Transformation Zone bill passes House
02/25/2015
After a series of impassioned speeches in the House, on the last day of the first half of the legislative session, HB 1638 (Rep. Bob Behning; R-Indianapolis) passed. One thing everyone agreed on: HB 1638 is seriously flawed.
The debate intensified with regard to whether its flaws should cause the bill to die. After the stunning defeat of HB 1072 Tuesday, it became clear that even a seriously flawed bill could be justified by some for passage.
Rep. Behning pointed to IPS and Evansville reforms that are currently producing some results as a cause for supporting HB 1638.
Wendy McNamara (R-Mount Vernon) followed by praising the positive impact that work in the Evansville Glenwood Leadership Academy has produced. She referred to it as miraculous but did not mention that it did not need HB 1638 to make these miracles.
Vernon Smith (D-Gary) followed by offering a page-by-page analysis of the flawed bill language itself and urged its defeat.
Gail Riecken (D-Evansville) noted that Evansville saw great results without HB 1638 and that the bill needs far too much work to warrant its advancement.
Sue Errington (D-Muncie) spoke of the “Muncie Miracle” achieved without this bill. She also pointed out that the Department of Education, through its outreach coordinator program, has turned 103 public schools that had been D or F schools to A, B, or C schools in a single year without HB 1638 or more money.
Ed Delaney (D-Indianapolis), took issue with the current State Board of Education adopting its own rules to grade entire school districts and then taking them over. He called the current takeover program a complete failure and noted that Evansville’s miracle occurred without HB 1638. The hidden trap in HB 1638 is that a takeover school would be able to capture other schools in the district, thereby enabling these takeovers to demonstrate better performance metrics.
Melanie Wright (D-Yorktown) spoke about how wrong and unproductive it is to set up a system in which people are operating out of fear. She noted that the “best and brightest” of our administrators, school board members and teachers are reaching out to us to be heard.
Terri Austin (D-Anderson) noted that the bill was held over through three committee hearings and is still seriously flawed. She asked the members of the body to read the “Report of Accountability Systems Review Panel” established by the speaker of the House, the president pro tempore, the State Board of Education and the state superintendent of public instruction. She concluded that the entire premise of HB 1638 rests on incomplete efforts (the new grading system). She reminded everyone that the current grading system is flawed and that the state board has a history of changing grades of schools. To push this bill forward for these reasons alone is wrong.
Tony Cook (R-Cicero) read testimony supporting the intent of HB 1638 as opposed to its actual content.
Woody Burton (R-Whiteland), who sits on House Education, talked about “having to do something.”
Please thank every House Democrat for voting “No” on HB 1638. Many of them took time to understand the numerous implications of the bill and testified. Be sure to also thank the following Republican friends of public education:
- Randy Truitt (Lafayette)
- Tom Dermody (La Porte)
- Tom Saunders (Lewisville)
Behning closed by acknowledging that this is “not an easy issue” and “very complicated” and that we all “want what’s best for kids.”
He defended the current takeovers by saying, “…they have only been in place for a limited time.” He acknowledged that the bill is not perfect and that if it moves in the Senate he will reach out to Superintendents Ferebee (IPS) and Smith (Evansville) for further counsel.
HB 1638 passed Wednesday based on some broad-based, agenda-filled ideologies and not based on data or the bill’s actual content. This is never a recipe for good public policy-making.