This one's going to leave a mark.
For those of you not caught up in the "education deform" movement, Indiana had been Ground Zero for a while, with Jeb Bush stooge Tony Bennett having been elected the State Superintendent of Education under Mitch Daniels. He wanted to make Indiana the "model for the nation". He wanted to "hold failing schools accountable". He devised an extremely strict A-F grading system for Indiana schools.
But guess what happened when a Charter School run by a VERY influential Republican donor got a very low grade?
Emails obtained by The Associated Press show Bennett and his staff scrambled last fall to ensure influential donor Christel DeHaan's school received an "A," despite poor test scores in algebra that initially earned it a "C."
"They need to understand that anything less than an A for Christel House compromises all of our accountability work," Bennett wrote in a Sept. 12 email to then-chief of staff Heather Neal, who is now Gov. Mike Pence's chief lobbyist.
Ruh-roh, Shaggy.
And the story is as sordid as it sounds. This calls into question the validity and legality of the entire Indiana school grading system.
This grading system is life or death for Indiana public schools. It determines funding. A bad grade can drive down property values. Consistent bad grades will close the school. And Bennett made it a centerpiece of his "reform" campaign, which was heavily centered on "choice" and charter schools, and vouchers. One of the schools Bennett touted was the Christel House school, established by the aforementioned Christel DeHaan.
All day, Bennett has been spinning this as "no big deal" and "nothing untoward" as if it were just to tweak the system to make sure that "the system was right to make sure the system was face valid."
And yet
However, the emails clearly show Bennett's staff was intensely focused on Christel House, whose founder has given more than $2.8 million to Republicans since 1998, including $130,000 to Bennett and thousands more to state legislative leaders.
That's a lot of cash. And to the corporate deformers, that much cash buys you obedience.
Christel House, as I mentioned earlier, was touted as a model example of a top-performing school statewide as he was getting the support to enact the A-F grading system.
But trouble loomed when Indiana's then-grading director, Jon Gubera, first alerted Bennett on Sept. 12 that the Christel House Academy had scored less than an A.
"This will be a HUGE problem for us," Bennett wrote in a Sept. 12, 2012, email to Neal.
Neal fired back a few minutes later, "Oh, crap. We cannot release until this is resolved."
By Sept. 13, Gubera unveiled it was a 2.9, or a "C."
A weeklong behind-the-scenes scramble ensued among Bennett, assistant superintendent Dale Chu, Gubera, Neal and other top staff at the Indiana Department of Education. They examined ways to lift Christel House from a "C" to an "A," including adjusting the presentation of color charts to make a high "B" look like an "A" and changing the grade just for Christel House.
It's not clear from the emails exactly how Gubera changed the grading formula, but they do show DeHaan's grade jumping twice.
The superintendent of Wayne Township schools in Indianapolis said "That's like parting the Red Sea to get numbers to move that significantly."
The timeline:
September 12: Bennett is informed Christel will receive less than an "A"
September 13: It is revealed the grade is a 2.9, or a "C"
That started a week long series of emails to try to figure how to get Christel's grade back up to an "A"
"I am more than a little miffed about this," Bennett wrote. "I hope we come to the meeting today with solutions and not excuses and/or explanations for me to wiggle myself out of the repeated lies I have told over the past six months."
September 14: His staff has changed the grade to a 3.5, or a "B" by manipulations, but Bennett's staff tells him it may be illegal to change it further
"We can revise the rule" was the response.
Over the next week they worked and emailed back and forth, and by September 21, the grade was changed to a 3.75, or an "A". Gubera, the state's Grading Director, resigned shortly afterward.
The emails don't detail what Gubera changed in the school formula or how many schools were affected. Indiana education experts consulted for this article said they weren't aware the formula had been changed.
Read the complete emails here.
And the knives are coming out.
From an editorial in the Fort Wayne newspaper:
Tom LoBianco of the Associated Press has found a gold mine in the email correspondence behind Indiana's shape-shifting A-F grading system. I never doubted that the grading rubric was changed to make some schools look better, but I wouldn't have guessed it was all about making one charter school look good.
snip
Indiana voters dispatched Bennett without knowing of his behind-the-scenes manipulation of school data. Now voters should realize the lengths public officials will go to keep the biggest donors happy. The nonsensical grading system foisted on Indiana schools was designed to punish public schools and advance the choice agenda.
The question for lawmakers listening to hours of testimony over last spring's ISTEP+ computer meltdown is not whether the scores are valid. It's how much longer will the lawmakers themselves continue to support a charade designed and maintained to please wealthy donors?
Tony Bennett is now in charge of Florida Schools, and is putting in a grading system there. I'm sure he fits right in with Governor Gollum, or Governor Voldemort, and the wholesale GOP corruption in that state. But there are millions of children in Florida, and they don't deserve what Tony Bennett does to Education. Join the
Badass Teachers in ridding education of leeches like Tony Bennett.
Florida Department of Education
Office of the Commissioner
Turlington Building, Suite 1514
325 West Gaines Street
Tallahassee, Florida 32399
Phone: 850-245-0505
Fax: 850-245-9667
Commissioner@fldoe.org