Commentary: What if Bennett was right?

August 15, 2013 By Cam Savage TheStatehouseFile.com What if Tony Bennett was right and the Associated Press got it wrong? Time, and a few investigations, some credible and some not, hopefully will tell the full story, but you may start preparing yourself for the possibility. Reading the emails of public officials is great fun, or so it seems, considering the reaction from Tom LoBiancos Associated Press story about the 2012 development of the Indiana Department of Educations A-F grading system under former Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett. LoBianco based his story on a very small number of emails between Bennett and his staff, of which I was a part in 2009 and early 2010. (Full disclosure: LoBianco apparently requested my emails, too. But well get to his records requests in a minute.) Few have bothered to question the completeness of a story based on a handful of emails, out of what must be tens of thousands. One prominent Indiana columnist I know and respect even wrote that it was disappointing to see some Republicans last week fiercely defending Bennetts actions, so confident was he in the completeness and accuracy of one story, based entirely on quoting a few select emails that were part of a project and system developed over the course of months, if not years. A narrow selection of emails might give columnists and reporters confidence to condemn, but what they cant give you is context. Context is more important. If you read the AP story, you are led to believe Bennett changed the letter grade a school was supposed to receive from a C to an A because the schools founder is a prominent donor to Republicans. Missing from this absurd, and false, contention is the fact that the emails came during the initial creation of the A-F grading system. What difference does that make? During this time, the Department of Education was working with schools to ensure the grading system was fair and accurate. Moreover, the department had provided schools with preliminary letter grades and asked schools to help identify problems with the new system. Bennetts concern that this particular school registered a C grade under initial system trials was well founded. Because the school only served students in kindergarten through the 10th grade, the initial formula penalized the school for not graduating any seniors. This is an obvious problem, because this school, and a few others, didnt have any

seniors. Adjusting the formula to avoid punishing these schools was certainly something Bennett had the authority to do, but unquestionably, was the appropriate thing to do. Jonathan Plucker, who at the time was the director of the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy at Indiana University, and sometimes found himself at odds with Bennett, was part of a working group that developed the elementary and middle school accountability model for the Department of Educations A-F plan. Plucker wrote this week for EdWeek.com that he tested his own recommended A-F model against schools he knew to be high-performing, including Christel House. Plucker wrote, In the end, we ran around two dozen schools through the model. Yes, Christel House was one of them, but the vast majority were traditional public schools. It was meant to be a validity check, and I buy that justification for why certain schools were targeted in the offending e-mails. No one has disputed that Christel House is a high performing school. But none of that was in the first AP story (or any follow up stories that havent been written). Which brings us to an important question, as yet unasked by anyone else in the media. How did the AP acquire these emails in the first place? The AP stories indicate the emails came through public records requests. But how did the reporter know which records to request? Is this distinguished journalism or just the byproduct of old school political leaking? When an open government advocate asked the Glenda Ritz administration for copies of both the APs records request and the emails provided to the AP reporter on which the story was based, he was first told that such records did not exist. When pressed, three days later Ritzs attorney suddenly found the APs requests, but has still refused to provide the responses, including the emails presumably provided to the AP. If they provided them once to a reporter, shouldnt they be readily available to anyone else? All this is curious. Is it possible, even probable, that a few emails, hand-selected and leaked to a reporter who made no attempt to put the emails in their proper context could result in a story that got the material facts wrong? If that initial AP story was wrong, then everything that has spewed forth since is getting it wrong, too. Is it finally time to consider the possibility that Tony Bennett was right? Cam Savage is a principal at Limestone Strategies and a veteran of numerous Republican campaigns and the National Republican Senatorial Committee. He also worked at the Department of Education for former Superintendent Tony Bennett. He is a graduate of Franklin College. He can be reached at Cam@limestone-strategies.com.