IN: From the AG, Another Edu-witch Hunt Site

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita has had a busy and varied political career, marked by a desire to go after targets. At the moment, at appears that he wants to go after public schools.

Most recently, Rokita won attention through his relentless pursuit and harassment of the Indiana doctor who performed a completely legal abortion for a 10-year-old rape victim who could not receive her medical care legally in Ohio. I mean relentless, going after her in every way conceivable and, according to the Disciplinary Commission of the Indiana Supreme Court, several ways that were not legal. 

Now Rokita has decided to join up the culture panic cause by setting up a witch hunt website. Didn't even touch base with the state's education department--just set up a website to allow anyone to report a school, district, or teacher doing Something Naughty. 

This guy

We've seen this movie before. In 2021, North Carolina rightwing Lt. Governor, gubernatorial candidate, and kind of a tool Mark Robinson set up a site to collect information about schools in the state. An awful lot of people contributed fake and/or unhinged reports, but by sifting through the remainder, Robinson's office was able to reach the exact panic-feeding conclusions they had planned to reach. In that same year, Idaho's Lt. Governor Janice McGeachin also set out to track down Naughty Indoctrinators with a task force and a website. 

Both of those official panickers were angling for the state's top office. Rokita already has a failed attempt behind him.

The site itself ("an official website of the Indiana State Government") is bold and imposing and full of--well, come choices were made here. "Eyes on Education" is the official title and only sort of sounds like "Big Brother Is Watching." There's a graphics attempt to combine IN (for Indiana) and a silhouette of the state with the slogan "Liberty In Action" but it ends up looking a lot like "Liberty Inaction." Also, "Office of the Attorney General Todd Rokita" appears as prominently if this were a campaign site.

The story behind the site is the standard-- "As I travel the state, I regularly hear from students, parents and teachers about destructive curricula, policies or programs in our schools," said Rokita via press release. Culture panic is always released per request of the masses, perhaps because that sounds better than "I calculated that there were political points to be made here." The website repeats the rationale-- "After our office consistently heard from student, parents, and teachers about objectionable curricula, policies, or programs affecting children, we launched the Eyes on Education portal." Because when people have concerns about school curricula, the state Attorney General's office is the first place they turn.

To turn in your local naughty district, all you have to do is click "submit to portal," fill in your totally not fake name and address, and attach the file image of whatever you're reporting. In this way, the portal collects and displays “potentially inappropriate” material in schools that are “real examples of socialist indoctrination from classrooms across the state.” 

When the site launched on February 5, there was nothing in place to insure against false reporting--you could attach any Indoctrinaty image you liked and claim it came from a particular school. Since that launch, the AG office has said that districts are allowed to respond to postings that are old or inaccurate or just plain fake, but apparently that is their problem and not the state's. And the AG will add the district's comments, but not remove the materials. Call me cynical, but I assume that's because it allows the AG to point at the sheer volume of postings as "evidence" that socialist indoctrination is rampant in Indiana schools.

The main point is not addressing culture panic; it's about creating more public distrust of public schools, the better to push dismantling public education. This is not the move of someone who is serious about public education in the state.

So far, the complaints on the site center on gender identity, a pride flag, DEI, CRT, BLM, 1619, and reading with sexual content. Much of it is unredacted, meaning the names of the teachers are still visible (in at least one case, the complainant's name, address, phone number, and email are also plainly visible), which in the current climate seems like a recipe for all sorts of harassment and intimidation. 

The site has improved slightly over the North Carolina and Idaho efforts in that it makes it marginally harder to clog the process with bogus and protest submissions, though you could certainly give it a shot right here at the submission page.

But mostly what this is going to do is add to intimidation of teachers, allow unsubstantiated slamming of schools, increase distrust of public ed, make some political hay for Rokita, and spread smoke without light. All that and waste the time of a lot of people working in public education (which school administrator will draw the task of doing the daily Check For Lies on the AG Website). What it won't do is improve the quality of public education in Indiana.