You Can't Make This Stuff Up

So continuing on the parade that charters are better, more innovative and, above all, allow more accountability, we have Exhibit 1.  That would be former Indiana and now current head of schools in Florida, Tony Bennett.  I'll let the Fort Wayne Journal tell you what "Mr. Accountable" did (bold mine)(graphic by Jersey Jazzman):

But when it appeared an Indianapolis charter school run by a prominent Republican donor might receive a poor grade, Bennett's education team frantically overhauled his signature "A-F" school grading system to improve the school's marks.

Emails obtained by The Associated Press show Bennett and his staff scrambled last fall to ensure influential donor Christel DeHaan's school received an "A," despite poor test scores in algebra that initially earned it a "C."

"They need to understand that anything less than an A for Christel House compromises all of our accountability work," Bennett wrote in a Sept. 12 email to then-chief of staff Heather Neal, who is now Gov. Mike Pence's chief lobbyist.

The emails, which also show Bennett discussed with staff the legality of changing just DeHaan's grade, raise unsettling questions about the validity of a grading system that has broad implications. Indiana uses the A-F grades to determine which schools get taken over by the state and whether students seeking state-funded vouchers to attend private school need to first spend a year in public school. They also help determine how much state funding schools receive.

Where to start?

He had to game the system to save a signature charter school for a wealthy donor.

He needed to game the system to save his own work.

He tried to change just ONE score to save face.

This would not only help the charter system in Indiana but also the voucher system (because those A-F grades help determine what public schools get taken over and the money for vouchers for those students to go to private schools).

Now, who was it that thought giving a simple (and simplistic) A-F grade for schools is a good idea for Washington State?  

 I know how many of you think that getting access to e-mails via public disclosure is terrible but when you see this:



But trouble loomed when Indiana's then-grading director, Jon Gubera, first alerted Bennett on Sept. 12 that the Christel House Academy had scored less than an A.

"This will be a HUGE problem for us," Bennett wrote in a Sept. 12, 2012, email to Neal.
Neal fired back a few minutes later, "Oh, crap. We cannot release until this is resolved."

By Sept. 13, Gubera unveiled it was a 2.9, or a "C."

It's not clear from the emails exactly how Gubera changed the grading formula, but they do show DeHaan's grade jumping twice.

"That's like parting the Red Sea to get numbers to move that significantly," Jeff Butts, superintendent of Wayne Township schools in Indianapolis, said in an interview with The Associated Press.

"I am more than a little miffed about this," Bennett wrote. "I hope we come to the meeting today with solutions and not excuses and/or explanations for me to wiggle myself out of the repeated lies I have told over the past six months."

Kudos to AP investigative reporter Tom LoBianco who broke the story.