Education is on the ballot this year

The Indiana Coalition for Public Education is a bipartisan non-profit dedicated to preserving and improving public education for all Indiana students. One of its functions has been to annually present a Legislative Report Card giving A-F grades for all Indiana legislators with respect to how they supported traditional public schools in the previous legislative session. NWI Coalition for Public Education is a satellite of ICPE with the same overall mission to support traditional public education.

As voters consider their choices for Indiana Senators and Representatives, they should be aware of the track records with respect to public education of incumbent legislators who are up for reelection.

With respect to how legislators either embraced or rejected nine legislative bills that either supported or harmed public schools, every Democrat received an A. Every Republican in Northwest Indiana received a D. (F’s were avoided due to unanimous support to hold schools harmless from the new State tests and to remove State test scores from teacher evaluations.)

Legislation harmful to public schools included: diverting $15 million to charter schools, diverting $19 million to vouchers for private schools, expanded voucher eligibility to wealthy families, giving leverage to charter schools to pursue a share of public school referenda, postponing funding for increased teacher salaries, moving up the date to allow the governor to appoint State Superintendent of Education, and refusing to support public audits of tax dollars used by charter and voucher Schools.

The full 2020 Legislative Report Card can be found at www.indiana coalitionforpubliced.org.