Could Hinckley’s instructional focus be what IPS needs?

Peggy Hinckley, the new interim superintendent of Indianapolis Public Schools, doesn’t much sound like she plans to be a caretaker. Could that present a dilemma for advocates of big-idea education reform in Indy?

Hinckley takes over from Eugene White, who accepted a buyout after he lost school board support. She retired last year after 11 years as superintendent of Warren Township schools.

The Indianapolis Star’s Scott Elliott recently pointed to reasons that Hinckley and IPS may not be a good match even for the short term. Her approach is “laser focused on standardizing instruction,” he writes. The dominant vision of reform in Indianapolis, by contrast, involves choices for parents and autonomy for schools. It’s modeled on the Mind Trust’s “opportunity schools” plan and the Center for the Reinvention of Public Education’s portfolio schools concept.

This approach seems to go hand-in-hand with a yearning for visionary, “cage-busting” leaders. Mind Trust founder and CEO David Harris argues in a recent Star op-ed that IPS should be free to hire non-educators as superintendents. Star opinion editor Tim Swarens adds that the district’s new leader should be a “reformer.”

But Hinckley suggests that meaningful reform involves what happens in the classroom.

Mind Trust CEO: Mayoral control no longer part of IPS transformation plan

When the Mind Trust unveiled its plan to transform Indianapolis Public Schools late last year, a key component was turning control over to the Indianapolis mayor. That’s no longer part of the deal, Mind Trust CEO David Harris said Wednesday.

“It turns out, we were the only people who thought this was a good idea,” Harris said at a Bloomington symposium on urban education. “The reality is, it’s not going anywhere.”

One problem was the fundamental fact that IPS is just one of 11 school districts in Marion County, and its residents are a minority of Indianapolis voters. Another: Mayor Greg Ballard turned out not to be interesting in running the schools.

Harris shared a stage with IPS Superintendent Eugene White, and they found a few points of agreement. Both said Indiana should invest in pre-kindergarten education. And both said it’s crucial to hire and keep good teachers. But, not surprisingly, they expressed different visions for the future of IPS at the Bloomington forum sponsored by the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy at Indiana University.

Harris pushed the plan, which the Mind Trust unveiled almost a year ago, to remake IPS into a system of autonomous “opportunity schools,” with responsibility on the principals, not central administration. “We don’t think the people are the problem,” he said. “We think the structure itself needs to change.”

White said it’s naïve to think you can dramatically change results by changing structure. “You don’t go, in urban education, from where we are to utopia,” he said. “It doesn’t work that way. It has to be a process.”

On early childhood education, White lamented that Indiana not only doesn’t fund pre-kindergarten programs, it doesn’t require school attendance until age 7. Harris said Indiana is “in the Dark Ages on that front;” it’s one of 11 states that don’t fund pre-K.

That puts the two in alignment with the 7,200 Indianapolis residents who responded to a survey

Superintendent debates, urban education forum

The Indiana superintendent of public instruction campaign is finally getting some attention, less than two weeks before the election. A debate will take place tonight (Oct. 26) between Republican incumbent Tony Bennett and Democratic challenger Glenda Ritz. It’s in Fort Wayne and runs from 7-8 p.m., sponsored by Northeast Indiana Public Radio and the Andy Downs Center on Indiana Politics at IPFW.

This event has a standard election debate format: two rounds of questions, posed alternately to each candidate, followed by closing statements. There will be no studio audience, but Northeast Indiana Public Radio will broadcast the debate, and folks can listen online. Kyle Stokes of NPR State Impact Indiana will moderate. As of Thursday, he was taking suggestions for questions.

Bennett and Ritz appeared Wednesday night in a forum at Wabash College. They didn’t debate, though. Indianapolis Star columnist Matthew Tully asked questions, first to Bennett, then to Ritz. You can watch on Wabash’s Youtube channel.

A year at an urban middle school: Not much cause for hope

Anyone interested in urban schools and education reform should read Robert King’s account of a year at Emma Donnan Middle School in Indianapolis – not because it provides answers, but because it shows that answers won’t be easy.

Writing in Sunday’s Indianapolis Star, King describes a school where students struggle every day against overwhelming odds, including extreme poverty, neglectful parents, violence, sexual abuse, mental illness and homelessness.

Part of the Indianapolis Public Schools system, Emma Donnan started the school year on an optimistic note: It had a new, energetic principal, Brian Burke, and two-thirds of the teachers were new. Then Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett announced that the school was being taken over by the state and would be run, starting in 2012-13, by Florida-based Charter Schools USA.

The news seemed to throw the school into a tailspin, with Burke possibly looking ahead to opening a new IPS magnet school and teachers worried about their jobs. “Whatever the reason, Emma Donnan went through a rough patch that lasted six months,” King writes.

Let’s hope that CPUSA turns Emma Donnan into a great school. But the Star story makes clear that this kind of “school turnaround,” even if eventually successful, isn’t without its costs.

IPS voters favored Kennedy over Ballard for Indy mayor

Melina Kennedy outpolled Greg Ballard by a hefty margin among Indianapolis Public Schools district voters in the Nov. 8 race for mayor of Indianapolis.

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

The Mind Trust’s plan to redesign IPS

The Mind Trust, an Indianapolis-based nonprofit that promotes education reform, released an ambitious proposal Sunday for remaking Indianapolis Public Schools. It certainly has people talking.

Here are some initial thoughts:

– A key feature of the plan involves killing off the IPS school board and turning control of the district over to the Indianapolis mayor and city-county council. Whether this is a good or bad idea, it’s certainly undemocratic. As Heather Gillers points out in the Indianapolis Star, it means “telling voters who live in IPS that they are the only ones in the state who will not be allowed to elect their school board.”

More significantly, the city of Indianapolis and IPS cover very different geographical areas –- the mayor of Indy isn’t the mayor of IPS. The mayor and city-county council are elected by voters from throughout Marion County, but IPS is only one of 11 school districts in the county. About three-fourths of public-school students in Marion County attend non-IPS schools.

The argument for mayoral control is that the mayor will be “politically accountable” for the schools. But even if the mayor screws up, IPS residents may not have the votes to punish him at the polls.

– More than 80 percent of IPS students qualify for free or reduced-price school lunches. No other public school district in Indiana comes close to that level of poverty, except for some districts in Lake County (Gary, East Chicago). The Mind Trust plan barely mentions this fact

School reform in a nutshell

Richard Lee Colvin, executive director of Education Sector, summed up the current debate over school reform quite nicely in a Q&A last week with Kyle Stokes of NPR’s State Impact Indiana.

Responding to a question about Indiana’s school voucher system, Colvin said: “You’ve really got a struggle here between folks who think the market is king and those who think good, common schooling experiences are important for democracy.”

Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett has put himself on the “market is king” side, not only with his support for private-school vouchers and more charter schools, but with his rhetoric. In his State of Education address this month, Bennett insisted that Indiana will improve education through “freedom, competition and accountability.”

Of course, it’s human nature to like it when the invisible hand of the market scratches your back, and to be upset when it slaps you in the face.

According to the Indianapolis Star, Bennett was peeved when Indianapolis Public Schools Superintendent Eugene White said recently that IPS would withdraw support from sports, band, choir and other extracurricular activities at the four schools – Emma Donnen Middle School and Arlington, Howe and Manuel community high schools– that the state is taking over and handing over to “school turnaround operators.”

White’s rationale: IPS will now be competing with those schools for students. Why should it provide activities that make the turnaround schools more attractive to students and their parents?

White said in an open letter to the community that he was dropping the idea of suing the state over the school takeover decisions. Instead, he said, IPS will focus on an effort to “create additional quality educational choices for students” through more magnet schools and programs.

In other words, if the state says competition is the key, bring it on.

White’ stance on extracurricular activities makes sense. The turnaround operators – for-profit EdisonLearning and Charter Schools USA and nonprofit EdPower – will apparently be awarded the state funding that would have otherwise gone to IPS for the support of the schools.

In Indiana, state funding typically pays for the bulk of extracurricular costs, including the salaries of coaches, band directors, etc. (Athletic ticket sales can help pay for uniforms, game officials and equipment, while upkeep of facilities is normally split between state funding and a school district’s capital projects fund, which is supported by local property taxes).

Why shouldn’t the turnaround operators be expected to provide their own extracurricular attractions, if they’re getting the state money that normally pays for such amenities?

And if Bennett truly believes that competition is the key to better schools, maybe he should welcome a competitive attitude from the IPS leadership.

Taking the pulse of a turnaround/takeover at an urban middle school

Indianapolis Star reporter Robert King and photographer Kelly Wilkinson should have a great time with a project that has them spending this academic year at Emma Donnan Middle School.

Not only is the school being turned around by the Indianapolis Public Schools system – it’s also being taken over by the Indiana Department of Education and turned over to Charter Schools USA, a politically connected, for-profit education business based in Florida.

As if hanging out for a year with a bunch of 14-year-olds weren’t stimulating enough …

Emma Donnan is one of five under-performing schools that the State Board of Education, acting on the recommendation of Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett, decided this week to place under the control of “turnaround school operators.” The others are IPS Manual and Howe high schools, also being turned over to Charter Schools USA; IPS Arlington High School, which will be run by charter operator EdPower; and Gary Roosevelt Academy, which goes to EdisonLearning.

IPS, meanwhile, is going to court to challenge the takeover of Howe and Arlington and the assignment of “lead partners” to Broad Ripple and Washington high schools, all four of which were recently been converted to “community high schools” serving students in grades 6-12. IPS Superintendent Eugene White argues that the Department of Education inappropriately included test scores from middle-grades students who were new to the schools when it awarded them Fs this year in the state’s PL 221 accountability system, triggering the state takeover.

But back to Emma Donnan Middle School and its seventh- and eighth-graders.

As King reports, IPS is doing what you’re supposed to do to turn the school around. It brought in a new principal, Brian Burke, and gave him the authority to remake the school. He got rid of two-thirds of the staff, replacing them with teachers who were selected in part for being passionate and caring about children.

Those teachers now will spend the year preparing to turn the school over to Charter Schools USA.

There’s a very real possibility that, after knocking themselves out to help a challenging group — more than 80 percent of Donnan students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, a quarter are in special education and over 10 percent speak a primary language other than English – these teachers will be shown the door.

And Charter Schools USA will take credit for the progress that they made.

As Scott Elliott reported in the Star, state board member Neil Pickett suggested Monday that maybe the new principal and teachers should keep their jobs if Emma Donnan makes significant progress this year. But Richard Page, Charter Schools USA’s vice president for development, said the company typically replaces school leadership and most of the staff when it takes control of a school.

The Star’s series on Emma Donnan has so far set the stage. First of all, an urban middle school is a different creature than IPS School 61 kindergarten, where King produced a compelling series of stories in 2010-11. Next, King profiled several of the new Emma Donnan teachers: the committed, enthusiastic Teach for America recruits; the seasoned veteran ready for a new challenge.

But will commitment, enthusiasm and caring make a difference? Are the Emma Donnan teachers working together to continually assess every student’s progress and make sure none is falling behind? What are school administrators doing to ensure a safe, supportive environment where learning can take place? Are parents encouraged to celebrate their children’s success?

What does principal Brian Burke’s formula of “a firm hand with discipline, daily remediation for struggling students and ongoing training for the staff” look like in practice?

Equally compelling is the question of how the teachers – and the students — will respond as Charter Schools USA gets ready to take over and implement its own educational model.

There may be no better place for enterprising journalists like King and Wilkinson to spend the 2011-12 school year. But for students and teachers? Well, we’ll be reading about that.

What’s the story on IPS Arlington Woods Elementary School?

The Indianapolis Star is running a compelling series about Arlington Woods Elementary School on the east side of Indianapolis, where an initiative called Project Restore has produced impressive gains in student performance, especially in math.

The series began Feb. 13 and continued Feb. 16 and Feb. 20; additional installments are scheduled Wednesday and next Sunday. Columnist Matthew Tully, who wrote the stories, and photographer Danese Kenon apparently had extraordinary access to the school’s teachers and students.

According to the Star, Arlington Woods has used high expectations for students, frequent testing and a relentless focus on learning to turn around what had been a low-performing urban school. More than 85 percent of the students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches; most are African-American.

The emphasis on high expectations and frequent tests (“formative assessments” in educator jargon) is widely accepted, and it’s likely a reporter could find a similar approach at many Indiana schools. But the success at Arlington Woods makes a great counter-story – a “man-bites-dog” tale – to the conventional narrative that Indianapolis Public Schools are mired in a culture of failure.

It’s worth noting that this turn-around was apparently accomplished by educators who were at the school. It didn’t require busting the union, instituting merit pay, firing teachers, relying on market-driven parent choice or bringing in a turn-around expert trained by Marian University.

Indiana updates: Inequities in the system

Indy Star launches kindergarten series
The Indianapolis Star, which last school year followed the fortunes of students at Manual High School in Indianapolis, is taking on a reporting project at the other end of the education spectrum: observing kindergartners at IPS School #61, where students are predominantly black or Hispanic, and 90 percent of the student body lives in poverty. Reporter Robert King’s first article in the series highlighted the first obvious differences among the new students: those who could understand simple directions and those who couldn’t; those who had been raised with awareness of correct social behavior and those who hadn’t; even those who showed up on the first day with their families, and the one child who showed up alone, with teachers not even knowing his full name until three days had passed.

Dumpster diving teacher provides for her kids
How’s this for an effective way to underscore the inequities among children in different Indiana public schools? Katie Nave, a fifth-grade teacher at IPS School 63, picked up on school supplies discarded by teachers and students in the Carmel schools and hit the jackpot, reports The Indianapolis Star. She came back with enough pencils, paper and other basic supplies to outfit her whole class.
“This is my first year when I’ve been able to give every single one of my kids every supply they would need during the school year,” she told the Star.
Some Carmel Clay schools already help out their neighbors to the south with fundraisers and drives for school supplies and even clothes. After Assistant Superintendent Amy Dudley found out about Nave’s exploits, she suggested a formal supply drive be added to those cooperative efforts so that IPS kids in future won’t have to rely on a Dumpster-diving teacher for their back-to-school needs.

IBJ (mostly) hearts Bennett
The Indianapolis Business Journal gave Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett a largely ringing endorsement for his recent State of Education address, applauding his push for “hard-nosed reforms.” (Read a transcript of the speech here.) The IBJ editorial noted Bennett’s emphasis on teacher and administrator accountability and praised his proposal to grade schools on a scale of A though F. Still, the journal expressed some reservation about the use of test scores as the only measure of school effectiveness. “Students are not widgets,” it said. And it suggested Bennett take up two causes that it said can’t be achieved without money: instituting universal full-day kindergarten and decreasing class size around the state. But overall, the IBJ said Bennett is on the right track, with the most aggressive education agenda since former superintendent H. Dean Evans’s A-Plus reforms passed in 1987.