Indiana EdAlert

A Critique of:
Indiana’s P-16 Plan for Improving Student Achievement
(Located online at: http://www.edroundtable.state.in.us/P-16Plan.htm)

By Ed Sparks:

Preface:

It is a demonstrated fact (In the recent ISTEP-Plus testing only 26% of the IPS tenth grade students passed the test--Star 12/03/2003) that the Indiana education system needs drastic overhaul. It has long been obvious to anyone who has observed the poor results of that system over the last many years. Indiana has just released, for public information and comment, a report titled “Indiana’s P-16 Plan for Improving Student Achievement.” This report was compiled by a blue ribbon panel composed of some 40 individuals who have spent five years in preparing this final report. It is a disaster. After reading it I can understand why Indiana is the only state in the Union to lose high-technology jobs each year (tbs). Instead of concentrating on improving the means to educate the school children the P-16 Plan focuses on expanding the control of the children and the public through the education system.. As it lays out its plans for increased control it does not show how those plans will result in improved education standards.

In this critique I propose to interpret the P-16 Plan, to define the standards the Indiana school system should meet and to provide a base with which to judge the success of the education system.

The P-16 Plan:

Here are the Ten Key Components of the P-16 Plan:

1. Academic Standards, Assessment and Accountability
2. Teaching and Learning
3. School and District Leadership and Governance
4. Early Learning and School Readiness
5. Eliminating Achievement Gaps and Ensuring Academic Progress for all Students
6. Ensuring College and Workforce Success
7. Drop-Out Prevention
8. Higher Education and Continued Learning
9. Communications
10. Effective Use of Technology and Efficient Use of Resources.

We will analyze each of these points and in-turn critique them. However, I must point out a serious failing that I noted in the P-16 Plan. In this report there are no references provided to show where the information included was created or where any claim or statement made can be checked or verified. No research source or research school is cited and there is no way that any double-checking for accuracy or relevance can be performed.

Note: There are no provisions for excluding private schools, charter schools or home schools from any of the P-16 Plans provisions.

The Information Age:

We are living in the information age. Information is everywhere and is immediately available on a dozen search engines. Two alone, Google and Alta-Vista, allow any user access to millions of pages of information. The computer is everywhere. No other commodity, in all of history, has been so rapidly welcomed, accepted and placed into worldwide use. Today, in the western world, almost every business has at least one computer and many have thousands. The computer has spread, in just twenty-five years, to everywhere. It is in India, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Zimbabwe. In fact, there are 10,000 computers in Zimbabwe alone and many are connected to the Internet. It is possible to get a weekly update on life conditions in Zimbabwe from a single Internet site. And this creates a problem the school system must now face.

In this country children are computer literate at three and one-half years of age. At that age children, when they desire to use their computer, no longer have to ask their parents for help, they can turn on the family computer, find the program they wish to use, start the program, do whatever the program tells them to do (read from the screen) and when they are finished close the program and shut down the computer. The computer program can teach them spelling, reading, mathematics, civics or any other subject the child wishes to approach. This is at three and one-half years of age. Imagine what will happen to any school system in Indiana when an entire class composed of these children registers for education. It will be catastrophic.

In its quest for control, the “Indiana P-16 Plan” ignores the needs and abilities of the modern child.

In General:

For roughly two hundred years our school system produced generation after generation of well educated children who went on to produce the greatest nation that ever existed on this earth. By the time of the Civil War, virtually every person in this country was literate and wrote glowing letters in beautiful script handwriting (See Ken Burns epic “Civil War”). We have produced more Nobel laureates than any other, we are a nation that has defeated the greatest challenges to freedom that has ever risen on earth and a nation that has placed a man on the moon. This nation did all those things with people who understood sovereignty, liberty and the inalienable rights of the individual. Our education system was outstanding until, beginning in the mid-1960's, it began to lose its way and now we here we have a state-sponsored report that ignored its opportunity to concentrate on improving education and instead concentrated on increased state control of the students and the public.

As I studied this report I began to see how limited it actually is. It extends and expands on policies set by politicians and the school management over the last many years, policies that have produced one of the poorest state education systems in the country. (In 1998 Indiana ranked number 42 in SAT scoring. New York ranked number 41.)(conterra.com...satstate98) The changes proposed in the report only expands those already existing concepts. For instance, there is medical care (a nurse) available in most schools. The P-16 plan expands that and, in its call for control, extends pre-natal care to all, an extension of my earlier statement. As this is a school system “expansion” plan then that statement means pre-natal care available through the school system. It also calls for medical care to be available to all children from birth to six years of age, again through the school system. Thus, we can see that the report is actually encouraging sexual activity, as now the school children who become pregnant will have a ready means for medical assistance–even baby sitting service (as a career track perhaps)--available through the public school system.

In many instances it is racist report, as the policies, if implemented, would extend and expand those barriers, already existing, that keeps children from lower income households from receiving a broad-based education. It would deny to those children the opportunity to use education as a means to overcome those barriers, to succeed, and leave the inner city. Should the state implement the described system it would be directly implicated in denying those directly affected, (the inner city children) the upward mobility, future intellectual growth, and the way out of inner-city poverty. The P-16 Plan proposes a vocational-centered education system. It must be stopped.

This is a “people” issue that will affect all people in the state.

It would destroy the inner-city residents dream of a better life for their children through education and, in so doing, finish the destruction of that great education system that took us two hundred years to build as described above. It would return our present broad “academic-based” education system to the vocational-based system common in Europe over a hundred years ago–a system that prompted many Europeans to leave Europe and come to this country. (Including Benjamin Franklin’s family.)(Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin) In England, today, the system still exists. A child is required to take his class A-exams when he finishes his secondary schooling at age fourteen. If he fails to pass those exams, at the age of fourteen, he is out of school and can qualify for no more public education. A more general exam, the class O-exam (the poly-technical exam) is administered a couple of years earlier.

For basic information: Not once, not anywhere, in the Indiana P-16 Plan report does it take into consideration the limitations placed on education by the Indiana State Constitution.

Article VIII, Section I of the State Constitution, explicitly states that only the General Assembly shall have control of the education system and that the schools shall be “general and uniform.” Any child thus, due to the property rights granted to him by the state constitution, may transfer to any school in the state and know that he will receive the same, identical, education that he would receive in the school from which he transferred. All public schools must offer the same curriculum, statewide.

Despite the limitations included in the State Constitution, in Indiana certain school systems are installing a curriculum different from other schools in the state. In particular, the Indianapolis Public School system is installing a thing called the “Smaller Learning Centers” where each child selects his course of education at the eighth grade and pursues that course throughout his high school years. This, the S. L. C. program, is a federal education system funded by a $2,242,031 grant from the Department of Education. The Constitution of Indiana directly prohibits that type education in Indiana. It is not “general and uniform”. It is a directed and limited education system and the student must stay in his chosen school throughout his high school career. Even if the S.L.C. system is installed, it was expressly prohibited by the people of Indiana through the Indiana State Constitution. Only the state General Assembly may control our school systems. A federal education program cannot be installed in the Indiana schools and it only needs to be challenged in court to be nullified. It would take a constitutional amendment to allow the schools to receive support from an outside source.

In spite of the poor performance of the Indiana Public School system, nowhere in the “Indiana P-16 Plan” is there any recommendation for the introduction of school vouchers to allow the students to escape to the private school sector. Even Washington D. C. is introducing a school voucher system to allow any student a way out.

On Page 24 (Page 13 in the hand-out edition) the “Indiana P-16 Plan” recommends increased taxes to support it.

In no state is there evidence that increased funding has increased the level of education achievement by the students in any school. For instance: In Washington D. C. $11,181 is spent yearly on each student (average daily attendance) and its SAT ranks it at number 50 of 51 school systems in the country. Only New York spends more, $11,568, and its SAT ranking is at number 41. (1998). The student SAT in Utah ranks it number 9 while that state only spends $5,718 per student, the lowest in the nation. Indians spends $9,220 per student to rank number 12 in spending but at number 42 in the national SAT ranking. Iowa, at number one (1) SAT ranking, spends only $7,701 per student, number 32 in the nation. (centerra.com....satstate98)

Obviously, spending more money on the Indiana public school system is not the right thing to do.

Just as in all other Indiana Public School so-called “improvements,” that we have seen installed over the last twenty years, the “Indiana P-16 Plan” deals with function rather than with facts. It, like all the others, is mere eye-wash.

And, on page 23 (Page 12 in the hand-out edition), the “Indiana P-16 Plan" deals with technology but totally ignores one of the greatest technology advances ever made to aid education: eBooks. These are conceivably an even greater advance than Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press.

One of the major expenses faced by parents of students today is the states requirement to purchase or rent school books each semester. We live in the age of technology. The value of a book is not the book but the information printed on the page. We have the ability to furnish the information provided in every school book, via the Internet, directly to every student at no charge, free. If the student needs a printed page it can be printed at the cost of about a penny per page in the students home. It would be of far greater value for the student, or his parents, to invest in a computer for the home rather than throw the money away down the book rental rat hole. The computer costs could be even tax deductible or the state could rebate the purchase price if no taxes were due. Let us treat education for what it really is, the most important activity in the state. Without education we cease to exist. It would appear that Indiana could well emulate Texas where the Gilmer-Aiken law provided free textbooks to all students. eBooks allows that possibility in Indiana. (Lost books and uncollected rental or purchase fees are a major expense to schools) Even if the eBooks still had to be purchased for each student the savings would be worth the cost.

In the discussion of particular sections of the “Indiana P-16 Plan” that follows, note how many of the sections do not deal with student scholastic improvement.

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The “Indiana P-16 Plan”:
(The page numbers listed refer to the on-line edition)

Need: (Page 2)

The “Indiana P-16 Plan” opens with a short introduction, then a brief history of the Roundtable and a listing of its members. The listing is most impressive and it is truly a blue ribbon commission. One would be hard pressed to assemble a more impressive array of individuals on one board to discuss the subject of this commission. Unfortunately, the impressive array of individuals is overshadowed by those who are excluded from the commission. Not a single parent with no affiliation with either industry or scholastic association is included. At least half the Roundtable membership should have been made up of those individuals. There was no one to speak for the students and no one to speak for the taxpayers. Both classes of Indiana people were effectively ignored both on the roundtable and in this report. The customers and supporters of the school system were excluded. (This is marked throughout the report.)

Academic Standards, Assessments and Accountability (The first Section, page 5)

Here was the ideal place to introduce a discussion of the minimum academic standards expected of the students at each level in the school system along with means to assess those achievements. When only 26% pass the ISTEP.(Star, 12/03/2003) It could have also introduced the accountability required of the schools if the students failed to meet those expectations and provide a base from which to judge if the report in its recommendations achieved its stated goals. When only 26% pass the ISTEP (Star, 12/03/2003) there needs to be some school accountability. Instead the report mainly concentrates on extra-student activity and suggests electronic monitoring of students rather than ways to give knowledge to the students. It even includes a suggestion for school leaders to assess the performance of their school in terms of the later, after graduation, success of its students.

The report states: “Post-secondary leaders and faculty to assess the performance of their institution in terms of later success of its students,.....”

This pre-supposes a state-enforced method of monitoring or tracking an individual after he leaves the school system. Thus, the report justifies the introduction of a totalitarian education/personal monitoring system through the school system that is best left out of a freedom-loving society. We certainly do not want our schools turning into a personal monitoring arm of the government.

Teaching and Learning (Second Section, page 6)

Again, here was another ideal place to discuss the methods required to improve the level of student achievement. This was not done. Instead the entire section is concerned with teachers, their recruitment, preparation, licensing, compensation, retention and professional development. Nothing to do with teaching and learning by the student.

Here, in this context, would have been an excellent place to discuss returning teachers to professional status and eliminating the teachers union. No teacher, or any professional, can perform at his or her optimum best when there is no chance for advancement in his chosen career. The teacher should be able to perform at the peak of his ability and, on his own, negotiate for compensation and advancement that properly would reflect his achievement both in education and professional growth as he progresses in his career. A true professional needs no one else to negotiate for him.

In Texas, at least a few years ago, every teacher was required to be working towards his Masters degree and was rewarded for his personal achievements as he progressed. There was no teachers union.

School and District Leadership and Governance: (Third Section, page 8)

This is a section that should not have appeared in this report. It deals with leadership, with teachers, with high quality school leaders including women and minorities along with incentives to work in certain areas and schools. This should have appeared in another, entirely different, report aimed primarily at school management.

However, included in this section is the recommendation for full-day mandatory Kindergarten for all children. This is a recommendation that would result a huge increase in the school budgets–as much as, roughly, an eight percent increase and would require a huge tax increase for the taxpayers. It would extend school control of the children to a younger age–an undercurrent that runs throughout the report.

Our school system has not needed this additional grade for over a hundred years and certainly does not need it now. Children, today are the same as they were two hundred years ago. The education system is at fault. (Consider: Benjamin Franklin only received two years of formal education at Boston Latin School (Cotton Mather’s school) where he qualified for Harvard but was apprenticed at age 10.)(Isaacson: Benjamin Franklin)

Early Learning and School Readiness: (Fourth Section, page 9)

This entire section is devoted to extra-curricular activity at a time in the child’s life which is normally considered outside the schools responsibility. In particular, it deals with the student from birth to age seven. It deals with early learning and states “that the way the human brain develops during the first years of life has a significant impact on later learning and intellectual growth.”

It does not mention that there are 11 trillion neurons in the brain at birth, each of which must be coated, insulated, with a tiny little sac created from Omega 3 fatty acids. Nutrition is just as important to the young child as quality care and learning. But this important information is missing from this plan. Children need more than just learning experiences as stated in this report. They need good nutrition. Yet, that is ignored in this plan.

The P-16 Plan calls for providing for information to be available to parents, pediatricians and others who work with pre-school age children, regarding cognitive (brain) development and the importance of reading to children. It proposes to guarantee health screening and high-quality developmental checkups for all children from birth to age 7. In words from the report: “Childcare and education cannot be thought of as separate entities.”

Medical care is the responsibility of the medical profession. It is not the responsibility of the school system to ensure that it available to those young children and it would probably be illegal for it to provide that care without each school employing a doctor. (Who else in the school could write a prescription.) It is the responsibility of the parents to ensure proper medical care is available to their children.

Is the school planning on having all the students addicted to Ritalin before they start to school?

The report then suggests providing parents with information on what they can do to help their children become good readers. In one sub-subject it even wants to ensure students can read at grade-level by grade 3. That’s right, by grade 3.

That is unacceptable. According to one author (Stormer: None Dare Call It Education.) students in private schools are taught to read by January or February of their first year (and then can read a hundred books by the end of their second year in school. I know, I did) This should be the minimum standard acceptable in any Indiana school system.

The plan wants to require full-day Kindergarten for all children and to make their attendance mandatory.

This also is unacceptable. The taxpayers of this state cannot be expected to extend free compulsory schooling to students below the age of the first grade. If parents of those children want to send their students to those schools then they can support those activities. If the parents cannot afford those pre-school activities then the taxpayers of the state cannot be asked, or required, to furnish those activities. The taxpayers support a 12-year public school system. That is all.

Finally, in paragraph 8 of this section the report calls for establishment of a School Readiness Commission to coordinate, from birth to age six, early learning and school readiness experiences.

This too is unacceptable. The taxpayers of this state should not be expected to fund a state activity that could conceivably relieve parents of their responsibility, and their right, to educate and to instill their own beliefs in their own children. Childhood is a special time, a time apart, with claims and needs that only parents can tend to. We need only look to Hector and Andromache to understand the remarkable character of this familial love.
Yet in this plan those childhood needs are ignored and we see a clear attempt to substitute the school for the parents. In this free country neither the school nor the state has any right to interfere in this important aspect of the parent/child relationship. Again, we see in this P-16 Plan the beginning of an attempt to turn the school system into a personal monitoring and control arm of the government. Have we less compassion than the Greeks?

Eliminating Achievement Gaps and Ensuring Academic Progress for All Students:
(Fifth Section, page 12)

This is another section that should not have been included in this report. It deals with an educational problem concerning poor students and students from minority households that should be handled by the administration at each school. This should be the subject of an entire report on its own. If there is sufficient need, then special schools should be made available to provide private instruction to these students to bring them to the grade level with their peers or to the grade level they can operate at with their disabilities.

We must recognize that if there are students with learning disabilities and that some students may not be able to function at the intellectual level required in this, the information age. If that is so, then perhaps special attention (special schools) should be created to assist those students to acquire and reach the highest level of performance he can achieve. It is not discrimination to provide education at a secondary level to students with learning disabilities. It is recognition of certain limitations, finding the level where that student can function and then ensuring he has adequate preparation for his future. Perhaps it is just accepting reality.

If necessary, we must petition the Legislature to establish a separate school system for those certain students. If this is done the Legislature may need to place this system beyond the purview of the court system. (The special schools would have to be available in all school districts to meet the requirements of the State Constitution.) Personally, I think too much attention is focused on the underachiever, with enormous effort needed to bring them to some acceptable “standard” of performance, with little or no attention given to the brighter students. With this program the high achiever becomes the more at risk population. The high achiever is ignored.

Ensuring College and Workforce Success: (Sixth Section, page 15)

In this section there are many “suggestions” for improving the quality of the academic skills of students. But when I see the words “Require”, “Ensure”, “Insist” and “Increase” I begin to wonder if the school system is not becoming a bit tyrannical and paternalistic in its approach to teaching. Where are the words such as “motivate” and “energize” and “captivate”? Where this section could have focused on the students individual needs it almost exclusively addresses the limitations of the school system.

It insists that “Core 40" become the standard curriculum for all students
It wants more time for communication with parents and students
It wants to justify the stiffer curriculum
It requires formal “opt-out” if the students decides “Core 40" is not for him
It wants to install another End-Of-Course Assessment (ECA) system although the school system already has the SAT student performance information.

The “Core 40" curriculum is not defined in the P-16 Plan. (My outside information is that the “Core 40" curriculum, addressed above, is laughed at by the students and it is considered a joke as a minimum standard for students. It appears, that in perspective, it shows just how bad the current programs are.)

This section also addresses vocational training yet fails to address one simple fact: If a student is involved in vocational training (work) he is spending valuable time away from study. He has less time to study and cannot meet the standards required for high academic performance. The obvious question then becomes:

Why does the school system support any mandatory vocational training system?

If the business community needs specially trained workers, let them train their workers. It is the responsibility of the school system to provide a general (academically oriented) and uniform education system throughout the state to ensure that each student has an education that allows him to function as an employable worker in several careers throughout his lifetime.

If the schools, statewide, want to offer elective vocational training as an option for the students, and it is approved by the General Assembly, that is perfectly acceptable. Then any student can opt for it or opt not to participate. However, it goes a little far to require students to participate in directed vocational education such as cashier training. Burger King, Chi-Chi’s, Bank-One and Marsh’s can certainly afford to train their own workers. We want fully academically trained students who can be not only an employable worker but an entrepreneur who can start and succeed in his own business one day.

Not only all this, mandatory vocational training, but they want the student to supply his own transportation between the school and the job.

Our school system should be concentrating on producing well-rounded, educated people who can work for companies such as Menasha Corp. (plastics), Parker Hannifin Corp. (pneumatic products) and Balester Optical Corporation. Never heard of them? If we were properly educating our students each of those companies would have a subsidiary in Indiana. There goes the brain drain!

Finally, there is one sub-heading of this section that addresses the high school transcript system and the needs to “electronically” transfer student data between high schools, post-secondary institutions and employers.

The transcript is the students private record of his achievement during his high school education. The controlling word in the previous sentence is “private”. It is his record and it belongs to him. The school should not be allowed to issue that transcript to anyone other than the student, and, if asked by anyone other than the student, the school should be required to obtain the students written permission before issuing it or simply refer the question to the ex-student.

To close this section, the report asks Indiana employers to demonstrate support by demanding higher student academic achievements. Indiana employers have been demanding that for years and the school system has not been able to deliver. The P-16 Plan is not the cure all. The very existence of this Plan demonstrates another wasted five years.

Drop-Out Prevention: (Seventh Section, page 17)

It is unfortunate that the Roundtable chose not to investigate this subject, school drop-outs, to any degree. The report states that “it is estimated that more than 20,000 students (1 out of 5) do not graduate each year. And then it completely drops the numbers. This is regrettable in this important report. Every school system knows precisely how many students drop out of its schools each year. To justify the conclusions of this section those figures should have been made available, to everyone in this report. The Roundtable chose not to do so and included only an estimation. Even I can see the errors of their estimation. If there are 350,000 students in Indiana then at a 1 to 5 drop-out rate there are 70,000 drop-outs each year. This leaves the members with egg on their face. It is unfortunate they chose to speak only of those who do not graduate.

In Houston Texas, in the several schools where the “No child left behind” program was tested, the drop-out rate was such that of 2000 students entering freshman classes only 300 graduated four years later. When the program was started and the principles told they had to stop drop-outs the rate went “magically” to zero. Yet, surprisingly, while the freshman classes remained at 2000 members the graduation classes also stayed precisely the same at 300. (tbs)

Let’s look at the “unintended consequences” that happen when small schools are closed and the students transferred into large schools. Supposedly, there are all sorts of savings if ten small schools are closed and the students all are then incorporated into just one large school. Management expenses are reduced and everything is more efficient. The question is, what happens to the students? Lets see if we can find out.

Each of those ten schools had a football team. That’s about forty boys that were involved in each of those ten schools for a total of about 400 boys involved in football. Suppose there were 10 cheerleaders at each school, or a total 100 cheerleaders for the ten schools. Total, so far, of 500 students. Each of those schools had a basketball team or fifteen boys playing basketball at each school, for a total of 150 boys. Each school had about 6 cheerleaders for their basketball team for a total of 60 girls. Total basketball, at ten schools, 210 students involved. We now have a grand total of 710 students involved in just two sports in those 10 schools. Baseball adds another twenty students per school, or 200 students total. That brings us, just in sports, to 910 students involved in school activities. Each of those students can be proud, can walk with his head held high and even show off a bit. Participating in those sports kept those 910 students in school for four years. They don’t drop out. They keep their grades up and they play sports or lead cheers.

Now look at what happens when those ten schools are incorporated into one large school. The large school, of course, must have a football team. Forty boys. The large school must have cheerleaders. Ten girls. Fifty students are now involved in football. Basketball has its fifteen players and six cheerleaders. Twenty-one students. Baseball has its twenty players.....A grand total of ninety one (91) students involved in sports in the new school. Eight hundred and nineteen students take a walk. 819 students have no place to go, no place to hold their head high, no incentive to keep their grades up. So they take a walk whenever the occasion to do so presents itself. That’s what the large school offers to the students.

And every teacher in each of those ten small school knew the name of every boy on its team and every cheerleader out in front of the crowds. And yes, there were crowds; the same size as the ones now seen at the large schools.

And this analysis is only for sports. What about the band members, the thespians, the newspapers, the school yearbooks, the announcers, the office helpers, all those students that make a school work doing those things that teach individual student responsibility. All those involved students are mostly lost in the large schools. Nobody there even knows the names of the lost students.

That’s what the creation of large schools has cost. It is the students that have paid the price.

When the Roundtable chose to ignore numbers it was really ignoring the Students.

In its report the Roundtable chose not to recommend smaller schools. Using these simple examples the state, and every large school within the state, has no option but to immediately start to reestablish the smaller school system. (Not smaller schools within the large schools, each with a limited and directed curriculum, but back to physically separate uniform, smaller schools.) Each school will have its own identity, each involved student can then hold his head high and even brag a little. This is a program to stop drop-outs and eliminate the movement toward totalitarian control so obvious in this report..

Higher Education and Continued Learning: (Eighth Section, page 19)

In this section it appears the Roundtable may have slightly overstepped its charter. It calls for all the state universities to align their college and university admission standards, remediation policies and state-approved financial aid.

This is nonsense. Each university must always set its own admission standards to directly reflect the difficulty of the courses offered at that higher-level school. For instance, the admissions standards at a Nuclear physics college would, of necessity, be far higher than those needed at a liberal arts or education college. When it comes to designing a bridge, an airplane or an atomic reactor, we want the best engineer or mathematician available to be behind the drawing board and we want the admission standards to reflect that requirement. If a school-to-work curriculum interferes, for one day, with the education of those future intelligent students then the school-to-work program must be thrown out.

Since this section is largely devoted to College level subject matter I will comment no further. My interests (in this critique) are wholly directed toward ensuring improvement of the Indiana public school system. Except for one thing, I want my bridges correctly designed.

Control of the University entrance qualifications would seem to be a bit beyond the scope of the P-16 Plan.

Communication: (Ninth Section, page 22)

Unfortunately, the hand-out version of the P-16 report, cleverly omitted all of this section except for one rather blaze statement. Here is the core of the report: This section defines who the P-16 Plan will affect and, if implemented, would give the school system almost total control, almost dictatorial powers over all education throughout the state and to all ages.

Please Note: In this section there is no provision for excluding private schools, charter schools or home schools from the nine requirements listed below.

The key word, ALL, is used in defining its reach in seven of the nine statements. In the remaining two statements ALL is replaced with the word EVERY. That makes this section explicit. If this P-16 Plan is accepted and its requirements enacted by the Legislature those classifications of independent schools will cease to exist. This is government take-over of all state school systems.

In the on-line version this section opens with this introduction:

1. Clearly explain the non-negotiable nature and urgency of raising student achievement for all students.
2. Honestly convey the progress Indiana has made and the challenges that still exist
3. Motivate individuals to take specific actions.

It then states: “Clearly spelling out what we collectively want for every child will enable us to develop, deliver and assess the effectiveness of our communication efforts.”

Those writing the report thus tell the reader they are more interested in the effectiveness of the communications effort than in educating the child. There’s more. But when this report speaks of what they want “collectively” it eliminates individual responsibility and what follows must be government provided through the school system.

If we have learned anything from the recent trillion dollar losses in the stock markets it is that collective wisdom is always wrong. In this country success is contingent on individual action, individual wisdom and individual morality. The school system could not force anyone to study anything against his own desires. What follows in this section, therefore, is a lesson in state-applied brute force. It is tyranny.

The P-16 Plan then states its coverage: (Note the extensive use of the word “All”.)

1. All infants get the best foundation for learning by receiving the prenatal care they need to enter the world healthy.
2. All children receive the care, love, nurturing and experiences they need as the foundation for early brain development.

3. All children have the early learning experiences they need to enter the Kindergarten ready to learn.
4. All students are reading at or above grade level by the end of third grade.
5. All students meet or exceed academic standards at each level.
6. All students enroll and succeed in rigorous high school courses and graduate prepared to succeed in college and the work force.
7. All students have the opportunity to attend college.
8. Every student who enters a post-secondary program completes a degree.
10. Every Hoosier has access to continued life-long learning.

This is scary and reeks of state control for all of us. This listing starts with the school system (read “state”) guarantee of free prenatal care to unborn infants and ends with life-long learning. Again, this implies state control of all Indiana residents. All that is left out is the work card.

Again, prenatal care is a medical system responsibility. This service, while it may seem desirable, must never become a part of the school system. To do so would allow the school system to offer pseudo-medical care to the unborn children in Indiana. If would give the school system the right to reach deeply into the family to force the mother to receive prenatal care. And then, after birth, the school would have full control of the child and its health care needs. All this, without any guarantee of increased education for the child. Where are the other states that have successfully incorporated health care into the school system. Again, we see those basic facts omitted from the P-16 Plan.

This pre-natal early childhood care service would require a pediatric clinic in every school. The cost of this care alone would bankrupt every taxpayer in Indiana if he had to finance such a service in every school. This is to say nothing of where the pediatricians would come from. Under no condition would we, the taxpayers, allow the state to assume this responsibility.

And it just goes on from there. With the word “All” prefacing every sentence it would appear that the report demands that all the different requirements be made mandatory and that it become the responsibility of the state to ensure that the school system assume the responsibility for each. Each of those sentences beginning with the word “All” is very scary. What happens to the student who cannot meet or exceed academic standards at each level? What happens to the Mexican student who arrives in Indiana the day before school starts and cannot meet the early learning experiences it requires. Will the student who cannot meet these standards be excluded from the school system?

Notice: This dangerous section was cleverly omitted from the hand-out version so that those attendees who had not supplied themselves with the on-line version would not be aware of the requirements mandated by this section. Although I had the on-line version, during the rather hectic presentation I failed to recognize that this section had been omitted from the hand-out version.

Here the report again states that all children will be required to attend full-day Kindergarten.

We again find that sentence that says “all students are reading at above grade level by the end of third grade”. Reading is easily taught. Children can be taught to read in the first semester of school and can read a hundred books by the end of their second school year. That is an achievable goal for the Indiana school system.

In this P-16 Plan, the school system wants an awful lot without giving, in return, any educational improvements. Life doesn’t work that way.

Some very qualified and intelligent students simply cannot master college work and cannot earn a degree. Yet this report says all who enter a post-secondary program must complete a degree. Where is the law that states that all who enter college must graduate? Does that sentence imply that there will be such a law?

And the final statement, “Every Hoosier has access to continued life long learning,” would require enough local schools, and teachers, to teach every state citizen throughout his lifetime. This would be enormously expensive, particularly when the state constitution requires that all public school systems be general and uniform throughout the state. There would even have to be a school for older folks in Dime Box, Indiana, population 24.

Does this report, in fact, forecast a future state-controlled society administered by the school system? If so, then it is beginning to appear that the citizens of Indiana are viewed as slaves who exist only to serve the school system. Isn’t this backwards?

This section of this P-16 Plan details an attempt to acquire lifetime control of the citizens of Indiana, from pre-birth to old age, by the Indiana public school system. It must be rejected.

Effective Use of Technology and Efficient Use of Resources: (Ninth Section, page 23)

This is not a scientifically correct report. No theory and proof is offered, hence no opportunity for verification of any claim can be made.

The first question I asked when I encountered this section of the report was: “Where are the Research Schools?” Without adequate research to provide verifiable results, proof, every suggestion offered in this section can be questioned as to its actual need.

This section proposes furnishing broadband data connections between each school and the states’ broadband networks to support “new” ways of learning, state-wide testing and distance learning.

What will be achieved, by the average student, for the school to have access to International Baccalaureate programs, Dual Enrollments, professional development, leadership, bench marking, collaborative learning, vocational and career explorations?

Here is where the true value of the Internet technology could have been introduced and explored to show exactly the values it offers to the present student.

For example: As I mentioned before, there is a new phenomenon appearing called eBooks. This remarkable innovation is totally ignored in this report. One of the major, recurring, expenses faced by parents is the state requirement to purchase or rent the school books needed by the student each semester. Others may disagree and believe the book in hand is better. With eBooks, the book can always be printed for about a penny a page. Most important, it gets the book home where the parents can study it and see what their student-child is being told at school

Remember. This P-16 Plan states, at the beginning, that “We live in the age of technology.”

The value of a book is not in the paper it is printed upon. The value of a book is in the words that are printed on each page. It is the knowledge contained therein. We, for the first time in all history, have the ability to transfer all knowledge, all the information contained in every school book, directly to the student via the Internet, through eBooks, at no charge. If the student needs to see a printed page it can be printed at the cost of about a penny a page–in the students home. Here is a method where the student can determine, for himself, whether he has need to study the printed page or whether just reading, or reviewing, the material is sufficient to satisfy his needs.

In this section, the report could have addressed just how the state could ensure that every student has access to this new technology, along with a home computer, the first day of class. But this was ignored. State-funded programs could have been recommended that would allow the student to receive his computer and for his parents to offset its costs against tax payments and reduce the computer expense to zero.

Then the student, with access to unlimited knowledge to fuel the growth of his intellect and, yes, his morality, will be able to allow his imagination to soar and his dreams to become true. He can walk with the giants of the past by simply writing a few words into his favorite search engine and yes, that giant’s words will appear. He doesn’t have to wonder who Thomas Jefferson was, for he can read all the statements of Thomas Jefferson and see who he was for himself.

Technology is here. The Internet and E-Books are a fact and they allow the student to achieve an education previous generations would have never dreamed possible. That is what this section should have been devoted to doing, to bringing true education to the modern Indiana school students.

Resources (A sub-heading, page 24)

Finally, in this section under the sub-heading “Resources,” the report asks for additional funds, more money, for the school system. As I have shown in an earlier section, the Indiana school system is funded at the rank of number 12 in the nation, $9,220 per student. Its national SAT ranking places it at number 42. As a comparison, Iowa at number 1, SAT ranking, spends only $7,701 per student and Utah ranks number 9, SAT ranking, while spending only $5,718 per student. Let me make that perfectly clear with this table:

Indiana SAT Rank 42 Spends $9,220 per student (#12)
Iowa SAT Rank 1 Spends $7,701 per student (#32)
Utah SAT Rank 9 Spends $5,718 per student (#51)

The median amount spent per student throughout the United States is $7,948.
Indiana schools are funded $1,519 per student higher than the national median amount spent.

For the Indiana school system to ask for more money is unacceptable. What school system would dare ask for more money with a record comparable to this? The Indiana school system needs no more funding. It needs to clean up its own teaching system and the content of its curriculum.

But there are worse school systems. Let me include just two more schools to show just how bad some of them actually are:

New York SAT Rank 41 Spends $11,568 per student (#1)
Washington, D.C. SAT Rank 50 Spends 11,181 per student (#2)

Is this where we want Indiana to go? I think not.

Conclusion:

As I see it. The Roundtable P-16 Plan is asking an awful lot of Indiana residents without requiring, or even asking, the school system to give very much back. Lets look at that. It wants the Indiana school system to assume almost total control over the residents of this state. It wants to start with mandatory prenatal care for the unborn infant; extend that to mandatory health care, and give nurturing and experiences for early brain development for children from birth to age seven. Then it will provide total control through the school years. It even proposes to select their vocation for them. After schooling is completed, the school system wants total control to provide continued “lifelong” learning for older folks. And it, the school system (read state) is left to define what all this means. Thus the Indiana P-16 Plan would create a totalitarian education system that follows and controls everyone from before birth to the grave. This is unacceptable in a free society.

In a free society, each person is free to make certain decisions that affect his own future. No one else can make those decisions for him. The state cannot, his employer cannot and certainly the school system cannot. The school system is required, by the General Assembly, to offer a service to the citizens of this state. Defined and limited by the State Constitution, the General Assembly has the responsibility to ensure that the state public school system is general and uniform. It may not delegate or allow other levels of government, federal or local, to take over or dictate the educational rules for that system. Likewise, public schools within the state are prohibited from accepting funding or external mandates that require modifications to their curriculum other than that as designated and enacted into state statute by the Indiana General Assembly.

Freedom:

In a free society, the creative people are free to control their assets in any manner they so choose. If they choose to manufacture TV sets in China, they are free to do so. If they choose to educate their children in private schools, they are free to do so. They are free to make any decision that ensures to them maximum return on their available assets. In this country, should anyone choose to manufacture TV sets, he is free to do so. But that person must be able to compete both in quality and price or his TV sets will sit on the shelf. In this country, we employ people who once manufactured TV sets in a far more productive manner. AT&T once employed 475,000 telephone operators in this country. Today it employs 87,000. Technology allowed the rest to be employed in a far more productive manner.

Education is the same way. Parents should have the option to select the best source of an education for their children. While the state constitution does require a public school system it does not mandate that there be only a government-controlled system. The state constitution does not prohibit a parallel, but private, education system and that is what is missing from the Indiana education system and what is missing from the P-16 Plan.

This plan falls short in that it demands total control over the education system without giving anything in return. It maintains the status quo. Everything in the school system remains the same except that its hold on its captive audience (and it is almost a captive audience) is expanded. Just adding mandatory full-day Kindergarten would add an eight percent increase to its budget (at least) but would guarantee no better schooling. Those children who now attend Kindergarten fare no better later in school than those who never attend Kindergarten, else it would have been mentioned in the plan. It is not. Children start to school as an exclamation point. The schools change them to a period.

The P-16 Plan does not guarantee better teachers. It places no minimum standards for hiring or for maintaining a position (re-evaluations) on the teachers. It does not address the almost mandatory need to return professional teachers in the classroom. All professional people negotiate for themselves and the teachers have earned the right to be professionals. They worked hard enough to get where they are.

The plan overlooks mandating continued education for the teachers as a requirement for holding the job. It leaves huge central administration centers (unproductive overhead) in place. It places no requirements, no minimum performance standards, no goal to shoot for, upon the school system. It leaves teacher certification in the hands of the teachers union. It leaves the teachers union in place, thus leaving almost total teacher control to the union. (The education union is not even mentioned in the P-16 Plan.) Nowhere does the plan provide adequate justification for any of the requests for the increased control of people and the increased funding it is seeking to acquire.

In Texas, a few years, ago every teacher was required to be working on his/her Masters degree in order to hold a job as a teacher. Every teacher spent their summer breaks attending College until the Masters was completed. There is no mention of that requirement in the P-16 Plan. Why not?

The product the school system is supposed to produce is well-educated students. It is failing to do that. Private schools are doing an excellent job in Indiana and the United States, but the P-16 Plan fails to take any notice. It has failed to try to emulate, or to even recognize, Iowa, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Kansas or South Dakota, the top six states as rated in SAT scores. It did not mention any one of these states in its demand for increased control and funding. Surely, someone could have gone to those states and found why they rank number one to six atop the education ladder. But obviously, no one did, for not one of those is mentioned once in this report as roll model for a successful school system.

This report, the “Indiana P-16 Plan for Improving Student Achievement” should be rejected by the citizens of Indiana and by the General Assembly. It addresses increased control of citizens of the state, by the state, through the school system. It would expand forced vocational education to all students and is more concerned with control than with scholars. It will drive students from the education system.

Requirements for a new Education Plan:

Any new education plan must accomplish these things:

1. Improve student achievement. (This is the primary goal and must be paramount throughout)
2. Contribute to reduction in remedial education rates. (At all levels in the education system.)
3. Enhance teacher quality. (Achieved by returning teachers to professional status.)
4. A return to the pre-1995 ISTEP test.
5. Require no new governmental structures.
6. Reduce Administrative overhead.

That’s all there is to it. It is no mystery and doesn’t require massive new expenses or increases to the tax structure. It is self-explanatory.

Back to the Beginning:

At the beginning of this critique I mentioned a major problem that the school systems must face: The computer-literate child. Not once in the P-16 Plan did the ed-Roundtable address that problem. In our information-based society the school system should be set up to identify and educate those gifted children who can ensure that our society continues to grow and expand. Twenty-five years ago no one, and that includes every person on the Indiana P-16 Plan panel, could have foreseen the effects, the changes and the immense national growth that the computer would have imposed upon our society over the last decade. And yet in their report, the P-16 Plan panelists pretend to be able to forecast the needs of our society for the next ten, twenty or perhaps fifty years. They ignored the computer-literate child. He destroys their plan.

May I quote from one of my favorite authors, Michael Chrichton, on people forecasting the future?

“Let’s think back to people in 1900 in, say, New York. If they worried about people in 2000, what would they worry about? Probably: Where would people get enough horses? And what would they do about all the horseshit? But of course, within a few years, nobody rode horses except for sport.

“They also didn’t know what a radio was, or an airport, or a movie, or a television, or a computer, or a cell phone, or a jet, an antibiotic, a rocket, a satellite, an MRI, ICU, IUD, IBM, IRA. ERA, EEG, EPA, IRS, DOD, PCP, HTML, Internet, interferon, instant replay, remote sensing, remote control, speed dialing, gene therapy, gene splicing, genes, spot welding, heat-seeking, bipolar, prozac, leotards, lap dancing, email, tape recorder, CDs, air bags, plastic explosive, plastic, robots, cars, and hundreds of other items.”

Michael makes my point.

Only foolish people would attempt to forecast the future of our society in any way. For the authors of this P-16 Plan to attempt to forecast the educational needs of the children in our society over the next ten, twenty of even fifty years is indeed presumptuous.

I rest my case.

I vote no to the Indiana P-16 Plan.

Ed Sparks