It's Politics

Anyone who was surprised by the news that Tony Bennett, Indiana’s former superintendent of public instruction, fudged his own school grading system to favor a heavy campaign donor’s charter school hasn’t been paying attention. Sadly, it can be put down to political corruption. The corrupting influence of politics on education is not an absolute; it may be widespread but I won’t argue that it’s pervasive. But happens whenever politicians have an agenda in place of a moral compass.

Increasingly, across the United States, decisions about what should happen in schools are being systematically taken out of the hands of parents and educators. Politicians at every level are attempting to run the nation’s schools, something most of them simply are not qualified to do. But the political exercise of ineptitude is too tempting for some to pass up, particularly if their agenda puts corporations (the “people” who fill their campaign chests and, in some cases, line their pockets) before kids.

Politicians routinely overstep their mandate, their authority, and their common sense to meddle in schools chiefly in two ways:

Offering Simplistic “Solutions” to Complex Challenges. Politicians are not educators, and educators who become politicians swim with sharks. Survival sometimes can seem to be a matter of becoming a shark. Fundamentally, then, politicians are office-holders with a limited amount of time to get done anything they want—or have promised—to accomplish. That pressure argues for simplistic solutions instead of thoughtful, complex responses to complex challenges. Tony Bennett’s A-to-F grading system is a prime example. One of my early articles, from the 1970s, dealt with designing report cards that really communicate. Forty years later, we’re still stuck with A to F. Ramping up a poor but entrenched system for sorting students as if we were sorting eggs to sort schools in the same manner was, and is, simplistic. The challenge of discerning whether individual schools are doing a good job of teaching their students and serving their community is complex and deserves thoughtful, locally driven consideration. Instead, Bennett touted a dumbed-down, top-down “system” that offered little more than a crap shoot.

Letting Money Trump Morality. Then Bennett got tripped up by his own scheme. That meant it was time to load the dice. The charter school of a major funder—one who could donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to Bennett’s campaign chest and did, thanks to Indiana’s nonexistent campaign-funding laws—“earned” a C. Oops! Big oops! Or as Bennett put it, according to emails obtained by the Associated Press, “Oh, crap.” So, rather than offend a big donor, Bennett parked his morals outside the door and followed the scent of money into a dark closet where he changed that C to an A. It’s all a bit circular at this point, isn’t it? By letting money trump morality, Bennett went back to the previous tactic, grasping at the simplistic solution—simply changing the grade—rather than dealing with the complex questions his mindless grading system ignores.

It would be peachy if we could just believe the old playground maxim that “cheaters never prosper.” Unfortunately, in the politics of public education, they sometimes do. Indiana voters may have booted Bennett out of office, but he wasn’t pounding the pavement looking for a new job for long. Florida’s Governor Rick Scott snapped him up to head that state’s public education system. Of course, that was before the Bennett debacle hit the proverbial fan. Right about now, Governor Scott might be thinking, “Oh, crap.” But then, it’s Florida. So maybe not.

ADDENDUM: Shortly after I posted this, news arrived that Tony Bennett had resigned his position in Florida. Governor Scott will have to find another politician to mismanage the state's schools. Novel idea: Find a real educator.