Dear Members of the State Board of Education,

This is what I know:

As a former Academic Advisor at Indiana University Bloomington for nine years, I know the level of preparation with which high school graduates enter college. I know the strengths and weaknesses of in-state students as well as those coming from high schools in other states. Comparatively, Indiana students are at no disadvantage under the current diploma requirements.

As a Career Development Course faculty member, I know what employers look for in hiring college students for internships and college graduates for entry-level positions. I know what it takes to prepare high school students for successful college experiences, and I know what it takes to prepare college students for successful transitions into the careers of their choice. The current diploma requirements are effectively preparing Indiana students to begin the journey.

This is what I don't know:

As a mother of two elementary school children, I wonder how they will be affected by the new diploma scheme. My third grader has diverse interests that I expect will need to be narrowed down significantly if he is to complete the proposed track for a “College and Career Ready” diploma. I do not know the price he will pay for losing choices. My fifth grader has an Autism Spectrum Disorder and ADHD. He already talks about college and career as if it his choice which college and which career path he will follow. I do not know that he will have any choice at all if the proposed diploma tracks are adopted; it appears likely that IEP kids stand to lose the most if the new standards are actually adopted. I do not know what will be accomplished by forcing my son into high-level mathematics courses just to earn something called a “Workforce Ready” diploma.

This is what I fear:

As an Indiana resident, I will have to watch these proposed changes be adopted in the name of progress and see the choices for my children narrowed to an unimaginably small margin.

This is what I request:

Allow my children to learn and to choose. Give BOTH my boys a fair chance. Reject the proposed diplomas and focus on the real problems in Indiana education: standardized testing, teacher shortages, and lack of funding for public (not charter) schools.

​Sincerely,
Shelly Scott-Harmon, Ph.D.

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 I am rarely at a loss for words when I truly care about something, but at the moment I am afraid that I will not be able to truly convey what I feel. I hope I will be able to find the words needed to convince you to reverse your current position on the requirements for the new Workforce Ready Diploma.

Please understand that I have no problem with renaming what is currently called the General Diploma, especially if the requirements really do prepare high school students to enter the workforce. I am a former high school math teacher and the mother of a former special education student, and what I question are the new requirements. Let me be clear, however, that my sons have completed high school, so I am not asking for changes on behalf of my own children.

I would like to know how the proposed requirements for the new Workforce Ready diploma were generated. Did someone from the Indiana State Board of Education (SBOE) go to a wide variety of employers and ask if requiring students to pass geometry and advanced algebra meet their needs? Engineers, economists, scientists, statisticians and a host of other professionals need to have a firm grasp of mathematics, but do those who seek a Workforce Ready Diploma need such training? Think about it, does someone teaching high school history or English need this training? In fact, when was the last time members of the SBOE used skills taught in advanced high school math courses for something related to their work? I believe these courses are being used as proxies for whether or not individuals can learn job-specific skills, when they are not predictors of who will and will not be a good employee. I know, too, that employers complain about needing to provide additional training to employees, but what type of training are they providing? If they are not teaching advanced math skills, then we should be asking if the training is, in fact something that could not be predicted because it is specific to either that employer or that industry.

People may argue that not all high school students know what they want to do in life, so we should not short-change them. I am not disagreeing with that, and my hope is that we challenge all students. But, not taking geometry and advanced algebra in high school does not mean one can never study those subjects: Students can take these courses later in life through Ivy Tech Community College. Please remember that you are hearing this from a former math teacher.

According to Teresa Lubbers, the head of the Indiana Commission for Higher Education, less than 10 percent of high school students will be getting the Workforce Ready diploma. As the mother of a former special education student, I suspect that a majority of those obtaining the Workforce Ready diploma will
be special education students. If my own son were still in school and I wanted him to obtain a high school diploma via this track, the first goal I would want written into his Individualized Educational Program would be that he earn this diploma. Special education students are eligible to remain in school – at public expense – through the end of the school year in which they turn 21. For some students that would mean an additional four years beyond when they might have “graduated” from high school. Does the State of Indiana really want to pay for a student to stay in school an additional four years as he or she attempts to pass a meaningless course or two? Do we really want that additional burden on our schools, especially if (a) the student does not have the capacity to master such a subject, and (b) it is not valued by a potential employer?

My son who was a special education student took advanced algebra, and due to his work ethic, summer tutoring and nightly help from his mother, he passed this course. My son works as a part-time dishwasher and he is happy in his job. He does not need advanced algebra skills to do his job. Another young man I know, who shares many of my son’s characteristics, takes care of waste disposal at a hospital. A third bags groceries. A fourth rolls silverware at a restaurant. My point is that all of these individuals are contributing members of society who earned a general diploma which did not require advanced math courses. If these individuals possessed only a certificate of completion, they may not have been considered for the jobs that they have held for several years. As the SBOE determines what the requirements are for the Workforce Ready diploma, I would ask that you inform the public what percentage of those who leave high school with only a certificate of completion have any type of employment outside of a sheltered workshop and how changes in the diploma requirements might impact the employability of those who cannot meet these requirements.

We also cannot let where a student lives within Indiana determine their ability to earn a high school diploma. To do so would be discriminatory.

In short, I ask that you drop the advanced math requirements for the Workforce Ready diploma. Instead, please focus on the skills that employers value while simultaneously ensuring that students have the opportunity to learn those skills at all Indiana high schools. Thank you.

Penny Githens

I am a mother of four children in public schools.

I know that my children’s learning conditions are their teachers’ working conditions.

This educational environment has become a pressure cooker for our kids and teachers because the legislature has decided that somehow educators weren’t accountable enough. The learning and teaching process has been transformed into a test-taking, data collecting nightmare to somehow prove accountability... at the root of which is an apparent deep distrust of teachers.

​We’ve had standardized tests for a long time. But it is what is at stake when the kids take the test now that has transformed their experience.

In the past, standardized tests were just one aspect of an overall assessment of how our kids were doing. We trusted teachers to relay to us how our kids were learning. Now it has become the end-all be-all. If my eleven year-old doesn’t score well on a test, it could affect his teacher’s job, his school’s letter grade, the label on his district, property taxes, and the community as a whole.

This intensity of pressure comes down and lands right on the shoulders of my child.

Who stands between my child and that weight of the world? Buffering him and protecting him from this stress?

His teacher. And for teachers whose students have special needs, live in poverty, or are learning English as a new language, the pressure to perform is tremendous. The consequence is a stigmatizing F on their small heads—or in 3rd grade, flunking.

These policies are not brought about because parents clamored for them. Parents have not been begging for a better school than their neighbor’s child. They’ve been begging for a great school. Period.

Parents want equity. Instead, we get competition.

Competition involves winners and losers. No 6 year-old should be a loser when it comes to educational opportunity.

These recent changes in policy are occurring all over the country. And this is also why the teacher shortage is not unique to Indiana. Bills that have transformed our kids’ learning environment into a pressure cooker are all from the same source: ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council). The goal of this organization is to create more competition in education and to privatize it. There is even an Indiana Reform Package of model legislation on the ALEC website touting our reforms. Our governor has written the introduction to the ALEC report card on American Education. Many members of our education committee are or were ALEC members. In fact, you, Rep. Behning, our house education committee chair, were the ALEC chairperson for Indiana for several years.

The A-F grading of schools, teachers’ loss of voice in advocating for kids through the loss of collective bargaining, the draconian 3rd grade reading law, vouchers and charters creating a competition for funding, a developmentally inappropriate 90 minute block of literacy instruction, these are all ALEC laws. They were not backed by research of what are best practices in teaching. They were not created by teachers. Parents do not want this obsession with data.

We want funding for our public schools such that all children have smaller class sizes for individualized instruction. We want WHOLE CHILD accountability for our teachers and our schools. That means research-backed education. Kids learn through play. Are they getting recess? Kids need to have time to follow their interests and do hands-on projects. Are they getting the broad curriculum and what is NOT on the test: social studies and science? Many of these things are being squeezed out for test prep. Do our high schoolers have extracurricular activities—things that keep them connected and wanting to go to school?

We want our teachers to be paid as the professionals that they are and to have more time for teaching and less for testing. You cannot reduce the time on testing if you don’t reduce the stakes attached to it.

We want a multi-measure evaluation of teaching and success.

You cannot say you respect teachers when every single thing they do is micromanaged by having to prove themselves with data. You cannot quantify joy, creativity and critical thinking. My children are not numbers. 
They are unique human beings who are learning and growing. I don’t want my eleven year-old college and career-ready because he is a child. I don’t want him to have pressures to perform like an adult, because he is not one. His teachers know how to give him that childhood, they know what is developmentally appropriate for him, AND research (yes data!) shows that giving him these learning experiences will ensure that when the time comes, he will be ready to take his part in our society and our democracy.

So let teachers do their jobs. The best way to do this is to give them a voice, allow them to create policy, not business people and legislators who know nothing about it. Certainly not ALEC backers who make money off of it.

There is nothing more precious to me in this world than my children and every day I entrust them to the care of their teachers. I care more about what they tell me regarding my kids’ education than I do about any stinking ISTEP score. This is because they are the professionals. I trust them to do their jobs.

If you truly support teachers, you will, too.

Thank you.
Cathy Fuentes-Rohwer
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