Vic’s Statehouse Notes #196 – January 26, 2015

Dear Friends,

House Bill 1486 was posted at 1:30pm today for a hearing at 8:30am tomorrow, January 27th. Reading HB 1486 late this afternoon motivated me to alert you to a series of controversial changes that I strongly oppose.

HB 1486 would:

• Rewrite Indiana’s school accountability law Public Law 221 for only the third time since 1999, the legal basis for the A-F school grading system, deleting an important line added in 2013 that banned the “measurement of student performance or growth compared with peers.” This would open the door to reinstating the current flawed A-F system that is embedded with peer based growth comparisons, also known as norm-referenced measures.

• Delete the word “individual” from the definition of growth in the A-F system, allowing a return to the days of judging schools by results of large groups of different students and ignoring the before and after scores of the same individual student.

• Take away the power of the IDOE to develop ISTEP tests and give it to the State Board.

• Put the setting of ISTEP passing scores now overseen by IDOE in the hands of “independent experts” selected by the State Board.

• Change the State Board from a policy body to a nuts and bolts operations body by giving the power to “oversee the operation of turnaround academies” to the State Board.

• Give the State Board new authority to audit or evaluate any educational program based on data the IDOE would be required to provide.

• Put the State Board rather than the IDOE in charge of the teacher evaluation program, allowing the State Board to set “a minimum and maximum threshold for the use of objective measures of student achievement and growth in all staff performance evaluation plans,” taking away local control in the current law and pointing the way to Dr. Bennett’s often stated goal that at least 51% of each evaluation should be based on student test results.

• Change the control by the state over the local evaluation plan from “may” to “shall” language, leading to the loss of local control as districts set plans to evaluate their teachers.

• Remove the power of IDOE to determine which other subjects besides “the big four” subjects will have academic standards and give that power to the State Board.

• Mandate a “statewide assessment administered in grade 3 that serves as a determinant evaluation of reading skills in grade 3” which “shall be referred to as IREAD-3”. The 2010 law pushed through by Dr. Bennett made no mention of a test or of IREAD-3 which was mandated later via rules of the State Board.

Enough Said! Contact Members of the House Education Committee

This is a lot to digest in the 19 hours between posting the hearing and the 8:30am meeting.

I would love to take time to amplify my concerns, especially the first two bullets above that open the door to a return of norm-referenced growth comparisons that were debunked to the point that the 2013 legislature voided the A-F system and required a new system.

At least they thought they did.

The Governor and many current State Board members have embraced the old flawed system that Dr. Bennett created, which has been used to grade schools three times now with a plan to use it once again next fall. Now this proposed bill would allow them to keep it permanently.

I must stop here and urge you to contact members of the House Education Committee about your concerns about House Bill 1486. The chair of the committee is Representative Behning, who sponsored the 2013 bill on A-F (HB 1427) which would be reversed in part by this bill. Republican members of the committee are Representatives Rhoads, Burton, Clere, Cook, DeVon, Fine, Lucas, and Thompson. Representative Thompson is the sponsor of HB 1486. Democrats on the committee are Representatives Vernon Smith, Austin, Errington and Moed.

Make as many contacts as you can about one or several of the points above. Every email and phone call helps!

Thanks for your efforts in support of public education!

Best wishes,

Vic Smith vic790@aol.com

“Vic’s Statehouse Notes” and ICPE received one of three Excellence in Media Awards presented by Delta Kappa Gamma Society International, an organization of over 85,000 women educators in seventeen countries. The award was presented on July 30, 2014 during the Delta Kappa Gamma International Convention held in Indianapolis. Thank you Delta Kappa Gamma!

ICPE has worked since 2011 to promote public education in the Statehouse and oppose the privatization of schools. We need your membership to help support the ICPE lobbying efforts. Joel Hand will again be our ICPE lobbyist in the Statehouse. Many have renewed their memberships already, and we thank you! If you have not done so since July 1, the start of our new membership year, we urge you to renew now.

We must raise additional funds for the 2015 session, which begins on January 6th. We need additional members and additional donations. We need your help and the help of your colleagues who support public education! Please pass the word!

Go to www.icpe2011.com for membership and renewal information and for full information on ICPE efforts on behalf of public education. Thanks!


Some readers have asked about my background in Indiana public schools. Thanks for asking! Here is a brief bio:

I am a lifelong Hoosier and began teaching in 1969. I served as a social studies teacher, curriculum developer, state research and evaluation consultant, state social studies consultant, district social studies supervisor, assistant principal, principal, educational association staff member, and adjunct university professor. I worked for Garrett-Keyser-Butler Schools, the Indiana University Social Studies Development Center, the Indiana Department of Education, the Indianapolis Public Schools, IUPUI, and the Indiana Urban Schools Association, from which I retired as Associate Director in 2009. I hold three degrees: B.A. in Ed., Ball State University, 1969; M.S. in Ed., Indiana University, 1972; and Ed.D., Indiana University, 1977, along with a Teacher’s Life License and a Superintendent’s License, 1998. In 2013 I was honored to receive a Distinguished Alumni Award from the IU School of Education, and in 2014 I was honored to be named to the Teacher Education Hall of Fame by the Association for Teacher Education – Indiana.

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