Tag Archives: suellen reed

National School Choice Week: Start the Celebrations!

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National School Choice Week, running today through Friday, is an opportunity to highlight and celebrate the laws and programs that help parents choose the best educational settings for their children. Until recently, Indiana was mostly a spectator to that celebration. Today, we’re the focus of it due to Indiana’s 2011 laws creating our state voucher program and significantly expanding our charter school and virtual education laws.

It’s not that Indiana was void of school choice prior to 2011. We’ve had a charter school law since 2001 and we passed an educational tax credit in 2009. Both were significant accomplishments that the Indiana Chamber was proud to have helped lead. But both also demonstrate the critical importance of implementation and “minor” policy distinctions.

We were the 38th state in the country to pass a charter school law; but there were high hopes when, shortly after passage, our new law was ranked the sixth best in the country. Some of those hopes have been fulfilled, especially with the tremendous successes of charter schools in Indianapolis, but a policy decision by State Superintendent Suellen Reed almost stopped that hope dead in its tracks.

Despite language in the original law stating explicitly that funds for charter school students would follow immediately from their previous schools to the charter schools where they enrolled, Reed determined unilaterally that funds could not flow to charter schools until January of each school year when the school funding formula is reset.

The result was that charter schools in Indiana would be forced to operate for six months without any state funds, a challenge that no other public school in Indiana has ever faced. Ultimately, the issue was partially resolved through the creation of a state-backed, low-interest loan program, but the 2002 decision remains even today as a significant barrier to charter school growth in the state.

The 2009 Scholarship Tax Credit has faced its own tough challenges. One of the main ones is the low level of Indiana’s credit – just 50% of the donor’s contribution. It may sound generous, but in other states, where similar programs have thrived far better than ours, the programs offer 70, 80 and even 100% credits. Indeed, Indiana’s 50% credit is the lowest of any such program in the entire country.

Today, we celebrate a voucher law, passed in 2011, that has produced the largest first-year participation rate of any voucher law in American history. The celebration continues, as this year’s participation doubled that of the first year. Yet, even that success is tempered by some coming challenges.

Among them, Indiana’s law is the only choice law in the country that bans kindergarteners from participating. As some lawmakers have said, they think it’s a good idea to require parents to first give a “test run” to the local public schools – even when the parents know plenty about their options. Indeed, the suggestion of such “test runs” is directly counter to core philosophy of school choice – that parents are best positioned to determine the best educational settings for their children.

So we celebrate this week, and we will revel in the fact that states around the country are now chasing us – trying now to replicate the tremendous successes that we had in 2011. Those successes are well worth celebrating, but much work remains to be done.

In the next three days, this space will feature the thoughts of three Indiana leaders who have helped make choice a reality in Indiana. Robert Enlow, president of the Friedman Foundation, will help put Indiana’s role in a national perspective; Dan Elsener, president of Marian University, will share why choice has been a lifelong passion of his; and Lindsey Brown, executive director of School Choice Indiana, will report on the state of Indiana’s choice options.

We hope you’ll join us in this national celebration and will revel, as we will, in the newly minted attention that Indiana has earned. But as we’ll note in a closing column on Friday, the challenges that remain are more than just policy oriented; in many ways, they sit at the core of our political and policy environments.

Meanwhile, check out the web site for National School Choice Week and look especially for the celebrations and other events that are occurring throughout Indiana. You might even find a celebration near you!

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Derek Redelman is vice president of education and workforce development for the Indiana Chamber of Commerce.

New State School Chief to be Chosen in November

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After 16 years, Suellen Reed’s reign as superintendent of public instruction is nearing the end. Voters will choose this November between a new Republican nominee, Dr. Tony Bennett, who is currently the superintendent of the Greater Clark County Schools, and the Democrat nominee, Dr. Dick Wood, who just retired as superintendent of Tippecanoe School Corporation.

Over the next several months, we can expect to hear at least some debate on which of these gentlemen will best carry on the 16-year legacy of Reed. School leaders, who are largely happy with Reed, will be looking for someone who can continue on her role as chief defender of all that is good in public schools. Meanwhile, those of us interested in reform will be looking for a candidate who can return leadership and new ideas to the office. 

It is difficult to say what Reed and her supporters will tout as her accomplishments. She opposed most of the leading reforms that occurred during her tenure, including: revision of our state standards, reform of the ISTEP test and establishment of Core 40 as a graduation requirement. She was also largely silent during consideration of charter school legislation and then nearly killed the movement in its infancy with her administration of charter school funding. 

In the absence of other leadership, Gov. Daniels has tried desperately during his first term to provide substantial deregulation for our schools, to force greater financial efficiencies and to raise the dialogue on teacher quality. As Reed has been painfully silent on these issues, many of us are hoping that a new superintendent will help lead on these and other issues that are critical to the future of our schools. 

Perhaps most importantly, many — both in education and outside — are looking forward to a much improved Department of Education. Multiple stories by the Indianapolis Star and others have highlighted the dismal job the department has done on managing critical data such as high school graduation rates. But as highlighted by outside reviews by independent groups like Crowe Chizek, the problems with data are just the beginning of a management overhaul that is long overdue. 

The Indiana Chamber does not endorse candidates in the state superintendent race, but we will be watching carefully what each of these candidates has to say. Nobody can question the passion with which Reed has performed her job for the last four terms, but for the sake of our state, the next superintendent needs to transform that passion to ideas and leadership. 

Let us know your thoughts in the comment section.