School Matters’ recap last week of Indiana’s 2012 education legislation missed this interesting and potentially significant item: Lawmakers voted to create a “select commission on education” to evaluate certain operations of the Indiana Department of Education and the State Board of Education.
The measure, added late in the process to House Enrolled Act 1376, a catch-all education and public administration bill, calls for specific focus on two areas: 1) the process and content of creating new metrics for giving schools A-to-F grades; and 2) the implementation of the new teacher evaluation system that the legislature approved last year. It adds that the commission may also take up any other education issue that members and legislative leaders deem necessary.
Why might lawmakers think that the Department of Education and State Board of Education could use some oversight? We can speculate:
// In 2010, Gov. Mitch Daniels and Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett pushed for a law that said third-graders who don’t pass a state reading test wouldn’t be promoted to fourth grade. After considerable debate, the legislature declined to approve the law. Instead, it passed a compromise measure that called for taking steps to ensure that all third-graders can read at grade level, “including retention as a last resort, after other methods of remediation have been evaluated or used, or both …(emphasis added).” The State Board of Education then adopted a rule that exactly mirrors the failed 2010 legislation: It says third-graders who don’t pass a state reading test won’t be promoted.
// In a classic case of putting the cart before the horse, the State Board of Education in November 2011 voted to let the state take over schools that get an F on state ratings for four consecutive years or a D or F for five straight years. Continue reading
