Thursday, August 25, 2016

Vic’s Statehouse Notes #264 – August 25, 2016

Dear Friends,

Public education advocates should come to the ICPE meeting this Saturday, August 27th!

For the sixth year in a row since ICPE was founded, all members of the Indiana Coalition for Public Education as well as all who support public education are invited to the Dean Evans Center of Washington Township Schools, 8550 Woodfield Crossing Blvd (the corner of 86th and Woodfield Crossing Blvd), Indianapolis on Saturday, August 27, 2016 at 2:00pm for an important program:
  • Jennifer McCormick, Republican candidate for State Superintendent will speak first as the meeting begins at 2:00 pm.
  • State Superintendent Glenda Ritz, Democratic candidate for State Superintendent will speak around 2:45 pm.
  • After both candidates have spoken, the ICPE Legislator Report Card will be released. For the first time, ICPE has given letter grades to 107 incumbent legislators running for reelection based on their votes on keys bills which show their support or lack of support for public education.
Those present will get all the information and explanations of the Legislator A-F Report Card which will then be released to the media.
Other regional ICPE meetings in our annual fall series have been planned, each with different programs related to the fall elections:
  • · Evansville - September 12, 2016 at 6:30 pm- Evansville Central Public Library
  • · Bloomington – September 19, 2016 at 6:30 pm – Bloomington City-County Bldg.
  • · Lafayette – September 22, 2016 at 6:30 – Lafayette Jefferson High School
  • · Merrillville – October 5, 2016 at 6:30 - Merrillville High School
Please note: At this point, it appears that this Saturday August 27th will be the only ICPE fall meeting in which both candidates for State Superintendent have been able to accept our invitation to speak.

This fact along with the release of the ICPE Legislator Report Card make Saturday’s meeting one that public school advocates will not want to miss.

Please tell your public school friends about it and then join us on Saturday, August 27th at 2:00pm (E.D.T.).

Click here for a downloadable flyer. It will help you share the meeting information with your friends and colleagues.

Thank you for your support of public education!


Best wishes,

Vic Smith

“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 ICPE lobbying efforts. As of July 1st, the start of our new membership year, it is time for all ICPE members to renew their membership.

Our first 2016 membership meeting for all members and for all who support public education who might consider membership is set for Saturday, August 27, 2016 at 2pm at the Dean Evans Center of the Washington Township Schools. Candidates for State Superintendent Jennifer McCormick and Glenda Ritz will address our meeting in separate presentations and the ICPE Legislator Report Card will be released giving a letter grade for support of public education to the 107 incumbents running for reelection to the General Assembly. Come and join us on August 27th!

Our lobbyist Joel Hand continues to represent ICPE at interim study committees. We need your memberships and your support to continue his work. We welcome 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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Friday, August 19, 2016

Select Group is Served by Vouchers

NEIFPE member Terry Springer wrote this op-ed for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette about School Vouchers.

Select group is served by vouchers
Parochial schools less diverse, open

August 19, 2016

As a public school teacher for 36 years and public school advocate, I take issue with the sad and heavy-hearted responses of Tiffany Albertson (Aug. 3) and John Elcesser (Aug. 8) to Phyllis Bush’s July 19 op-ed criticizing school choice.

Albertson, the principal of Bishop Luers High School, and Elcesser, executive director of Indiana Non-Public Education Association, make similar assertions: Bush’s criticisms are unwarranted and divisive because the voucher program is good for students and families. They paint a rosy picture of a program which gives parents choice and supports diversity. The rosy picture dims if you examine the data on vouchers. The data clearly show that the criticisms are justified.

Vouchers did not create school choice. Parents have always had the choice to send their children to public schools or pay the tuition for private school. The difference is that through vouchers, our tax dollars are sent to private schools, which in Allen Country are exclusively parochial schools.

Vouchers were originally promoted as a way for families with limited income to send their children to private schools from failing public schools. After five years, the pretense of providing such opportunity has disappeared. Data from the Indiana Department of Education and the Choice Scholarship Report indicate most voucher students are not leaving failing schools; in fact, 52 percent have never attended public school!

The data from the area parochial high schools that accept vouchers show the increase in voucher students as legislators have changed the qualifying criteria. Between 2011 and 2016, the increase in vouchers is staggering and the percentage of increase jaw-dropping. (See the chart below.)



Obviously, the number of students is not growing at the same rate as vouchers in any of these schools. Education money is paying for students already in parochial schools rather than new students transferring to them.

Voucher money comes off the top of the education budget before money for public schools. In 2015-16, the net cost to taxpayers for private/parochial education through vouchers totaled a whopping $53 million.

Additional data also indicate that not all voucher-accepting schools are what Elcesser calls “beautifully diverse.” Albertson stated that Bishop Luers has a diverse population with 52 percent Caucasian and 48 percent minority, but the 2015-16 data from the DOE shows 62 percent white, 38 percent minority. Despite the 10 percentage-point difference, Luers’ population seems fairly diverse, and these numbers are similar to the diversity of FWCS high schools which range from Northrop’s 61 percent white, 39 percent minority to South Side’s 21 percent white, 79 percent minority.

The same cannot be said of the other schools: Bishop Dwenger (86 percent white, 14 percent minority); Concordia Lutheran High School (78 percent white, 22 percent minority); Blackhawk Christian Middle/High (87 percent white, 13 percent minority). Elcesser might take a closer look at actual data for this area before claiming that vouchers have “opened doors to thousands of children of color.”

Diversity also encompasses economic differences. The proportion of students at FWCS high schools who qualify for free or reduced-price lunch ranges from a high of 79 percent to a low of 49 percent. For the parochial schools, the range is 37 percent to 0 percent, suggesting little correlation between vouchers and poverty in these schools.

Accredited, voucher-accepting schools must comply with many of the same regulations as public schools; however, there is one very significant difference. Public schools are open to all students; parochial schools taking vouchers are not.

To attend the parochial schools in Allen County, students must complete applications that require basic information along with ISTEP scores, letters of recommendation, family financial information, placement exams and interviews by administrators. The parochial schools in our area charge an application fee ($35-$50) and/or registration fee ($100-$165) upon acceptance. And here is the key phrase – upon acceptance. Voucher-accepting schools can and do reject students.

Understandably, voucher parents are taking advantage of a program that benefits them and their children. But if these parents want a different kind of education – a faith-centered education – then they should pay for it. If they cannot afford it, then they should take that up with the religious institution.

Elcesser’s argument that voucher parents are taxpayers and their tax dollars should go to the school of their choice is rather like the argument that my tax dollar should only go to repair the roads and bridges I travel on or to pave my driveway. Public education benefits the whole community; private education does not. The arguments for the money following the child fly in the face of that perspective.

There are 1,046,527 Indiana children in public schools and 84,241 in private, mostly parochial schools. Our tax dollars should work for the public good. We should support public schools that open their doors and educate all children. Our tax dollars should not be used to pay for religious education for the few.

As Indiana’s Constitution states, knowledge and learning are “essential to the preservation of a free government,” and the General Assembly should “provide, by law, for a general and uniform system of Common Schools, wherein tuition shall be without charge, and equally open to all.”

Terry Springer is a retired teacher and member of Northeast Indiana Friends of Public Education.

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Thursday, August 18, 2016

ALEC's Goal is to Leave Out Regular Hoosiers

NEIFPE member Michelle Bandor wrote this op-ed for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette about ALEC.

ALEC's goal is to leave out regular Hoosiers
August 18, 2016

ALEC is at it again.

It isn’t enough that the American Legislative Exchange Council is funded by corporate membership fees ranging from $7,000 to $25,000 yearly, receives millions of dollars in direct grants from these corporations, and receives huge grants from corporate CEO-funded foundations such as the Charles G. Koch Foundation.

This time, top corporate sponsors of this year’s ALEC annual meeting last month in Indianapolis included Exxon Mobil (creator of bills to protect the interests of coal, oil and gas and a major climate-change denier) and AARP, which this year was a “Trustee Level” sponsor and gave out free AARP-branded USB power packs to legislators and others at registration.

You’d think ALEC and its sponsors, with its focus on “model legislation,” would spend more time improving legislator knowledge of democracy and responsiveness to the real needs and interests of the people in their districts.

If the above paragraph sounds vaguely familiar, I have used Rep. David Wolkins’ sentence structure and style from his editorial “Lesson to be learned” in the July 27 Journal Gazette, in which he lambastes, without reason, the Indiana State Teachers Association.

Wolkins is not only blinded by his ideology, but he seems to be putting blind faith in ALEC, a group of corporate lobbyists and state legislators who “vote as equals on ‘model bills’ to change our rights that often benefit the corporations’ bottom line at public expense,” according to www.alecexposed.org.

Wolkins asks, “What message are we sending to our kids when teachers choose to protest, rather than debate, the ideas and people with which they disagree?”

Were teachers invited to the ALEC annual meeting? Are teachers invited to any of the meetings where this so-called “model” legislation is being crafted? The for-profit, corporate education company Connections Academy has a seat at the table; where are the public school representatives? How can teachers – and the average citizen – offer valuable ideas to the so-called “debate” when they are not invited to the meetings?

Who really benefits from ALEC legislation? Had Wolkins been paying attention, he would have noticed more than ISTA members protesting the ALEC annual meeting. There were members of the UAW, AFT, National Letter Carriers Union, Indiana Moral Mondays, Central Labor Council and more.

These groups represent and speak for thousands more of us “average citizens” who are seriously concerned about legislation that threatens the public good. When we’re not asked for our input and opinions, we protest.

What happened to Rep. Wolkins’ Hoosier common sense? Did he lose it on one of his all-expense-paid luxury trips from ALEC? And he crabs about ISTA members getting a free T-shirt!

Whether we label ourselves “conservative” or “liberal” matters little when our state legislators succumb to the paternalistic “behind-the-scene” machinations of ALEC. With ALEC, state lawmakers and business people have a “voice and a vote.” But what about the rest of us?

Wolkins says of ISTA that “they are all for the students, so long as students’ interests don’t conflict with those of ISTA members.” We could say the same about Wolkins: Rep. David Wolkins is all for the citizens of his district in Indiana, so long as his constituents’ interests don’t conflict with ALEC and its corporate members.

Michelle Bandor is a Fort Wayne resident and a member of the Northeast Indiana Friends of Public Education.

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Tuesday, August 16, 2016

Vic’s Statehouse Notes #263 – August 15, 2016

Dear Friends,

All members of the Indiana Coalition for Public Education and all who support public education are invited to the Indianapolis membership meeting of ICPE on Saturday, August 27, 2016 at 2:00 pm for an outstanding program:
  • Jennifer McCormick, Republican candidate for State Superintendent will speak first as the meeting begins at 2:00 pm.
  • State Superintendent Glenda Ritz, Democratic candidate for State Superintendent will speak around 2:45 pm.
  • After both candidates have spoken, the ICPE Legislator Report Card will be released. For the first time, ICPE has given letter grades to 107 incumbent legislators running for reelection based on their votes on keys bills which show their support or lack of support for public education.
Those present will get all the information and explanations of the Legislator A-F Report Card which will then be released to the media.
For the sixth year in a row since ICPE was founded, the first fall ICPE meeting will be held at the Dean Evans Center of Washington Township Schools, 8550 Woodfield Crossing Blvd, at the corner of 86th and Woodfield Crossing Blvd, Indianapolis.

This program deserves the attention of all public school advocates!

Please mark your calendar, tell your public school friends about it, and then join us on Saturday, August 27th at 2:00 pm (E.D.T.).

Please use the attached flyer to share the meeting information with your friends and colleagues.

Thanks for your support of public education!

Best wishes,

Vic Smith

“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 ICPE lobbying efforts. As of July 1st, the start of our new membership year, it is time for all ICPE members to renew their membership.

Our first 2016 membership meeting for all members and for all who support public education who might consider membership is set for Saturday, August 27, 2016 at 2pm at the Dean Evans Center of the Washington Township Schools. Candidates for State Superintendent Jennifer McCormick and Glenda Ritz will address our meeting in separate presentations and the ICPE Legislator Report Card will be released giving a letter grade for support of public education to the 107 incumbents running for reelection to the General Assembly. Come and join us on August 27th!

Our lobbyist Joel Hand continues to represent ICPE at interim study committees. We need your memberships and your support to continue his work. We welcome 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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Monday, August 15, 2016

Letters: Public school boosters support parochial, too

NEIFPE member Meg Bloom sent this letter to the editor. In it she responds to a pro-voucher letter to the editor.

Public school boosters support parochial, too
Published: August 14, 2016

I read with interest Tiffany Albertson’s response to Phyllis Bush’s op-ed about vouchers (Aug. 3). I am a retired public school teacher with 28 years of experience. In the interest of transparency, I need to note that I, like Bush, am a member of Northeast Indiana Friends of Public Education. Albertson, the principal of a school that benefits greatly from vouchers, did not tell us her role at Bishop Luers – and I find that to be troubling and hypocritical.

Albertson talks about her school’s diversity. While a diverse population might be the case at Luers, it is not the case in many schools accepting vouchers. Schools accepting vouchers do not have to accept all students and are able to pick and choose the students they will educate. Public schools welcome all students all the time.

I am fully supportive of parents who desire a parochial education for their children. This has long been a valued option in American education. My problem is with public education money being used for religious education, which is what is happening with our current voucher system. Some families want a parochial education; others do not. But I think that those who cannot afford private education should seek help from their church and not from the public school coffers.

I, along with Bush and the other members of NEIFPE, will always be opposed to money being diverted from public schools to private and parochial schools. We at NEIFPE have never said that parochial schools do not do a good job. We simply say public dollars for public education.

Meg Bloom

Fort Wayne

Sunday, August 7, 2016

The Teach For America Bait and Switch

Reposted from Alternet. Published with permission of the author

The following guest post is an excerpt from Teach For America Counter-Narratives: Alumni Speak Up and Speak Out

About the book

From the publisher's overview
In its twenty-five years of existence, Teach For America (TFA) has transformed from an organization based on a perceived need to ameliorate a national teacher shortage to an organization that seeks to systematically replace traditional fully-certified teachers while simultaneously producing alumni who are interested in facilitating neoliberal education reform through elected political positions. From its inception, TFA has had its share of critics; yet criticism of the organization by its own members and alumni has largely been silenced and relegated to the margins.

The Teach For America Bait and Switch: From 'You’ll Be Making a Difference' to 'You’re Making Excuses'

by Jessica Millen

[Jessica Millen graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2013, majoring in sociology with a minor in education, schooling, and society. She was a 2013 Teach For America (TFA) corps member in New Orleans, where she taught third grade. She currently works as a field organizer for the campaign All IN 4 Pre-K, advocating for increased access to high quality preschool in the state of Indiana.]

The Bait

On the urging of a friend and campus recruiter, I applied to join TFA in October of my senior year at the University of Notre Dame. After a multipart interview process, I was accepted into the program’s Greater New Orleans region. Soon afterwards, TFA began to effectively use social networks to bolster my desire to join. Former classmates and undergraduate campus recruiters reached out and stressed how wonderful it was that I had gotten into such a selective organization. My interviewer called to congratulate me on a job well done. After being bombarded with so many congratulations, I couldn’t help but feel proud that I had passed through such a selective hiring process.

The official TFA recruiter on my campus held events for accepted corps members after each hiring deadline, offering free drinks and appetizers at an on-campus restaurant. I found it strange how much money TFA, a nonprofit organization, spent on us. We wore name tags, ate food, and discussed our excitement about the upcoming school year. Our recruiter, like the other TFA corps members and staff who had reached out to me, stressed the “prestige” of the program and how much TFA would help us in the future. He himself was a former TFA corps member who taught for 3 years before joining the recruiting arm of the organization. I found his enthusiasm for TFA contagious as he pointed out TFA’s connections with graduate schools and the numerous opportunities that would be afforded to us post-TFA.

At the time, I was impressed by how many corps members were still involved in public education. According to TFA, more than 775 alumni were in school leadership positions at schools across the country (Teach For America, 2012a). I was glad to hear that TFA wasn’t always just used as a stepping stone to more lucrative careers; information on the TFA website boasted that as of August 2013, 78% of alumni from the Greater New Orleans region were still in education (Teach For America, 2012b). I didn’t bother to look up the evidence behind TFA’s claims. I trusted that the information from this professional organization that seemed to care so much about children was ethically collected, compiled, and reported. I now know that the organization’s assertion that “Teach For America corps members help their students achieve academic gains equal to or larger than teachers from other preparation programs, according to the most recent and rigorous studies on teacher effectiveness” (Teach For America, 2012c) is, at best, extremely misleading. Reviews of the research cited by TFA to back its claims of corps member effectiveness ultimately reveal a less favorable picture; the majority of studies listed by TFA are not peer-reviewed, are problematic, and/or produced mixed results (Kovacs & Slate-Young, 2013; Vasquez Heilig & Jez, 2014).

But taking TFA’s claims of effectiveness at face value, I continued to be wooed by the organization. Besides the free events hosted by the campus recruiter, TFA offered additional financial incentives to make the bait even sweeter. I remember gushing to my parents that I would not only receive a full teacher’s salary, but also get funding to cover the transitional costs of moving and living during the summer before I began teaching. As an indebted college student, it seemed that, on top of using my skills and education to serve in public education, I was making a solid financial decision in joining TFA. Such tantalizing benefits convinced me that not only was I making a strong move for my future, but I would also be “making a difference” in the lives of low-income and minority students. As a young, well-educated, idealistic student, I took the bait—hook, line and sinker.

The “Training”

After a 7-hour drive to TFA’s summer training Institute in Atlanta, I was excited to begin. Although I had been warned that Institute could be an overwhelming experience, the intensity of our schedule was still surprising. Breakfast at 5:30 am, followed by a full day at our school sites, a quick dinner, additional training sessions in the evening, and then trying to complete the next day’s lesson plans was the perfect recipe for sleep deprivation, and left little time to process all this new information.

During this training, the organization’s “you’ll be making a difference” message became more insistent. Each morning, after being bused to our school site in the early morning, we were greeted by our school director. After signing in, we all gathered in our school site’s library to begin our morning with an inspirational video. Over the course of those 5 weeks we watched what seemed to be every single well-known, inspirational education video on YouTube. We saw Kid President’s “Pep Talk to Teachers and Students!”, listened to Taylor Mali tell us “What Teachers Make,” watched Sir Ken Robinson’s animation video “Changing Education Paradigms,” and many, many more.

Their model was working! At the time, I was inspired and eager to be in the classroom. Here I was, part of this great movement that was going to make a difference! So swept up in the staff members’ fervor, I did not stop to think about why we were being shown all these inspirational and emotionally charged messages, or what they would ultimately contribute to my ability to be a competent, caring, and effective teacher.

It didn’t end with just morning bursts of “let’s change the world.” Throughout our training sessions, we were often shown videos of real TFA teachers working in their classrooms. They were always uplifting clips, showing well-behaved students and enthusiastic teachers. We were told they had started just like us at one point in time, although the teachers’ educational backgrounds were never divulged. We were never shown any videos of “bad” teachers or teachers who were struggling, nor did we see how teachers deal with students who are challenging behaviorally, or even defiant. And we were certainly never shown how to handle students’ physical altercations or emotional breakdowns.

I had expected more hands-on training throughout the program. But with only a half hour to an hour and half in front of students each day, I found that we spent more time talking about how we were going to be make a difference rather than learning how to be effective teachers who could ultimately “make a difference.”

In addition to watching inspirational videos, we listened to many TFA staff members give talks about the rewarding nature of teaching. They showed us pictures of themselves and their students and told stories of how they had impacted their students’ lives. These peppy speakers were extremely positive, only occasionally using vague phrasing to describe teaching as “the hardest thing you’ll ever do.” There was no delving into why it was the “hardest thing I would ever do.” nor was there space to ask the speakers to elaborate. While I recognize that it might be difficult to convey the specific challenges that come with the first year of teaching, when such uplifting testimony is paired with only examples of successful TFA teachers, it was easy and safe for me to assume that I would soon begin “making a difference” once I entered the classroom on my own.

The “making a difference” message was not limited to our sessions in classroom management and pedagogy. During our training, we attended two huge pep rallies, one at the beginning and one at the end of Institute. As the Atlanta Institute hosted multiple TFA regions, the auditorium was packed. At the opening rally we were greeted by a huge PowerPoint slide declaring “One Day,” highlighting TFA’s mantra that “One day all children will have access to an excellent education.” The title of the evening’s program was “Your Role in the Movement for Educational Equity.” After listening to speakers thank us for undertaking the journey we were about to begin, I felt excited. It seemed like TFA was an organization that was actually making a tangible difference in communities across the United States.

Before the closing pep rally, each school site’s corps members created a chant to be shared with the full assembly. Most corps members had purchased t-shirts for their school sites, and as we filed in to our assigned school site spaces, the chanting began. Huge groups of matching corps members were on their feet, yelling at the top of their lungs the cheers they had written. Soon, the TFA staff running the rally began to moderate the cheering, shouting each school site’s name and encouraging each group to be louder than the rest. After more peppy speakers, a student brass band played the corps members out, matching the same frenzied enthusiasm that the hundreds of young, soon-to-be teachers had displayed. In retrospect, the techniques used at these rallies made it feel more like a multilevel marketing convention than a gathering of thoughtful educators. It is strange that TFA felt the need to use such manipulative methods of drumming up enthusiasm on a group of well-educated individuals already committed to their organization.

The Switch

After those 5 weeks of training, I was alone in a classroom with 27 eight- and nine-year-olds. I had no idea what to do with the rigorous and inflexible curriculum modalities that dictated what I taught and when. There was nothing in our training that indicated our teaching lives would be so scripted and controlled. Moreover, I was confused by strict administrative policies that were completely developmentally inappropriate; for instance, my third graders were allowed only 20 minutes of recess, once a week. Again, there was no mention of what to do when school-wide policies were completely incongruent with what I knew at this point to be developmentally appropriate practices.

Trying to balance the demands and expectations of both my school and TFA was challenging, especially when both parties were extremely focused on data and standardized testing to the detriment of what my young students needed. This made it difficult for me to realize my vision of schooling. While I understood the necessity of assessment and its usefulness in gauging how much students know, and therefore in future lesson planning, both my school and TFA’s focus on testing overshadowed my legitimate concerns for students’ emotional and social well-being and academic growth beyond what could be measured in omnipresent assessments. I had to prepare my students for weekly and quarterly testing, on top of looming state-mandated tests that would also measure my success as a teacher. The pressure from both the state and district to raise student test scores manifested in my administration’s extreme concern with test scores and maximizing instructional time not only in specific subjects but also to specific isolated skill sets, always to the detriment of exploring other important areas of elementary education, such as exposure to culture, creative and scientific thinking, music, and art.

Armed only with TFA’s strictly behaviorist methods of classroom management, I was unprepared for many of the issues I faced, and my classroom quickly spiraled out of control. From my 5 weeks of training, I was knowledgeable only about behaviorist management methods that focused on giving clear directions, narrating student behavior when they were following directions, and then giving consequences to those students not complying. These management methods were presented as best practices during our training; no other alternatives were mentioned.

After attempting to use TFA’s preferred classroom management system in my own classroom, I realized that the behaviorist theory of management was not working for my students or for me. When I expressed these feelings to TFA staff members, however, my concerns were ignored and brushed aside. In one meeting with my real-time coach from TFA, who had 4 years of teaching experience, I expressed how uncomfortable I was with forcing my students to remain seated all the time. My coach insisted that students learn best when they are seated. He then noticed that, according to the scripted conversation template from TFA, we had gone over the allotted time for this portion of our meeting. Rather than continuing a conversation that could have helped me understand TFA’s position, he decided that following the prescribed conversation model was more important and ended the discussion. Looking back, it is easy to see why I felt that I was not being supported or listened to by TFA staff. Suddenly, I found myself hearing a different story than the one I was told during the application and training process. Now, instead of “making a difference,” I was told I was “making excuses,” by not believing in myself enough and not being the leader of my classroom.

I met with my TFA manager of teacher leadership development (MTLD) every so often for a check-in. It is interesting to note here that corps members are “managed” by TFA, as if they were commodities, rather than “guided” or “mentored.” At one of these meetings, my MTLD told me she wanted me to have lunch with all my students, so that I could work on “building relationships.” I had already begun to have lunch with small groups of students occasionally, but I was having trouble finding the time to eat with students every day, given the other demands on my time as a new educator. When I brought up what I thought were legitimate concerns—the fact that I had only 25 minutes for lunch, which included dropping off/picking up my students at the cafeteria, and that my administration had concerns about me “rewarding” students who often were not following school rules (eating with students was seen as a reward, not simply a good practice to develop relationships)—my TFA manager told me, “I’m hearing a lot of excuses from you.”

In addition to telling me that I was making excuses, my manager also said that I did not believe in myself enough. As a confident young woman who had had a successful experience at Institute, where I was told, “Your students are going to be so lucky to have you” and “You’re doing so well,” I knew I could be an excellent teacher. I believed in my students and their potential, and had a wealth of knowledge about education, children, and learning, largely from my undergraduate studies. My end-of-Institute award was for “believing in your students.” To be told I didn’t believe in my students or myself was insulting, and not the type of support I expected to receive from TFA staff members.

TFA staff members repeatedly told me that I was not being the leader of my classroom, in the sense that I did not have strict control over my students’ bodily movements. Within TFA’s model of behavioral control, I was expected to have all of my students sitting in their seats at all times, and to accomplish this particular aspect of classroom management by consistently giving consequences. On an intellectual level, I recognized that giving consequences was a necessary part of their management system. It was not that I was incapable of giving my students consequences; the problem was that my vision of schooling did not include a classroom where the teacher is all-powerful, all-knowledgeable, and in strict control at all times. What I was beginning to understand was that there was no room in their model for my vision; in fact, my vision was completely contrary to their understanding of how schooling should be conducted and why. TFA’s Teaching as Leadership model is based upon the idea that teachers are responsible for everything that happens inside of the classroom, regardless of whether or not you agree with the techniques and content you are being forced to adopt (Farr, 2010).

My frustration deepened when TFA staff ignored the fact that there were other factors at work in and out of my classroom that affected student behavior and achievement. I was unable to choose curriculum or what was taught when. TFA’s model of behavioral control and TFA staff instructed me to use extremely scripted sets of phrases, limiting my freedom to develop my own style of classroom instruction that suited my unique context. In addition to this, TFA staff ignored the life circumstances of many of my students. I could not change the circumstances that led Jerome to bring a roach-infested notebook to school, or the fact that Peter’s mother told him to “get his lick back,” meaning that if someone hits him, he should hit back. Whenever I tried to bring up the lived realities of my students’ lives and the real challenges they faced, once again, I was told I was “making excuses.” Despite my having personal knowledge of my students and their families, my voice and ultimately my potential to use alternative methods and ideas for creating a more learner-centered, productive environment was repeatedly pushed aside, as it contradicted TFA talking points.

In the end, I decided to leave. I could not, in good conscience, continue to work for an organization whose guiding educational philosophy varied so greatly from my own. It was not a decision I made lightly, leaving the very students I was trying to love and teach. But after I decided to leave, there came a small moment when I knew I had made the right choice. As I was waiting on duty for the last of the buses to arrive, Sarah caught my eye. She and her younger brother were role-playing the teacher-student relationship and the words coming out of Sarah’s mouth broke my heart: “You’re receiving a consequence! You have earned a lunch detention. You get a consequence!” These are the words and phrases she had heard me use repeatedly, again and again, over and over, as I strove to enact my MTLD’s mandate to give lots of consequences. I had spent 3 months with this child and all I taught her about what it means to be a teacher is that a teacher gives consequences. This was devastating to me, and it was then that I realized that the bait and switch was complete.

For more of this essay, and many other perspectives on the Teach For America experience, you can purchase the complete book of essays here.

To learn more about ALL IN 4 Pre-K click here.

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Friday, August 5, 2016

Vic’s Statehouse Notes #262 – August 5, 2016

Dear Friends,

$53 Million!

That is the price tag to taxpayers for the voucher program in Indiana to pay for private and religious school tuition.

$53 Million in one school year, 2015-16!

The cost of the program was detailed in the Choice Scholarship Annual Report released by the Office of School Finance of the Indiana Department of Education on July 18, 2016.

The voucher program didn’t start out as a cost to taxpayers. As the report clarifies, in the first two years of the program, the state saved over $4 million dollars each year because a number of students transferred from public to private schools, and the transfers saved the state money.

Starting after the massive expansion of the program passed in Governor Pence’s first legislative session in 2013, eligibility rules were changed enabling many private school students who had always been in private and religious schools to get a voucher. Adding these students to the count of state-paid students added their full cost to the state totals with no offset of savings as is seen when a public school student transfers to a private school. Hence, the fiscal costs to the state ballooned.

As seen in the chart below summarizing the findings of the Office of School Finance, the voucher program has grown from a savings to taxpayers to a massive expenditure:


Dr. Dalton’s Question

Dr. Bob Dalton, as he advocated passionately against taxpayer funding for private school tuition, always concluded with a direct question to legislators: What is the fiscal cost of the voucher program?

Dr. Dalton, a founding board member of the Indiana Coalition for Public Education, passed away last year after a 63 year career of leadership and advocacy for public education. He is sorely missed.

Now his question, which was ignored by legislators for years, can be answered.

What is the fiscal cost? $53 million in 2015-16 and growing every year.

What has been the fiscal cost adding all five years together? $100 million after five years.

Bob would be horrified.

The total payments the state made to private schools for tuition, as seen in the chart, were $131 million, but that is not the fiscal cost to taxpayers. That is the total amount diverted from public schools to private schools. That means there is a $131 million dent in the budgets available to public school students. That outcome is bad enough for public school students.

In most cases, however, the state saves some money when students transfer from a public school to a private school. Since the 2013 voucher expansion allowed many students already going to private schools to get a voucher, they were new to the state-funded count and added a new cost to the taxpayers. When the Office of School Finance of the Indiana Department of Education weighed out all savings and cost factors, they found that the net cost to the state was $53 million, using the formula for savings set by the General Assembly itself in 2011.

Would the Voucher Expansion Have Passed Had the True Fiscal Cost Been Known?

If Governor Pence had stood before the legislators in 2013 and said that his voucher expansion would cost taxpayers $53 million per year, would the bill have ever passed?

I doubt it.

If he had said he wanted to give a subsidy to private school parents of $53 million which is more than Indiana pays for summer school ($18 M), preschool ($10 million), technology ($3 million), English language learners ($10 million) and Gifted and Talented programs ($12 million) all added together, would the bill have passed?

I doubt it.

Dr. Dalton’s concerns are vindicated.

It is up to the General Assembly to reign in the voucher program and rebalance our priorities. The expansion of private school vouchers has to stop. Over one million public school students are in need of additional resources to reach their full potential.

Do the citizens of Indiana want ever expanding voucher programs and Educational Savings Accounts to privatize our public schools bit by bit?

That is a question the voters will answer in the November general election.

I hope all public education advocates will participate in the vitally important general election of 2016, our bicentennial year.

Thanks for your support of public education!

Best wishes,

Vic Smith

“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 ICPE lobbying efforts. As of July 1st, the start of our new membership year, it is time for all ICPE members to renew their membership.

Our first 2016 membership meeting for all members and for all who support public education who might consider membership is set for Saturday, August 27, 2016 at 2pm at the Dean Evans Center of the Washington Township Schools. Candidates for State Superintendent Jennifer McCormick and Glenda Ritz will address our meeting in separate presentations and the ICPE Legislator Report Card will be released giving a letter grade for support of public education to the 104 incumbents running for reelection to the General Assembly. Come and join us on August 27th!

Our lobbyist Joel Hand continues to represent ICPE during the 2016 short session. We need your memberships and your support to continue his work. We welcome 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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