By Abdul Hakim-Shabazz
IndyPoltics.Org

With the May primary being about a month away, a few things popped on my radar screen to make me think that it’s probably time for Indiana to change the way it conducts primaries. No I take that back, it’s time to eliminate taxpayer-funded primaries.

Abdul Hakim-Shabazz is an attorney and the editor and publisher of IndyPoltics.Org.

I reached this conclusion after doing a story about the actual number of contested primaries in Indiana. It was interesting to see how many races there were in both the Democratic and Republican primaries with only one person on the ballot. For example, only 15 percent of the 100 races in the Indiana House of Representatives were contested. However, looking at the data and filings got me wondering about the bigger question: What is the point of a primary?  It’s for political parties to pick a candidate to present to the voters to win in a general election.

So, if the point of a primary is for Democrats and Republicans to pick their candidates, why should the general public pick up the tab? I can see if we were doing an open primary and the top two vote getters faced off in the general election, but we don’t. Indiana’s primaries are closed, which means only “declared” Republicans and Democrats are supposed to vote in them. And, no offense to my political friends, but having to spend the taxpayers’ resources so a handful of politicos can nominate a candidate is kind of silly. As any county clerk will tell you, running an election is complicated. You need election judges, inspectors, poll workers for each precinct. You have to find space. Ballots have to be printed. You need to procure machines to count the ballots. That seems like a lot of work so 11-12 percent of registered voters can choose a candidate.

Primaries are a function of political parties and they should be the ones footing the bill. So instead of a political primary, why not do county conventions? They would operate just like state and national conventions where the parties and their delegates would select a candidate to present to the voters. We already do this Indiana with the secretary of state’s office, treasurer, auditor and attorney general.  The Democrats, Republicans and Libertarians have conventions in which they nominate candidates and then present them to voters for approval in November.

Now one of the criticisms of eliminating the primary system is that the party bosses and insiders will pick the candidate and the better choice may not necessarily be the one who is picked by the voters. That is a risk that you take, but I point to the most recent example of “party bosses” getting their hats and other parts of their anatomy handed to them at the most recent Marion County Democratic slating in February. The party “leadership” wanted to back the coroner, Dr. Frank Lloyd, as the candidate for clerk as opposed to Myla Eldridge, who actually worked in the Clerk’s office for the past seven years and has helped run elections. And, despite threats, intimidation and usual Democratic election chicanery, the precinct committeemen said they had enough and chose the much more qualified candidate in Eldridge.

The trick in all this is figuring out a system to choose delegates or precinct committee folks, but I am sure that can be figured out. There are a lot of smart people in this state in all political parties that can come up with an answer. But the current system needs to be changed. As long as primaries remained closed and voters have few choices, then there’s no reason taxpayers should open their wallets and foot the bill to do for political parties what they should be doing for themselves.

Abdul is an attorney and the editor and publisher of IndyPoltics.Org. He is also a frequent contributor to numerous Indiana media outlets. He can be reached at abdul@indypolitics.org.

Vast majority of educators rated in top 2 categories

By Jacob Rund and Lesley Weidenbener
TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS — Only a tiny fraction of Indiana’s educators were deemed ineffective while more than one quarter earned the highest possible marks during the first year of a state-mandated evaluation system.

Performance results released Monday by the Department of Education revealed that only one of every 250 educators was ranked in the lowest category. And less than 3 in 100 were rated as needing improvement.

Those two bottom categories block pay raises and require individual improvement plans.

The data from last year’s 55,000 evaluations also showed schools that earned overall A grades from the state gave more of their educators higher ratings, while those that received F grades had the most scored ineffective.

“It confirms what I think we already thought was true,” said Teresa Meredith, president of the Indiana State Teachers Association, the state’s biggest education union.

“As schools’ letter grades go down, the number of highly effective teachers shrinks,” she said.

But even schools with F grades rated less than 1 percent of their educators as ineffective. The law’s author — House Education Chairman Bob Behning, R-Indianapolis — said he’s not sure the system produced enough lower ratings to be realistic.

“In every field in life, you have a bell curve in terms of proficiency,” Behning said. “You don’t predetermine how many people are on each side but it needs to be somewhat balanced. This bell curve is so one-sided that it doesn’t it even look like a bell curve.”

The evaluation data is the product of a 2011 law passed by the Indiana General Assembly requiring public school districts to establish a system to review their licensed educators. That would include an assessment of anyone working for the school district that needs a license to do his or her job — including teachers, counselors, administrators and others.

The law doesn’t mandate a specific evaluation system but does require student test results to play a “significant” role in determining the ratings. Classroom observations and school performance can be other factors. Districts were able to develop their own systems for determining teacher ratings or choose among several models.

School districts rated educators on a 1-4 scale — 1 being ineffective and 4 being highly effective. The data also includes a “not evaluated” category for teachers and other educators who were unable to complete the school year for various reasons.

Statewide, schools rated 26.4 percent of educators as highly effective, 61.2 percent effective, 2 percent as needing improvement and 0.39 percent ineffective. About 10 percent were not evaluated.

Schools with A and B grades had more educators rated highly while those with Cs, Ds and Fs rated more teachers as needing improvement and ineffective.

Those schools with lower grades also had higher percentages of educators in the “not evaluated” category. More than 14 percent fell into that category at schools with F grades.

Meredith said the category likely includes some teachers who realized they would receive a poor rating and quit or retired. It could also include educators that schools fired before the evaluation process finished, she said.

That still means the system is working, Meredith said, because it’s rooting out poor teachers. “I don’t want an ineffective teacher teaching next to me,” she said.

The state law requires every public school district to evaluate their teachers and all but charters to report the information to the state. However, roughly 70 districts settled their collective bargaining agreements before the law took effect on July 1, 2011 and were therefore not required to submit data. Those districts will be subject to the law when their contracts expire and new ones are established. Charter schools must begin reporting results for the 2013-2014 school year.

Senate Education Chairman Dennis Kruse, R-Auburn, said he was surprised to see more than 90 percent of teachers and other educators had received ratings of effective or highly effective. But he said the results— assuming districts took their responsibilities seriously and used rigorous standards — are “really good.”

And Kruse said the anecdotal evidence he’s seen backs up the data.

“I’ve visited quite a few schools the last couple years — in my district and across the state — and I am impressed with a lot of the teachers in classrooms,” Kruse said. “I’m impressed with what they’re doing.”

But he warned against using the new data to compare educator ratings between districts. That’s because each district determined how it developed the evaluations.

Of the school districts that submitted data, about 115 reported using RISE, the state-adopted model for educator evaluation and development, and 60 said they used a modified version of RISE. Another 62 reported they had used locally developed plans for teacher assessment criteria. The remaining 29 used another system or did not report.

Districts can change evaluation systems on a year-to-year basis.

The highly-rated Crawford County Schools used the RISE system with a few tweaks and ranked nearly every one of its educators as effective or highly effective. Only one received a needs improvement rating and none were deemed ineffective.

Superintendent Mark Eastridge said the evaluation process was valuable. “It’s really gotten my administrators and myself and teachers very in tune with quality instruction and what’s going on in our classrooms on a day to day basis,” he said.

“We’ve been a very successful school corporation for awhile,” he said. “But now we’re being much more intentional about looking in the classroom and seeing what’s happening.”

He said administrators used the evaluation process to identify resources or practices that are successful and should be shared to other teachers and schools.

But Eastridge said he expected schools that are struggling would identify ineffective teachers using the system. And while most schools rated no educators as ineffective, a few did have several in the lowest category.

Madison Junior High in Jefferson County rated four teachers as ineffective, Crestview Elementary in Lawrence Township in Indianapolis had five, Kokomo High School in Howard County had six and the Theodore Roosevelt Career & Technical Academy in Gary had seven.

The individual teacher ratings are confidential. State law requires that if an educator receives a rating of ineffective or improvement necessary, the evaluator and the educator will develop a remediation plan.

Also, districts are required to notify parents if a student is to have teachers rated as ineffective for two consecutive years.

The state also released information Monday regarding Indiana colleges and their teacher prep programs. The information includes the total teacher evaluation scores listed by category for recent graduates of colleges around the state. The only teachers included in the evaluation were those with three years of experience or less. The statistics are broken down by category — teachers with one year of experience, those with two years of experience, and three years of experience.

Kruse said the goal is to help colleges learn how well their graduates are prepared for the classroom and to let superintendents know where to find the best teachers.

“I think the competition it creates at the colleges will be good,” Kruse said. “They’ll have to have their teachers rated well or they won’t be getting new students to enroll.”

The data shows that first year teachers are less likely to be rated as highly effective and more likely to be rated as ineffective than their colleagues.

Jacob Rund is a reporter at TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.

By Lesley Weidenbener
TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS – State tax receipts beat projections in March but a key lawmaker said it’s not enough to clear concerns about the state’s finances.

Revenue topped $1.02 billion last month – about 1.4 percent more than estimates released last December. That’s also 11.6 percent more than in March 2013.

Senate Appropriations Chairman Luke Kenley, R-Noblesville, said that sounds like good news. “But it’s actually not,” he said. “Not if you dig deep into the numbers.”

For the fiscal year – which began July 1 – total tax collections are still about $71 million behind the estimates used to write the current two-year budget. And in March, sales tax collections – the state’s highest single source of revenue – remained behind projections.

“I’m scratching my head,” Kenley said. “The economy is not that bad and the stock market is crazy. But our revenues are just not robust.”

Kenley pointed to corporate tax receipts – which are 15 percent higher than projected this fiscal year – as the one positive sign. The increase in revenue is despite cuts in that tax rate. Kenley said that could be the result of companies shifting revenue to Indiana from states that have higher tax rates.

Republican Gov. Mike Pence has already ordered agencies to cut back to try to accommodate the lower than expected revenue. And Kenley said Indiana government remains in good fiscal health, thanks to roughly $2 billion the state had in the bank at the end of the last fiscal year.

But to maintain that, state officials must be careful about future spending, he said. That will be important next year as lawmakers write the next two-year budget.

Kenley said he’s already thinking about it. “We can’t let these things slip,” he said. “We have to keep our good position.”

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