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Wearing a kelly green windbreaker over a blue button-down shirt, Gov. Mitch Daniels came face to face with a student dressed a little more formally.
Freshman Logan Bradford came to school in a shirt and tie, knowing he would have the opportunity to meet the governor Thursday.
“Look at me, I look like a slob,” Daniels said as he sheepishly unzipped his jacket.
The informal exchange concluded and Bradford, 14, began showing Daniels his class schedule on a laptop computer. A group of students soon surrounded the governor, who proceeded to grill them about their school work.
Daniels visited Wayne High School’s New Tech program and asked students and teachers about every aspect of the new venture. It’s one he has strongly endorsed statewide, saying previously that he wants to see New Tech at all or most of the state’s high schools by the time he leaves office.
“I was interested in seeing a dramatic improvement in our high school results, and New Tech, as I studied it elsewhere, was achieving those kind of results,” Daniels said.
“Rather than trying to invent something ourselves or spend more years sampling this and sampling that, let’s grab this proven method and try to roll it out as many places that are willing to try it.”
New Tech is a project-based and technology-driven high school program that’s supposed to simulate a real-life working environment. Students learn the same subjects as the rest of Wayne’s students, but they do so by doing projects, not reading textbooks.
They work in groups, give presentations and have more flexibility than in a traditional school setting. Textbooks are not absent from the curriculum, but students use them as resources instead of reading chapter after chapter.
Daniels said he tried to get the state legislature to fund New Tech high schools but wasn’t successful.
“Probably because it was my idea, they wouldn’t go along with it,” he said.
Daniels liked the idea that Fort Wayne Community Schools was making Wayne a regional hub for New Tech, allowing other districts to observe and learn about the program. He said he also wonders whether Indiana can be a standout state for New Tech high schools.
Daniels said he isn’t sure whether New Tech is the best model, the second best or even the third best, but he said Indiana’s high schools needed some way to move forward in achievement.
The Indiana Department of Education has taken a magnifying glass to achievement recently, deploying a team of educational consultants to 23 struggling Indiana schools.
Cambridge Education LLC, of Massachusetts, was hired to visit and evaluate schools, including North Side and South Side high schools in FWCS, that are on Year 4 of probation, the worst designation according to the state’s accountability model, Public Law 221.
The visits have led to speculation that the state is closing the schools or that state officials are poised to take over.
“Let’s hope not,” Daniels said in response to the speculation of a state takeover.
“I’m not talking about Fort Wayne now, but we have schools in this state that have failed so miserably and totally and there isn’t a chance of their ever succeeding under current operation, so both the law and your compassion for kids tells you we’ve got to do something different in those cases.”
