During his State of the State address, when referring to students in the gallery who wanted to go to a Charter or private school, Governor Mitch Daniels pointedly asked the members of the General Assembly “Will you be the one to tell the parents “tough luck”? Are you prepared to say to them “We know better than you do”?”

As this historic legislative session winds down it is clear that the Indiana General Assembly was willing to say “YES” to parents who want choices for their children, “YES” to teachers who want to be rewarded and protected for effectiveness and not just seniority, and “NO” to education special interest and doomsayers who have held back our state’s education system for too long.

The Governor’s education agenda that passed the legislature includes some incredible accomplishments.
* Reforms collective bargaining law to give school leaders the freedom and agility they need to run their schools effectively and also limits collective bargaining to wages and benefits;
* Ends “LIFO” the practice of laying off teachers with less seniority first, regardless of their effectiveness;
* Gives great teachers the opportunity to earn pay increases and professional protection based on their effectiveness—not just on their seniority or the college credits they earn;
* Requires multifaceted evaluations for teachers and principals—based in part on student learning and growth;
* Creates Indiana’s first school voucher program, allowing qualifying families to use a portion of their child’s per-student state allocation to help pay tuition costs at participating non-public schools. When fully implemented, hundreds of thousands of students statewide will be eligible to access a voucher.
* Expands the number of entities that can sponsor charter schools and increases accountability for charters to ensure only the highest-quality options for Hoosier students.
* Will give students who choose to the opportunity to graduate from High School early and use the money that would have been spent on their Senior year for higher education.
* Completes the funding of full-day kindergarten so that more children will have the opportunity to start their educational experience early if their parents want them to.

So many people had a role in making all these improvements to our education policy, from Superintendent Tony Bennett, Senate Pro-Tem David Long, Speaker Brian Bosma, Senator Dennis Kruse and Carlin Yoder, and Representative Bob Behning, not to mention the advocates and the parents who worked so hard to fight the misinformation that was put forth but the defenders of the status quo.

It will take time to see the improvements that these changes will make in educational outcomes for students, and we can count on the adversaries of change to start fighting back and trying to undermine these programs. But unquestionably Indiana is now at the forefront of the education revolution that is taking place all across the country, and Hoosier children will be the first beneficiaries of our new found place the Head of the Class!

See this Indy Star editorial for more thoughts on the Governor’s successful education agenda http://bit.ly/lvUnE9.