Bennett outspent Ritz 5-to-1

The results are in: Tony Bennett outspent Glenda Ritz by more than 5-to-1 in the 2012 campaign for Indiana superintendent of public instruction.

Ritz, of course, won the election: a shocking upset that got noticed around the country. The Democratic challenger polled 1,332,755 votes to 1,190,716 for Bennett, the Republican incumbent and darling of advocates for market-based education reform.

According to campaign finance reports filed this week, Bennett spent $1,866,741 on his campaign during 2012, an unheard-of sum for a down-ticket race. Ritz spent $341,873, which is closer to what you’d expect for this office.

Bennett has been telling news media that he knew he might lose, because the changes he implemented were difficult but necessary. And it’s true – you don’t raise and spend the kind of money that he did unless you think you’re in a race.

But the outcome was still startling. Candidates just don’t win statewide elections when they are outspent 5-to-1. Ritz pulled it off with an extraordinary grass-roots campaign, unified backing from teachers and their friends and supporters, and innovative use of social media to organize and rally the troops.

Politics watchers will be talking about this one for years.

Pyramids and politics

The New York Times reports that hedge-fund king Daniel S. Loeb is backing the Herbalife company against accusations that it’s a pyramid scheme. That pits him against his friend and rival, William Ackman, in what one source calls a “battle bigger than any sumo pairing.”

Of course, Loeb backed former Indiana Superintendent of Public Education Tony Bennett, too, with a $25,000 campaign contribution. Maybe Herbalife should worry, given the way that turned out.

Bennett to Florida: Sure, why not?

It should come as no surprise that Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett is moving to Florida to take over as that state’s commissioner of education. Hey, I called this one in August. And back then I couldn’t have predicted Bennett would lose the election and be out of a job come January.

Bennett has looked to Florida for inspiration and ideas throughout his tenure as Indiana superintendent. A-to-F grades for schools, dramatic expansion of charter schools, retention for third-graders who don’t pass a reading test – all those Indiana policies were pioneered in the Sunshine State.

So were school vouchers, before the state’s Supreme Court held them to be unconstitutional.

And Bennett has long been a favorite of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. He chairs Bush’s Chiefs for Change organization. Two members of the Florida State Board of Education are former Bush chiefs of staff. (The state board appoints the state education commissioner; the board’s members are appointed by the governor). So it makes perfect sense that he would be drawn to Florida, and vice versa.

More on Indiana and pre-K; more on Bennett and Florida

A new study from Texas adds weight to the argument that Indiana should find a way to provide state support for pre-kindergarten programs. The study finds that children who attended state-funded preschools scored better on standardized tests and were less likely to be retained in grade.

Researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas, Rutgers-Camden and the Communities Foundation of Texas carried out the study, which was posted as a working paper by the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Educational Research, or CALDER.

This is hardly the first research to find benefits from preschool programs. (See Nobel laureate James Heckman’s site for a bunch of information). But the authors note that many previous studies examined small, intensive programs, such as Perry Preschool in Michigan and the Carolina Abcedarian Project. The CALDER study looks instead at the state preschool program for at-risk children that Texas started in the 1980s. It finds that taking part in the program was associated with increased scores on the math and reading sections of the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills and with a decreased likelihood of being retained or being identified as needing special education.

This is just one study, but a key point is that Texas’ program is far from a model program. The National Institute for Early Education Research gives it low marks for funding, class size and staffing ratios.

Ritz reaches out … Republicans, not yet

Indiana Superintendent-Elect of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz sounded ready to compromise during a brief interview Friday for WFIU public radio’s “Noon Edition” program. The Democrat said she’s not worried about how hard it will be to work with Republicans who control the Statehouse.

“I’m going to work with all legislators,” she said. “That’s what I’ve always done.”

And while Ritz has criticized the education policies that the legislature and State Board of Education have adopted – school vouchers, test-based teacher evaluations, A-to-F grades for schools – she didn’t call for undoing the changes.

“I’m really not looking to repeal all kinds of things … I think it’s all about implementation of what’s in place already,” she said.

But compromise takes two sides. And Indiana Republicans have been dismissive of Ritz’s upset win over incumbent Superintendent Tony Bennett.

Gov.-elect Mike Pence said, “We ran on a platform of continuing a bold agenda of education reform … and we’ve been given the opportunity to lead based on those ideas.”

Outgoing Gov. Mitch Daniels vowed that none of the policies he and Bennett supported would be rolled back.

Ritz over Bennett: the grass roots prevail

Glenda Ritz’s upset of Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett sent shock waves across the country. Bennett, after all, is a national figure in education circles – the head of Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change, able to bring in big money from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Chicago hedge-fund managers and a Wal-Mart heiress. He raised 10 times as much campaign cash as Ritz.

What happened? In a word, teachers. In fact, if you talk to teachers, retired teachers or people who hang out with teachers, you may hear they aren’t the least bit surprised that Bennett lost.

His policies, and the way he advocated for them, angered and threatened Indiana educators. There are more than 68,000 public elementary and second teachers in Indiana. They have brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, children, cousins and friends. And they vote. Many parents talk to their children’s teachers and know whether and why they’re unhappy. Quite a few school administrators and school board members didn’t like what they perceived as Bennett’s heavy-handed ways.

“It really did boil down to a grass-roots effort by the teachers, the teachers’ union and the administrators,” said Terry Spradlin, director of education policy with the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy at Indiana University.

Ritz also may have caught a break from the fact that Gov. Mitch Daniels sidelined himself from politics after being named president of Purdue University. He and Bennett worked hand-in-hand on education, and a little strategic campaigning by the governor could have made a difference.

Bennett, a Republican, said this about the election to State Impact Indiana: “I don’t think it’s a message on reform. I believe it was a referendum on Tony Bennett.”

There’s probably some truth to that.

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.

Indiana superintendent campaign finance: The rich vs. the many

Tony Bennett’s campaign donors are hedge-fund managers, charter-school developers, Big Tobacco and wealthy supporters of “education reform” and the Republican Party. Glenda Ritz’s are teachers and public-education advocates – hundreds of them – and the Indiana State Teachers Association.

Needless to say, fund-raising for the Indiana superintendent of public instruction race isn’t close. Ritz’s supporters give between $25 and $100 each. Bennett’s financial backers aren’t the 47 percent, or even the 99 percent. They give thousands of dollars apiece, sometimes tens of thousands.

Third-quarter campaign finance reports filed last week show Bennett had more than $1 million in his campaign account as of Oct. 1, which explains why we’re seeing him in TV ads, a first for a state superintendent candidate. Ritz had $42,000.

True, the Indiana State Teachers replenished Ritz’s fund with $65,000 this month. The teachers’ union has given Ritz $173,000, most of what she has raised. But that’s less than Bennett got in one check — $200,000 – from Alice Walton, a Wal-Mart heiress and supporter of school-choice and voucher plans.

Bennett’s other third-quarter contributors include: multi-billionaire home-builder Eli Broad ($50,000); Wisconsin businessman and voucher proponent Robert Kern ($50,000); Hoosiers for Economic Growth, whose money comes from New York and Philadelphia hedge-fund managers ($50,800); and Chicago hedge-fund manager Anne Griffin ($25,000).

He also got $10,000 from Red Apple Development, the real estate partner of Charter Schools USA, which Bennett’s Indiana Department of Education selected to take over three under-performing public schools in Indianapolis. He got $1,000 from the Reynolds American PAC – enough tobacco money to cancel out 20 typical Ritz donors.

Fact-checking the Indiana State of Education speech

Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett mostly told the truth in his State of Education address last week, but not always the whole truth. There were no pants-on-fire whoppers – just the fact-bending you expect in an election year.

A few examples, with Bennett’s claims in italics:

(More students) are taking and passing challenging Advanced Placement exams. In fact, Indiana has the second highest two-year AP pass rate gains in the nation. In four years, the number of Indiana students taking advanced classes and exams has increased by almost 50 percent, and their success rate has jumped by 48 percent. This is news worth celebrating.

It is, but according to the College Board’s AP Report to the Nation, Indiana remains in the middle of the pack for most measures of AP test performance. Indiana’s percentage of graduates who took an AP class and scored 3 or higher on the exam is below the national average. Its rate of improvement in passing scores between 2001 and 2011 is right at the national average.

Beginning this school year, all districts will use locally designed teacher evaluations. These new evaluations must consider students’ academic performance and growth, but local schools have full flexibility to determine the other factors to include in the overall evaluation of teacher effectiveness.

It would be accurate to say that “most school districts” will begin using the new evaluations this year. However, some districts, like the Monroe County Community School Corp. in Bloomington, are operating under multi-year teacher contracts that specify how teachers are to be evaluated.

Bennett calls for school district accountability, says little about pre-K

What would a second term in office for Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett look like? Bennett didn’t give a lot of clues during his 2012 State of Education address on Tuesday.

Bennett suggested expanding Indiana’s accountability system to include school districts, not just schools. And he said the state needs to better align its K-12 education with the expectations of colleges and employers.

Other than that, there didn’t seem to be a lot of new ideas in the speech, which included what some would consider fulsome praise for outgoing Gov. Mitch Daniels and claims that improved high-school graduation rates and tests scores have resulted from “Hoosier values” and the reforms adopted under Bennett’s watch. It seemed more like a victory lap than a look ahead to the next four years.

Bennett gave only a lukewarm endorsement to expanding state-support preschool, a cause that the Indianapolis Star and others have begun championing.