When Indiana moved last year to become one of the 13 states that either launched or expanded school voucher programs, one could have easily expected Indianapolis Public Schools to take…
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When Indiana moved last year to become one of the 13 states that either launched or expanded school voucher programs, one could have easily expected Indianapolis Public Schools to take the biggest hit. By the 2010-2011 school year,IPS served only 33,079 students, a 13 percent decline over the school year five years earlier. Some of the decline could be attributed to the expansion and success of the charter schools serving the old city limits, whose (often modest) successes in improving student achievement have continually embarrassed the worst-performing district in the Midwest outside of Detroit. But the decline had been happening long before charters came onto the scene. For most of the past four decades, middle-class black and white families (along with those families who could take advantage of a decades-long school desegregation order) fled IPS in order to get what was often marginally better instruction and curricula offered by the other 10 districts within Indianapolis (as well as to those outside of it).
No one expected either IPS Supt. Eugene White or the district’s school board to do anything to either revamp curricula and instruction, or even overhaul the entire district’s operations. After all, White has proven in his seven years on the job that he is unfit to check coats at Ruth’s Chris, much less oversee a turnaround. Under White’s tenure, IPS lost four of its dropout factories and failure mills to state control after years of refusing to address the systemic failure at the heart of their struggles, while the superintendent’s nepotism, firing of top-flight staffers, and his own all-too-public searches for new jobs have made the district a laughingstock even among those collection of urban districts (including the aforementioned Detroit, and Philadelphia) not known for being functional. Meanwhile IPS has continued its decline as an educational going concern, with only 31 percent of IPS students successfully pass the state’s reading and math end-of-course exams over the past two school years, and thousands of students being denied futures worthy of their potential.
So it wasn’t shocking to learn this week that IPS is no longer considered the Hoosier State’s largest traditional district by enrollment, after a 9 percent decline in enrollment since 2010-2011. With 2,911 children and their families fleeing the district either for private schools funded through the state’s voucher program, to charters, or to other districts (and taking state school funding with them to boot), IPS finds itself at a point in which staying the course simply isn’t possible (and shouldn’t be acceptable). Even more students may end up leaving next year, especially as a suit filed against IPS by Darnell “Dynasty” Young, a former student at the district’s Arsenal Tech High School expelled after responding to bullying by students that went unchecked by teachers and school leaders there, makes its way through the courts (and forces more revelations about how poorly White has handled this and other similar cases). For families who want their schools to both safe for their kids as well as nurturing of their genius, there’s nothing about I-P-S that spells school culture success.
There are possibility of changes on the horizon. Mary Busch, who has helped preside over IPS’ failures during her four decades on its board, isn’t running for another term. This could shift control of the board from one that heavily favored White to one which will hand the superintendent his well-deserved walking papers. The district won a reprieve from losing a school last month when state officials decided to allow IPS to contract with Voyager Learning to handle the turnaround of John Marshall Community High School and eight other schools. If IPS is serious about letting a private-sector operator take control of these schools, there may be hope for the other schools it operates.
But in the long run, IPS is likely to end up going the way of Detroit, New Orleans, and other districts that have been on fiscal and educational life support for far too long: Broken apart. A proposed takeover of IPS pushed earlier this year by the Mind Trust, the school reform outfit founded by former Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson, didn’t go very far with either Peterson’s successor, Greg Ballard, or the state legislature. But with few satisfied with either White’s moving-deckchairs reorganization plan or the district’s performance, one can expect reformers to push Ballard into stepping up to the plate, either proposing to the state that he take over most of IPS’ schools (and convert them into charters) or take control of IPS outright.
Given how far gone IPS is at this point, Ballard would do just as well to announce a major expansion of charters in the city, partnering with operators such as KIPP and even Green Dot particularly targeting the black and Latino neighborhoods in which IPS is serving children the most poorly; this potential loss of enrollment could spell the end of IPS as a going concern. It is already clear to many of the city’s families that sending their children to an IPS school is akin to handing them educational and even economic life sentence. One of the few reasons why so many remain is because of the lack of high-quality (and safe) school options that exist outside of what the district has to offer. Moving from West 38th Street to East 96th Street (into the boundary of the Washington Township district) is not only expensive, but no guarantee of better teaching and curricula. Expansion of charters (as well as the possible launch of new private schools looking to take advantage of the state’s voucher program) would spell the end of IPS and the traditional district model it represents.
The fate that IPS is facing is one that is becoming common for failing districts throughout the nation where school choice and Parent Power have become robust. It can be seen in Adelanto, Calif., where the traditional district there refuses to heed June’s court order requiring it to hand Desert Trails Elementary School to its parents after the district’s failed management of the school. It is also clear in Philadelphia, where the district may end up shutting down 104 schools (and borrowing $300 million) just to deal with its fiscal and academic woes. And with the Chicago Teachers Union strike ruefully reminding school reformers about the problems of dealing with National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers affiliates more-concerned about defending costly traditional teacher compensation systems and avoiding more-comprehensive performance management than with the futures of children or the districts charged with educating them, more state and local leaders are going to look to expand charters and vouchers (as well as pass Parent Trigger laws) to give families avenues to get out of traditional districts schools and even take over those schools and pull them out of district control.
These factors, in turn, hit upon the reality that the traditional district model is no longer workable. A century ago, the district model may have made sense to maintain. After all, few kids needed a high-quality education to simply stay in the economic and social mainstream; there were no reasons to spend time on teacher performance management (and no tools available to measure either student or teacher performance in objective ways). But in an age in which kids need comprehensive college-preparatory learning just to gain entree into the middle class, and the nation’s education crisis has made it important to help dropouts get back on the path to college and career, the scales that traditional districts such as IPS have brought to the table merely encourage bureaucratic paralysis and the kind of policies that are starting to overburden taxpayers. In an age in which quality is more important than scale, the time has come to move from traditional districts to the Hollywood Model of Education, in which a variety of schools — including independent public schools, public charters, private schools, online outfits, DIY schools launched by families and communities, parochial school operations, and charter management organization-managed schoolhouses — help all kids succeed in school and life.
This move away from the traditional district model is already happening in Indianapolis. And it needs to happen throughout American public education.