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Teachers warn of bills’ impact

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Liberty
Friday, January 28, 2011: 11:52 am
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My hats off to our legislators for their willingness to stop letting special interest groups affect our children. To think that a young man had the gall to go and speak against the children's best interest and trying to maintain the power of his union over the system is disappointing but expected. What is really sad is you had one side against the schools represented by big union but where was the parent group ? Where was the parent lobby their to support freeing of the schools from the grasp of the very element that has so destroyed our school system. ?
Probably home playing their new xbox games they got for Christmas.

Mr Foley, pass the bill for the sake of improvement and actually doing something instead of the phony trowing money at a problem and thinking it could help. Our children here in Morgan County deserves better.

floyd24
Saturday, January 29, 2011: 4:29 pm
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Mr. Foley--I hope you have new buses for the children that want to be transported from Martinsville to the Indy area under the language of this bill! This bill is bad for education and bad for Indiana. MSD of Martinsville is a great school system with great educators in the profession to teach young people of Morgan County. Mr. Liberty--Have you read this bill? I did very well being educated in Morgan County and went on to get a B.A. and an M.A. So I am totally against this bill and Charter Schools! READ THE PROPOSED BILL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Liberty
Saturday, January 29, 2011: 9:09 pm
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Kevin,

Let see, a teaching BA and MA means you are on our payroll for over $53, 561.00 for a little over 10 months worth of work. I can understand why you like it the way it is.

The only question is why you feel you have to be against charter schools ?

Could it be the......Hummmm....ah......let see...the NEA ?

Please share with us exactly what it is in this bill that you disagree with and would be harmful to our children.

Reality Check
Monday, January 31, 2011: 9:48 pm
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If good teachers are 20 times effective then they should be running the show, Liberty. Our know-it-all Governor said so himself.

Hey Mr. Limited government, do you know that this plan is a state take over of public schools? It walks lock step in Obama's socialist agenda, too. So, you must be a communist, Obama lover.

I"m glad we exposed that.

Now I can get some rest.

P.S. You are just about the biggest idiot I have ever in my life witnessed. You comment on EVERY story and feel the need to puke your psycho babble on this website. What nerve. You must be a shallow, sad, lonely old fart to spend this much time on this website????????????

I'll pray for you.

Reality Check
Monday, January 31, 2011: 9:52 pm
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And Reporter:

I think it's about time that when one of these comments gets more then -10 score it should be blanked. It's pretty obvious this person is only on here to be a gigantic pain in the butt and actually gets off on it. They live for it. Probably foaming at the mouth to respond to this, right now.

(Let's see how fast captain ding dong spits something stupid out on this one)....

We're waiting, Liberty......come on. Write something hateful that lowers the IQ of the county another three points when attempting to decipher your comments!!!!!

Liberty
Monday, January 31, 2011: 10:08 pm
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Parents,

This is the teacher I was talking about in my example. This is what your children get when you send them to school. Love them enough to find another way to educate them.

Peace ;)

Reality Check
Friday, February 4, 2011: 12:26 pm
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I wish I could educate you but you're just too stupid. No help can be achieved. Case closed. You're (pay attention to the usage here) too stupid.
Peace, brother:)+ :_ :+ :0- (and more smilies and goofies, amen)

Step Up
Friday, February 4, 2011: 11:45 pm
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Indiana's super connections
Karen Francisco | The Journal Gazette

Plenty of education observers have pointed out State Superintendent Tony Bennett's enthusiastic and unquestioning support for charter schools and his wife's job as a school improvement consultant for the Indiana Public Charter Schools Association. Tina Bennett, a former school principal in Clark County, landed the job after her husband was elected to the state's top school post.

But there's now another interesting connection between the Indiana Department of Education and the superintendent's wife. Tina Bennett supervises the Teach for America program at Marian University, which just landed a $500,000 contract from the DOE to run a program to train principals for turnaround schools.

A DOE spokeswoman told the Indianapolis Star that Tina Bennett had no involvement in developing the program at the university, which has an enrollment of about 1,800 full- and part-time students.

Last month, the DOE announced the award of $15.5 million in School Improvement Grants to four of the state's lowest-achieving schools. Two of the four were charter schools and members of the Indiana Public Charter Schools Association.

Indiana's lax conflict of interest laws require only that state officials declare the name (or names, in this case) of a spouse's employer, which Tony Bennett dutifully did on his 2009 financial disclosure statement. Voters, however, should note that -- within a three-week period -- the Department of Education has awarded $3.85 million in grants and contracts to entities with close ties to the superintendent's wife.

Reality Check
Saturday, February 5, 2011: 11:35 am
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Step up: I'll do you one better:

The founder of School Choice has given over $1 million to Republicans (not to mention what the Chamber of Commerce in 92 counties give to anti-public school campaigns). This same group has also given hundreds of thousands to BRIAN BOSMA, who has broken a long standing tradition as House Speaker to write and sponsor a charter school bill and school voucher program.

Oh, forgot to mention, the same groups gave Tony Bennett $15,000 in campaign cash.

So, what's the difference between ISTA giving money to Democrats (and Republicans) and these groups giving millions to Republicans who want to destroy public education?

You figure it out.

WHERE"S THE MEDIA?>>???????????????????????????????????????

Chirp, chirp, chirp. No one cares. VERY SAD.

Reality Check
Saturday, February 5, 2011: 11:38 am
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South Bend Tribune. Jan. 30, 2011.

School vouchers: Whose choice?

School vouchers were not a campaign issue last fall. But they are a legislative priority today - the bill establishing them is co-authored by the Indiana House speaker himself.

Taxpayers should ask why lawmakers preaching fiscal responsibility are pushing legislation that would drain millions of dollars from Indiana's public schools, with no data or research to support their assertion that sending public money to private schools improves education overall.

Economist Milton Friedman advanced the idea for school vouchers in a 1955 essay:

"Let the subsidy be made available to parents regardless where they send their children � provided only that it be to schools that satisfy specified minimum standards � and a wide variety of schools will spring up to meet the demand," he wrote.

Friedman's proposal initially attracted little attention, and when it finally began to build, voucher program proposals were appropriately challenged on constitutional grounds. A New York voucher program was thrown out on the grounds that state aid supported religious schools.

Milwaukee established a voucher program in 1989, allowing students to attend private, nonsectarian schools. The first such program to significantly subsidize private schools with taxpayer dollars, it represents the longest-running and largest voucher program, serving about 21,000 students from low-income families. Indiana's proposed program would eclipse the Wisconsin program, with no cap on the number of children who could receive vouchers and income limits up to $105,000 a year for a household of four - hardly a struggling family.

But what about House Speaker Brian Bosma's claim that the competition posed by the voucher schools will improve all schools?

No research supports it. The conservative Weekly Standard weighed in on the Milwaukee program in 2008:

"The two most recent studies show that, since implementation of the voucher program, reading scores across all Milwaukee schools are falling," wrote contributor Daniel Casse. "I think that any honest assessment would have to say that there hasn't been the deep, wholesale improvements in (Milwaukee Public Schools) that we would have thought."

And from Sol Stern of the conservative Manhattan Institute, which promotes economic choice and individual responsibility: "Fifteen years into the most expansive school choice program tried in any urban school district (there is) . no 'Milwaukee miracle,' no transformation of the public schools has taken place."

Another high-profile voucher program, the Cleveland Scholarship and Tutoring Program, was the subject of a long-term study by Indiana University's Center for Evaluation & Education Policy. It concluded: "Results indicate that by the end of sixth grade, after controlling for differences in minority status, student mobility and prior achievement, there are no statistically significant differences in overall achievement scores between students who have used a scholarship throughout their academic career . and students in the two public school comparison groups."

If the data don't support the case for vouchers, lawmakers must be responding to constituents, right?

There's no clamor for choice. Bosma tries to make the case there is by claiming there are 3,500 students on charter school waiting lists. But that figure represents about one-third of one percent of Indiana's 1 million-plus public school enrollment.

Ball State University's Bowen Center for Public Affairs conducts an annual opinion survey in mid-November on issues facing the upcoming legislative session. The current survey didn't ask about vouchers, because they didn't appear to be on the agenda. But a question about school improvement strategy found that only 25 percent favored choice through more public charter schools, while 67 percent wanted the money to stay with traditional public schools.

The Foundation for Educational Choice, established by Friedman � the same economist who introduced the voucher concept � did its own Indiana school choice survey which, unsurprisingly, found great support for vouchers, with 66 percent strongly or "somewhat favoring" and just 24 percent opposed. But unlike the Ball State survey, the pro-voucher group polled only registered voters. School policies affect all Hoosiers, and residents who aren't registered still pay taxes supporting Indiana schools.

So, without evidence that vouchers improve school performance or interest from Hoosiers to make them available, why the rush to provide school choice?

Consider where the push is coming from. The Indianapolis-based Foundation for Educational Choice is the loudest voice clamoring for school choice in Indiana. Look closely at the foundation's supporters and you begin to see why they command the governor's attention. Patrick Byrne, chairman and president of Overstock.com, is chairman of the foundation board. Campaign finance records show the Internet retailer and Utah resident has donated at least $125,000 to Daniels' campaign coffers since 2007, plus $25,000 to Aiming Higher, the political action committee supporting the governor's legislative agenda. Byrne also gave $200,000 to Hoosiers for Economic Growth, a PAC that supported primarily GOP legislative candidates last fall.

Byrne gave $15,000 to state Superintendent Tony Bennett's campaign. At least four other Friedman foundation trustees made political contributions to Bennett and/or Daniels. That doesn't begin to account for the millions contributed by school choice supporters like Christel DeHaan to Bosma, Bennett, Daniels and committees working to elect a Republican majority in the Indiana House.

In the absence of data and public support for school vouchers, the influence of campaign contributions speaks loudly. Public education supporters will need to speak even louder in the weeks ahead to protect Indiana schools and students.

___

THERE YOU GO>>>>>>>>>>

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