Tag Archives: Education

Grants Available to Assist in Family Learning

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To reach long-sought goals of high educational achievement for all students, there must be stronger collaboration between schools and families. The National Center for Family Literacy and Toyota are partnering to promote such efforts, beginning with a grant program for communities.

Additional details below and online:

The National Center for Family Literacy (NCFL) has announced a new six-year initiative, Toyota Family Learning.  One major component of the initiative: NCFL is now accepting grant applications to further family learning beyond the classroom and into homes and communities. Applications are being accepted now through June 24 at www.toyotafamilylearning.org.
 
This year, five organizations will be awarded a three-year, $175,000 grant, in addition to a wide range of NCFL training and communication support, learning items, and materials. Grantees will engage vulnerable families in learning together and participating in family mentor and service learning activities. Schools, libraries, and community-based organizations that provide services to families are eligible to apply.
 
The vision for Toyota Family Learning, fueled by the enduring NCFL-Toyota partnership, is much more than a specific program or model. It will engage not only grantee families but also families across the nation to be a part of modern-day movement for families learning together. Toyota Family Learning will draw the participation of families both online and offline, incorporating digital elements launching later this year including a website, mobile app, social media, and more. The first component of this effort is the current grant opportunity for communities.

VIDEO: Pres. Brinegar Wraps up the 2013 Legislative Session

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Categories: Business News, Education, Government, Tax/Finance

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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.

Common Core Kept in Place

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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.

Facts Ignored, Politics Winning on Common Core

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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.

Learning Lessons from Teach for America

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Teach for America has made a significant impact in Indiana and in states across the country. The now nearly 25-year effort to bolster the teaching profession has adapted to changes in the education landscape and earned the support of lawmakers through proven results. Heartland reports:

As shifting employment opportunities and reform movements alter the U.S. education landscape, one organization has received steadily increasing support from lawmakers.

Teach for America (TFA) began as Wendy Kopp’s senior thesis in 1989. A Princeton University undergraduate, Kopp wanted to improve poverty-stricken urban schools by recruiting young, enthusiastic, and persistent college-educated adults into education. In 1990, 500 new college grads joined the first TFA class as teachers who bypassed traditional teacher education.

Kopp started “a Peace Corps for urban education,” said Alan Borsuk, a senior fellow at Marquette University Law School. “There was a much bigger need then for a shot in the arm for urban teaching, a lot of jobs open, and it tapped into a realistic [desire] that college grads had that they wanted to do something to help.”

Now TFA is active in almost half the states, this year supporting more than 10,000 young teachers. Donations provide 70 percent of TFA’s income, with governments picking up the other 30 percent. TFA recruits heavily from Ivy League and top-rated public universities, and was listed as one of Fortune’s top 100 companies to work for in 2013. Corps members commit to a two-year stint in needy public schools.

Study Says
Teach for America has been controversial, however, because its teachers get good results from students with only a summer of teacher training before their two-year placement.

Studies in Tennessee, Louisiana, and North Carolina have found students with TFA teachers learn as much as or more than those with traditional teachers.

Top Companies Rank Top Goals

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Categories: BizVoice, Chamber News, Indiana Vision 2025

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Two of the many Indiana Chamber programs/initiatives that we are proud of are the Best Places to Work in Indiana program and our Indiana Vision 2025 economic development plan.

We combined the two in a strictly unscientific survey, asking the Best Places applicants to prioritize five of the Indiana Vision 2025 goals. There are no right or wrong answers, of course, but it's interesting to see how these top organizations rank some of the strategies that will help move our state forward.

The five goals and the average rank (1 being most important, 5 least important):

  • Develop entrepreneurship and aggressively promote business start-ups through education, networking, investment and financial support: 2.3
  • Diversify Indiana's energy mix with an emphasis on clean coal, nuclear power and renewables: 4.2
  • Enact comprehensive local government refrom at the state and local levels to increase efficiency and effctiveness in delivery of services: 3.4
  • Increase to 90% the proportion of Indiana students who graduate from high school ready for college and/or career training: 2.1
  • Increase to 60% the proportion of Indiana residents with high quality postsecondary credentials: 3.0

Work is ongoing on all the Indiana Vision 2025 goals. The 2013 Best Places to Work program will culminate with the May 2 awards dinner. Rankings will be revealed at that event and BizVoice magazine will profile the 100 winners.

WGU Recognized for Innovation by Major Magazine

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Those involved in higher education are well aware of Western Governors University, and the school's unique approach to educating the Hoosier workforce. At a time when online schools face scrutiny from some, WGU is recognized as credible and a leader in its field. Fast Company magazine recently took note, and ranked the university 28th on its list of Most Innovative Companies for "showing public schools another way to do business."

Full college degrees in months! It sounds like an email scam, but it's a new philosophy in higher ed being driven by… the government? In 2012, the online, not-for-profit institution, founded by 19 U.S. governors, became the nation's leading provider of master's degrees (and the fourth largest of bachelor's) in math education. The low-cost, self-paced WGU focuses on skills that lead to better jobs in teaching, health care, IT, and business. "We measure learning, not time," says Bob Mendenhall, the school's chancellor. Students (average age: 37) pace themselves through material designed with input from corporate board members (such as AT&T) and with help from mentors. Starting in 2010, the governors of Indiana, Washington, and Texas each endorsed virtual branches integrated with (and financially independent of) their public universities–boosting WGU's enrollment to 40,000. And while public university tuition was rising by about 5% a year, WGU's has held steady at $6,000 since 2008. It keeps the fees so low through technological efficiencies, such as replacing in-person test centers with virtual ones. And it obsessively tracks metrics like this one: 95% of employers say WGU grads are as good as or better than those from anywhere else.

WGU's chancellor also blogged about the honor, and in other WGU news, the school just announced a new business outreach program in Indiana.

Your View: More Choice in K-12 Schools

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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):

  • Expand voucher opportunites (30%)
  • Increase overall funding (22%)
  • Leave Common Core standards alone (15%)
  • Preschool funding for students in need (22%)
  • Other (11%). Specifics focused on increasing accountability, restoring traditional public schools and ensuring high levels of learning for all students

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.

Pulling the Education Trigger for Students

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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.

Brown: Hoosier Parents Deserve Choice in Education

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The following guest blog is part of our weeklong celebration of National School Choice Week:

Indiana has a lot to be proud of as it relates to education in recent years. We have become the envy of many other states, and a leader in putting the needs of students ahead of the interests of adults. It’s been about two years since Gov. Mitch Daniels led Indiana to enact a comprehensive education reform package, which was designed to enable quality teachers to succeed, empower parents to make choices for their children and allow students an opportunity to thrive in a high-quality school. One of the most notable reforms in this package was the state’s Choice Scholarship Program.   

While I realize that there is no silver bullet to reforming our education system and I remain committed to a variety of effective efforts to improve student outcomes, school choice has become my passion. Choice is a tool that empowers parents and provides students opportunities. Most importantly, it’s a tool that can help a student today – a tool that parents both want and deserve. In fact, today, over 9,000 students have taken advantage of this tool and are benefitting from Indiana’s voucher program. Many more take advantage of charter schools and other options available in this new world of choice in our state.

This week is National School Choice Week and a great opportunity for us to celebrate the increased educational opportunities we are offering our children. I encourage everyone to take advantage of this opportunity and shine a spotlight on the great things happening in our state. Attend one of the events going on across the state, visit a voucher school and witness firsthand the new opportunities students are receiving, write a letter to the editor or simply email your legislator to thank them for doing what’s in the best interest of students.

However, while we have much to celebrate, this is not a time to sit back and wait. There are over 180,000 students who remain in a “D” or “F” school in Indiana. Until this number is 0, we must not rest. As we head into the 2013 legislative session, legislators begin to consider potential expansions to the Choice Scholarship Program such as the addition of kindergarten to the program. Unfortunately, as it stands today, students must attend public school for TWO years (kindergarten and 1st grade) before becoming eligible to receive a voucher. We must remove these artificial barriers to the program and enable more families to benefit from this opportunity to choose a school that best meets their needs.

This week is a time of celebration, but also a time to remember that there is more work to be done. Please join me in thanking your legislator for all they’ve done, but remind them that we cannot rest until ALL Hoosier students have access to a high-quality option, and an opportunity to become all they can be.

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Lindsey Brown is executive director of School Choice Indiana.