Indiana schools chief lauds overhaul in annual speech
Indiana Schools Superintendent Tony Bennett used his second annual assessment of the state's education system to promote a sweeping overhaul approved this year.
Indiana Schools Superintendent Tony Bennett used his second annual assessment of the state's education system to promote a sweeping overhaul approved this year.
The schools, which help high-school dropouts earn their diplomas and start to receive post-secondary training, plan to enroll 300 students near the Indiana State Fairgrounds and 150 near the airport.
The state is moving to adopt a system that ensures more high school graduates can perform in college or on the job.
A cash crunch at its Common Goal education program forced the Greater Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce this month to start covering the program’s bills out of its coffers.
Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels and state schools superintendent Tony Bennett say Indiana needs a more honest look at the job teachers and principals are doing.
The state Department of Education says in a report issued Monday that 64 percent of Indiana's public high schools improved their graduation rates from 2009 to 2010.
The position at United Way of Central Indiana had been vacant because of budget issues.
Indiana's top school official says more students are graduating high school and many schools have closed the achievement
gap between white students and their black peers despite lean funding.
Consider these alarming statistics: More than 6,700 Marion County students drop out of school every single year. Dropouts
earn $9,200 less per year than high school graduates, and earn $1 million less over a lifetime than college graduates.
In his [March 29] column, “Set sights on education, not graduation,” Morton Marcus raises a vital point about
Indiana’s higher education reform efforts—but he overlooks a larger one.
Economist Morton Marcus [on March 29] took issue with the notion that college and university graduation rates can be improved
by tying compensation to increases (or decreases) in institutional graduation rates.
After the 2008-2009 school year—the first of the Greater Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce’s four-year Common Goal program, the overall
graduation rate among public schools in Marion County had jumped from 69 percent to almost 74 percent.
According to data released Friday by the Indiana Department of Education, 81.2 percent of Hoosier high school students scheduled
to graduate in 2009 did.
Just over half of students at state-supported, four-year institutions in Indiana graduate within six years—a tremendous
waste of resources by both students and taxpayers. The number of citizens with bachelor’s degrees is one of the surest
indicators of economic success in a 21st century economy driven less by workers’ hands
and more by their heads.
Teresa Lubbers became Indiana commissioner for higher education on July 7 after serving 17 years as a Republican state
senator from Indianapolis. She says every Hoosier needs some college-level training. Lubbers got a running start on her new
job, having served as chairwoman of the senate education committee
for years. She also worked frequently at the commission’s downtown offices during May and June—after her predecessor
had
left but before the Legislature returned for a special session to pass a budget. Her new staff dubbed her SenComm.
There’s reason to believe serious progress is coming, due to the people in leadership positions for the state in three key
areas: the Department of Education, the Commission for Higher Education and Ivy Tech Community College.
Incentives have long been used as an effective tool in business to improve employee performance. But can a concept that helps
companies motivate workers also work in public education?
Indiana’s superintendent of public instruction stresses reading, math and competition.
With high school graduation rates as low as they are in Indiana, I find it amazing that Indiana isn’t at the very bottom of
the statistical ladder described in Morton Marcus’ March 16 column.
United Way is spending $114,000 to bring Project Seed, a program with specially trained math experts, to 11 Indianapolis Public Schools.