated. If everyone else in the community is vaccinated, the individual can skip the risk to him or herself by not getting vaccinated without a lot of risk of getting sick because everyone else has been vaccinated and won’t be a vector for that particular illness. The individual is protected by the herd immunity of the community. That’s a free-rider problem. It’s not a big deal if there are only a few free riders.

There are cases where a person’s particular medical condition makes their personal risk from vaccination unacceptably high and letting them ride for free on the rest of the community’s immunity is the sensible approach. If there are only a few outliers who are claiming a religious exemption, you can skip them too in order to avoid the emotional turmoil of offending their religious sensibilities. But that only works if their numbers are small. Sen. Tomes is choosing a policy that will inevitably increase those numbers. In addition to hurting the community, this policy will ultimately harm those with the most deeply held religious beliefs on the issue. Because, as more people get sick, the less tenable a religious exemption will be. Once you hit an inflection point, you just say public health concerns don’t permit a religious exemption of any kind. You’d do away with the people using religious concerns as a pretext to enjoy the benefits of a free rider, but you’d also sweep up the very devout few who we’re able to accommodate under the present system.

SB 24: Wear Sunscreen

December 29, 2017 by Doug Masson 2 Comments

SB 24, introduced by Senator Liz Brown, takes to heart the “Wear Sunscreen” speech. It requires students to do one thing every day that scares them, to be kind to their knees, to live in New York City once but leave before it makes them hard, and to live in California once but to leave before it makes them soft.

Well, not really. But, with respect to the sunscreen, it says that students may possess sunscreen at school and that schools may assist students with application of sunscreen provided they have the parents’ permission. It also gives schools civil immunity for actions they take complying with this legislation.

Personal note: If I ever win a case with a sunscreen immunity defense, I’ll consider it my best day as a lawyer.

SB 7: School Calendar

December 28, 2017 by Doug Masson 26 Comments

Put away the book, nerd. It’s only August 20th.

Sen. Leising seems to have a thing for schools and “the good old days.” Her perennial windmill is, of course, attempting to have the State government mandate school curriculum relative to cursive writing for what I regard as a combination of nostalgia and specious reasoning. (This year, she submitted her cursive bill as SB 8.)

With her SB 7, which would prohibit schools from starting earlier than the last Monday in August, I also detect a strong whiff of nostalgia. I’ve also heard it characterized as a response to lobbying efforts from the amusement park industry. Whatever the lobbying background of this proposal might be, my sense is that more generalized support for this initiative is going to be from people with a sense that back in the good old days, we had longer summers. When I was a kid, and my birthday rolled around in early August, I still had a few weeks of vacation left. I seem to recall my parents talking about school not starting until after Labor Day.

Aside from the general idea that school corporations are perfectly capable of organizing their calendars without dictation from Indianapolis, West Lafayette’s superintendent, Rocky Killion, had a column in the Journal & Courier a few weeks ago discussing some of the problems with this proposal.

? Indiana code requires 180 days of instruction for all public schools.

? If public schools cannot begin school until the fourth week of August, then students will be attending school through mid-June.

? Students and staff members involved with advance placement tests would not be able to participate in the national testing schedules.

? It is better for high school students to finish their first semester finals before winter break rather than having to take several weeks off and then come back and finish first semester at the end of January.

? Seniors who plan to graduate early will now have to return in January to finish their first semester and may possibly be prevented from enrolling into college until the fall semester.

? All three public school districts in Tippecanoe County serve students whose parents are associated with Purdue University. When Purdue University ends classes in early May, many parents will be forced to choose between staying in the area through mid-June or taking their children out of school before the end of second semester.

? High school athletics would begin nearly a month before school starts.

Even though I’m not immune from grumbling about “back in my day” when my kids go back to school in the heart of August, the fact is that the scheduling works out o.k. And I trust that our local officials have decent reasons for implementing the schedule the way they do. They have lives and families outside the schools, just like we do, and I doubt they are any more eager to cut summer short than anyone else. But, there are competing considerations involved. And the General Assembly may not know how to appropriately weigh those considerations for each community.

Washington Post on the Political History of School Privatization in Indiana

December 22, 2017 by Doug Masson 9 Comments

School Privatization Discussion (artist’s visualization).

Valerie Strauss, writing for the Washington Post, has an article with some of the political history behind school privatization in Indiana and the related defunding of public schools in the state. (Much of the article seems to come from Carol Burris.) Former Governor, Mitch Daniels, is mentioned prominently for obvious reasons. But, the article dates the movement back to a discussion at a 1996 event involving Mike Pence, Mitch Daniels, Steve Hilbert, Mickey Mauer, and Fred Klipsch.

Daniels asserted that there was no debating “the abysmal, atrocious failure of the public school monopoly.” Mauer was apparently told he was wrong when he tried to argue that the Carmel schools were doing o.k. Twenty-one years later, the result of that discussion would be described as:

[P]ublic schools were reeling from 15 years of relentless attack. I found public schools engaged in fierce competition with each other, charter schools, virtual schools and voucher schools for students and the “backpack funding” that came with them.

Entire public school systems in Indiana cities, such as Muncie and Gary, had been decimated by funding losses, even as a hodgepodge of ineffective charter and voucher schools sprang up to replace them. Charter school closings and scandals were commonplace, with failing charters sometimes flipped into failing voucher schools. Many of the great public high schools of Indianapolis were closed from a constant churn of reform directed by a “mind trust” infatuated with portfolio management of school systems.

The article talks about much of the PAC funding of the political movement that resulted in a political environment where public schools could be attacked coming from Betsy DeVos starting in 2010. I think their dates are off a little. Back in 2006, I posted about Dick DeVos and his Amway fortune funding an organization called “All Children Matter” that was donating liberally to Indiana campaigns. Of “All Children Matter,” I wrote, “All Children Matter is devoted to privatizing our educational system through use of vouchers and similar schemes or, to use their characterization, offering “school choice.””

In the 12 key house races that Mary Beth Schneider called Hot races:

District 17, Steve Heim $1,000.00 from All Children Matter
District 20 Tom Dermody $53,000.00
District 21 Jackie Walorski $1,000.00
District 30 John Smith $4,500.00 on 10-13-2006
District 31 Tim Harris $1,000.00 on 10-03-2006
District 33 Bill Davis $1,000.00 on 10-10-2006
District 46 Vern Tincher report not online
District 52 Martin Stutzman report not online
District 64 Troy Woodruff $1,750.00 in three payments
District 69 Billy Bright $20,000.00 on 10-25-06……yes 20 grand!
District 70 Christopher Byrd $500.00 on 10-12-2006
District 86 Kathy Densborn $2,000.00 on 10-12-2006

In any case, the Washington Post’s telling of the tale of Indiana’s assault on traditional public schools is well worth reading. In the years since, we’ve discovered that private schools don’t yield better results and charter schools very often suffer from sketchy oversight. We need to re-commit ourselves to giving public schools the resources they need to thrive. In addition to educating our kids, our public schools provide an important focal point for our communities generally. They are part of what transform our cities and counties from a collection of individuals into a community — something that charter schools and private schools don’t do nearly as well.

Indiana Interim Study Committee on Education Recommends In-State Tuition for Undocumented DACA Students

October 29, 2017 by Doug Masson 1 Comment

This probably isn’t the best picture for an entry having to do with higher education. Perhaps legislators should be offered bus transportation so they can make it to interim study committee meetings.

Don’t get too excited. I was looking at documents posted by the General Assembly’s interim study committee on education and found that they had recommended, on a 6-5 vote, to permit Indiana residents who were undocumented under the DACA program to pay in-state tuition. Given that Republicans dominate the General Assembly and given the hard line view Republicans have taken on proper paperwork for non-citizens, I found this surprising. Turns out that a few Republicans simply weren’t present for the meeting, momentarily giving Democrats the upper hand for votes that don’t have a substantial impact.

Ed Delaney proposed that the committee approve a recommendation that all in-state residents, including undocumented students under the DACA program, be allowed in-state tuition to the maximum extent allowed by law. That proposal was approved by a vote of 6-5. Voting ‘aye’ were Sen. Melton (D), Mrvan (D), Stoops (D), Rep. DeLaney (D), Errington (D), and Smith(D). Voting ‘nay’ were Sen. Kruse (R), Crane (R), Raatz (R), Zay (R), and Rep. Cook (R). Not voting (presumably because not present) were Reps Behning (R), DeVon (R), and Jordan (R).

(DACA stands for ‘Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.’ It delays immigration enforcement action for people who came to the country before they were 16 and have been in the country since 2007. More information, received by the committee, is available here.)

Muncie Teachers asked to retroactively pay more in insurance premiums

September 17, 2017 by Doug Masson 6 Comments

WISH-TV is reporting that, under a deal between the Muncie Teacher’s Association and the Muncie Community School district, teachers will have to retroactively repay insurance premiums to the tune of $900 to $2,300 per teacher. The Muncie schools are struggling financially and previous stories said that the State sided with the teachers to stop a 23% pay cut. The teachers have, nevertheless, been resigning at a pretty fair clip.

I haven’t seen what the new deal does in terms of teacher pay, but the WISH-TV story says:

Teachers had been working under an old contract from 2015 to 2017, while the Muncie Teachers Association (MTA) and the school district negotiated and finalized a new deal.

Teachers’ insurance premiums increased for those two years, and Monday’s newsletter explained they’d have to pay back the difference.

According to the MTA newsletter, teachers will need to pay back anywhere from $50 to $130 per paycheck for the next 18 paychecks, depending on their insurance plan.

This is messed up on a number of levels, most obviously in terms of how we fund our schools and how we fund health care in this country. Then there is the backdrop of decades of stagnant incomes for average Americans even as GDP and economic production has increased a great deal over the same time period.

I know I come off as some kind of communist on this blog to my right-wing friends. But I assure you I’m a fan of the market, innovation, hard work and risk taking. It’s just that there has to be some balance to keep the system working smoothly, and it’s my opinion that there are elements of our economy that are badly out of balance, causing us to do things in a way that is equal parts senseless and harmful.

Our society’s thumb is firmly on the scale favoring property rights over other types of rights and, as a result, wealth is concentrated in few enough places that it’s distorting our markets and our democratic institutions. We end up spending far more on health care than other countries while getting the same or worse results. We can see other countries implementing educational systems that perform better than ours does but, for ideological and venal reasons, we pursue privatization rather than taking measures to enhance the professional status of our teachers and other steps that have been shown to yield educational improvements.

Economic stress on working families is exacerbating our underlying racial and other social problems, shrinking the middle class and causing widespread hopelessness which, in turn, increases drug use and related crime.

Humans need cultural myths and narratives to give them purpose. The American Dream has been that guiding story for much of our country’s history. As I always understood it, that Dream was that we are a nation of laws, not of men. If you work hard and play by the rules, you will prosper and your community will flourish. That dream was often more aspirational than real, but mostly it didn’t seem too far-fetched. These days, with the idle rich making money hand over fist, hard working Americans going bankrupt from medical bills or lack of opportunity, and the wicked going unpunished, that Dream is being stretched to the breaking point. Once deprived of the narratives that give our lives positive meaning, we succumb to nihilism or other pernicious ideologies.

Is this a lot of freight for me to be putting on a simple employment contract out of Muncie? Sure. But all of these things are connected. And we’re not going to make a lot of progress on the immediate problems unless we recognize the underlying structural problems.

School lunches for kids of parents who aren’t quite poor enough

August 22, 2017 by Doug Masson 2 Comments

The Trib-Star has an article on the subject of what schools should do about feeding kids whose parents don’t pay the bill for school lunches. The article specifically deals with Vigo County, but it’s an issue that comes up everywhere. On the one hand, none of this is the kids’ fault. On the other hand, there is fear of creating a free rider problem by parents who can pay but choose not to. One solution that makes a lot of people angry is the “cheese sandwich of shame” — an “alternate lunch” that feeds the kid but theoretically creates some pressure to do something about the outstanding bill.

I’m a softy, but I’m inclined to err on the side of feeding the kid and not creating an environment where they feel ashamed of not being rich enough to get the hamburger or whatever the standard lunch is. If I’m getting swindled out of my tax dollars and the result is that those dollars are going to feeding kids, I’m really o.k. with that. If the parents are really taking the school district for a ride, go after them with standard collections procedures. The argument is that collecting the money is more expensive than getting it up front. And, there is some truth to that. But, if the parents really have a lot of extra cash, it shouldn’t be too tough to collect — and, there are ways to impose additional fees for collection costs and attorney’s fees to sort of offset the costs of collection. If the parents don’t have much extra cash, maybe it’s o.k. to help out a little by giving their kids a free lunch.

State Impact on High School Career and Technical Training

July 1, 2017 by Doug Masson 3 Comments

Peter Balonon-Rosen, writing for State Impact Indiana has a good article on career and technical training initiatives in Indiana schools:

A new state law could allow job training programs to replace other high school graduation requirements. The law requires the State Board of Education to develop new pathways to high school completion.

It comes just as job training in Indiana high schools has taken on a new life — and new name.

“I think there’s a negative perception associated with the term ‘vocational training,’” Deuberry says. “Instead it is kind of like job training program. It’s so much bigger.”

. . .

Career and technical education programs are growing across Indiana. Today, students learn skills from welding to 3D printing to cooking – not just shop class skills, as was common in the past.

This is probably a good concept if done well but subject to abuse if done poorly. (Not very insightful: you could probably say that about almost literally any initiative.) Earlier in the article, Balonon-Rosen mentions that policymakers have struggled with whether education should be about getting kids ready for college or for the workforce. Molly Deuberry, speaking for the Department of Education, says “both.” And that’s correct as far as it goes, but I cringed a little at the idea of “college” being the counterpart to “workforce” because you run into the same question in college. Is that just advanced vocational training?

The larger question, in my mind, is whether you are teaching the student to be a worker or teaching the student to be a person. The ability to make a living is a big part of what is going to make you a productive, happy, fully developed citizen and human. But, it’s obviously not the only thing. Schools have to focus on vocational capabilities as a significant part of what will make a student a good person and a citizen who will improve the community. College preparation is not necessarily the path to excellence in those non-vocational areas of life.

But, I’m straying a bit from the point. When I was a kid, it seemed like vocational classes were a place where the troublemakers were shunted off. As I walked the hallways, I saw lots of rough kids through the doors of shop rooms that I never set foot in. The danger is that these vocational classes won’t be used so much as an alternate route for a fully developed education as storage space for troublemakers.

But it definitely doesn’t have to be that way, and from the article it sounds like the aspiration of the career and technical training initiatives is to recognize that college isn’t for everyone. (And, as I say this, I’m extremely wary of sounding like Judge Smails in Caddyshack when he tells Danny, “the world needs ditch diggers too.”) A strong career and technical education path was one of the recommendations of the NCSL report on how to build a world-class educational system after the study group reviewed a number of other educational systems around the world. As I put it in a blog post from last year:

Develop a Career and Technical Education path for those students preferring more of an applied education rather than a more academic approach. This shouldn’t be an educational backwater like so many vocational programs. It should be geared to boosting the national economy and providing a higher standard of living for a broader base of the population.