“Gov. Pence believes in accountability and that students, parents and teachers deserve to know our state has a fair and impartial grading system that accurately describes the performances of our schools,” a Pence spokeswoman said in a statement.

Former Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett on Thursday resigned from a similar position in Florida. TheStatehouseFile.com

Meanwhile, the American Federation of Teachers – a teacher’s union – called for the state to suspend the entire school grading system, which can be used as part of teacher evaluations and can lead to a state takeover of a school.

“AFT Indiana believes in evaluation and accountability of schools, but we believe the rubric should be a fair and well-developed tool,” the union’s Indiana President Rick Muir said. “We believe a school labeled below expectations should be given the support to improve not be turned over to a for-profit corporation.”

Bennett said he opted to resign – a move that took effective immediately – even as Florida Gov. Rick Scott urged him to stay. But Bennett said the issues were too distracting to the work Florida officials were trying to do to overhaul that state’s assessment system. 

“Tony demonstrated great leadership in transitioning Florida to new state standards – and he worked tirelessly during his tenure to provide students and teachers with the tools they needed to succeed,” Florida State Board of Education Chairman Gary Chartrand said in a statement.

Bennett also said he would ask the Indiana inspector general to investigate what he called “malicious, unfounded” reports that his office improperly changed the grade for Christel House Academy, a charter school he had used as an example of what works in schools.

Officials at Christel House Academy did not a return message seeking a comment for the story.

Bennett has insisted that he was not focusing on one school and that the changes were meant to better reflect grades for institutions that served elementary, middle and high school students in one school.

But the emails uncovered by The Associated Press discuss only Christel House, which was to receive a C under the original grading formula, due largely to poor 10th grade algebra scores. Changes made by Bennett’s office in the days before the scores were released raised that grade to an A.

The AP quoted a Bennett email to his then-chief of staff Heather Neal saying that, “They need to understand that anything less than an A for Christel House compromises all of our accountability work.” Neal is now legislative director for Pence.

Bennett told Indiana Inspector General David Thomas in a letter that the emails the AP found “are a small snapshot of a long, arduous and iterative process of implementing the A-F accountability metrics.” Bennett said there were many questions surrounding the grading system at the time the emails were sent because the system was new.

“The emails that were the subject of the reports were part of an exchange about what to do with a set of 13 schools that were not contemplated in the system because of the grade configuration of those schools,” Bennett said in his letter to Thomas. “This is not the only issue we found, and it is not the only issue we had to solve.”

Key Indiana Democrats said Thursday that Bennett’s resignation is appropriate but doesn’t solve problems the Republican created in Indiana.

“The fact that he was stopped down south doesn’t undo what he did the past four years here,” said Indiana House Minority Leader Scott Pelath, D-Michigan City.

He added that Indiana’s “grading system has never been about shared and common sense accountability.”

“What’s clear is some high-level officials appeared more interested in picking winners than objectively evaluating school performance,” said Senate Minority Leader Tim Lanane, D-Anderson. “We’ve seen now that these actions have real consequences.”

But members of the Indiana Democrats for Education Reform said they don’t want state leaders to let the scandal overshadow work that’s been done to improve education in Indiana.

“It would be throwing out the baby with the bath water if current elected officials in Indiana use this story to undermine years of bipartisan work in K-12 education that began under Democratic leadership,” the group’s executive director, Larry Grau, said in a statement.

Current Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz, a Democrat who defeated Bennett last November, has said her office is undergoing a “thorough examination of the current A-F model calculations to ensure that every school has the grade they earned in 2012.”

“Nothing more, nothing less,” Ritz said in a statement earlier this week.

She also said the state is creating a new system “that will be both fair and transparent based on individual student academic performance and growth.”

Ritz is among public officials and educators who have criticized the current A-F school grading system as unfair.

Pelath said that’s appropriate.

“Hoosiers support accountability in our schools. They admire ingenuity and passion in education,” he said. “But they also support fairness, especially when it comes to how we treat our kids. The A-F system needs serious rethinking.”

School corporations also said they have reservations about the state’s grading system.

David Smith, superintendent of the Evansville Vanderburgh Schools, said he expressed “grave reservations” about the grading system for elementary and middle schools last year, when the protocol was announced. He said he still holds those reservations.

Smith said the grading system was “convoluted” and “certainly not user friendly.”

“The only thing that was simple and easy to understand about the school grade was the letter,” Smith said.

Many school districts have raised questions over the past two years about how the grades were determined, said Krista Stockman, superintendent of Fort Wayne Community Schools.

“Many school districts over the last two years have questions about where the grades came from. We had questions about where our grades came from when we had improvement across all grade levels,” Stockman said. “What are we measuring and what are we holding people accountable for?”

Both superintendents said they believe the grading system should take into account more than just test scores.

Smith said the current school grading system “doesn’t take into consideration all the various components that make up a child’s education.” Instead, he said, the grades for elementary and middle schools are largely based on the ISTEP – an “eight hour test out of a 180-day school year.”

“The students are much more than an individual test calculation,” Smith said.

Stockman agreed.

“It has come down to one test. We need a way that really measures our learning and doesn’t focus on dollars,” she said. “The system has been flawed for a long time. There are a lot of conversations that need to happen.”

A number of parents and educators have taken to social media to express their feelings about Bennett’s resignation and the school grading system.

“This validates the teachers’ claims about him. So happy for my friends that teach in Indiana!” Jeannie Crain said on the Facebook page for Support Indiana Teachers.

John Kiel questioned the former superintendent on the Facebook page.

“Tony, if you didn’t do anything wrong, why are you quitting?” Kiel asked.

The American Federation of Teachers is defending public schools.

“Our public schools have not failed,” Muir said. “They have been set up for failure.”

Story by Olivia Covington. Reporters Megan Banta and Sandie Love contributed to this story. Olivia Covington, Megan Banta and Sandie Love are reporters for TheStatehouseFile.com, a new website powered by Franklin College journalism students. 

Legislative leaders order independent review of A-F school grades

INDIANAPOLIS – Legislative leaders announced Friday that an independent task force will review Indiana’s A-F grading system for schools in light of allegations that the state’s former education chief manipulated the formula to help a school he had touted.

The General Assembly passed a law earlier this year ordering the State Board of Education to revamp the system.

But House Speaker Brian Bosma, R-Indianapolis, and Senate President Pro Tem David Long, R-Fort Wayne, said Friday that enough questions have been raised about 2012 schools grades to warrant an independent look – in addition to the ongoing analysis by education officials.

House Speaker Brian Bosma, left, R-Indianapolis, and Senate President Pro Tem David Long, R-Fort Wayne

They’ve asked John Grew, executive director of state relations and policy analysis at Indiana University, and Bill Sheldrake, president and founder of Policy Analytics, to lead the task force. They are to report their findings by Labor Day.

“The most important thing we can do moving forward is to have an independent and fair assessment of the A-F school grading process,” Long said in a statement Friday. “This will help ensure that everyone, from our schools and teachers to our parents and students, can have their confidence restored in this past year’s outcomes.”

He called Grew and Sheldrake “highly respected policy leaders who should have the confidence of Hoosiers everywhere.”

Grew is a former legislative fiscal analyst and Sheldrake is a former deputy state budget director and served as president of the Indiana Fiscal Policy Institute.

The announcement by legislative leaders comes one day after former state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett resigned from a similar post in Florida following accusations that he rigged Indiana’s A-F grading system to help Christel House Academy, a charter school in Indianapolis that he had helped up as an example of excellence.

Bennett has vehemently denied wrongdoing and insisted that he was not focusing on one school. He said the changes were meant to better reflect grades for institutions that served elementary, middle and high school students in one school.

But the emails uncovered by The Associated Press discuss only Christel House, which was to receive a C under the original grading formula, due largely to poor 10th grade algebra scores. Changes made by Bennett’s office in the days before the scores were released raised that grade to an A.

The AP quoted a Bennett email to his then-chief of staff Heather Neal saying that, “They need to understand that anything less than an A for Christel House compromises all of our accountability work.”

Neal is now legislative director for Gov. Mike Pence, who has asked the Department of Education – now under the helm of Democrat Superintendent Glenda Ritz – to review the 2012 grades and ensure they are accurate.

Ritz has said that review is underway, as well as work to overhaul the A-F grading scale, which is used as part of teacher evaluations and can lead to a state takeover of a school.

The new independent task force will be charged with:

• Evaluating the previous A-F assessment tool.
• Determining its validity.
• Ascertaining the fairness of previous grades given to schools.
• Determining whether manipulations of the system occurred.
• Making recommendations to the State Board of Education and the General Assembly as to what next steps may be appropriate.

“It is imperative that we assess the previous metric, and ensure that it is fair, accurate and uniformly applied,” said House Speaker Brian Bosma, R-Indianapolis. “As we move forward, it is our hope that this task force’s findings can help the State Board of Education develop a new system that bases assessments on growth and achievement, as we always intended.”

Article writer Lesley Weidenbener is managing editor of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.