Jacob Perry: In defense of Tony Bennett

Imagine that you are the new United States Secretary of Education and in the interest of higher education reform have put into place on a trial basis a new rating system for our nation’s universities. You create a ranking scale based on a simple A-F formula, taking into account a number of common sense variables in order to create the most accurate ranking possible.

Then one day an aide sends you an email informing you that the U.S. Military Academy at West Point will receive a poor grade in the upcoming rankings due to the fact that 100% of its graduates immediately enter a hazardous occupation. Even worse is the fact that the Academy’s Commandant was a contributor and major supporter of your boss’s due to his commitment to higher education reform. Clearly this ranking is absurd as it’s common knowledge that West Point is one of the nation’s (if not the world’s) top universities and you express this thought to your aides in a series of emails that become a matter of public record.

What would you do?

With the exception of a few changed names this exact scenario is what happened to Florida’s short-lived Secretary of Education, Tony Bennett. Indiana’s “A-F” school grading system was new and much like President Obama’s health care reform initiative, there were serious growing pains in the beginning. When the initial round of grades came back an obvious problem emerged: Christel House, one of Indiana’s most highly-regarded charter schools, received a poor grade, in part because the school had a graduation rate (a significant factor in the grading system) of exactly ZERO%. Why? Because the school only goes to tenth grade.

Glenda Ritz, a former librarian and teacher’s union official who defeated Bennett in his bid for reelection for Indiana’s Superintendent of Public Instruction (based entirely on Tea Party crossover votes), decided that winning wasn’t enough. Her office soon began to selectively release emails that had been archived after Bennett left office. It appears that Ritz’s staff neither released the entire thread of emails involved in this situation and the original reporter on the story never reports asking for them, instead taking at face value the word of an elected official who has already proven herself to be little more than a partisan activist.

I’m frequently asked by friends and family what the worst part of working in politics is, and my answer usually has to do with the poisonous partisan atmosphere that pervades the entire system these days. Adding to this mixture are partisan bloggers who pass themselves off as journalists or someone merely interested in telling the truth when the reality is far different. Even worse are professional journalists who, in their effort to become the next Woodward, snatch at the mere hint of a scandal that could take down an elected official and provide a gateway to book deals and decades of television appearances. In this case the only outcome is that needed education reform is sacrificed upon the altar of a short-term political win.