A Month of Misleading Education Misinformation From Governor’s Appointees

The month of July was a blitz of guest commentaries from the Governor’s State Board of
Education and “shadow department of education” (known as Center for Education and Career
Innovation a.k.a. CECI) appointees to influence the public that Glenda Ritz is the problem and
not them.

No less than three commentaries appeared in The Times. Two were from members of
the State Board of Education (Tony Walker and Gordon Henry) and one from Ashley Gibson of
CECI. All of them placed full responsibility on State Superintendent Glenda Ritz for the State’s
probationary status by the US Department of Education regarding its No Child Left Behind
Waiver. In addition, the CECI executive director publicly undermined the State Superintendent’s
waiver submission to the feds thereby exacerbating the dysfunction and putting the waiver in
jeopardy.

Times reporter, Dan Carden, accurately reported last June that the USDOE based its
complaints on what occurred during Tony Bennett’s tenure, NOT RITZ’S TENURE. Bennett
promised the feds to implement Common Core and participate in a Common Core testing
consortium. The Republican dominated Legislature put Common Core on hold. The State
Board of Ed officially rejected Common Core.

Tony Walker and Ashley Gibson reported that the USDOE cited concerns that the
Indiana Department of Ed “could not demonstrate adequate assistance to failing schools or an
adequate evaluation system…”. What they left out, as reported by Dan Carden, was that the
time period of concern was from February, 2012 to August, 2013 - primarily Tony Bennett’s
tenure. Glenda Ritz took office January, 2013.

Further, Tony Bennett’s philosophy of “assistance to failing schools” was takeover by
Charter Schools. The DOE was gutted of education specialists and school support staff at the
start of his tenure. There was a legislative philosophy of “flight and abandonment” of public
schools in favor of unproven Charter Schools and uncontrolled tax dollars for vouchers for
students already in private schools (now at $16 million which exceeds State budgets of only $5
million for non-English speakers, $10 million pre-school, $13 million for Gifted, and $0 for
teacher development).

The responsibility for improving pubic schools was abdicated by Bennett and the
Legislature and only now resurrected by Glenda Ritz’s outreach counselors for underachieving
schools.

Update: the civil lawsuit against the SBOE has been allowed to continue. At stake is
whether State Board members can conduct “meetings” electronically among themselves to gain
agreement and carry out formal action (even awarding contracts) prior to a public meeting. This
“strategy” has recently evolved into the SBOE’s proposal to allow itself unprecedented authority
to circumvent the State Superintendent and present new agenda items without advanced notice
to the public, or the State Superintendent, and then vote on them immediately.

1.3 million voters elected Glenda Ritz because they were dissatisfied with Tony Bennett’s
abandonment of public education. A new effort is underway to coordinate those same voters to
elect pro-public education candidates, hold legislators accountable for making public education
funding a priority, and equalizing accountability for any recipient of public tax dollars. Stay
tuned.