Carping about Carpe Diem

There will be a public hearing this month on a proposed new charter school to be located on the Ambassador campus just a stone's throw from my house. Carpe Diem is a for profit operator, so Karen O'Frisco is already moaning about a Republican conspiracy. She's also complaining that the input from the "public" (FWCS school officials) will be disregarded, which would make it just like talking at an FWCS public hearing.

But that probably won't stop Mark GiaQuinta from personally voicing his disparaging opinion about school choice for those who can't afford to send their kids to Canterbury. It's like telling them they can have any car they want as long as it's made by Government Motors.

Karen suggests just e-mailng your comments. Good idea.

Imagine that

Ball State pulled the charters of both Imagine Schools and the Timothy Johnson academy for poor academic performance. That's the way it should work. If they can't perform their basic mission, they should go out of business, even if they have air conditioning.

So now the question is who's going to pull the plug on government schools that don't perform. The answer in Indiana with Glenda Ditz in office is nobody. Kids stuck in bad schools like my former (now F rated) Harrison Hill have few viable alternatives until someone else opens another charter or private schools enlarge their capacity.

At least Wendy's body count will go back up.

Wendy gets a hook

That's what a grade of "C" was called in my day. That's not the kind of hook we need to jerk her off the stage. Anyway that's down from an "A" last year. Well not really. The were never an "A" except under the IDE's screwed up new letter grade rating system, which had SAC and NAC rated as "C" districts.

But they got to pretend to be an "A" district until the IDE got their act together this year and the ratings were reversed. They got to hang banners all over town proclaiming themselves to be an "A" rated school district. They got to hang ""A" rated district" after FWCS in every print article for a year. They got to convince voters they deserved a bond issue to air condition their "A" rated schools.

Now that the IDE has fixed their calculation and FWCS' grade is realistic, they and the JG are complaining that the system is incomprehensible. There were no complaints last year. For a year FWCS and  incumbent board members John Peirce and Becky Hill were able to lie to us with the assistance of the IDE. You could argue that they really believed the ratings but that would be testimony to their incompetence. They should grateful for undeserved favors. Voters should be grateful to learn the truth before the election is over.

Davis and Jehl for School Board

If you live in one of the contested FWCS school board districts, you may or may not know that incumbents John Peirce and Becky Hill are being challenged by Jenna Jehl and Michael Davis respectively. If you know nothing about any of them then the key to your vote should be that the JG endorsed the incumbents. After an earlier editorial encouraging people to run for the board, they then proceeded to trash those who did because they looked to be conservative.

Incumbent 32 year board "vet" Steve Corona, another JG favorite, is unchallenged in district five. Mr. "proven leadership", as his billboards said four years ago, has been sitting on the board for 32 years watching my former school district and high school go down the tubes. Like the two challenged incumbents, Corona is still ignorant about the situation in our classrooms. But since all three believe Wendy walks on water, they're more than happy to take her word for the state of the district. Ms. O'Frisco's recommendation referred to increasing pressure from the state. That's the result of no pressure from a blissfully ignorant board of cheerleaders.

Michael Davis is the owner of a software business he started. He knows the educational requirements of today's economy.  He had three kids in FWCS. He knows what's going on in the buildings. I know Mr. Davis personally and supported him with a check.

I don't know Ms. Jehl personally. She was endorsed by the Sentinel. Predictably, she was dismissed by the JG. That alone would make her the best choice to replace John Peirce.

Can the cans

The new FWCS high school grading system has been rolled out as described in a lengthy article on the front page of the Sunday JG. An appropriate summary would be "Much ado about nothing." Well, OK, it will have an impact on can drives..

According to Faye Robbins-Williams they wanted to address inconsistencies such as students who were getting F's in all their classes passing the standardized tests with flying colors. What a ridiculous statement. Absolutely backwards. But it does point out again that high school grades mean nothing. With any grading system teachers will still have to find a way to pass 50% of an algebra class when only 20% can pass the ECA.

The problem with the high schools is the elementary schools and middle schools that feed them. A high school grading system will do nothing to fix that.

FWCS #1 by default

Indy media reported to day that IPS has lost 1500 students from 2011 while FWCS lost about 350. That makes FWCS the largest district in the state in terms of enrollment. It should be noted that four IPS schools were taken over by the state and converted to charters. About 1700 student chose to transfer to other IPS schools instead of going with the new charters, so the losses in Indy could have been much worse. In all about 500 appear to have opted out of IPS or former IPS schools entirely. But we need to see the state figures on vouchers and charter school enrollment to see what's really going on.

Nevertheless we expect GiaQuinta to organize a celebration featuring the high school bands.

Pain brings gain

FWCS'  percentage for kids passing both the Math and LA  portions of the ISTEP this year improved by about 3% versus the state overall. Over the last 3 years they've improved 2%/yr on average, about what should be expected. So after nearly a decade of claims to the contrary, it seems that they can do better despite the demographics.

The improvements began when the state legislature and the IDE finally lowered the boom. The district couldn't inflict the necessary pain on itself,  forcing the state to step in and dictate a plan for schools that were heading toward a takeover. That allows the administration, FWEA and Democratic politicians to paint Mitch and Tony Bennett as the bad guys, and vilify them from now on for "destroying the public schools", which in the case of urban schools were already destroying themselves.

By avoiding the tough decisions for decades the district opened the window for charter schools, vouchers and the other reforms passed by the legislature. School choice has arrived and the response from the district is to trash charter schools. The best way for FWCS to discourage losses to charters and vouchers is to get their own house in order.

It looks like the state has finally accomplished what couldn't be done under "local control".