Tony Bennett vs. Glenda Ritz
Tony Bennett, the well-funded incumbent, is facing Glenda
Ritz, a national board certified teacher in Washington Township. On
the surface, it looks like a mismatch. Tony Bennett has built a
national reputation and has had fundraising events in his honor from New York
to California. The Star reported that New York Mayor Michael
Bloomberg donated $40,000 to the Bennett campaign. I have heard
reports that Alice Walton of the Walmart fortune has donated $200,000. The
name of Glenda Ritz is still not well known, even by those who have opposed
Tony Bennett’s positions. It looks like a “David vs. Goliath”
situation.
I support Glenda Ritz for State Superintendent because I
believe Tony Bennett has led us in profoundly wrong directions. He
talks often about accountability, and this election is the accountability
program of our democracy. I believe that he should be held
accountable and defeated in his bid for reelection. I’ll start with
four key reasons:
1) Bennett led the fight to
use state tax dollars for religious school tuition. In the first
year alone, $16 million dollars were diverted from supporting public school
students in order to pay tuition for private and parochial school
students. According to a recent report in the Star, we now have 301
private schools receiving tax supported vouchers, of which 290 are Christian
schools, 3 are Muslim schools, 2 are Jewish schools and 6 --only 6! -- are
independent, non-religious private schools. For the first time since
the Indiana Constitution was approved in 1851, Indiana taxpayers are providing
state funding for sectarian, religious education.
This directly contradicts the vision of Caleb Mills, leader
of Indiana’s common school movement in the 1840’s that successfully put a
public education system in the 1851 Constitution. He was a
Presbyterian minister, but he strongly believed that if public money was going
to pay for schools, they should be non-sectarian and non-partisan. He
believed that young citizens should not be raised in schools that take partisan
positions. Private schools taking vouchers now have every right to
take partisan political positions in line with their religion, while educating
students with public tax money. Political and theological positions
of Christians, Muslims and Jews will be inculcated at taxpayer expense. The
pro and con presentation of issues that I grew up with in non-partisan public
schools will be the civic framework for fewer and fewer people. This
will inevitably lead to a more partisan nation, and partisanship is already
clearly challenging our democracy.
Tony Bennett found 56 House members and 28 Senators to vote
for the voucher bill. Do Hoosier voters really agree that religious
school tuition should be funded with tax money? This is the election
that will tell us whether voters agree with the biggest change in church/state
separation in 160 years, since the 1851 Constitution. This election
is the referendum on Tony Bennett’s efforts to give public money to private and
parochial schools.
Glenda Ritz is a plaintiff in the lawsuit against the voucher
law, which currently awaits review by the Indiana Supreme Court. I
support Glenda Ritz.
2) Bennett brought us an A-F
grading system that degrades Indiana’s public schools. Ignoring
the complaints from all 35 speakers at the only public hearing, he pushed
through a system in February of 2012 that, by figures put out by his
own department, gives D’s and F’s to 22% of Hoosier schools, while
Florida, the state he used as a role model for school letter grades, gives D’s
and F’s to 6%. Indiana schools are not over 3 times worse than
Florida schools!! In fact, Indiana consistently outscores Florida on
the National Assessment. The data on the attached file shows
clearly that Indiana leads Florida on 4th and 8th grade
Math and on 8th grade reading by as much as 9% passing on
the same test. Check out the attached table.
Unfairly low school grades damage local economic development
efforts to attract new jobs. Mayors have expressed great concern
about the inappropriately low grades produced by Tony Bennett’s A-F model,
saying it will hurt their recruitment of new businesses to their
community. In the past, when the public school community and the
Indiana Chamber agreed that the system needed to be revised, it would be
revised. Not so under Dr. Bennett. No stakeholders spoke
in favor of the plan in the January hearing. Nevertheless, Dr.
Bennett pushed it through. The only correction to this is to vote no
to Tony Bennett in November.
This Thursday, August 30th, preliminary letter
grades under the new system are on the agenda of the State Board of Education. Great
questions still exist in the minds of school leaders about how the growth model
data impact the grades. Leaders are frustrated that they can’t
calculate their own grade without statewide data they don’t have regarding
growth. The bonuses and the penalties for growth can only be
calculated based on each individual’s growth compared to the total state
performance of peers. This, in my view, violatesIC 20-31-8-2(b): (b)
The department shall assess improvement in the following manner: (1)
Compare each school and each school corporation with its own prior performance
and not to the performance of other schools or school corporations. The
labeling of high and low growth students does indeed use comparisons involving
the students of other schools and school corporations.
Glenda Ritz has called for a revised school letter grade
system. I support Glenda Ritz.
3) Bennett has narrowed the
curriculum to Math and English/Language Arts. His focus on high
stakes testing has narrowed the curriculum to the two subjects schools must do
well in to get a high grade and even to survive as a school under the threat of
state closure or takeover. This is especially true in elementary and
middle schools. The tremendous impact of this pressure on schools is
not well understood by the public. It has undermined other crucial
subjects and electives needed for well rounded citizens and for civic education
needed to continue our democracy. These shortchanged subjects
include science, foreign language, economics, history, geography, vocational
courses and health. Tony Bennett has absolutely ignored the civic
mission of public schools to teach our next generation about citizenship under
our Constitution. With Indiana now in the top ten states for obesity
problems, he attempted unsuccessfully to remove a state law requiring a state
health curriculum and a health consultant.
Glenda Ritz has called for the restoration of common sense in
pulling back from the overemphasis on high stakes testing and for restoration
of the balance in our curriculum. I support Glenda Ritz.
4) Contrary to the rule
of law, if Bennett disagreed with something on the law books, he didn’t enforce
it. Here are three examples:
1. For nearly
20 years, the Indiana Principal’s Leadership Academy (IPLA) had
provided professional development to principals since it was begun under State
Superintendent Dean Evans. It had an extremely loyal following of
alumni, but Tony Bennett didn’t like it and worked to delete funding for IPLA
in his first budget as he entered office in 2009. IC 20-20-2-4 is
very clear: “The state superintendent shall: (1) appoint a full-time
director to administer the academy; (2) employ staff necessary to implement
this chapter; (3) appoint members of the advisory board”. Instead
of appointing staff and advisory board members to bring policies more to his
liking, he simply ignored this statute and gave money for professional
development to an Evansville program to train principals at Brown University, a
program that quickly ran out of money. Then he attempted in the 2012
session to take the IPLA law off the books, but the legislature refused to do
that. The law still stands, but Tony Bennett is not enforcing the
law. Can he enforce only the laws he likes?
2. While Dr.
Reed was State Superintendent In 2008, the General Assembly created the Indiana
Legislative Youth Advisory Council in HEA 1162 to be administered by
the Indiana Department of Education. When Dr. Bennett came
into office in 2009, he let it be known that he would not continue the Youth
Advisory Council. Apparently the fact that it was a law had no
impact on Dr. Bennett. Representative Bell from Fort Wayne, who had
sponsored the original bill, worked diligently in the 2010 session to keep the
ILYAC alive by amending the law to say that the Indiana Bar Foundation Civic
Education Center would administer the program, instead of IDOE. Again,
here was a law that Tony Bennett didn’t want to carry out, so he didn’t. Others
who saw the importance of civic education for young people had to step in to
keep the program going. Why didn’t he carry out the law until it was
changed? Isn’t that the way the rule of law works?
3. Bennett applied a
double standard of leniency to private Scholarship Granting
Organizations that give out private school tax credit scholarships,
which since a 2009 law have been subsidized 50% by your tax dollars. He
has held public schools strictly accountable to the point of state takeover,
but he let Scholarship Granting Organizations ignore the law without
penalty. When the 2012 General Assembly considered Senate Bill 296
to expand tax credit scholarships for private schools, the facts came out: As
of March 2012, of the four SGO’s, only two had ever submitted audits required
by the 2009 law, and only one had documented the legally required 90%
distribution for student scholarships on the required public report.
When citizens make great efforts to pass a law through the
General Assembly, they believe that they have institutionalized the program for
future generations or at least until the General Assembly changes the
law. They do not think that the law will be ignored because the new
office holder doesn’t like it. That practice is the opposite of the
rule of law under our Constitution.
Glenda Ritz will not pick and choose which laws she will
enforce. She will follow the law. I support Glenda Ritz.
I urge you to support Glenda Ritz in any way you can by
talking with family members, neighbors and friends. Her name
recognition is still low. When the TV commercials start
flying, she will be vastly outspent. She needs your involvement and
your support at the grassroots level.
by Vic Smith
Vic Smith has worked many years as a reporter focused on events at the statehouse. He is an ardent supporter of public education and president of the Indiana Coalition for Public Education, a new, bi-partisan non-profit organization. Its mission is to focus public tax dollars on the K-12 education of public school students by opposing legislation in the Indiana General Assembly that would:
fund private school vouchers
expand private school tax credits
privatize charter schools by
allowing private colleges and agencies to be authorizers
put for-profit managers in place to
take a profit from operating public schools
privatize public schools through
any other means
For more information, email vic790@aol.com
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