Courtney Hott (Class VII Fellow) is a dedicated public servant having served in multiple state agencies focused in education. Courtney is an IU alumni, married to a Boilermaker with two beautiful daughters.

I have been looking forward to this class from the moment we started the Fellowship. As an education advocate by trade, I could not wait to discuss the education system with a group of some of the brightest minds in Indiana and our  epically brilliant Liberty Fund moderator Pat Lynch. We began and ended the day with two Socratic style discussions like we always have at Liberty Fund (my favorite day for each topic). The prompt this time was ‘The Purpose of Early Education and the Role of Government, Society and Local Communities.” Basically, is education a utilitarian policy? Should public education be teaching basic skills or normative values? Who knows best, teachers or parents? And lastly, how do we measure the quality and success of our education system? My first question is what have we currently defined our government to do? The US Constitution does not talk about a public education system - Indiana’s, however, does. Article 8 of Indiana’s Constitution states that “knowledge and learning, generally diffused throughout a community, being essential to the preservation of a free government; it shall be the duty of the General Assembly to encourage, by all suitable means, moral, intellectual, scientific, and agricultural improvement; and to provide, by law, for a general and uniform system of Common Schools, wherein tuition shall be without charge, and equally open to all. To simplify, Indiana believes our education system should be focused on keeping a free market thriving in Indiana and the General Assembly should encourage a level of standardization through our schools and to provide access to all Hoosiers tuition free.

Our group jumped right into the discussion, I felt my heart rate pick up and I was sitting on the edge of my seat the whole time. The common theme between all arguments was expectations. What are our expectations for schools? What level of standardization should be taken, are basic skills of reading and computation enough? The most beautiful part of this discussion was that no two people had the same answer to these questions. Some argued that critical thinking was the true measure of student success, however, others thought that may blur the lines of values-based thinking. Others thought civic participation and financial literacy were the biggest focus. So what truly is our expectation of our schools? One fellow spoke up and said, isn’t it the school's role to give students a chance? We want students to learn and gain skills to be successful contributing members to our economy, participate civically and be able to live the lifestyle they strive for. Systems inevitably will fail individuals but how do we ensure we’re at minimum setting up a system that allows a chance for all young people to take responsibility for what they, their families and communities define as success? This really resonated with me and brought me back full circle -the state’s role is to ensure educational opportunities are available to families, but, overall families, individuals and communities drive what is important to them. This brings me to the second discussion, where is higher education in all of this? Are too many students attending four-year college? Is higher education becoming more expensive and less valuable? The longest part of the discussions was again on expectations - what are we holding universities accountable for as far as expectations? What does a bachelor’s degree hold that makes it a basic requirement for so many jobs? The arguments for this were even more expansive than in the first conversation. Overall, the conclusions we arrived upon was - it sounds easy but when you break it down setting expectations and being able to measure effectiveness and accountability in education is complicated and multifaceted. We left with more questions than we started with, which I don’t think is a bad thing.

Between the two Liberty Fund discussions we had the privilege to listen and converse with three incredible education innovators and advocates; Betsy Wiley who serves as President and CEO for the Institute for Quality Education, Dr. Tony Bennet who serves as Senior Vice President of Academics and External Affairs at K12 Inc. and Brian McGrath who is the Vice President of External Relations at Ed Choice. We were also privileged to have the namesake of our fellowship, the one and only, Mitch Daniels in the audience with us. This panel started by them sharing the incredible history of school choice in Indiana, where it started and how it has grown from here. Indiana has been a leader in school choice and continues to lead the pack. We picked their brains for well over an hour and soaked in all of their knowledge. My favorite thing that Mitch shared was about the level of government participation in programming. He said the more programming the government does the less that happens. Government should focus on setting up the environment for markets to thrive and allow other entities to execute the programming, reducing bureaucracy and increasing innovation. Bringing to light how the MDLF core principles: individual liberty, personal responsibility, and importance of private enterprise play a role in education. I particularly enjoyed this session as I was a Senate intern back in the 2011 Indiana legislative session which was known for school choice legislation. That session is what peaked my interest in education policy and has formed all of my career decisions since then. It was truly incredible to listen to them talk about the very thing that shaped my career and who I am as a professional today. It reminded me that the work I do is important and needs to continue, even when it gets hard.