Basic HTML Version
16
BizVoice
/Indiana Chamber –
March/April 2012
C
onnecting the dots couldn’t be any simpler: If young people don’t receive strong
schooling in their formative years through high school, then they likely won’t
have the foundation needed for college or vocational success – thus impacting
their earning potential and, ultimately, their quality of life.
Yet the vital importance of that rather obvious concept hasn’t itself been
enough to light a fire throughout the education establishment and the broader
community. In the last few years, however, strides in certain areas have been made thanks in
large part to an aggressive agenda by state political leaders.
The K-12 reforms last year in the Indiana Legislature – including a broad school choice law
to let parents choose their child’s academic home, school accountability measures (including
letter grades for schools) and policies to increase the number of charter schools – are already
producing positive results, but represent only one small piece of the puzzle.
To discuss where we stand and what else needs to take place to get Hoosier students better
prepared for the global marketplace,
BizVoice
®
turned to four business and civic leaders with a
passion for education:
Building blocks
“What we did last year (with the reforms) was establish a structure that promoted or at least
improved the idea that competition as part of the answer is now going to be part of the process;
that the educational establishment will have to react to the competitive pressures,” Kubacki surmises.
“It’s a good first step. But is incremental change going to really get the job done? Can we
afford to be that patient? I think we can’t.”
Edwards – who, like Elsener, also serves on Indiana’s Education Roundtable – concurs on
both counts. He is optimistic about the “valuable principles now in place structurally and
operationally in the classrooms. I think certainly they will serve in the long haul, but we still
have the huge professional development task ahead – to get the teachers and the administrators
in the system on course and doing the right things at the right time.”
Opening up school choice is the most significant of the recent laws, according to LaMothe.
“We’ve set targets on test scores and we’ve done all of those kinds of things that try to raise
the bar in the existing system. But the reality is the quickest path to real reform in the K-12
system is by offering choices to parents. In turn, that encourages parents to pay attention to
education and hopefully will lead to involvement in their children’s education.
“That is probably one of the single biggest potential drivers of real change in our K-12 system.
I feel the lack of parental involvement is the most fundamental problem we have,” he contends.
While the panel agreed on several pillars that could make a profound difference in Indiana’s
education system, perhaps nothing drew as much attention or was repeatedly cited as the need
Our Participants:
Jim Edwards –
president of Edwards and Associates, Santa Claus, and State Board of
Education member
Dan Elsener –
president of Marian University, Indianapolis, and State Board of
Education member
Mike Kubacki –
chairman and CEO of Lake City Bank, Warsaw, and former longtime
chair of the Indiana Chamber of Commerce’s K-12 policy committee
Chris LaMothe –
chairman and CEO of Sherry Laboratories, Daleville, and Commission
for Higher Education member
By Rebecca Patrick
Education Reform Act II
Time is Now for Systematic Improvement
Chamber
Roundtable