When you turn over control of your public school system to a group of board members whose financial livelihood is dependent upon shifting public education dollars into the pockets of the education profiteers who employ them, it should come as no surprise that the public school under their leadership continues to bleed students. IPS' enrollment is expected to fall close to a 1,000 students next year. "If we continue to drop down 1,000 students a year, somebody is not going to have a job," the Indianapolis Star quotes IPS board member Sam Odle opining. Odle is a lobbyist for Bose Public Affairs Group, and he's just doing the job his true masters hired him to do.
IPS' enrollment is already down 22% from where it was a decade ago from 37,890 students to 29,377. What students aren't lost from families fleeing to the suburbs are siphoned off to attend all of the charter schools the education profiteers have gotten your bought and paid for politicians to fund. Those charter schools perform no better than IPS schools on average, but they do succeed in making their financial backers very rich, which is their only purpose. It's funny that Odle would mention somebody being out of a job. He and his fellow board members are giving a generous salary increase to Dr. Louis Ferebee, the school's superintendent the board imported from North Carolina to do its bidding.
8 comments:
"Better" is equivocal. If a charter school, fairly measured, performs no better than a matched government school then,1) the charter is better because it costs a boat load less, and 2) if it goes bad it can be closed readily. While one can argue all day about stupidities (be a legislator) one then avoids the unasked question about the worth of any of this foolishness. A rotten school run by the government (charters are included) can operate for a long time before anyone closes them-non charters live forever? Remember Mitch finally took umbrage about kids not being able to read at grade level? Pence mewed about having 15,000 kids per year accepted to low admission standard places (like purdue) but having to undergo "remediation" and then set about increasing that number with off branded common core.
All this legislative tinkering with ISTEP obscures the lack of educational progress the test was intended to measure. If there were any bribes involved in the switch from McGraw Hill to the new ISTEP vendor one can take solace in thinking that Pearson's "investment" in Indiana legislators was money ill spent-not saying any illegal thing has ever been done by anyone in Indiana by any text book publisher.....just speculating about the ways of the worldly. As for IPS problems it is not likely that their problems will be solved so long as there is a 150 member school board screwing things up for all of Indiana public instruction.
Anon 10:33,
"the charter is better because it costs a boat load less"
what is your source for this? In Indiana, charter schools receive the same funding per student as traditional schools.
What is being measured by this?
The state bends over backwards to fund charter schools. Indiana charter schools receive $665 more per pupil from state funding than do public schools. A $50 million fund has been created for charter schools to borrow at a 1% interest rate. In 2013 the state forgave $91 million in debt, solely for the charter schools. When charter schools go under they retain all per pupil revenue even when pupils return to public schools. One charter took the money and never even opened.
Charters use public school facilities, food services and busing with no remuneration.
For the state to take action on closing a charter school the school must have been designated as failing for 6 consecutive years.
The 150 member school board must include all of the outsiders whose money was spent, during the last school board election, to elect those who would clear the way for those wanting to chomp at a trough of available easy money.
It has more than a bit of truth to it that government schools are viewed by many as PREY. They are easy pickings for bond underwriters, construction managers, insurance salesmen,text book publishers, lawyers, roofing contractors and, of course legislators looting the taxpayers both with promises of student academic achievement (never delivered upon) and wasted tax dollars (most of them).
Perhaps the metric ought to be on measured outputs? E.G. you get so much money per pupil who tests at grade level or above. You get a lot less for underperforming pupils. Before too long, most Indiana would be private or charter schools? I can't recall a regular government school ever being closed for being "failing". Worse, Tully's long ago article on Broadripple High was actually a decent article (due for a reprint). And, all of the failing schools in Indiana are accredited. As for the Legislature (all 150 of them), yes, they do take money and votes, and can't run a single school as well as Marsh runs a single store.
Indiana blows about 70% of its spending on so called "education". Charter schools are next to none of it. Government schools, including charters, are just islands of applied socialism trying to exist in a world where the rest of the world delivers a quality product and they don't. End of discussion?
The bigger issue is the hundreds of abandoned homes and lots surrounding IPS schools. You can't have full school buildings if not enough potential students live nearby. The blight within the old city limits (IPS district), except for a few neighborhoods blessed with cultural districts or the Super Bowl legacy, is astounding.
...but the good Doctor (Superintendent) needs a pay raise!
Anon 2:39; Wrong order; people migrate to better & from worse; which makes the case against the failed pretense of government "education." What thinking parent would knowingly expose their children to the abuses & vagaries of statism? People have had it with bureau-crap, sold as some variant of "nutrition."
And, culture doesn't owe its existence to Disney or Legoland development fantasies; funded by public treasury raids. Contributions from people like the Glick family are well intended & indeed generous, but don't cover the entire or ongoing cost of those fantasies.
Anon 2:39 The homes are abandoned BECAUSE caring parents will not send their kids to IPS schools. The truth behind the Big Lie is that everyone who can flee Indianapolis (aka Little Detroit) continues to do so. I imagine at some point they'll have to expand Unigov to Fort Wayne and Evansville to keep the lie about a vibrant, growing city alive.
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