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.
Valerie Strauss wrote the introduction…the research and main article (the first of three) is written by Carol Burris, the Executive Director of the Network for Public Education (See article for link).
Thanks!
Amen
14 hours ago
Also worth noting is that David Hilbert’s values in practice have been anything *but* examples in personal integrity.
https://www.indianapolismonthly.com/longform/john-menard-steve-hilbert-dumpster-fire-of-the-vanities/
Make that Steve Hilbert. Once again it’s all about the money and screw the kids.
Read the first 10 comments fro the Post article, very enlightening. Here’s my favorite.
I am living through the hell that Mitch Daniels has created right now, both as a teacher and a resident of the communities where his racist, elitist policies have destroyed the public education system in Indiana. As a teacher in city school system of the largest city in Indiana (I am not allowed to name the school system I work for) I can tell you that Mitch Daniels and Mike Pence set out to destroy the advances that had been made in our school system by segregating the black and hispanic students from white students. I teach in a public school that has 4 white students out of 400, and in a neighborhood that has a about a 60/40 % population of Black/White residents. Within a 5 mile radius, my school is surrounded by 3 charter schools and one “innovation” school which is just a charter school within a school corporation. The charters take students many students in when it is enrollment time, and then kick the hard to educate down the road to the public school when the “Count Day,” the day that enollment numbers determine the amount of funding the charter gets from the state. The public school takes that kid, knowing that there will be no funding for the student that may have learning disabilites, special accomodations or behavior issues that require a great deal of time and money. These charters take money directly from the individual school corporation where they locate. So Indianapolis and Gary schools loose money for every kid that is lured away by the charter even if they return to the public schools. Same with vouchers, except it impacts the entire state, not just the local schools. Because of the lack of funds, the burdensome evaluations, low pay and lack of respect for teachers, we have a very serious teacher shortage resulting in terrible conditions in the classroom. In my school, the classes have 40 or more in a class with one teacher. Indiana’s public education is disintigrating just as Daniels intended;
Competition and choice has been reviewed by researchers, and they found that it has no impact on improving the learning outcomes of students. This was in a study by Stanford who found that vouchers had no positive impact and in some cases it was a negative impact.
https://news.stanford.edu/2017/02/28/vouchers-not-improve-student-achievement-stanford-researcher-finds/
A damning indictment.
My wife is a molecular biology professor at IPFW, soon to become Purdue Fort Wayne. She tells me that Daniels is very disliked among the faculty. The purchase of the for-profit fraud school Kaplan University is seriously damaging the school’s reputation. Elections have consequences. Serious consequences that last for years. Generations.