That means whoever the Indiana Democratic Party selects to run will face an uphill fight when it comes to cash – and the party won’t pick its candidate until June.

It’s no surprise that Bennett has raised a lot of money. He has gained a national reputation in education reform circles, and he’s been traveling the country, spending time with political heavy hitters. His is wired in with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and his Chiefs for Change organization.

Bennett’s major campaign funding sources include:

– Wealthy Indiana business people with a history of giving to Republicans: $50,000 from Merrillville hotel developer Dean White, $22,500 from Mike Weaver of Weaver Popcorn, $20,000 from William Oesterle of Angie’s List and $10,000 from Carmel investment manager Robert Goad.

– Out-of-state businesses that contract with the Indiana Department of Education, or might like to: $5,000 from K-12 Inc., operator of online charter schools; $2,500 from McGraw-Hill, Indiana’s testing contractor; $2,800 from ITEACH U.S., a Texas company that provides alternative teacher certification; and $1,000 from Kevin McAliley, CEO of educational services company Apangea Learning.

– Supporters of Bennett’s “choice and competition” agenda: $25,000 from Indianapolis charter-school founder Christel DeHaan; $15,000 from Hoosiers for Economic Growth and $11,500 from the American Federation for Children, a pair of pro-voucher outfits; $5,000 from Richard DeVos, Amway heir and voucher supporter; and $5,000 from Florida charter-school supporter Gary Chartrand.

– Members of Chiefs for Change: $5,000 from Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Janet Baressi; $1,000 from former Louisiana state superintendent Paul Pastorek; smaller gifts from current and former Florida education commissioners Gerard Robinson and Eric Smith and from Jeb Bush.

It seems likely the Bush connection brought additional donors. Bennett reported more than 40 contributions of $150 or so from non-Indiana residents, most from Florida and Texas. Julie Southworth, finance director for the Bennett campaign, said the campaign’s contributions resulted from fundraisers and solicitations. She said that “people around the country see his (Bennett’s) focus on students and his passion for helping them succeed and want to support his re-election.”

Democrats will choose their candidate at the party’s convention June 15-17 in Fort Wayne. Justin Oakley, a Martinsville middle-school teacher and head of the local teachers’ association, is seeking the nomination. Joe Pearson, a former state representative from Grant County and the 2006 Democratic candidate for secretary of state, is rumored to be mulling the race.

“Teachers matter,” he said. “So instead of bashing them, or defending the status quo, let’s offer schools a deal. Give them the resources to keep good teachers on the job, and reward the best ones. In return, grant schools flexibility: To teach with creativity and passion; to stop teaching to the test; and to replace teachers who just aren’t helping kids learn.”

Obama said a good teacher “can increase the lifetime income of a classroom by over $250,000,” a reference to a recent study by economists at Harvard and Columbia, who concluded that effective teachers have a long-lasting positive impact on the life prospects of their students.

Here’s the problem. Most of the proposals to “reward the best” and “replace teachers who just aren’t helping kids learn” rely on student test scores to determine which teachers are effective. The administration has pushed that approach through its Race to the Top grants and, more recently, through waivers to No Child Left Behind Act requirements. It’s the entire premise behind the economists’ study that Obama cited.

As Dana Goldstein writes in the Nation, “It can be difficult to balance test-based accountability with the sort of ‘creative, passionate’ teaching the president says he supports, especially if teachers are so worried about raising test scores that they teach-to-the-test or — as we’ve unfortunately seen around the country — cheat, or are pressured by administrators to do so.”

Of course, it’s easy to bash teaching to the test; almost as easy as bashing teachers. Let’s just say this: Starting this spring, Indiana students will be retained in third grade if they don’t pass the new test called IREAD-3. Let’s hope third-grade teachers are teaching students the skills they need to pass that test.

The president didn’t describe any new programs to improve teaching, and the blueprint released by the White House with the speech was similarly vague. It calls for reforming teacher education, creating career ladders, tying earnings to performance, reshaping tenure and improving accountability. It also says the administration wants to give teachers professional development, time for collaboration, and classroom autonomy – important goals! – but doesn’t say how to do that.

Obama also called on states to require students to stay in school until they graduate or turn 18, although it’s not clear if the feds would do anything to compel the states to comply with this idea. Indiana does require attendance to age 18, but allows 16- and 17-year-olds to drop out for health or economic hardship reasons, with the permission of a parent and the school principal.

More on the Big Study

Harvard professor John Friedman, one of the authors of the Obama-cited study on the impact of good teachers, responded to criticism by Bruce Baker, and Baker prints the response in its entirety at his School Finance 101 blog. If you’re following the debate over the study and its implications, the exchange is worth reading.

Friedman says his and co-author Raj Chetty’s “fire first, ask questions later” quotes were used out of context in a New York Times article. He points to their subsequent Times Room for Debate piece as a better representation of their views on the policy implications of the study.

No school choice and competition, no high-stakes tests, no top-down accountability and no union-bashing. Instead, Finland pursued egalitarianism for students and high-level professionalism for teachers – and became a world leader on international measures of student performance.

Is Finland’s experience relevant to the U.S.? Certainly there are differences between the countries. Finland is a small; its population, 5.4 million, is less than Indiana’s. It is culturally homogeneous, although its immigrant population is growing.

According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the child poverty rate is about 5 percent in Finland, compared to over 20 percent in the U.S.; and we know that poverty is strongly correlated with student achievement. But other European countries – e.g., Denmark, Sweden, France, Germany – also have low child poverty rates but trail Finland on measures such as the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment.

Advocates of American-style reform tend to dismiss Finland. For example, Rick Hess, education policy director for the American Enterprise Institute, calls it a “tiny island of homogeneity” and argues the U.S. should pursue its own path based on “uniquely American strengths like federalism, entrepreneurial dynamism, and size and heterogeneity.”

But if we listen to what Sahlberg and others are saying, what lessons might we learn from Finland? Here are a couple:

Maybe it’s not all about me. Americans, with our habit of making everything a competition, tend to think of “good schools” as a finite commodity. There are only so many seats, and if you get your kid gets one, there’s less for mine. Sahlberg says Finns don’t understand the concept of good schools and bad schools, because schools are largely the same. And there are almost no private schools, so there are no opportunities to opt out of the program. Finnish parents are all in this public education thing together. For them, apparently, “your kid” kid gets the same opportunity as “my kid,” and that’s OK.

Teaching is complicated. Teachers in Finland are required to have master’s degrees, and they’re accorded autonomy and expected to act as highly trained professionals. They also spend considerably less time in the classroom than American teachers and more time meeting with each other, collaborating and planning. Sahlberg calls this “less is more,” but in fact it reflects a difference in how we see teaching. Here, people complain that teachers work only six hours a day and get summers off. We think they’re working only when they’re in class, a perception that is sometimes reinforced by contracts that restrict what teachers are supposed to do after school hours. Finnish lesson: Change our mental picture of teaching from “stand in front of classroom 180 days a year” to “do what it takes for every child to learn what he or she needs to learn.”

Sahlberg doesn’t set Finland up as a model. But he argues that we can learn from each other – and that the U.S. and states such as Indiana should think twice before heading further down the path of high-stakes testing, accountability and competition.

“I would say you have very little chance to be successful with these policies,” he said.

For more on Finland, see Indianapolis Star reporter Scott Elliott’s recent blog post on Sahlberg’s IU talk and Sahlberg’s recent essay in Education Week, as well as an upcoming Q&A with NPR State Impact Indiana. There’s also a lot of information, including links to presentations, on Sahlberg’s website.

But overall, the state’s education system is barely above average. Indiana earns C+ and is ranked 22nd among the states by Quality Counts, an annual initiative from Editorial Projects in Education that tracks education indicators and grades the states on their policies and outcomes. The state’s grades in sub-areas include:

– C for “chance for success,” which includes family income, parent education, preschool and kindergarten enrollment and adult educational attainment.

– D+ for K-12 achievement, including National Assessment of Educational Progress scores, high school graduation rates, achievement gaps and AP exam scores.

– A (and No. 1 among the states) for standards, assessments and accountability, with the latter category encompassing Indiana’s A-F rating system for schools and sanctions for low-performing schools.

– D for efforts to improve teaching, such as teacher education, licensing and pay. This score is likely to improve next year when Indiana schools implement a mandated teacher-evaluation system.

– C- for school finance. Indiana does OK for spending equity between districts but ranks low for per-pupil spending, even when adjusted for regional cost differences.

– B+ for education alignment, including school readiness, high-school-to-college transitions and workforce and career preparation.

Voucher lawsuit setback

It was disappointing but not surprising that a judge ruled last week against the parents, teachers and religious leaders who challenged Indiana’s private-school voucher program. As Indiana University’s Center on Evaluation and Education Policy explained last fall, the “choice scholarship” program was carefully crafted to withstand legal challenges.

Marion County Superior Judge Michael Keele ruled that the voucher law doesn’t violate provisions of the Indiana Constitution that call for a uniform system of common schools, prohibit people from having to support religion against their consent, and bar the use of state money to support religion.

There’s no question that the vouchers, which go almost entirely to Catholic and Evangelical Christian schools, amount to using state money to support religion. But Keele says it’s OK, because the state isn’t choosing which religious institutions get funding — parents are making that decision.

The Indiana State Teachers Association, which is supporting the lawsuit, says the decision will be appealed.

Finnish lessons

Folks in the Bloomington can hear this Friday about what’s behind Finland’s educational success. Pali Sahlberg, director general of the Centre for International Mobility and Cooperation in the Finnish education ministry, will speak at 1:20 p.m. in Wylie Hall 005 on the Indiana University campus.

Sahlberg is the author of Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn From Educational Change in Finland?, which explains how Finland transformed itself from educational mediocrity to powerhouse. Since 2000, its students have scored at or near the top on international assessments.

Sahlberg writes in Education Week that Finland imported good ideas from other countries and developed reforms through consensus with teachers and local education officials.

“Finally,” he writes, “the key driver of education-development policy in Finland has been providing equal and positive learning opportunities for all children and securing their well-being, including their nutrition, health, safety, and overall happiness. Finnish authorities, in this regard, have defied international convention. They have not endorsed student testing and school ranking as the path to improvement, but rather focused on teacher preparation and retention; collaboration with teachers and their union representatives; early and regular intervention for children with learning disabilities; well-rounded curricula; and equitable funding of schools throughout the country.”

On the one hand, the paper by economists Raj Chetty, John Friedman and Jonah Rockoff offers new evidence that good teaching has long-lasting and far-reaching effects. This suggests that the recruitment, preparation and support of teachers should be a high priority for the nation.

But the economists also use their findings to call for rating teachers on the basis of “value-added” models, which use complex formulas to measure teachers’ impact on student test scores – and for firing teachers who don’t measure up. Annie Lowrey writes in the Times:

The authors argue that school districts should use value-added measures in evaluations, and to remove the lowest performers, despite the disruption and uncertainty involved.

“The message is to fire people sooner rather than later,” Professor Friedman said.

Professor Chetty acknowledged, “Of course there are going to be mistakes — teachers who get fired who do not deserve to get fired.” But he said that using value-added scores would lead to fewer mistakes, not more.”

This is a little surprising, given that, in the study itself, they caution against that sort of policy conclusion.

“Overall, our study shows that great teachers create great value and that test score impacts are helpful in identifying such teachers. However, more work is needed to determine the best way to use VA for policy,” they write in the executive summary.

They add that two important questions must be resolved before value-added models are used to evaluate teachers. One is whether attaching high stakes to test scores will skew results so much that it undermines the accuracy of the models. The other has to do with the economic cost of firing teachers, sometimes in error – the very “mistakes” that Chetty said would be trivial.

Then the New York Times calls and they throw caution to the wind.

The study reportedly breaks new ground by quantifying the long-term impact of teachers who are effective at raising students’ test scores. It finds that students with high-value-added teachers are more likely to attend college and more likely to get into “good” colleges. Their lifetime earnings are higher. Girls who have more effective teachers are less likely to become teen mothers.

Also, the study presents evidence that value-added models can effectively identify effective teachers, overcoming the “bias” that enters the formulas from different ways of grouping students and assigning teachers to classes.

The authors reach these conclusions by analyzing data for 2.5 million students over 20 years, including test scores, teacher assignments, college attendance records, tax returns, etc.

Even scholars who question the conclusions seem impressed. Bruce Baker at School Finance 101 writes that it’s “a really cool academic study” with “a freakin’ amazing data set!” Matt Di Carlo at Shanker Blog calls it “one of the most dense, important and interesting analyses on this topic in a very long time.”

But while the study shows that good teachers matter, Di Carlo adds, “What it does not show is how to measure and improve teacher quality, which are still open questions.”

Other studies have shown that value-added ratings can be highly unstable; a teacher who is rated ineffective one year may be rated highly effective the next. Different value-added models produce different results. Research has found that, even in ideal conditions, most models will mis-classify significant numbers of teachers as above or below average.

The Chetty-Friedman-Rockoff study doesn’t make those problems go away. (Neither does the fact that many states, including Indiana, are already moving to evaluating teachers on the basis of test-score improvement. Indiana will use not value-added but a growth model, a simpler and arguably less sophisticated approach to tying teachers to test-score gains).

Another issue is what Baker calls the use of “super-multiplicative-aggregation” to make findings seem significant. Friedman tells the Times, for example, that replacing a “low-value” teacher with an average one for 10 years would increase the lifetime earnings of all the students in that particular class by $2.5 million.

That’s a big number, but Baker notes that, at the individual level, this isn’t such a big deal: $250 a year for the average student.

Again, as the authors admit in the study, it would be helpful to be able to compare these economic gains with even the purely economic cost of mistakenly firing good teachers because of test scores. Or even the cost of carrying out the evaluations needed to support such high-stakes decisions.

And of course, even this assumes that the purpose of schools is to grow the economy. With that in mind, the last word in this too-long post goes to writer and mom Maria Bustillos, writing at The Awl:

I’m an ordinary parent and I do not give .5% of a tinker’s curse whether my kid earns an extra $250 a year or not. I know many parents who feel as I do about this. What we want for our kids is for them to grow up to be adults who are happy, well-informed, engaged citizens. Love their work and be good at it. Have a lot of pleasure and love in their lives, eyes open, good friends and good companions. Responsible, kind, reliable, open-minded people. Good parents themselves, maybe, someday. If anyone is going to be envisioning education reforms, then let him reckon with these principles first.

Vic Smith, a retired educator who helped start the Indiana Coalition for Public Education, has written detailed criticism of the proposed grading system, and he’s urging parents and public-school supporters to show up and make themselves heard.

Officials with Bartholomew Consolidated Schools in Columbus are also upset about the plan to change how schools are evaluated. In a guest column in Sunday’s Indianapolis Star, Bartholomew school board member Jill Shedd argued that the system focuses too narrowly on reading and math, ignoring much of what schools do for students.

Smith argues that the rule is flawed because it relies on statistical quotas to determine whether schools should get credit for improvement.

Using the state’s “growth model” for measuring year-to-year student gains on test scores, the DOE will arbitrarily determine that one-third of students show high growth, one-third show normal growth, and one-third show low growth. Schools can earn bonus points if a high percentage of their students show high growth; they can be penalized if too many students show low growth.

But growth is measured by how students perform compared to their peers, not whether they improve their ability to meet academic standards. “We might have a great year when everybody learns, but we’ll still have 34 percent with low growth,” Smith said Wednesday at a Bloomington forum on public education.

The DOE reported that, if the proposed rule were in effect this year, 26 percent of Indiana elementary and middle schools would have earned Ds or Fs. That compares with 7 percent that get Ds and Fs in Florida and 19 percent that earn Ds and Fs in New York City, two locales that Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett often cites as models for school reform. Yet Indiana schools outperform those in Florida and New York on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Smith points out.

Tuesday’s hearing starts at 10 a.m. – obviously an impossible time for teachers and most parents – in the Riley Room of DOE headquarters at Ohio and Capitol streets in Indianapolis. If you can’t get there, you can watch the hearing online and submit comments via the department’s website.

The state doesn’t seem to have done anything to help the public understand what it wants to do, other than to post the dense legalese of the proposed rule. Smith’s “At the Statehouse” post on the ICPE website may be the best explanation available.

Figures don’t lie, but …

Gov. Mitch Daniels is a master of making statements that are true but misleading. He did it in his State of the State address Tuesday, when he said that Indiana spends 56 percent of its budget on K-12 education, “the highest percentage of any state in the nation.”

As Dennis Costerison, executive director of the Indiana Association of School Business Officials, pointed out, that may be true, but it says nothing about how well Indiana schools are funded. Unlike almost all the other states, Indiana relies entirely on state revenues, and not local property taxes, to pay for school operating expenses — so of course education is a big share of the state budget.

“There’s only one other state that doesn’t use property taxes to fund schools,” Costerison said. “That’s Hawaii, and Hawaii only has one school district.”

Superintendent doesn’t mince words

Steve Kain, superintendent of Richland-Bean Blossom schools, got some of the strongest applause at the Wednesday forum in Bloomington with this:

“Tony Bennett is a bully. He has some good ideas, but he never heard the part about a little sugar making it go down easier. He just rushes in and says, ‘This is how it’s going to be.’”

The report didn’t seem to get much attention, maybe because it came out right before the holidays, or possibly because the topic is pretty far removed from the current narrative of education reform. But it’s probably worth a closer look.

It compares per-pupil spending in schools that receive federal Title I funds, and serve large numbers of students from low-income families, with spending in schools that don’t qualify for Title I. It finds that 40 percent of Title I schools spend less state and local money on teachers and other personnel than comparable non-Title I schools in the same school districts.

You might think that’s OK – that federal funding makes up for what the schools aren’t getting from state and local sources. But according to the DOE, Title I is intended to “supplement, not supplant,” to help schools meet the additional challenge of educating poor children, not compensate for a lack of state and local dollars.

Why would Title I schools receive less? One possible explanation, the report says, is district teacher-assignment policies that often result in sending the least experienced – and lowest-paid – teachers to the highest-poverty and most challenging schools.

The Obama administration wants to change federal education law to require comparable state and local funding for schools that receive Title I money and those that don’t. Doing so, it says, would boost funding for low-spending, high-poverty schools by 4 percent to 15 percent.

Forum on public education in Indiana

State and local advocates for public schools will take part in a forum this Wednesday evening (Jan. 11) in Bloomington, titled “The Future of Indiana’s Public Schools: Are We On the Right Track?”

The forum, which starts at 7 p.m. in the Bloomington High School North Auditorium, will focus on school funding, state grading of schools and collective bargaining for teachers. Panelists will Indiana State Teachers Association president Teresa Meredith, Dennis Costerison of the Indiana Association of School Business Officials, Vic Smith of the Indiana Coalition for Public Education, State Rep. Matt Pierce of Bloomington and superintendents Judy DeMuth of Monroe County Community Schools and Steve Kain of Richland-Bean Blossom Community Schools.

Sponsors include South-Central Indiana Jobs with Justice, Monroe County Education Association, Richland Bean-Blossom Education Association, Indiana Coalition for Public Education – Monroe County, and White River Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO.

The following morning (Jan. 12), DeMuth will deliver the first MCCSC State of the School Corporation address at 7:30 a.m. at the John Waldron Art Center in Bloomington. The speech is free, but people who want to attend are asked to register at mccsfoundation.org/events.

Terry Spradlin, education policy director with the Center on Evaluation and Education Policy at Indiana University, listed several topics that lawmakers may tackle in the 10-week short session:

Appointed state superintendent – This is an issue that’s been kicked around for at least two decades: Should the state superintendent of public instruction be appointed by the governor? Or should voters continue to select Indiana’s chief state school officer?

Appointment advocates say the governor and superintendent should be on the same team. Opponents say it’s better to have an elected superintendent who can act as an independent advocate for education. (A CEEP policy brief from 2008 explores the pros and cons and compares Indiana’s governance system with those of other states).

Multiple count days – Indiana currently sets funding for schools on the basis of student enrollment on a single “count day” in early fall. If students leave a school district after that day, the district doesn’t lose any money. If students enroll after count day, the district doesn’t get any money to pay for them.

Indianapolis Public Schools Superintendent Eugene White has advocated for multiple counts. He has accused charter schools of “dumping” students and sending them back to IPS after they’ve been counted for funding purposes. Charter schools and private schools that receive state tuition vouchers also like the idea, which makes it worthwhile for them to accept transfer students year-round.

Grading schools on financial management – Indiana gives letter grades to schools based on the performance of students. Should it also grade districts according to how efficiently they use resources?

This idea grows out of the “65 percent solution” initiative, which called on schools to devote at least 65 percent of their spending to classroom costs. It’s a questionable approach. First, there’s no good way to classify whether money is spent “in the classroom.” Second, there are legitimate reasons why some districts spend more than others on administration, transportation, construction, etc. Third, advocates haven’t shown that more classroom spending produces better outcomes.

State takeover of schools – Currently, schools must earn an F from the state for six straight years to be subject to takeover. Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett wants the state to be able to take control if a school earns an F for four straight years or Ds and Fs for five straight years. The State Board of Education endorsed quicker takeovers late last year. But the current six-year timetable is part of the state’s school accountability law, known as Public Law 221, so speeding up the takeovers would require a change in statute.

This could be contentious, especially when lawmakers realize how many schools have been getting Ds and Fs. Rep. Robert Boehning, R-Indianapolis, who chairs the House Education Committee, pushed a similar change last year. It was one of the bills that House Democrats cited when they fled to Illinois to shut down the session.

Multiple count days and Public Law 221 revisions are part of Bennett’s legislative agenda, which the state superintendent announced Wednesday. He’s also supporting a requirement that students pass at least one online course to earn the state’s standard Core 40 high-school diploma.

Overall, it may seem like a fairly modest set of issues. But as Spradlin pointed out, Indiana schools have their hands full dealing with the reforms that the legislature passed in 2011. “I would assume superintendents, principals and teachers would prefer an opportunity to catch up,” he said.

Becker’s Senate Bill 122 would require the Indiana Department of Education to develop standards for what is “acceptable” in the performance of the anthem. State-funded schools, colleges and universities would have to enter contracts with anyone who sings the anthem at a public, school-sponsored event. Schools would be required to record the performances and maintain the recordings for two years. Singers who deviate from appropriate words and music could be fined $25.

Apparently many folks have strong feelings about the right and wrong ways to sing the English drinking song that became the melody of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” But regardless of what you think of a little melisma with your bombs bursting in air, it should go without saying that Indiana schools and the Department of Education have better things to worry about. Remember, this is the same state legislature that last year insisted on relieving schools from “burdensome” rules and regulations in locally negotiated teachers’ union contracts.

Bill-filing for the 2012 session, which starts this week and ends in March, has just begun, yet several questionable education measures have already been introduced.

– SB 89 would allow school boards to require the teaching of “creation science.” See Karen Francisco’s Learning Curve blog at the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette for a good report on this measure.

– SB 83 mandates the teaching of cursive writing as part of the school curriculum.

– SB 84 would eliminate multi-class state basketball tournaments.

There will be serious education issues to debate in this session – more on that soon. But let’s hope lawmakers give these four bills the cold shoulder they deserve.

Meanwhile, a New Year’s gift for Sen. Becker: Colorado-based jazz singer Rene Marie’s lovely, daring and inspirational version of the anthem our nation should aspire to.

Of course, Kennedy, a Democrat, didn’t win. Ballard, the Republican incumbent, was re-elected and will serve another four-year term. He won despite being beaten soundly among voters within the IPS boundaries, roughly the pre-1970 city limits.

And that highlights one issue with the recent proposal by the Mind Trust to redesign Indianapolis Public Schools. A key factor in the plan is turning governance of the schools over to the mayor of Indianapolis. The mayor would appoint three members of a new IPS school board, while the Democratic and Republican leaders of the city-county council would appoint one member each.

But the mayor and city-county council are elected by voters from throughout Marion County; that’s been the case since city and county government were consolidated via “UniGov” in 1970. IPS is only one of 11 school districts in the county, and its residents are a minority among the voters who choose Indianapolis city-county officials.

It’s a little tricky to figure out exactly what the results of a Ballard-Kennedy contest within IPS would have been. The Marion County clerk’s office does a good job of making precinct-by-precinct results available. But some voting precincts are apparently split between IPS and other school districts in the county, including Lawrence, Perry, Warren, Washington and Wayne township schools.

Further complicating matters, there are precincts where residents can vote for candidates in both IPS and township school board elections, said Angie Nussmeyer, press secretary for Marion County Clerk Beth White. The unusual double-voting situation reflects the busing of IPS students to township schools for desegregation purposes, which is currently being phased out.

Nevertheless, we can try.

If you count all the “city precincts” in their entirety – those without a township designation – Kennedy wins with 33,646 votes to Ballard’s 17,311. That’s 66 percent to 34 percent.

If you count the all precincts that include IPS voters, Kennedy gets 35,231 votes to 18,579 for Ballard. That’s a 65-35 percentage split.

If you exclude the split precincts and count only those that are fully in IPS, Kennedy gets 25,464 votes and Ballard gets 14,955 – a 63-37 margin.

It would be wrong to cast the Mind Trust proposal for IPS as a Republican take-over. Bart Peterson, the only Democratic mayor of Indianapolis since UniGov, chairs the Mind Trust board. David Harris, who was Peterson’s charter-schools director, is the organization’s founder and CEO.

The Mind Trust argues with some justification (pages 89-91), that elected school boards, for a variety of reasons, often haven’t provided effective leadership – and that mayoral control of IPS might be preferable to the alternative of a state takeover.

It’s also true that Indianapolis and central Indiana residents who live outside the IPS boundaries have a stake in the success of the state’s largest school district. But it’s not self-evident that Marion County voters would put a high priority on holding their mayor accountable for the performance of IPS schools.

Interestingly, Kennedy tried to make education an issue in the election, proposing to use proceeds from the sale of the city water system to pay for pre-kindergarten programs. Ballard largely steered clear of education issues in his campaign. It apparently didn’t hurt him.