…http://CPNLive.com at 7:00pm est. Neil McCluskey, author of Feds in the Classroom: How Big Government Corrupts, Cripples, and Compromises American Education, and Adam Schaeffer, author of They Spend WHAT? The Real Cost of Public Schools.

I encourage you to tune in at 7pm est and see how dire this situation is and why I have been ranting on and on about the Obama Administration’s machinations of nationalizing our public education system. You can watch, chat and call in with your .02.

Oh yeah,and invite your governors to watch with you.

Tony Bennett is disappointed in Arne Duncan’s rejection of the Indiana Race to the Top application. Others are surprised that New York and Kentucky made the first cut. What does New York and Kentucky have that Indiana doesn’t have? An aversion to charter schools.

Hold up! I thought lifting caps on charter schools was a deal breaker for RttT?!  Maybe not. Kentucky has zero charter schools. New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, and North Carolina (all finalists) have restrictive caps on charter schools.

Was Mr. Duncan ever really serious about charter schools? What is Arne serious about? Is it a federal infusion or will it be federal intrusion? Here are the four required significant areas of reform:

1. States expected to adopt common, internationally-benchmarked K-12 standards and assessments that truly prepare students for college and careers.
2. Recruiting, developing, rewarding, and retaining effective teachers and principals;
3. Building data systems that measure student success and inform teachers and principals how they can improve their practices;
4. Turning around our lowest-performing schools

Note #1, common, internationally benchmarked K-12 standards and assessments. Is that what it sounds like? Yes. And that, Mr. Bennett is why you are NOT a winner in Duncan’s grade book. One can only speculate where the charter school rhetoric was coming from. Perhaps, it was a way to get conservatives onboard.

(Read more after the leap)

Back in 2003, Leftist radicals threw a hysterical temper tantrum over the personal blog of IU professor Eric Rasmusen, who argued against homosexuality on his personal blog and took the position that homosexuals should not be hired as teachers. This brought forth a great deal of debate in the Indiana Daily Student and the Herald-Times, as Leftist radicals demanded that Professor Rasmusen be fired from his job with the university.

In West Lafayette, it is déjà vu all over again, as Leftist radicals are throwing another hysterical temper tantrum about a Purdue University professor who wrote critically of homosexuality. As was the case with Professor Rasmusen, they are demanding Bert Chapman be fired from his job for expressing opinions that are not approved by Leftist radicals. Of course, not all Leftists support punishing Professor Chapman for his speech, and some have come to the defense of free speech. This is why I refer to the people advocating termination of Professor Chapman’s employment as “Leftist radicals” rather than Leftists. And, let’s be honest, it is not conservatives calling for his career on a platter.

(Read more after the leap)

From Fox News:

“The existing policy is worded in such a way that it may lead one to believe that we’re prohibiting biking to school,” said Saratoga Springs superintendent Janice White.

The one-sentence clause in the school board handbook looks clear enough:

“The riding of bicycles by elementary pupils to and from school is prohibited.”

Wow. Just… wow. The boundless arrogance is amazing.

Do these government school bureaucrats actually think they can get away with shamelessly lying to the taxpayers who pay their salaries? Unbelievable. This woman needs to be fired. Yesterday.

School children taught to sing praises to Obama

Source.

By: State Rep. Wes Culver

Are our state universities financing inefficiencies on the backs of students? Recently Purdue University announced a 5% increase in its tuition rate in addition to a new annual per-student $500 surcharge that must be paid on top of tuition and room and board fees. These increases are, according to a trustee, necessary to maintain Purdue’s status as an excellent school. Purdue is not the only state funded university looking to raise tuition rates. Indiana University, Ivy Tech, Ball State, Indiana State University, Vincennes University and Southern Indiana University are all proposing or adopting tuition increases in the 4%-5% range for the upcoming academic year.

The rise in tuition rates at Indiana’s state funded public universities is not without precedent. According to Andrea Neal, a scholar with the Indiana Policy Review Foundation, the historical trend in Indiana is for college tuition rates to double every 10 years.* This figure does not include increases in room and board fees that also come on a frequent basis. In 2006 Indiana earned an “F” from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education in terms of college affordability. Hoosier students and their families bear a heavy financial burden when they pursue a college education. Those who chose to finance their degree through a private loan frequently find themselves paying much more for their degree once interest on the loan is factored in and paid back.

But the cost to students is more than just a financial one, as young people trying to start life often find the cloud of college debt hanging over them and their finances to be a hindrance to personal and professional development. If we are going to make sure that Indiana is ready for the 21st Century economy, we must reform our college education system to make it more affordable and more accountable. The rising costs hurt many students, and all too often have the disappointing effect of discouraging many well-qualified high-school students and adults from pursuing a college degree.

(Read more below the fold)

By: Wes Culver (R-Goshen, Ind.)

Unless they work in education or state government, not many people know or understand the complicated formula that determines how much funding each school corporation receives each year.

Each school corporation receives a specific dollar amount per student. So, two schools with the same number of students will receive a different dollar amount because the amount per student is different.

The amount per student can be immense. The lowest amount received by a school corporation in 2008 was $5,414 per student in Northwest Allen School Corp. The school corporation with the highest rate per-student was Gary School Corp., receiving $9,010 per student.

Several community members have voiced their concern with this variation. Why, they ask, does the state give more money per student to some schools and less to others?

Generally, tuition support for schools is tied to the numbers of students — “average daily membership” in bureaucratic terms — in each school district. As such, districts with declining enrollments face decreasing amounts of tuition support.

However, districts are still provided partial funding for students who have left the district, which is known as “ghosting.” Ghosting may occur when a student was enrolled at the start of the school year and then left sometime during that year.

Keep in mind, school districts have five years before funding is completely phased out for that student — 100 percent the first year, 80 percent the second, then 60 percent, 40 percent and, in the fifth year, 20 percent.

School systems with declining student enrollments have benefited greatly from this method, while those with growing enrollments have suffered, even though both face the same problem of changing enrollment.

The governor’s budget wants to finally end ghosting to make sure the money follows the student. If the student is not there, the money for that student wouldn’t be, either. However, the House Democrat’s budget proposal includes the ghosting formula.

A declining enrollment creates no more problems than an increasing enrollment. Officials from schools with declining enrollments say the students leaving are not from one class, but rather a few from every classroom; therefore, they cannot get rid of any teachers. However, neither can a growing school corporation place all the new students in one classroom and hire one teacher.

Growing schools are forced to handle their greater enrollments by redistricting to most efficiently handle students; declining schools should do the same.

These are not easy problems for superintendents to resolve. But that is what their job is and why we put them in those positions. Tough decisions aren’t always easy for businesses and families either, but they have to make them when their income declines.

I don’t think we should ask our schools to do anything we wouldn’t do as families and business people. They should not be exempt from the struggles everyone else faces.

Wes Culver (R-Goshen) represents House District 49 in the Indiana House of Representatives.  His website is www.electwesculver.com.

By: Brian Sikma

The recent, and ongoing, debate over the future of the Washington D.C. school voucher program has served as a high profile reminder that efforts must continue to be made to improve the quality of education provided by public schools.  Here in Indiana, the House has passed a bill that has the potential to lower the quality of education in this state and increase the administrative workload facing school districts.  The bill deals with creating “cultural competency” standards and protocols for schools around the state and has been sponsored by Rep. Greg Porter (D-Indianapolis).

Cultural competency is often defined as understanding the differences in action, behavior, and communication that span across various cultural and social groups.  If one is able to take this understanding and act in ways that are consistent with an increased awareness of these differences, they can be considered culturally competent.  To bring it to the practical level, if one is to be culturally competent they must be willing to adjust their actions based on the culture they are dealing with and, by extension, they emphasize the fact that differences between the two groups exist.

Cultural competency is good for diplomats.  It is not good for Indiana’s teachers and students.  By requiring school districts to develop programs to train teachers in cultural differences, set benchmarks for culturally competent behavior, and implement a system that monitors the cultural competency of teachers, we are shifting our focus away from the proper goal of classroom instruction: educating students in a way that stretches them academically and prepares them to become successful individuals and good citizens.  We should not turn the focus of classroom instruction into understanding the varying degrees of differences that we have with one another.

Teachers do need to be aware of the different socio-economic backgrounds that their students come from.  Yet this understanding should not be translated into a mandate that classroom education be reduced to a number of different individual standards with each student being held to his or her own level of accountability.  Our teachers should have the freedom to hold all students accountable for their actions and demand that each student do their very best in class.  Not all students will be at the top of the class, but by excusing lack of effort, inattention to instruction, or other behavioral issues by ascribing them to the cultural background of the student, we are sending the message that because of one’s background they will not be expected-or encouraged-to achieve great things.

(Read More Below the Fold)

If you’ve read this site for any length of time during the short, but ever so eventful, first 50+ days of the Obama Administration, you can guess that I don’t agree with the President all to often.  But today, I do.  And oddly, the education obstacles…I mean agenda that Pat “The Hair” Bauer and the Indiana House Democrats have put forth does not.

What we’re talking about here are Charter Schools and stronger accountability and high standards for the rest of Indiana’s schools.  Consider the following, first from President Obama, via CNN.com:

“We have let our grades slip, our schools crumble, our teacher quality fall short and other nations outpace us,” Obama said in an address to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. “The time for finger-pointing is over. The time for holding ourselves accountable is here.”

“The relative decline of American education is untenable for our economy, unsustainable for our democracy and unacceptable for our children, and we cannot afford to let it continue,” he said.

The President even went on to harshly criticize Teachers Unions that oppose merit-based pay.

“If a teacher is given a chance but still does not improve, there is no excuse for that person to continue teaching,” he said. “I reject a system that rewards failure and protects a person from its consequences.”

But here’s the kicker. Oddly, all of this seems to right out of Governor Daniels and Dr. Bennett’s play book when it comes to education.

Obama called for the promotion of educational “innovation and excellence” by renewing his campaign pledge to support charter schools. He called on states to lift caps on the number of allowable charter schools.

The emphasis added was mine. Why? Because Democrats at the State House directly oppose the president’s education agenda. Why? Because they are backed by the Indiana State Teachers Association (ISTA), a union. Consider the following:

(Read more after the leap)

A freshman girl at Bloomington South sued the Indiana High School Athletic Association in November due to IHSAA policy forbidding girls from playing on boys’ sports teams unless the “the school does not have a comparable girls’ program” for the same sport. IHSAA considers softball (which is offered by South) to be comparable to baseball for the purposes of interpreting the rule. The lawsuit disagrees.

First and most importantly, sports is a very different animal than the right to vote, the right to free speech, the right to keep and bear arms and other fundamental Constitutional rights. The very nature of sports makes sex discrimination in sports very different from sex discrimination in the workplace, such as factories, offices or an academic environment. Not allowing a girl to play on the boys baseball or football team does not represent a challenge to basic constitutional rights, and there are many good and legitimate reasons to keep girls’ and boys’ sports separate.

Girls often have an unfair advantage in contact sports, if the boys they are playing against are gentlemen unwilling to play against girls with the same level of aggression they use against boys. This is true for football and (especially) wrestling, where modesty and appropriate behavior between the sexes is mixed in with contact. A few years ago, two Christian schools participating in Rainier Valley League’s coed wrestling program (Tacoma Baptist School and Cascade Christian School) decided to forfeit all of their matches when one of their young men was to compete against a girl. Even sports like basketball could be considered contact sports, with boxing out for rebounds and taking charges being part of the game.

(Read more after the leap)

When I was on Abdul in the Morning last Friday, four separate callers called in to ask my Democrat counterpart Jen Wagner to name three legislative accomplishments by Barack Obama.  She mentioned three things that she claimed were things that Barack himself usually answers when asked to list accomplishments:

1. Marrying Michelle Obama
2. Being a community organizer
3. Registering record numbers of voters

I kid you not, that’s what she said. Abdul and Chris Spangle can back me up on that.  And frankly, I’d love to post the audio of that.

But since those are far from legislative accomplishments (though I will give credit where credit is due..all are remarkable in their own right), I was able to come across at least one legislative accomplishment…though it was while he was in the Illinois Senate…and he was able to pass comprehensive sex education for (wait for it….) kindergartners.

Right.

(H/T – Speechology)

A little piece of news hit yesterday about a family in the Hamilton Southeastern school district that is fighting to get the school system to put their child in both AM and PM sessions of Kindergarten. Many of the fact of the case are reported in the Indy Star today. As a bit of background, this is the world of special education which is a complex combination of Federal requirements, state requirements and local implementation.

This child, in this case, has been identified as a child in need of special services. he has speech, memory, and behavioral problems. The parents would like for him to go through both the AM and PM Kindergarten program. Just to be clear, this is not “full day” Kindergarten–he would receive the exact same instruction twice in the same day. Without knowing the specifics of the child’s situation, this seems to be a very reasonable service plan to me for the Kindergarten year. The school system, while admitting that the child needs services, do not agree that this is the right approach.

Analysis below the fold: