A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Masson's Blog

Some Thoughts on Being a Concerned Citizen

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Between my former work as a legislative services attorney and my current work as a county attorney with some other government work thrown into the mix at various times, I’ve attended a lot of public meetings over the past 20 years. Like, really a lot.

Mostly these are not attended by citizens and, for the most part, that’s more or less ok. There is a lot of routine business handled at these meetings by people who are good at what they do. For example, there’s really no call for John Q. Public to get involved with every drainage plan that gets reviewed when some business wants to add some parking spaces.

But, occasionally a concerned citizen or citizens will undertake a kind of watchdog role by trying to come to every meeting of a government body or all of those concerning a particular topic. This can be beneficial and is certainly the citizen’s right. But, I’ve noticed that some approaches are more effective than others. The overarching rule for being an effective concerned citizen is “don’t be a jerk.” Now, I’m not talking here about people whose goal is to effect far reaching social change — civil rights protesters and the like. That’s above my pay grade, and I’m not presuming to know what is effective in that context. I’m thinking more of the good government watchdog who wants to ensure that local decision makers are acting in the best interest of the public.

The most effective people I’ve seen working for that purpose are clear, direct, brief, and polite. They aren’t shy about speaking up when they don’t like things, but they don’t belabor the point, don’t wander off topic, recognize the scope and limits of the public body they’re attending, and avoid delusions of grandeur or that they’re participating in some Manichean battle of good versus evil (where their place on the side of good is never in doubt.)

These individuals attend consistently and, often, don’t have to speak at the meeting. Before and after the meeting, they are willing and able to chat with the public officials in an amiable, friendly way, even if they disagree with the official’s politics. They don’t always get their way. In fact, very often they don’t get their way. But, public policy isn’t binary — decisions are usually made on a spectrum. And, in the back of the public official’s mind — it seems to me — the official will maybe ratchet the policy a notch or two just because they know they’ll get some push back from a citizen whose position they’ve come to know, understand, and perhaps respect to some degree — even if the official will never necessarily agree with that position or frame of reference.

Contrast this with the belligerent bellyacher. This person will never be happy and often treats the public official rudely. Public life being what it is, officials usually don’t have thin skin and can usually endure some level of criticism. But, if you don’t agree with the citizen’s policy views in the first place, the citizen is never going to be happy, and he or she treats you badly besides, what is the upside to accommodating such a person? Mostly the rest of the public will find such a person off-putting in any case, so there is likely no political downside to simply enduring that citizen as best you can and then moving ahead without regard to that individual’s preferences.

Somewhere in the middle you have the people who are not up to speed on the purpose or the powers of the public body in question. A technical planning board isn’t going to be able to do much when the plans are in order but a citizen complains, not about the plans, but — for example — the social value of the business submitting the plan. Or maybe they’ll complain about federal policy to the local government officials. Or they’ll spend a great deal of time talking about extraneous information. These citizens aren’t disagreeable. In fact, they often present very sympathetic stories. But, ultimately, they are not effective because, even where the policymaker wants to help them, there is simply nothing that can be done for them in the context of whatever the public body is designed to consider.

So, be nice, be persistent, be focused, and be concise. Government generally benefits when citizens can engage with it in this fashion.

Roads Compromised by No-Tax Pledge

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Maureen Hayden, writing for CNHI, has an article in the Terre Haute Trib Star, entitled No-tax pledge clouds Indiana’s road funding debate in which Rep. Bob Cherry muses about the impact on Grover Norquist’s no-tax pledge in light of Indiana’s road funding needs. The broken bridge on I-65 is the specific trigger for these thoughts, but Indiana’s overall infrastructure needs are also a concern.

(Note: The Trib Star web page is unpleasant with pop ups and ads and whatnot — I really have to be interested in an article before I click on one.)

Back in 1998, then-candidate Bob Cherry made a promise never to raise taxes.
Seventeen years later, as the state needs billions of dollars to fix its crumbling roads and bridges, the Greenfield lawmaker wonders if it was a mistake.
“How can we make good public policy for the future if we’re tied to the past?” he said.
. . .
Cherry, a vice-chairman of the House’s Ways and Means Committee, said he fears the no-tax pledge will keep the General Assembly from acting on a long-delayed but needed solution.

The article mentions, in addition to the I-65 bridge, that 350 others maintained by the state are deemed structurally deficient. The gas tax, used to fund such repairs, has not been raised since 2002. Inflation and more efficient cars have reduced the amount available even as the infrastructure has continued to age.

Norquist’s no-tax pledge is an anti-government suicide pact. Norquist famously said he wants to shrink government to size where he could drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub. This dysfunctional relationship to government is one thing for an activist and ideologue like Norquist, quite another for lawmakers who have to govern. I’m not thrilled by the prospect of higher taxes. I’m less thrilled by the idea of traffic jams and sketchy bridges.

Another note – The Interim Committee on Roads and Transportation currently has no meetings scheduled. What to do about I-65 specifically and our roads and bridges in particular would be an excellent topic of study.

Trial Court Dismisses Public Records Lawsuit Against Indiana House of Representatives

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Katie Heinz and Matt McKinney, writing for the Indy Channel, report that the trial court judge has dismissed the public records lawsuit brought against the Indiana House Republican Caucus. I had a post back in March about the underlying request and the trip to the Public Access Counselor.

The request was for, essentially, correspondence from Sept. 1, 2014 to the present between Rep. Eric Koch and various players in the energy policy world (e.g. Duke Energy, NIPSCO, Vectren, etc.)

In resisting the request, the House is claiming that it is exempt under the Access to Public Records Act (APRA) and that, as a matter of policy, they need to be exempt:

House Speaker Brian Bosma told RTV6 in March that complying with public records requests could dissuade constituents from contacting their legislators.

“You’d truly be surprised at the things people share with their legislators,” Bosma said. “Many times we’re the point of last resort when family tragedy occurs.”

As an initial matter, I am not sure that the language of APRA really contains such a broad exemption for communications to the Indiana General Assembly. But, assuming for the sake of argument that they are, the exemption would be horribly underinclusive if the rationale was truly to protect communications between constituents and elected officials. Why just the General Assembly? It’s not like they’re the priesthood of the republic to whom citizens confess their sins and impure thoughts. Constituents communicate all sorts of concerns to all sorts of lawmakers and elected officials. There is not one principled reason for carving out an exception specifically applicable to the General Assembly on this basis. Either ditch the exemption for the General Assembly or make it applicable to all of the State’s elected officials.

I’ll be interested to get a look at the trial court’s rationale. But, to a certain degree, the rationale is going to be incidental. This is the sort of thing the Court of Appeals or, if they’re interested – the Supreme Court, will have to sort out.

Update The trial court order (copy obtained by the Indiana Law Blog) is not a wealth of information. It simply says that the court finds the Masariu case to be applicable and therefore grants the motion to dismiss for lack of justiciability. That case is State ex rel Masariu v. Marion Superior Court No. 1, 621 N.E.2d 1097 (Ind. 1993) which, itself, is not a tour de force of reasoning and research.

Betty Masariu was the Clerk of the Indiana House of Representatives and, in that capacity, a lawsuit was brought seeking to compel her to produce certain voting records of the House. (The decision itself does not reveal anything else about the voting records requested.) The Indiana Supreme Court cited Article 3, Sec. 1 of the Indiana Constitution which provides:

“The powers of the Government are divided into three separate departments; the Legislative, the Executive including the Administrative, and the Judicial; and no person, charged with official duties under one of these departments, shall exercise any of the functions of another, except as in this Constitution expressly provided.”

Under that section, according to the Masariu decision, the Supreme Court was prohibited from determining that disclosure of the voting records was required under the Access to Public Records Act. To do so, the Court declared, would “amount to constitutionally impermissible judicial interference with the internal operations of the legislative branch.” Assuming that the APRA requires production of such records (which is the required assumption at this stage of the litigation), it’s unclear how requiring such production constitutes interference with the House’s internal operations — in as much as, if APRA requires it, the General Assembly imposed the requirement on itself (along with other governmental entities).

The Masariu decision is opaque, but the case it cites, Roeschlein v. Thomas, 258 Ind. 16, 280 N.E.2d 581 (1972) and the manner in which it is cited hints at a distinction: (“Courts cannot be authorized to undermine the exclusive constitutional authority of the presiding officers of each house to authenticate all legislation.”) It might be (and I’m only speculating) that this request for voting records was part of an effort to say that some piece of legislation was not passed correctly and was, therefore, invalid. Roeschlein was an effort to invalidate Article 7 of the Indiana Constitution concerning the judiciary, revised in 1970. Part of the complaint was that the Joint Resolution containing the constitutional amendment was not properly passed by the Indiana General Assembly. The Indiana Supreme Court said that it was enough that the joint resolution was authenticated as having been properly passed by the Speaker of the House and the President pro tem of the Senate. The Court was not going to get into the internal business of either chamber to investigate the underlying mechanics of how the legislation was passed.

Roeschlein seems like an entirely appropriate invocation of separation of powers. Masariu looks like a sketchy but plausible invocation if the underlying voting records were sought as part of an effort to invalidate legislation certified as passed by the Speaker. The present case does not seem to raise such concerns at all. The General Assembly passed a law that applies to all government records, including its own. (Or, again — if these records are exempt under APRA, that’s a separate argument.) While a court should hesitate to impose such a requirement on the General Assembly on the court’s own, where the General Assembly has imposed the requirement upon itself as a matter of state law, the courts should feel free to compel individual Representatives to comply with the law in the same manner it compels members of the executive branch to comply with APRA. Does this mean that the Governor is exempt from complying with APRA under Article 3, section 1? If not, why not? And, because Article 3, section 1 doesn’t just mention the governor along with the legislative branch, it specifies “the Executive including the Administrative,” under this rationale, all of the executive branch agencies would seem to be justified in invoking interference with their “internal operations” as a reason not to produce records.

That’s my initial take, anyway. If and when the Court of Appeals and/or the Indiana Supreme Court takes this up, I am hoping for a more extensive discussion than the one paragraph ruling of the trial court or even the six paragraph decision of the Masariu case. If separation of powers is the rationale, I would also welcome some explanation about why the same rationale would or would not apply to APRA requests directed to the executive branch.

I-65 Over the Wildcat

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So, the bridge is out on Northbound I-65 over the Wildcat in Tippecanoe County. According to the INDOT press release:

Structural engineers monitoring the I-65 northbound bridge over the Wildcat Creek noticed movement in the riverbank pier and ordered the bridge closed Friday afternoon. An estimated reopening date for the bridge will not be known until soils testing and analysis is completed. INDOT will work to provide updates as new information is available.

Chris Morisse Vizza and Hanna Smith, writing for the Lafayette Journal & Courier provide additional information:

What caused the bridge to drop 9 inches last week while construction crews worked to widen it has not yet been determined, pending further tests. Officials believe soil conditions and an underground artesian spring, in conjunction with construction work on the bridge, caused the structure to settle or sink into the ground, necessitating its closure.

Engineers apparently feel that using the Southbound bridge to provide one lane of traffic each way is not a viable option because the lanes would be too narrow. As of yet, there is no timeline for re-opening until the tests come back. “Closed until further notice” is an ominous phrase. Those of us in Tippecanoe County suddenly find ourselves discussing routes to and from Indy as assiduously as we normally discuss the weather and basketball.

I see pundits trying to fix the blame for this on Gov. Pence. I’m open to additional information on the subject, but for now, I’m not buying it. Certainly I don’t see eye-to-eye with the man on some of his policy preferences. The fixation on the surplus as a metric of government efficiency or economic health strikes me as a pernicious bit of modern day mercantilism. Economic health isn’t indicated by the amount of wealth a state is able to amass but, rather, (at least in part) by the velocity with which the money flows.

In a very real way, the velocity of money is tied to the velocity with which goods and people can get around. Your goods are going to cost more if you are paying truck drivers extra to sit in traffic moving stuff from the factory to the store. So, in that respect, $2 billion in the bank is less valuable that $2 billion invested in public infrastructure.

But, we need to be more concerned about fixing the problem than we are on fixing the blame. We need engineers to identify the problem and solutions for restoring the bridge to safety. We need construction companies and workers to implement the repair. We need to be more pro-active about identifying deteriorating infrastructure and spending the money necessary to fix it — preferably during economic periods where unemployment is high and interest rates are low. And, rather than railing against government, we need to learn from this problem and take a moment to appreciate the infrastructure we have and figure out how to improve and expand it.

70 Years Since Nagasaki

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On August 9, 1945, the U.S. dropped the second atom bomb, this time on Nagasaki. Hiroshima gets the most attention for being first, but Nagasaki was the one that ended the war. Initially, the Japanese city of Kokura, an important manufacturer of munitions, was the target. However conditions over Kokura made the bomb delivery difficult and the bombers went to Nagasaki as their secondary target.

The Japanese government had not reacted to the Hiroshima bomb on August 6. The war council still insisted on four conditions for surrender: the preservation of the Emperor, disarmament being the responsibility of the Imperial Headquarters, no occupation of the Japanese Home Islands, Korea, or Formosa, and delegation of the punishment of war criminals to the Japanese government. After Nagasaki, Japan dropped all of the conditions except preserving the Emperor, and he announced the surrender.

Probably it would have been better if World War II could have been ended without opening the Pandora’s box of atomic weapons. But, it’s difficult to say that their discovery would have been far off in any case. However, I have little patience for those who make the American decision to use the atomic bomb as unconscionable and try to paint Japan as a sympathetic victim. Japan was under the leadership of war mongers and, once that type gets control, it is difficult to dislodge them. Their treatment of conquered peoples had been deplorable, and their defense was tenacious. The bombs made victory swift and complete. Internalization of the defeat by the population and the resulting peace could be structured in a way that made pernicious “stabbed in the back” (post WWI Germany) or “Lost Cause” (post Civil War South) mythologies less likely to arise. This is to say nothing of the Americans who would not have to die invading Japan to end World war II.

The formal surrender of Japan would take place on the USS Missouri on September 2, 1945. We don’t need to be proud of the bombing at Nagasaki but neither, I think, do we need to be ashamed of it.

More Loans for Charter Schools

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Kris Turner, writing a story that appeared at the Lafayette Journal & Courier, reports that the State has released details about a loan program for charter schools.

The program gives charters access to $50 million in state-funded loans and comes on the heels of the state’s forgiveness of $90 million in charter school loans in 2013.

$140 million here, $140 million there, and pretty soon we’re talking about real money. Let’s invest in our public schools.

The loans carry a 1% interest rate and will theoretically be paid back within 10 years. The loans are further secured by the facilities that are built with the loan proceeds. However, I’m not sure what the re-sale proceeds are on a defunct school building if you foreclose on them.

And, there is still the possibility that, like the $90 million loan that came before, this new $50 million loan will be forgiven by the State:

In 2013, the state forgave and paid off more than $90 million in charter school loans. The move drew protests from traditional public schools whose loans were not forgiven and consequently charter schools were no longer given access to the loan money.

Kenley said Pence and House Speaker Brian Bosma plan to do the same thing again with the new loan program — an assertion that neither denied outright.
. . .
[T]he new loan program . . . gives charter schools access to up to $50 million in loans from the state’s common school fund.

The fund has about $170 million available — money that would normally be reserved for traditional public school loans for construction and technology purchases. Now, charter schools can access nearly a third of the funds at an interest rate of just 1 percent.
. . .
Overall, 43 of the state’s 79 charter schools already have outstanding obligations, for a collective debt of about $120 million.

Traditional public school districts carry much larger debt loads, but those loans are typically backed by property tax levies, making them relatively safe bets. Of the 655 outstanding common school fund loans to traditional public schools, none are behind on payments, according to the state treasurer’s office. Nor have any traditional public school loans been forgiven.

Charter schools, on the other hand, are less predictable. Several of the charter schools whose loans were forgiven in 2013 ceased operations shortly thereafter.

In Which I Address Another Voucher Argument in the Local Paper

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The Lafayette Journal & Courier featured a column by an administrator at one of the local Christian schools entitled “Why School Choice is Working.” Despite the title, the column doesn’t really establish that “school choice” (i.e. vouchers/privatization, etc.) is “working.” For starters, it doesn’t really define what “working” is. (My assumption is that this should mean that we end up with a better educated population. But, for all I know, someone else might think it enough that we’re handing kids diplomas without spending as much money.)

But, on to the arguments.

Item the first: The columnist argues that vouchers are actually saving our educational system money because a “voucher will always cost less than public school tuition because it cannot exceed 90 percent of the cost of attending a public school.” I’ll just re-state my response from the last time this argument surfaced in the paper:

First of all, not all children cost the same to educate. As I’ve mentioned before, that’s a major issue with taking a “dollars-follow-the-child” approach. Some kids are easier to educate than others. My guess is that the tougher cases are more likely to stay in public schools. Secondly, this ignores the subsidy potential for parents who, in the absence of the “choice” legislation would have paid 100% of their decision to put their kid in a non-public school. This is a windfall for those families. No one is forcing you to give your kids a public, secular education, but now we’re subsidizing the decision to send kids to private and/or religious schools.

Item the second: The local schools’ test scores are improving and the administrator’s particular school have remained the same. This “does no harm” argument is not compelling. First of all, this particular argument is anecdotal. I have no idea whether it is representative of the state as a whole. But, even if it was, maintaining the status quo in terms of educational quality is hardly a compelling case for publicly funding private education.

Boiled down, those are the two arguments the column puts forward. So, the headline (which may not be the author’s doing) is not really on point. He also asserts that publicly funding a religious education is constitutional because it’s the parent’s choice. I don’t think one follows from the other, but won’t quarrel with him at this point because, where these vouchers are concerned, the religious angle really isn’t at the heart of my beef. I don’t really like it any better when the vouchers are going to private, secular schools.

Lacking any evidence that these voucher experiments are actually improving education, proponents of school privatization are left with bare assertions that “empowering” parents to “choose” is, by itself, a sufficient reason to publicly fund private education. Being empowered and choosing are good things, right? I’m sure their marketing consultants tell them that. But, as I’ve said before, these are not sufficient reasons for insisting on unproven schemes for improving our schools. Other countries have figured a lot of this out. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel. We can look at what has worked elsewhere and copy it.

Near as I can tell, the voucher proponents fall into one of three general camps:

1. People who were going to send their kids to something other than a traditional public school anyway and want to have that decision subsidized.

2. People who see that big pot of education money as a business opportunity.

3. People who regard “free market” arguments as a sort of dogma and believe that making the school system more like a marketplace must improve education, regardless of the actual data.

And, I suppose honorable mention should go to lawmakers and politicians who see this as a way to disempower public school teachers as a political force. But that is, perhaps, a discussion for another day.

Cell Phone Ban for those Under 21 – Class Action Time?

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Niki Kelly, writing for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, has an article entitled “Young Drivers Hit with Cell Ban: Even lawmakers taken by surprise”.

The bill was HB 1394-2015 authored by Rep. Soliday and sponsored by Sen. Crider. At issue is a provision that prevents drivers under 21 from using a cell phone at all — even for GPS, texting, or music. The digest (written by LSA as a tool for lawmakers, but not actually part of the legislation) reads:

Supervision of probationary drivers. Amends existing supervised driving requirements to receive a learner’s permit or an operator’s license. Provides that an individual with a disability who satisfies certain requirements is eligible to receive an operator’s license. Repeals a superseded provision concerning probationary operator’s licenses. Provides that an operator’s license issued to an individual who is less than 21 years of age is a probationary license. (Under current law, the age limit for a probationary license is 18 years of age.) Requires the bureau of motor vehicles to adopt rules to establish minimum hours of instruction for approved driver education courses.

(emphasis added)

The story reports that some lawmakers were caught flat-footed, unaware of the expansion. The probationary license is the mechanism creating the expansive prohibition of cell phones. From the text of the legislation, it appears that was already in place for individuals under 18.

On page 6 of the legislation, it says, “(4) The individual may not operate a motor vehicle while using a telecommunications device until the individual becomes eighteen (18) twenty-one (21) years of age unless the telecommunications device is being used to make a 911 emergency call.”

The language is pretty clear if you’re reading it. But I can see where this is something you’d gloss right over when scanning. The definition of “telecommunications device” is not changed by this legislation but is defined in IC 9-13-2-177.3 as meaning “an electronic or digital telecommunications device. The term includes a: (1) wireless telephone; (2) personal digital assistant; (3) pager; or (4) text messaging device.”

I suppose one could very legitimately take issue with the interpretation that this prohibits using your iPhone in its capacity as a music player or in its capacity as a GPS system. Yes, it’s a “telecommunications device” but it’s also many other things. Are you “using a telecommunications device” when you check the time on a machine with both clock and telecommunications functions? I’m skeptical.

Another potentially interesting angle: does this open the State up to a class action for taking without due process and without compensation by those people between 18 and 21 who had a full operator’s license prior to July 1, 2015, but now have a license of diminished value? I have not done any research on this — so take it with a huge grain of salt, but the theory would go that an individual has a property interest in a license issued by the State and the State can not just arbitrarily take that away from you or limit the scope of your license. For example, see some language in the 1971 case of Bell v. Burson:

Once licenses are issued, as in petitioner’s case, their continued possession may become essential in the pursuit of a livelihood. Suspension of issued licenses thus involves state action that adjudicates important interests of the licensees. In such cases the licenses are not to be taken away without that procedural due process required by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Seems like a case where a grandfather clause would have saved everyone a lot of trouble.

Teacher Shortage: Who Could Have Predicted?

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In the comments to my previous post about school privatization, there was discussion of news reports that there is a shortage of teacher applications in Indiana lately. See, e.g. this Associated Press report.

Teachers have been treated poorly by policy makers lately. They are collateral damage to people who see the public school system as a big pot of money ripe for the taking. They are government employees which makes them anathema to certain ideologues. Because everyone has been to school, there is a temptation to believe that anyone can do their job. They have been politically active in support of lawmakers who support public education which makes them fair game to opponents of those lawmakers.

We can learn from other countries with successful school systems that the way to improve school systems is to to pay teachers well, treat them as professionals, and create an incentive for the best and brightest to go into the teaching profession. In the United States, and Indiana in particular, we seem to have an inclination to see whether doing the exact opposite will work instead.

Per the news report:

School districts across Indiana are having trouble finding people to fill open teaching positions as the number of first-time teacher licenses issued by the state has dropped by 63 percent in recent years.

The Indiana Department of Education reports the state issued 16,578 licenses to first-time teachers, including teachers with licenses in multiple subject areas, in the 2009-2010 school year. That number dropped to 6,174 for the 2013-14 school year, the most recent for which data were available, the Greensburg Daily News reported.
. . .
Enrollment in Ball State University’s elementary and kindergarten teacher-preparation programs has fallen 45 percent in the last decade. Other schools are reporting similar declines.

Denise Collins, associate dean with the College of Education at Indiana State University, said enrollment there has fallen 7 percent, and the number of students completing an education degree has dropped 13 percent.

This is a problem that wasn’t created overnight and fixing it will take some time. We can begin by not regarding teachers as interchangeable widgets where schools would necessarily want to have as many of the cheap, new teachers as possible and regard experienced, but more expensive, teachers as a liability.

Point/Counterpoint on School Privatization and Subsidies

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Today’s Lafayette Journal & Courier offered some space for a column attempting to defend Indiana’s voucher system in response to West Lafayette School Superintendent Rocky Killion’s earlier column entitled “Myth busting Indiana’s voucher system.”

Since today’s pro-voucher column was offered in rebuttal to Killion’s column, we’ll start with him. He said:

1. Indiana’s system won’t save us money. Rather than being, as advertised, a savings to taxpayers, voucher spending has increased from $16 million to $40 million.

2. Indiana’s “choice” system is not improving Indiana’s public schools. There is simply no evidence for it. Top performing school systems in the rest of the world don’t operate like this. He quotes Marc Tucker, president and CEO of the National Center on Education and the Economy: “I defy you to point to a top-performing country that got that way by introducing choice systems.”

3. Private/charter schools get better results than other schools. Again, no evidence. Available research indicates private/charter schools are generally performing the same or worse.

With respect to the cost, the pro-voucher column insists that “vouchers only cover a portion of the cost to educate a child. Their parents, private donors and other scholarships pay their remaining tuition.” First of all, not all children cost the same to educate. As I’ve mentioned before, that’s a major issue with taking a “dollars-follow-the-child” approach. Some kids are easier to educate than others. My guess is that the tougher cases are more likely to stay in public schools. Secondly, this ignores the subsidy potential for parents who, in the absence of the “choice” legislation would have paid 100% of their decision to put their kid in a non-public school. This is a windfall for those families. No one is forcing you to give your kids a public, secular education, but now we’re subsidizing the decision to send kids to private and/or religious schools.

See generally, this report (pdf) from the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability:

Indiana joined the ranks of states with voucher programs with the enactment in 2011 with the Indiana Choice Legislation and expansion in 2013. As indicated previously, this legislation significantly expands the ways in which public dollars in Indiana may be directed to private schools. Indiana’s school choice initiative contains three distinct components, each of which increases the ability of parents to use what would otherwise be public money to cover the cost of a private education.

First, the Indiana initiative offers parents a traditional school voucher (Choice Scholarship) program. Second, Indiana also created an income tax credit (Scholarship Tax Credit) for individuals and corporations making contributions to private, nonprofit SGOs, which in turn use these donations to fund scholarships for Indiana school children to attend private schools. An individual or corporate contributor to a SGO receives a credit against what she, he or it would otherwise have to pay in state income taxes, in an amount equal to 50 percent of her, his or its SGO contribution. Third, the Legislation allows parents to deduct against their Indiana taxable income, up to $1,000 per child for unreimbursed education expenses.

With respect to improving public schools, the pro-voucher column offers this article of faith: “If Killion perceives non-public schools to be ‘competition,’ I would argue that competition will elevate all schools to be more innovative, to challenge the status quo and to achieve more.” You can argue it all you want, but there is no evidence to support the argument. Competition makes some things better but not everything. There’s a reason we don’t rely on competition to supply tap water, drainage, and sewage. Water is a basic necessity, and we all lose when our neighbors cut corners. Based on the manner in which top performing countries developed their public education systems, there is no reason to believe that this voucher system will do the trick.

With respect to private/charter schools getting better results, the pro-voucher column offers nothing – only second hand anecdotes and platitudes about how parents should be able to choose a quality education for their child, assuming (without support) the contention that private and charter schools perform better than public schools. They don’t.

Again from the CTBA report:

None of the independent studies performed of the most lauded and long standing voucher programs extant in the U.S.—Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Cleveland, Ohio; and Washington, D.C.— found any statistical evidence that children who utilized vouchers performed better than children who did not and remained in public schools. After controlling for school type and student demographics, a comprehensive study commissioned by [the Bush administration] found that students who attend traditional, K-12 public schools outperform students who attend both charter schools and private religious schools, irrespective of denomination.

I expect that that bit about “controlling for demographics” is a key point. Some of those demographics are, no doubt, correlated with those more expensive to educate students I alluded to above. But, ignoring those demographics is, long-term, a losing strategy for the community.

The CBTA study recommends that we take instruction from places like Korea, Finland, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Canada — countries with school systems that were not always leaders but which found ways to dramatically improve their systems. We don’t have to re-invent the wheel here — educational systems have been improved other places. School choice advocates’ determination to ignore those lessons suggests that improving education is a pretext with the primary motive having more to do with cultural and ideological concerns (leaving aside, for now, the venal types who just see the public school system as a big pot of money, ripe for the taking.)