Maureen Hayden
CNHI
INDIANAPOLIS —
Declaring “no more room for excuses,” Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett has called on educators to stop clamoring for money and devote their energy to providing better service for their “customers.”
In his first “State of Education” address delivered Monday at a middle school in Indianapolis, Bennett dismissed complaints about a recent $300 million budget cut for local schools. He said increased spending on education won’t deliver reforms needed to raise test scores and graduation rates of students in Indiana’s K-12 schools.
“(A)s we confront an uncertain and rapidly changing American economy, we must accept that more money is not the answer to the problems that challenge Indiana’s schools,” Bennett said.
The answer instead, he said, was for local schools to change the way they do business by redirecting more of their resources directly into classroom instruction and to reward teachers for performance, not tenure.
“If we’re going to hold teachers accountable for teaching our kids – if we’re going to hold leaders accountable for school success – we have to make student learning the primary consideration for teacher promotion and recognition,” Bennett said.
Bennett, who was elected in 2007 to head the state’s education department, has come under criticism by some educators for pushing reforms that could mean the end of teacher tenure and force more accountability on schools that fail to raise test scores. The push for reform has come at a time when schools across the state have laid off teachers in response to budget cuts imposed by Gov. Mitch Daniels and forced by declining state revenues.
But the criticism hasn’t swayed Bennett, who vowed to push for more education reform in the coming legislative session, which begins in January.
Among the reforms he promoted Monday were additional changes in teacher licensing, including what he called “rigorous teacher education standards” that would compel teachers to master the subjects they teach.
In his speech, he also chastised some school administrators for failing to conduct “rigorous annual evaluations” to identify and remove bad teachers.
Bennett also rolled out a number of changes he’ll be unveiling in coming months, including “Indiana’s Growth Model” that will allow parents access to detailed teacher and student performance data.
A full text and video of Bennett’s speech is posted on the Indiana Department of Education’s website, www.doe.in.gov.
Maureen Hayden is Statehouse bureau chief for CNHI’s Indiana newspapers. She can be reached at maureen.hayden@indianamediagroup.com.
