Education
- Strengthen Indianapolis Public Schools
- Strengthen early childhood education
Education is the way out of poverty, street crime, blighted communities, and unemployment. Early childhood education, freely and fairly accessible to all children, is critical to prepare them for success in school and for life. However, our government has continued to shift money away from education into prisons, both of which are transitioning into business model enterprises, and more disturbingly, to religious-focused public education. Public tax money, and the public Hoosier Spirit, must be invested into our communities, and our children, not into Party cronyism, big business, and religious-specific indoctrination.
Charter schools have been a creative experiment to address public dissatisfaction with traditional public schools. However, national data does not support the claims of charter school advocates--in fact, charter schools tend to do worse than traditional public schools, and have a disturbing history of fiscal malfeasance. Over a quarter of Philadelphia charter schools are under federal investigation for fraud, and several Indianapolis charter schools have been closed for falsification of records. My own analysis of charter school budgets has evidenced a lack of transparency, and for most charters, a failure to fund faculty development, curriculum development, and a failure of to fund student support staff, such as guidance counselors, social workers, nurses, or libraries. While charter schools claim to be more cost efficient, their per-student administrative costs are higher:
| School | General Admin | School Admin |
| IPS | $324/student | $600/student |
| Charters | $486/student | $938/student |
Similarly, in the classroom there are other incommensurate disparities:
| School | Avg Teacher Pay | Avg Teacher Experience | Avg Class Size |
| IPS | $55,000/yr | 15 yrs | 14 students |
| Charters | $39,000/yr | 5 yrs | 17 students |
While a couple of charter schools have shown short-term benefits over traditional schools, the majority have not shown the benefits promised. Further, the benefits that have been generated share a commonality with the one other charter district in the nation that has also shown improvement (Harlem Children Zone schools by Geoffrey Canada)--strict oversight and mandates to conform to the same standards as traditional public schools. Bart Peterson mandated these regulations when he authorized the first charters. However, Governor Daniels' new legislation would eliminate these guidelines, freeing charters from the only safety net that keeps them from the same fate as the rest of the charters in the country--lower performance than their neighboring traditional public schools.
Charter schools in Indianapolis are only viable if they remain under the same standards and regulations as traditional public schools. Further, schools funded by public tax money must not fall under the auspices of religious mandates--currently every private Marion County school that applied for Governor Daniels' voucher program has a religious charter. But charters are not the only option available, and IPS magnet schools have been filling the gap. The data indicates that students in charter schools have improved only minimally when compared to IPS schools, if at all, (IBJ, 4-2-11), and given the potential for fraud, it seems like an experiment not worth pursuing. The energy and money poured into charters could be far more effective revitalizing IPS.
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