As students return, ideological diversity and new diplomas keep Indiana’s schools going lower

Several new high school and college legislative changes are working through the process. (Getty Images)

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! The fall semester starts this week, and I might be a little too excited. I need to remember to have a little sympathy for my new students, particularly those in my 8:00 am class on Tuesdays and Thursdays. For the rest of their lives, when they hear the term, “morning person,” they will immediately think of me.

Even when my professional world revolved around legislation in the Statehouse, I rarely had business in the realm of education policy. Over the years, I only watched that stuff as a citizen. My sons went to Catholic school, so I felt a little detached from the annual wrangling over what the next moves from the Indiana General Assembly and the Indiana Department of Education would be.

Lately though, the biggest two moves seem to have a common theme: aiming lower.

Last year, Senate Bill 202 was a headline-maker that had folks in the realm of higher education all worked up. Conservative lawmakers were trying to address the reality that college professors tend to be more ideologically liberal or progressive than they prefer. You know, leftists like me are “indoctrinating” young people, not teaching them. It’s a “problem” worthy of an eye roll.

From the perspective of a public university faculty member, I only cared a little about the bill in a practical sense. It never appeared to be impactful on what or how I teach. I already make space for diverse ideological viewpoints when appropriate, and honestly, it matters only in the rarest of circumstances. The “problem” the legislature is trying to solve here is incredibly overblown, and their solution is, in fact, not one. More importantly, that non-solution is expensive.

As implementation of the new law is beginning, I can now see the resources being invested in an attempt to comply with it. The legislature should be happy with how seriously the new law is being taken, no matter how poorly it was written. But when administrators are through, it will have cost a fortune and accomplished practically nothing. I read the estimated fiscal impact the bill had while it was under consideration, and that too is laughably void of what it is certain to cost.

High school changes

Last year’s legislature also decided to rework the standards for Indiana’s high school diplomas. This was even less interesting to this college professor, whose adult children are already done with school. But again, as the new high school diplomas the IDOE was directed to develop are now coming into focus, it is clear that academic rigor and the college-going rate for Hoosiers is not the priority.

The first stab at the new diplomas inspired objections by the state’s universities because the new standards would further reduce Indiana students’ ability to even be admitted to college after graduating high school. Our college-going rate has dropped from 65% in 2008 to 53% now, though the plummeting seems to have flattened in recent years. In 2012, officials set the goal of getting that number to 60% by 2025. No way is Indiana going to get there.

Instead, the latest move is to reshuffle the priorities by focusing on preparing our young people for the employment opportunities legislators predict will be here for them. Apprenticeships and job training that doesn’t require a bachelor’s degree in economics or English are the new shiny objects. This is another mistake.

The second draft diplomas create “readiness seals” that will allow some freedom for students to choose a path that suits them. I wonder if I would have taken physics or trigonometry if my school didn’t think they were important at the time. I know those classes helped me learn how to think, so I’m still glad I took them, forty years later.

Aiming lower

While preparing my classes for the semester last week, something other than my excitement became obvious. My already demanding classes will be even more difficult this year. I teach communication at a nationally competitive business school, which means none of my students came there to take my speech and writing classes. Most only discovered these requirements well after they chose Indiana for college.

I plan to keep pushing them until I discover their limit, and mine.

There’s nothing special about that. It’s intuitive for me and my colleagues, really. And after we get rolling this week, most of us will lock into our tunnel vision until the semester ends in December. Then we will evaluate how it all went and ask ourselves how we can do it better in the spring. There will be a time when I ask too much of my students, and when that day comes, I’ll adjust.

But in Indiana, that day is definitely not today.

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