Glenda Ritz beat Dr. Tony Bennett with a grassroots guerilla warfare campaign that included a social media push with Facebook. She also loaded her slingshot with old school postcards.
Nate Schnellenberger is the president of the Indiana State Teachers Association. He said Dr. Bennett never knew what hit him.
“I believe, my personal opinion is this is the greatest political upset in Indiana political history,” said Schnellenberger.
Under Ritz, expect major changes to four big areas in Indiana Education. First, Ritz plans to tackle teacher evaluations. She wants local school districts to create their own evaluation systems.
“I'm going to be promoting that,” said Ritz. “That was not the case under Dr. Bennett. He was steering everybody toward this Rise Model.”
Next, she'll review Dr. Bennett's school takeovers and create a new coordinator position that will identify the individual needs of schools to help them succeed.
Her third target will be the Common Core standards.
“We're going to back up,” said Ritz. “We're going to take a look at the Common Core. We're going to take a look at our standards and see what Indiana wants to do.”
And she wants to change the A-F Letter Grade System for individual school performance tied to standardized testing.
“I want to put in place a student growth assessment so we know the growth of a student from year-to-year, actually know their individual improvement and have an accountability system based on that,” said Ritz.
But, those goals won't mean anything if she can't work with the Republican controlled legislature and the newly elected Republican governor.
“I’m looking for partners in both political parties to continue to lead here in the Hoosier State on education reform and that includes the new Superintendent of Public Instruction,” said Governor-Elect Mike Pence.
