by Joy Pullmann Indiana’s current debate over government’s role in education mirrors the national debate, which has resurfaced as Congress considers bills to rewrite No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the central federal-education law. Republican leaders in Congress had to pull a vote on one of those rewrites for lack of conservative votes after constituents peppered lawmakers with complaints that the new proposal was too much like the old. Republican leaders may not have noticed, but…

A Procrustean bed: a scheme or pattern into which someone is arbitrarily forced by either stretching or cutting. WE HAVE REACHED a point in Indiana’s public discussion in which a citizen who decides between the proffered options faces a dreadful ordeal. The liberal gentry of Indianapolis, both Republican and Democrat, is fine with this. Its members can pose in the manner of a Starbucks CEO, in the most reasonable of clothing, to hover above it…

by Andrea Neal Not much has changed since the first Indiana State Fair in October 1852. Farmers showed off their finest specimens of cows, hogs, horses and chickens. A “Mechanics Hall” displayed the newest reapers and plows. Corn growers competed for a silver cup for the heartiest ears. And right outside the main entrance, a vaudeville act performed under a big tent three times a day. In 1851, the Indiana General Assembly established a State…

by John Tatom, Ph.D. Two separate reports dated March 4, 2015, by the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) on the Michael Brown killing and on the Ferguson, Mo., police and courts set new, but mixed, benchmarks for what happened. While the DOJ could find no reason to question Officer Darren Wilson’s account of the shooting of Michael Brown, it launched a secondary investigation of the police and courts for potential civil-rights violations. The DOJ points out…

by Craig Ladwig All of us learn to write in the second grade. Most of us go on to greater things.” — Robert Montgomery Knight An officer of our foundation spoke at a local university recently on the topic of journalism. Afterward, talking with students, he was surprised that, although they hoped to work in newsrooms of one sort or another, they were not journalism majors. Rather, they were enrolled in something called a “professional…

“‘Bipartisan’ usually means that a larger-than-usual deception is being carried out.” — George Carlin PASSAGE IN THE INDIANA HOUSE of a moratorium on enterprise, in this case nursing-home construction, is cause to wonder why the Super Majority is such a big deal. Democrats could have done that by themselves and saved GOP donors tens of thousands in campaign contributions. We asked a friend involved in the backroom discussions how nominally conservative Republicans could vote for…

by Eric Schansberg, Ph.D. The most recent issue of The Indiana Policy Review, Dr. Maryann O. Keating describes the priorities of the key “stakeholders” in K-12 education: a) parents and children; b) the general public, including future employers; and c) providers of educational services, including school teachers and staff (public, private or for-profit), testing services and textbook publishers. Dr. Keating leads us into a discussion of recent reform — most notably “No Child Left Behind”…

by Craig Ladwig Could Indiana live without 12 percent of its education budget, the $1.2 billion coming from Washington each year? The answer is yes if you trust cost-benefit analysis. An expert in that field, Dr. Maryann O. Keating, writing in the current issue of the quarterly Indiana Policy Review, raises an even more troubling question: Does that 12 percent have anything to do with education whatsoever? “Certainly, the $1.2 billion yields some directed benefits,”…

by Andrea Neal Even before Indiana began recruiting them, African-American Hoosiers volunteered to fight in the Civil War. An 1862 act of Congress allowed President Abraham Lincoln “to employ as many persons of African descent as he may deem necessary and proper for the suppression of this rebellion.” The Emancipation Proclamation of Jan. 1, 1863, expressly allowed use of African Americans as combat soldiers. Racial prejudices initially kept Indiana from enlisting blacks, so the future…