Educational Progress in Area Districts (2006-2008)

The Indianapolis Business Journal has an informative article, currently online, about the progress school districts in the 8-county region achieved during 2006-2008. They also relate the information in a map format that is easy to read, and therefore quite informative.

Norm Heikens, IBJ reporter, opens up his piece with:

Some unsung local school districts are better than the most glamorous districts at improving their students’ academic performance, an IBJ analysis of new figures from the Indiana Department of Education suggests.

Warren Township outpaces Carmel-Clay.

Franklin Township outshines Hamilton Southeastern.

Indianapolis Public Schools upstages Zionsville.

To be clear, students in the less affluent districts do not score higher on tests than their counterparts in the prestigious districts. And not even the most enthusiastic supporters of the new “growth model” way of measuring students and schools are prepared to say, for instance, that Warren is necessarily a better district than Carmel.

But the 2006-2008 figures, made available to schools in January and the public a few weeks later, show that some districts facing overwhelming odds in the form of poverty and absentee parents are arguably among the best at getting the most from their students.

Heikens goes into good detail about the success, as measured in ISTEP score improvement in Warren Township and IPS, as well as looking at Washington Township schools as a high achieving district with lower levels of improvement in scores.

This analysis is complex, grouping children by ISTEP scores with other children who obtained the same score throughout the state. They then measured the improvement in test scores of those children as compared with their peers. The analysis pulled together the improvement in ISTEP scores of all children within any school district - compared with how each child's peers fared in other districts throughout the state. So, bottom line, this analysis is presented in a clear fashion, but the analysis underpinning it, is complex and reflects more than the change in average test scores district to district. It is an attempt to hold districts accountable for the advancement of student learning as compared to student learning throughout the state, child by child.

The school districts are categorized by the State Department of Education, as High Achieving or Low Achieving, according to the % of students passing ISTEP. They are also categorized as High Growth or Low Growth, according to the improvement in the test scores over the 2006-2008 time frame, using this child by child improvement analysis. While the IBJ lists all school districts in the 8-county region, below I just pulled out the Marion County school district information. But, do look at the map for a broader perspective. The 8-county rank is based on the ISTEP score improvement among the 44 school districts in the region.

District (8-county rank) MATH	state rating	2008 % passing	change from 2006(% points)
MSD Warren Tnsp (1)	HG/HA	57	+16
Franklin Tnsp Comm. (2)	HG/HA	60	+14
Town of Speedway (3)	HG/HA	57	+11
IPS (4)	LG/LA	45	+9
MSD Perry Tnsp (6)	HG/HA	61	+8
MSD Wayne Tnsp (10)	HG/LA	50	+7
MSD Decatur Tnsp (18)	LG/LA	45	+4
MSD Pike Tnsp (26)	LG/LA	46	0
Beech Grove (28)	LG/HA	49	-1
MSD Lawrence Tnsp (32)	LG/LA	48	-1
MSD Washington Tnsp (33)	LG/HA	46	-2

District (8-county rank) ENGLISH	state rating	2008 % passing	change from 2006 (% points)
MSD Warren Tnsp (4)	HG/LA	50	+7
Franklin Tnsp Comm. (6)	HG/HA	58	+6
MSD Wayne Tnsp (13)	LG/LA	47	+4
IPS (18)	LG/LA	42	+2
MSD Perry Tnsp (19)	HG/HA	54	+2
MSD Pike Tnsp (20)	LG/LA	49	+2
MSD Washington Tnsp (27)	LG/HA	49	-1
MSD Lawrence Tnsp (30)	LG/LA	49	-2
MSD Decatur Tnsp (39)	LG/LA	41	-5
Town of Speedway (42)	LG/HA	48	-6
Beech Grove (43)	LG/HA	47	-8

As the ISTEP data for 2009 and 2010 come out, the DOE will plug those numbers into this student achievement growth model. This is and will continue to be a very interesting approach to analyzing how well school districts are doing at improving the education of their students.

Tully's Sunday Article On IPS-Bennett Meeting A Real Gem

Yesterday's Indianapolis Star had a front page, in depth, article about a meeting between Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tony Bennett, IPS Superintendent, Eugene White, and 'more than a dozen [of White's] staff members'. This is part of Matt Tully's Manual Project where he has written on various aspects of getting an education at IPS' Manual High School.

[edited March 30, 2010, to add link to IndyStar post of article : click here]

I cannot locate this outstanding piece on the IndyStar website and I fear it has fallen victim to the Star's new practice of omitting some of the favorite columnists from its web version, in an attempt to increase at least their Sunday paper copy buyership. I am told the Star posts the Sunday articles that are print-only some time midweek. I'll post a link as soon as I can.

With that rant over, let me say - maybe the dollar store still has a couple of copies or maybe you can get a copy from a friend or neighbor who still has it, or if you are going to the public library perhaps you can read their copy. It is extremely well written - Tully having massive talents in that arena. It is so good and so important that I would have willingly typed up chunks of it here, had I not learned at the recent Citizen Journalism Boot Camp put on by the Indiana Coalition for Open Government that doing so is a legal no-no.

So here is the inferior gist of Tully's article.

Bennett met with White and others from IPS to discuss whether 8 IPS schools, including Manual, would be taken over by the State Department of Education (DOE) beginning next school year. These schools are Arlington Community High School (grades 7-12), Emmerich Manual High School, Northwest High School, Thomas Carr Howe Community High School (grades 7-12), George Washington Community School (grades 7-12), Broad Ripple High School for the Performing Arts (grades 7-12), Emma Donnan Middle School (grades 7-8), and Willard J. Gambold Middle School (grades 7-8). According to the Indiana DOE website (click here for all school in Marion County with links to their performance) all have been on probationary accreditation.

Tully quotes Bennett as saying

"I want you to be able to have every discussion you have going forward with a framework," he said, staring at White. "And that framework is this: Who do we want to run these schools? I know who I want to run these schools. That's the guy sitting at the other end of the table."

Bennett then turns the conversation to what IPS is will to do differently that will improve education in these 8 schools. Tully says that the State DOE has the legal authority to make sweeping changes, including tossing out teacher union rules, due to a 1999 change in State law. They can also increase the length of the school day and the school year. But, IPS can make those changes on their own, if they can get buy-in from the teachers union.

Again just the gist of Tully's article - roughly 40-60% of teachers in these schools are ineffective, by White's own estimate. The union President, Ann Wilkins, objected to the notion that they protect bad teachers, rather saying that they support the 'process'. Tully notes that even if the State DOE takes over the failing schools, any teachers let go from those schools would be relocated to other schools in the district. That certainly is a valid conundrum.

Tully doesn't put it this way, but I believe it is all about finding some way to improve education in Indiana - improve education in all schools and improve education for all students in Indiana.

We are quite possibly on the threshold of dramatic changes in the way Indiana deals with failing schools, and Tully gave us a rare glimpse of that threshold.

Again, I highly recommend finding a copy of this article. I understand the Star will post this story within a couple of days - I'll keep checking and add a link as soon as I locate the post. This is a gem that should be read widely in Central Indiana, if not the entire state.

And They Wonder Why ...

The MSD Decatur Township likes to control information released to the public. We've all seen it. Sometimes from the outside, it appears to be a total block on information and not just spin.

The other day I was going through financial documents published about the District on the State Department of Education website (click here if you like to peruse these things yourself, MSD Decatur Township is district 5300), when I came across a line item for payment of a building lease out of the pension debt service fund. That seemed odd, so I did an open records request for what building lease was involved. I got the following email message back from Gary Pellico, the spokesman for the District.

Pat, FYI
They have coded it incorrectly on the website. We cannot and do not pay for any lease out of that fund. The correct account number is 51000 Principle of debt – bonds.

So, I called the DOE to find out what they had to say. I got a call back today from "Peggy" (I forgot to ask her last name) from the DOE, who said that it was the MSD Decatur Township who had been miscoding the entry since 2004. Peggy said she spoke with Debbie Blessing, Deputy Treasurer for the District, who told her that the person who coded it is no longer with the District and the correct code will be used in the District reports for 2010.

So, why not merely say "oops, we made a data entry error back in 2004"? This level of CYA information dissemination just causes mistrust.