Explanation seems hollow

Sorry, Tony, your explanations don’t ring true.
Former Indiana superintendent of public instruction Tony Bennett has been doing some verbal fan-dancing this week in the wake of reports by The AP’s Tom LoBianco that emails show a concerted effort to change the grade for a favored charter school backed by a major Republican donor.
But no matter what he says, the emails themselves are more credible.
They provide incontrovertible evidence that the state’s top education official wanted to “cook the books” in order to advance his own political agenda.
Bennett’s A-F grading system for schools and school districts has always been a little bit suspect simply because it oversimplifies a complex issue.
While Jay Schools is justifiably proud of its grade of A, the system itself has seemed arbitrary at times.
Exactly how arbitrary is demonstrated by Bennett’s labors to boost the Christel House Academy charter school in Indianapolis from a C to an A.
A grade of C wouldn’t bolster his arguments on behalf of charter schools and his criticism of public schools. Tony Bennett needed that grade to be an A, so his staff was sent into contortions to produce an A.
“They need to understand that anything less than an A for Christel House compromises all of our accountability work,” Bennett wrote in an email last September that undermined the very notion of “accountability.”
Fortunately, last November the voters had a chance to give Bennett a grade as well.
He flunked, and Indiana now has a new superintendent of public instruction. — J.R.[[In-content Ad]]