I don’t envy Jeb Bush, Patricia Levesque and Tony Bennett hunkered down in their bunker furiously coming up with ways to spin the revelation that Tony Bennett had the grades of a wealthy donors charter school adjusted for a C to an A. It must be frustrating to see their house of card crumbing down around them.
I don’t envy them but I don’t feel sorry for them either. Their unethical policies designed to enrich their friends and donors have held back children and knee capped the proud profession of public school teacher.
This is what Patricia Levesque said in The Tampa Times, "Commissioner Bennett and his department found and corrected a mistake that would have unfairly penalized 13 schools missing data for grades they did not even serve. They fixed a problem to be accurate and fair - any accusation otherwise is false and politically motivated," reads the statement released by Bush's foundation Tuesday afternoon.
It goes on: "A-F school grading empowers parents to know how well schools are serving their children, in a transparent and easy to understand way. In 2012, Indiana was in its first year of its new school grading calculation, and there is always a learning process when implementing a policy new to a state.
Not, wow, if he did that we should get rid of him, because getting things right for our children is most important. I really feel as if the press could catch Bennett with a dead girl or a live boy and they would spin it in a positive light.
If they wanted to retain any shred of credibility should have taken a tact similar to Teresa Meredith in the Chesterton Tribune: it’s time to call the Bennett school letter grade scandal exactly what it is—cheating.
Emails obtained by the Associated Press and released Monday show that former Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Dr. Tony Bennett and his staff worked furiously last September to artificially raise the letter grade of the Christel House Academy, an Indianapolis charter school created by a prominent donor to both Bennett's political campaign and to others in his political party.
There are no excuses for the actions taken by Bennett and his staff as revealed in the string of emails other than favoritism, cronyism, self-interest, and hubris—none of which has a place in public school policymaking.
