Shocking electoral defeats. Meeting walkouts. Accusations. Litigation. Reconciliation. Is this Netflix’s hot new political thriller, or the fight over Indiana education?
For the past three years, the state has been embroiled in a political struggle plucked straight from a television writer’s draft table. Although other states have faced issues similar to those plaguing Indiana, it seems like every contentious education policy debate has come to a thrilling and tumultuous head in Indianapolis. Understanding this statewide struggle is key to grasping the current trends in American education. In particular, Indiana’s stark partisanship over education policy and its delayed resistance to the Common Core mark it as a microcosm of the national education debate. The state’s public clashes and contentious shuffling of standards make Indiana a bellwether of the future landscape of education policy.
How did we get here?
Indiana’s rancorous education debate can be attributed to the convergence of two trends in American education: greater focus on classroom standards and increasing partisan polarization over education reform. The focus on standards dates back to the 1980s, Harvard education professor Martin West said in an interview with the HPR: “Over the past decades, the dominant reform strategy in American education has been to reform standards.” The initial movement in the ’80s gained some federal encouragement in the 1990s, but the strongest push came with the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001. The No Child Left Behind Act conditioned federal funding on achieving high standards in math and reading, while requiring states to take action against schools that failed to meet those standards. Yet West notes that because each state had its own standards, “different states had different understandings of what was proficient and what wasn’t.” In order to remedy this, states began to collaborate on common standards in an effort that would eventually become the Common Core. According to West, the turning point came when the federal government incentivized state adoption of the Common Core by giving adopting states a “leg up” on its Race to the Top program and providing a streamlined process to get waivers from national requirements. However, federal involvement removed the possibility of conservative support.
Meanwhile, Indiana’s educational terrain was undergoing tumultuous change. Scott Elliott, bureau chief for Chalkbeat Indiana, points to 2011 as the year in which partisanship began to dominate education policy within the state. That year, the state’s heavily Republican legislature passed several major education bills with the endorsement of Governor Mitch Daniels and State Superintendent Tony Bennett. One bill started the state’s school voucher program; another expanded charter schools. A third bill limited teachers unions’ bargaining rights, and a fourth reformed the teacher evaluation process. Each of these hotly contested bills was passed nearly exclusively by Republicans—only one Democrat voted in favor of a portion of the legislation. This galvanized Democrats against the Daniels-Bennett administration and ensured future conflict.
The Democrats got their revenge a year later, when Bennett was defeated by the nearly unknown Glenda Ritz in what Elliott calls “one of the great upsets of Indiana political history.” Elliott credited the win to Ritz’s superior campaign, which relied on social media and teacher networks to create pro-Ritz communities. It also helped that Bennett had a reputation for blaming teachers; indeed, his rough personality tended to disenchant even traditional supporters. Indianapolis Star columnist Matthew Tully told the HPR that Ritz “won very red counties all over the state. … I talked with Rush Limbaugh-listening Republicans, and they supported Glenda Ritz in this.” Regardless of the source of the outcome, the result was shocking. Ritz, a library media specialist with no prior political experience, had defeated the effective yet controversial right-hand man of a popular governor.
Toxic Environment
Yet Ritz’s election was merely the beginning of a new chapter in the protracted fight for control of Indiana’s education policy. The Republicans lost the superintendent race but maintained their hold on the rest of the state government. Soon after he was sworn into office, Daniels’ successor, Mike Pence, created the Center for Education and Career Innovation as a vehicle to continue advancing conservative education policies. The CECI diverted resources and responsibilities from Ritz’s Department of Education. Additionally, Pence sparred with Ritz over control of the State Board of Education, an 11-member board consisting of 10 gubernatorial appointees and Ritz herself. All of this led to a “tremendous amount of tension between the governor and the superintendent” over control of state policy, says Elliott.
The issues on which Pence and Ritz spar are many—from school grading and teacher evaluations to school funding and charter schools. Teresa Meredith, president of the Indiana State Teachers Association, told the HPR that school funding was the source of much of the conflict. The controversy began with a $300 million cut to public education during the Daniels administration: “It was never replaced. … Part of the money in the Indiana surplus that the governor likes to speak about now has come on the backs of Indiana schoolchildren.” Meredith says the cuts increased class sizes and gutted supplemental instruction. School grading received special attention when Ritz walked out of a State Board of Education meeting after it was suggested that Pence’s CECI take over school grading from Ritz’s DOE. After Ritz threatened to sue the rest of the board, the state was compelled to hire a mediator to resolve the matter.
Harsh teacher evaluations were the source of much of the anti-Bennett sentiment that pushed Ritz into office, yet Pence has continued the program of his predecessor. Meanwhile, under Pence’s leadership, Indiana’s voucher program has blossomed into the largest and fastest-growing in the country, according to Elliott. As the only Democrat in statewide office, Ritz has been unable to stop or reverse many of these policies. In several cases, such as the walkout over school grading, she has resorted to obstructionist measures, with limited success.
The public power struggle has been met with a combination of frustration and disappointment. “To me, it’s been a disaster for the past year,” says Tully. “They’ve fought in ways that are far beneath what you would think of state education leaders. The meetings have been long, drawn-out battles over silly things that have nothing to do with what’s going in the classroom.” In an interview with the HPR, Justin Ohlemiller, executive director of Stand for Children Indiana, despaired of the time wasted by partisan battles: “We’re debating process, and we’re flexing political muscle instead of diving into policy and tackling critical issues that are affecting our kids in the classroom.”
Uncommon Agreement
Yet in this remarkably toxic environment, Pence and Ritz found common ground on an issue at the heart of much of the political divide over education: the Common Core. Originally, Indiana had been one of the first adopters of the program. Daniels and Bennett had pledged their support back in 2009 when the effort first began. After that pledge, the issue stayed dormant through the election and into 2013. Both Pence and Ritz refrained from taking a position on the standards, claiming they were studying their effectiveness and fit for the state. In March 2014, Pence broke his silence when he came out against adopting the Common Core. Ritz quickly followed suit, and Indiana opted out of the program.
How did the two come together? West credits the strength of state interest groups, specifically the Tea Party on the Republican side and the teachers unions on the Democratic side. The Tea Party’s objections stemmed from federal involvement, which “tainted the effort.” West sees the unions’ involvement as a way to delay the implementation of test score-based teacher evaluations. Although evaluation reforms and the Common Core are separate issues, West says the unions are using the Common Core as a scapegoat in order to achieve their true goal of putting off the evaluation reforms. The combined fervor of these two oft-warring groups led directly to the agreement between Pence and Ritz to desert the Common Core and create state-specific standards.
The decision was met with mixed reactions. Ohlemiller says that before Indiana opted out, the Common Core “was very popular with teachers because it really focused on in-depth learning,” unlike the far-reaching yet shallow set of standards that preceded it. Meredith acknowledges that the initial adoption of the Common Core was a step in the right direction, but she adds that “there were some real developmental holes” that needed to be fixed. In order to fix those holes, Ritz and Pence repurposed the committee that reviewed the Common Core to create the Indiana College and Career Readiness standards. Questions quickly arose as to how different the two supposedly distinct standards really were. Elliott concedes that the state-specific standards are “very similar to the Common Core.”
So was the one seeming bright spot in the tumultuous sea of education partisanship really just a mutual misadventure? West theorizes that Pence may have sympathized with the Common Core but knew it would drain his credentials as an advocate of limited government. Thus, he repackaged standards in order to placate his Tea Party base. If that is the case, Elliot says, “some would say he’s done the right thing.” Ohlemiller disagrees: “We wasted a lot of time and a lot of effort creating these new standards that ultimately end up being aligned with the Common Core … if we had moved on from that debate instead of letting petty politics enter the equation, then we could have tackled these other critical issues in the last couple years.” Thus, even though Pence and Ritz finally collaborated on one issue, many believe it was wasted time.
A National Bellwether
In assessing the national implications of Indiana’s education plight, two common themes emerge: the influence of extreme views on policy and complications in Common Core implementation. The partisanship is reflective of the greater environment of political polarization, indicating that Washington gridlock trickles down to the states. The Tea Party’s fingerprints, all over the contentious climate in Washington, are also apparent in Indiana’s statehouse. Before Pence assumed the governorship, he was a member of the Tea Party Caucus in Congress. The Tea Party’s expenditure-cutting platform has been the source of many of the state’s contentious policies, including larger class sizes, fewer extracurricular programs, and lower salaries for teachers. As long as the far right continues to slash spending in the name of fiscal responsibility, it seems that bipartisan agreement on education policy is unlikely in any state.
In the same vein, Ohlemiller points to “extreme political views on either side of the aisle” as the source of much of the conflict over the Common Core. West’s research corroborates that opinion. As one of the collaborators on the annual national Education Next poll, West found a clear partisan divide when it came to support for standards. In 2013, 65 percent of Americans were in favor of the Common Core, with only 13 percent opposed. One year later, the split was 53 percent and 26 percent. As West notes, “that increase in opposition was driven entirely by Republicans.” Their support dropped from 57 percent to 43 percent over the course of one year, while Democratic support remained level. “Much of that has to do with federal involvement,” he says. “They [Republicans] don’t seem to be opposed to the underlying concept,” but the Obama administration’s involvement has “tainted” the effort.
The tumult in Indiana signals potential trouble for implementation across the country. “The fact that we’re seeing a lot of resistance in states that have been the furthest along the path in terms of implementation … tells me that maybe we’ll see flare-ups in other places,” says West. “I think you will see a growing number of states deciding not to participate, both by making more radical departures and by doing a form of relabeling.” Originally, 45 states adopted the Common Core standards. Since then, three have opted out and four more have made revisions to the standards. As more and more states opt out, they set examples for other states to do the same. In the end, West views the heavy federal involvement as the source of much of the strife. “That’s really in tension with deeply held American traditions of education governance, and that will make it less rather than more likely that the Common Core will succeed.”
Unfortunately, however, Pence and Ritz’s mutual support for new state standards has not translated to cooperation in other areas. “As soon as the standards issue was over, Pence and Ritz immediately returned to a significant level of discord and criticism of each other,” Elliott told the HPR. Ritz renewed her assault on Pence’s CECI for usurping power from the DOE. Pence and the state board pointed fingers at Ritz for dragging her feet on a No Child Left Behind waiver.
On October 14, Indiana’s Republican legislature extended an olive branch by pledging to increase education spending in the upcoming legislative session. The tide looked to have turned for a whole 24 hours, when Ritz sparred once more with the state board over school grading. Not to be outdone, Pence passed up a chance at an $80 million federal grant for a pilot preschool program later in the week.
The two are already gearing up their war chests for the 2016 election, which Elliott says “makes it all the tougher” for them to work together. Ohlemiller agrees, telling the HPR, “I don’t foresee it getting a whole lot better until, frankly, we move past another election.”
The lack of common ground promises continued public conflict as entertainment for the masses. The political theater will carry on in front of a local and national audience stricken with partisan ennui. Yet a key difference remains between Indiana’s tale and the plot of a TV political thriller: in this reality, it seems the hero will never come.
Editor’s Note: The original version of this article misstated the name of the president of the Indiana State Teachers Association. Her name is Teresa Meredith, not Teresa Martin as was originally published.
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