For nine months, Indianapolis’ Deputy Mayor for Education Jason Kloth has been meeting with highly selective groups of community leaders to discuss a radical education overhaul plan for Indianapolis.
Called “Neighborhoods of Educational Opportunity” or “NEO,” the plan was first developed for the “Mayors Challenge,” an effort by billionaire New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to inspire innovative thinking among American cities.
Kloth and Indianapolis thought NEO would win the Challenge’s $5 million top prize. It didn’t. Now, a revised NEO 2.0 Plan is being secretly circulated around town and shopped to national foundations.
The NEO Plan was partly written, I hear, by the same think tank that helped write the 2011 “Creating Opportunity Schools” Mind Trust plan that advocated a radical overhaul of the Indianapolis Public Schools. That plan, unveiled with media hoopla and public meetings, died after fierce community opposition.
Kloth and his staff have spent tons of taxpayer-paid time pushing this new plan to attack IPS. A plan cloaked in the respectability of pointing out educational shortcomings in township schools.
The NEO plan incorporates research from a Chicago based group IFF. Their detailed analysis found that “The common misconception is that (IPS) is the sole area that needs improvement.”
IFF’s data showcased academic deficiencies in township and charter schools. But NEO, while giving lip service to township schools problems, reinforces that it’s an IPS-centric report by focusing their demographic justification for the plan on population loss within Center Township. And claiming Indianapolis’ reduced household incomes is directly because of education failures; not a lack of job growth and development in the city/county.
Kloth’s been loath to share the NEO Plan with taxpayers through Indy’s media. He especially didn’t want this columnist to have a copy.
NEO’s goal is to liberate Indianapolis students in Center Township and inner city neighborhoods from languishing in low performing schools by making Indianapolis “a city where every student in every neighborhood has access to a high quality seat.”
NEO wants 30,000 new “high quality seats” to rescue these children from educational purgatory. NEO defines “a high quality seat” as one “in a school that received an ‘A’ or ‘B’ rating on (Indiana’s) accountability system.”
NEO believes creating these “seats” in new charter or independently autonomous public schools would create “high quality education.”
But what is the reality? How many students now sit in “low quality seats”? Are those students predominately Black? Are they mostly concentrated within IPS?
Since African-American researchers were forbidden to participate in NEO, I did my own research.
Using the Indiana Department of Education (IDOE) 2011-12 accountability grades and 2012-13 enrollment, here’s what I learned.
NEO defines a low performing school as one with a “D” or “F” IDOE grade and this year 49,044 Indianapolis/Marion County public school students attended one. Some 22,092 (45.0 percent) were Black; 14,826 (30.2 percent) were white non-Hispanic; 8,651 (17.6 percent) were Hispanic and 7.2 percent were other races.
The surprise was the breakdown between IPS and townships.
Of those attending low performing schools, 23,267 (47.4 percent nearly half) attended a low performing township school. Just 19,167 (39.1 percent) attended a low performing IPS school. Another 4,652 (9.5 percent) attended a low performing charter.
Seen another way, of the 149,952 attending public school this year in Indianapolis, a third (32.7 percent) attended a low performing “D” or “F” school.
The data by race/ethnicity was also striking.
NEO incorrectly claims Marion County’s white flight was because of low performing schools. But of the 60,417 white non-Hispanic city/county public school students, just 24.5 percent attended a low performing school.
Of 22,228 Hispanics in public school, just 38.8 percent attended a low performing school.
And of the 54,734 African-American students in public schools here this year, 40.4 percent attended a low performing school.
More significantly, a paper-thin majority (50.4 percent) of Black students in low performing schools attend IPS. Nearly as many attend a low performing township or charter school.
African-American students have a greater higher risk of attending a low performing school in Indianapolis/Marion County than whites and Hispanics.
Even though minority youth would be disproportionately impacted by NEO, arrogantly, NEO failed to enlist Black grassroots educational groups or employ strategies to improve the educational quality for Blacks.
The groups partnering with Kloth’s NEO Plan are disproportionately big supporters of charters and school choice like Mind Trust, School Choice Indiana, Stand for Children. Nearly all have no real understanding on educating African-American youth. Or employ African-Americans in their organizations’ leadership or staff.
The two “token” Black organizations partnering with NEO are the Indianapolis Urban League and UNCF.
The NEO plan gives a vague, nebulous description about the Urban League’s role and UNCF would create “grassroots” partnerships and engagement to shift perceptions of education in Indy’s African-American community.
To me, the NEO plan is using the Urban League and UNCF as a window dressing for a plan that won’t materially improve educational outcomes for Black children from poor and working poor families.
NEO’s major flaw is it was prepared by folks with absolutely no experience in urban education.
Unfortunately, the Kloth/Ballard/Mind Trust NEO Plan would perpetuate, not improve, educational inequality in Indianapolis, destabilize public education in IPS and some townships. NEO isn’t new, but a regression towards continued unequal education for poor Blacks and Hispanics in Indianapolis.
Kloth and the mayor’s NEO plan should be shut down!
See ‘ya next week at Black Expo!
You can email comments to acbrown@aol.com.
