Flatlining the Future
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett just doesn’t get it:
Republican Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett said maintaining the same level of spending in the education budget is the best way to change the discussion in the state.“Very few Hoosiers will be able to say they made more in calendar year 2009 than they did in calendar year 2008,” he said. “The discussion shouldn’t be ‘How do we get more money for education?’ but ‘How do we get more education for our money?’ ”
Who wants to guess how many Hoosiers would say they needed more money because the price of goods is still rising? Who wants to guess how many of those Hoosiers searching for jobs in an increasingly post-manufacturing environment would have liked a more comprehensive education plan that funneled them toward post-secondary opportunities?
Very few Hoosiers, indeed.
Yes, there need to be school reforms. Yes there probably needs to be a close examination of where our dollars are being spent. But pursuing those ends and preserving the means of providing top-notch educational services are not mutually exclusive.
I think the question is very much “How do we get more money for education,” or it should be to any Hoosier who believes that the next generation needs to not just meet the standards of today, but be prepared to excel in the more competitive landscape of tomorrow.
For what it’s worth, the Niki Kelly article quoted above notes that the Democratic-controlled House passed a school funding bill that increases funding by an average of two percent. Sen. Luke Kenley is reportedly working on his own school funding plan that would boost funding by one-to-two percent.
If you want to know where Tony Bennett stands, I suggest just asking the Governor’s Office, where he seems to be getting all of his talking points from, anyway.
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Amen. You could have saved a bunch of time and just posted your first and last sentence.
at the end of the day, does it really matter? — if the public schools got zero increase (like most of the real world or the rest of us are getting) instead of one or two percent — will IPS high schools still only graduate about 50 percent of their students? During this economic chaos, the age-old argument that the public school bureaucracy needs its traditional increase is just poppycock — it will not make any difference at all, and it is tantomount to throwing good money after bad. The public schools need to join the rest of us in making necessary and real cutbacks.
I agree with Joe. As a high school student, I can say that the most effective, most efficient reforms wouldn’t have anything to do with funding.
You could quadruple IPS budget and you would not get a significantly larger number of students to graduate. (No one argues that they could become more efficient) You could trade all of the Carmel administrators and teachers for all of the IPS administrators and teachers and still get the same results. Until the culture of the families change to value education the results will not change. That is not to say you kill funding for the families (like mine) who value education.
That said, Thomas’ first and last sentences were probably the two most accurate statements he has ever made.