Indiana teacher licensing issue a test for compromise

Indiana Superintendent-elect of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz has been reaching out for post-election compromise. A Democrat, she says she looks forward to working with Republicans who control the legislature and the State Board of Education. Now there’s a chance for the other side to reciprocate.

On Dec. 5, the state board may take up Indiana’s Rules for Educator Preparation and Accountability, or REPA II, a major policy changed pushed by Superintendent Tony Bennett, who lost to Ritz on Nov. 6. The board could approve REPA II; or it could hold off and let Ritz make a case for what she wants to do.

The proposed rules would ease requirements for getting a teaching license in Indiana. Under one provision, college graduates could get a license by passing a standardized test, without taking courses in education. Under another, a licensed teacher could become certified to teach in other areas — special education, for example — by passing a test, without specialized training.

State officials say the proposal, which mirrors model legislation from the American Legislative Exchange Council, will give schools flexibility to hire teachers who can be effective even if they haven’t studied education. Opponents say it makes no sense to lower standards for the teaching profession at a time when Indiana and other states are raising expectations for students and schools.

Department of Education spokeswoman Stephanie Sample said the board’s Dec. 5 agenda won’t be posted until a couple of days before the meeting, as is customary. “At this point, we aren’t certain what the discussion and action items will be,” she told School Matters.

Ritz, who takes office in January, spoke against REPA II this summer to the state legislature’s Select Commission on Education, calling it “degrading” to the teaching profession. Gerardo Gonzalez, dean of the Indiana University School of Education, noted in a letter to the Indianapolis Star that nearly everyone who testified at a June 21 public hearing thought REPA II was a bad idea. He called on the board to delay action until Ritz is inaugurated. “Then, under her leadership, it should table REPA II for good,” he wrote.

So many people spoke at the June 21 hearing that it lasted well over two hours, even though witnesses were limited to three minutes each. Opposing REPA II were representatives of teachers, principals, superintendents, school boards, school nurses, teacher-education programs and, especially, special-education teachers and parents of special-needs children.

Only one State Board of Education member, Mike Pettibone, was at the hearing. Bennett, who, as superintendent, chairs the board, didn’t take part.

Indiana’s new grading system to challenge schools

The curve just got tougher for Indiana elementary and middle schools with the State Board of Education’s approval Wednesday of new criteria for the state’s A-to-F grading system.

We know this because the Indiana Department of Education recently made available a spreadsheet of estimated grades that schools would have received in 2011 if the new criteria had been in place at that time. It suggests that many schools are likely see their ratings drop.

Under the old grading system, after years of improvement, almost half the elementary and middle schools in the state earned As in 2011; under the new system, fewer than a quarter would have had As. Just 20 percent received Ds and Fs under the old system; under the new system, 26 percent would have received Ds and Fs.

The Department of Education warned that the estimated grades shouldn’t be used for accountability purposes or to predict how schools will do in 2012. But the information suggests schools will have to adapt to a new set of expectations.

Exemplary schools – or not

Take, for example, the five Indianapolis elementary schools that the Indianapolis Star profiled in an excellent front-page feature Sunday.

The schools – IPS Schools No. 79 and 90, Clinton Young Elementary in Perry Township, Sunny Heights Elementary in Warren Township and the Christel House charter academy – are succeeding despite the usual challenges of urban education, including large numbers of poor and minority students and many who are learning to speak English. They all earned As under the old criteria in 2011.

As Scott Elliott reported, the schools are doing the things that good schools do. They make productive use of every minute of the day. They conduct frequent assessments and use data to guide instruction. The principals are strong leaders and who recruit and support effective teachers.

But if the state’s new grading rules had been in place, only two of them – the two in IPS – would have received an A in 2011. Christel House, which earned As for five consecutive years under the old system, would have received a B. Clinton Young and Sunny Heights would have received Cs.

Another example: Today’s Star tells about two schools in Lawrence Township, both of which got Cs last year. If the new criteria had been in place, one would have earned an A and the other an F.

This will take more study, but it appears the new grading system for elementary and middle schools favors affluent suburban schools while making it harder for urban schools serving low-income neighborhoods to get high grades. (There are striking exceptions such as IPS Schools No. 79 and 90).

So what’s the lesson? For one thing, maybe we shouldn’t put absolute faith in letter grades handed down by the state. For another, ensuring that students learn in schools beset by hard-core poverty is hard but essential work. We should celebrate schools that succeed, even if our measures of success are shaky, and encourage those that are taking steps to get better.

Charter schools bomb

One of the most striking results of applying the new A-to-F criteria to 2010-11 school performance is this: Indiana charter schools look really bad.

Of the nearly 100 elementary and middle-grades charter schools in the state, only one would have earned an A: Columbus International School. The highly touted Christel House and Charles Tindley Accelerated academies both would have received Bs for their elementary and middle grades.

Hoosier Academy and Connections Academy, the state’s two online charter schools, both get Fs in the exercise. So does Indianapolis Metropolitan High School, celebrated by the Star as a model for success and the recipient of a $2.2 million School Improvement Grant. Indianapolis’ KIPP College Preparatory School, part of the well regarded KIPP network of no-excuses charter schools, gets a D.

It would be tempting to say the results prove that charter schools are overrated. But what they most likely show is that many charter schools in Indiana serve predominantly poor and minority children in urban areas, and schools like that may struggle under the new grading system.

Grading schools: Does complexity defeat the purpose?

Indiana began awarding letter grades to schools this year based on the idea that it’s a clearer and more transparent way to hold schools accountable and inform parents and the public about how they are performing.

After all, the thinking went: Everyone knows what an A means? Everyone knows what an F means. But do we?

Watch just a little of the video of the Oct. 5 State Board of Education meeting, and you may wonder. Members spent nearly five hours discussing criteria for calculating grades, and they seemed no closer to consensus when they were done than when they started.

Or try reading a version of the proposed rule that the board is considering to create the new letter-grade metrics. You’ll find language like this: “Highest growth passing rate is the percentage point increase of identified passing students at the lowest performing high growth passing rate school within the top quartile of schools ranked from highest to lowest by the percentage point increase in passing percentage students.”

Department of Education staff tried to simplify the rule by giving it to the board in an easy-to-follow PowerPoint presentation. But it was still slow going – made slower by the board’s tendency to argue over philosophy and details every step of the way.

And state officials are working on a deadline. Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett indicated he’d like to have board approval of the rule before Indiana submits its application for federal waivers under the No Child Left Behind law, due Nov. 14.

State takeover of ‘failing’ schools: Why just high schools?

Here’s a question that rarely seems to be asked about the impending state takeover of Indiana’s chronically low-performing schools: Why is it that, of 18 public schools at risk of being taken over by the State Board of Education, 17 are high schools?

Have all the bad K-12 teachers somehow gravitated to the upper grades? Is there something about high schools that just attracts lousy leaders? Are students who did just fine in elementary school and middle school giving up when they hit ninth grade?

Or is it possible that there’s something fundamentally wrong with Indiana’s system for determining which schools are “failing”?

Consider this: There are 1,129 public elementary schools in Indiana, along with 348 public middle schools and junior high schools and 385 public high schools. None of those elementary schools has been designated for five consecutive years for “probation,” the lowest category in Indiana’s Public Law 221 accountability system and the trigger for state takeover. Only one middle school has.

But 17 high schools – about 1 in 20 – have been in the lowest category for five consecutive years.

In 2009-10, 49 percent of Indiana high schools fell into the probation category. That compares with 8 percent of middle schools and 4 percent of elementary schools.

PL 221 categories are based on two criteria: the percent of students who pass ISTEP-Plus exams and the school’s year-to-year improvement in ISTEP passing rates. And for high schools, especially, that’s a questionable gauge of effectiveness.

In elementary and middle schools, all students in grades 3-8 take annual state exams in math and language arts. With a concerted effort, those schools will occasionally make enough improvement to escape a designation of probation.

But in high schools, it’s different.

Bennett: Retention rule holds kids accountable

We need to start holding 9-year-olds accountable, Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett said – that’s why they must be held back in third grade if they can’t pass a new state reading test.

The State Board of Education on Tuesday approved a reading rule that says schools must retain students in third grade if they don’t pass the test, called I-READ 3. The only exceptions are for special-needs students, non-English speakers and students who have already been retained twice. Parent and teacher assessments of whether children should be promoted won’t matter.

“When I’ve traveled around the state, I’m asked, ‘Where’s the accountability for parents and students?’” Bennett said. “This is accountability. One of the things we’ve learned in two years is that things happen when accountability occurs. What we inspect, they respect.”

Board members and Indiana Department of Education officials didn’t respond to – or even specifically acknowledge – objections that educators raised in public hearings last month. The educators cited research that shows academic gains made after retention don’t last; kids who are retained are two to 11 times more likely to drop out; and retention costs U.S. schools $14 billion a year.

The rule and an accompanying “reading framework” also require schools to intervene when children fall behind in reading and provide 90-minute, daily, uninterrupted blocks of time devoted to reading. Most schools will have to use “scientifically based” reading programs approved by the state.

Department of Education staff have suggested it may be possible to retain students in reading but pass them to fourth grade in other subjects; but it’s not clear how that would work.

State board about to decide on third-grade retention rule

A proposed rule that would force schools to retain students who don’t pass a third-grade reading test could face a vote by the State Board of Education this week. The board meets Tuesday at 1 p.m. in Indianapolis.

The rule, which was the subject of a previous post on School Matters, also requires elementary schools to implement reading plans that include goals for student achievement and interventions for students who fall behind. Schools will have to devote 90-minute uninterrupted blocks of time to reading instruction in grades K-3 and use research-based reading programs.

The state board accepted comments on the proposal at public hearings on Jan. 20 and Jan. 25. The hearings, video of which can be viewed online, brought comments from reading specialists, principals, superintendents and representatives of the state associations of teachers and school administrators.

Thirteen people testified. And while some praised certain aspects of the rule, all 13 said unequivocally that it’s wrong to hold kids back based on results of a single test.

Speakers cited research showing that the academic gains children make after being retained don’t persist; that students are two to 11 times more likely to drop out of school if they are held back than if they aren’t; and that forcing students to repeat grades costs the nation $14 billion a year.

“There is no research that retention benefits children,” said Whitney Witkowski, principal of Abraham Lincoln Elementary School on the south side of Indianapolis. “There is a substantial body of research about the negative effects … Retention is not only ineffective but it punishes children.”

Several speakers suggested that, if Indiana wants to help kids learn to read, it should require kindergarten attendance and fund pre-kindergarten programs. And some pointed out that the retention mandate goes considerably further than the 2010 state legislation that called on the Department of Education to develop a rule to make reading instruction more effective.

Department of Education staff members are suggesting some changes to the proposed rule. One spells out that students should get a second chance to pass the yet-to-be-developed reading test, possibly after remediation in summer school, before they are held back. Another makes clear that the rule applies to charter schools as well as regular public schools.

But the pass-the-test or fail-the-grade language remains – the only exceptions are for special-needs students, non-English speakers and children who have already been retained twice.

Interestingly, when the State Board of Education has a hearing, members apparently don’t need to show up. Who knew? Not a single board member was present on Jan. 20, when weather was apparently an issue. On Jan. 25, David Shane was the only board member on hand.

Presumably the other board members can watch the video of the hearing and read testimony submitted in writing. Let’s hope they do, and that they consider the issue with an open mind.