Chamber President Kevin Brinegar offers a two-minute wrap-up of the 2013 legislative session. Highlighting his review are thoughts on the new budget, tax relief and critical education and workforce development issues.
House Bill 1427 preserves the state’s Common Core academic standards and allows for continued implementation.
The Indiana General Assembly rejected the attacks on Common Core and allowed the standards, which the State Board of Education adopted in August 2010, to continue to be implemented. (Only the elements of the program not already adopted – such as testing and science standards – would be paused under HB 1427).
In another strong move, the Legislature mandated standards that include Common Core as the foundation and require college and career readiness criteria. By those standards still being based on Common Core, that should assure that Indiana keeps its federal waiver (that removed us from the federal No Child Left Behind program) and Title I funding for our schools.
It was also critically important that the ultimate decision-making on Common Core remain with the State Board of Education (as it does), which has adopted all previous Indiana standards (including Common Core) and doesn’t face the same politically-charged environment that exists at the Statehouse.
While we don’t agree that actual new adoption procedures are necessary, several positives could result from that. Further review of the Common Core standards would hopefully provide the general public with a better understanding of what Common Core does and doesn’t do. Plus it will give the state the opportunity to determine which, if any, additional standards we should adopt. (The Common Core multi-state agreement permits Indiana to add up to 15% of its own standards to the program.)
The Indiana Chamber advocated for the Common Core standards to be left in place, both for the merits of the program and the consistency of the rulemaking process.
Two moms from Indianapolis, a handful of their friends and a couple dozen small but vocal Tea Party groups. That’s the entire Indiana movement that is advocating for a halt to the Common Core State Standards. No educational backgrounds. No track record of supporting education reforms or any other past education issues. And worst of all: A demonstrated willingness to say just about anything, no matter how unsubstantiated or blatantly false, to advocate their cause.
Meanwhile, the policy that they are attacking was implemented by former Gov. Mitch Daniels, then State Superintendent Tony Bennett, the Indiana Education Roundtable and the State Board of Education. To date, 45 other states have also adopted it. Common Core has been supported by superintendents, school boards, Indiana’s Catholic and other private schools, principals, teachers unions, the Indiana PTA, various education reform groups, higher education and more. The business community is actively engaged, including strong support from the Indiana Chamber, Eli Lilly, Cummins, Dow AgroSciences, IU Health and many others.
Given that lineup, to whom would you expect the Legislature to be listening? Amazingly, for many in both the House and Senate Republican caucuses, it’s the former and not the latter. Few legislators know anything about Common Core other than the rhetoric that has been thrown at them. Yet, it appears that a majority of Republican legislators are willing to heed those calls, to ignore the more thorough reviews and judgment of individuals and groups that have led on education issues and to throw out two years of implementation that have been underway at schools throughout the state.
Education is once again among the dominant Indiana General Assembly topics. Our recent poll question asked your top priority among the following (all five options received between 11% and 30% of the vote):
A large number of K-12 education bills remain in play at the Statehouse, not to mention proposals on higher education and workforce development. It's promising to see the attention devoted to such important issues. We hope the end results match the intentions.
Check out the new poll question (top right) regarding potential enhancements at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Joy Pullmann is a research fellow for education policy at the The Heartland Institute. A free-market think tank based in Chicago since its inception in 1984, Heartland typically offers compelling research and insights.
Do I agree with everything I see from Heartland? Far from it.
On education, though, Pullmann has been paying particular attention to Indiana. She reported extensively on the Common Core debate last month.
Now, she weighs in on a "parent trigger" reform bill passed by the House Education Committee last week. Her comments on that option to expand school choice.
“The bill’s proposed changes will give parents actual power to change their kids’ failing schools, which is the whole point of a Parent Trigger. The current school board veto is a veto to the whole idea.
“Because Indiana already has a statewide voucher program, state representatives could add another option for parents besides converting the school to a charter school: giving all the kids slotted to attend that failing school a voucher. Real options for parents is what the Parent Trigger is all about.”
Learn much more on education issues in the General Assembly with Indiana Chamber updates and reports.
The Common Core was a critical component of the Daniels-Bennett education reforms that were pursued over the last four years. Developed through leadership of the National Governors Association and the Council of State Chief School Officers, these math and English standards are designed to provide a common and rigorous benchmark for students that can be compared across state lines and can be benchmarked against our international competitors. Adoption of the standards is optional, but Indiana is one of 46 states that committed to the standards after a review by the Indiana Education Roundtable and the State Board of Education. The Obama administration has also supported the Common Core by offering additional points in grant competitions to states that have adopted the standards and through two large grants to help support the development of corresponding assessments. Indeed, Indiana has been one of the lead states in helping to develop one of those assessments.
Unfortunately, that support by the Obama administration has caused some critics to suggest, incorrectly, that the standards have actually been developed by the federal government and/or have been “mandated” by the federal government. Neither accusation is correct. In fact, the real developers of the standards – a consortium of governors and state superintendents – have asked the feds to stop being so “supportive” so that such concerns can be allowed to settle. But here in Indiana, those concerns have emerged most prominently from a small fringe element of the Tea Party that have demanded Indiana withdraw from the Common Core. Moreover, this opposition is supported by a handful of national researchers from mostly far-right think tanks that have claimed that the standards are poorly designed, lacking in rigor and too expensive to implement. Other researchers and think tanks – along with education officials from Indiana – have rebuked these criticisms; yet, the debate continues.
On Wednesday, Indiana took center stage in that debate as local Tea Party activists and national critics joined forces to support a proposed mandate to ban Indiana’s further participation in the Common Core. The Indiana Chamber was the lead presenter among three dozen allies, most of them organized by the education reform group, Stand for Children, which opposed the proposed ban. While the proponents of the ban were limited primarily to a small but passionate number of parents and national think tank representatives, the opponents of the ban included a broad coalition including the Fordham Institute, Lumina Foundation, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, UIndy’s CELL, Goodwill Education Industries, Indiana PTA, Indiana Association of School Principals, ISTA, Indiana Federation of Teachers and more than a dozen classroom and building-level educators.
The Indiana Chamber has acknowledged that some of the critics – at least those focused on contents of the standards rather than hysterical exaggerations of federal intrusion – may have some legitimate concerns that should be evaluated. But we’ve also noted that those concerns, if legitimate, can be offset by the flexibilities contained within the Common Core and through corresponding adoptions of rigorous assessments and accountability measures. But more importantly, we have urged the Legislature to leave such determinations in the hands of our state’s education leaders, including the Department of Education, the Education Roundtable and the State Board of Education, rather than subjecting our standards to the politicized environment of the Legislature. Indeed, while critics of the Common Core have heaped praise on Indiana’s previous state standards, they consistently overlook the fact that those highly-rated standards were adopted through the same process as was conducted when Indiana adopted the Common Core, and that the Legislature played no role in those adoptions.
Senator Schneider has already drafted one amendment to his bill that would remove the ban from Common Core but would invalidate our state’s previous adoption, require a new adoption process with extensive public input and implement a new ban on Indiana participation in either of the Common Core assessments. Newly-elected State Superintendent Glenda Ritz, who has occasionally expressed some concerns about the new standards, has urged the Legislature to allow Common Core implementation to continue but has promised to conduct a review of the standards that would be completed by the end of 2013. The Indiana Chamber supports the Ritz recommendation and notes that such a review would be helpful for determining how best to use the flexibilities that are allowed in the multi-state agreement. The next step of this debate will likely occur on January 30, when the Senate Education Committee is expected to amend and vote on SB 193.
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