There was an exciting development in the Indianapolis Star this morning.  The Lilly Foundation donated 2.5 million dollars to Mind Trust, an organization dedicated to educational reform in Indianapolis.  Indiana has become a very reform minded state, with Mind Trust, and the Indianapolis Mayor's Office, having paved the way for innovative change.

This year, the Governor and Superintendent of Public Instruction led the way in getting a number of controversial education reforms passed which gives the state the ability to charter schools, allows for vouchers for private schools, and both makes it possible to give performance increases to good teachers, and to terminate underperforming teachers.  

While teachers' unions and others might be uncomfortable with the new legislation, changes are necessary in the Indiana educational system, especially in Indianapolis Public Schools.  As someone who has worked with this system and other systems since the 1970s, I am much more interested in looking through the lense of improvement rather than that of change.  

For example, Mind Trust is very supportive of Teach for America, which recruits top college graduates and brings them to Indianapolis to teach.  The New Teacher project is another organization with which they are involved.  The only downside here is that the most intelligent people don't necessarily make the best teachers.  Sometimes they are the worst.  I graduated from the Indiana University School of Education several years ago, and several of my classmates went on to be classroom teachers.  Of the ones who stayed in education and became outstanding teachers, only one was a top graduate and obviously smarter than the rest of us.  I have always been in awe of him, but most of my smartest classmates left education after a few years.  Two of the best three of my peers graduated towards the middle of our class and became awesome teachers with long careers and a number of accolades.  

The traits of good teachers are often more relational than content centered.  Anyone who has taught or been around teaching knows that the abilities to control a classroom in ways that young people like and accept, develop relationships with your most motivated, least motivated and all the students in the middle, and facilitate learning for everyone in the room are the traits of good teachers. It is far more about quality of heart and love than about degree of intelligence.

Unfortunately, in the current environment, the teachers who work the hardest and do the best jobs will frequently be the ones we leave.  One friend of mine, an excellent educator, is taking an early buyout from her school system because it is a good financial deal and she knows she can do other things.  A more critical factor in this case is the loss of wisdom.  My friend is an excellent mentor to young teachers and the system is losing this asset.  Current teacher evaluation methodologies often leave too much room for political bias and result in good teachers receiving bad evaluations.  Excellent teachers are youth advocates and that isn't always popular with administrators.

Two other people I know in the system who aren't so excellent, are staying because they are in a secure job and lack the confidence to do other things.  This isn't the intent of the system, but early buyouts usually cull the best older workers rather then the worst.  

I point this out, because it is a change, but it isn't an improvement.  Developing new and less political ways of evaluating teacher performance, improving the performance of those who can improve and moving the ones out of the system who can't is not just a change, it is an improvement.  Bringing in people who want to teach, love to teach and can teach is an improvement.  Bringing in people because they are smart is a change, but not necessarily an improvement.  We need to be very deliberate an thoughtful about this difference and not cause more harm than good in our strategies.

Lilly, Mind Trust, and all those pushing these reforms are to be commended.  I only hope that the mantra of change is tempered with the wisdom necessary to actually produce improvements.  If so, our city and state will benefit greatly.