FROM THE CICP BLOG

The Central Indiana Corporate Partnership (CICP) is an alliance that includes the CEOs of many of our major employers and the presidents of our research universities, coming together to advance a common goal ??? growing our regional economy. 

I???m Mark Miles, CICP???s President & CEO, and this blog will offer our thoughts and perspectives on the latest economic news and other issues that affect the future of our region.  Thanks for visiting.

Our colleagues at BioCrossroads yesterday publicly announced the successful fundraising for Indiana Seed Fund II, an $8.25M venture fund aimed at promising early-stage companies in the life sciences sector.  This shows the continuing confidence and commitment of our state’s institutional investors in our entrepreneurial sector’s ability to innovate and commercialize scientific breakthroughs into successful businesses.  (BioCrossroads had already raised more than $135M in risk capital for life sciences ventures.  HALO, a network of angel investors organized by our TechPoint initiative, plays a similar role directing early-stage funding to high-tech start-ups.)

The ability to finance homegrown, high-potential businesses is of vital importance to our economic future.  As Indiana works to emerge from the shadow of the national recession, every effort must be made to attract new investment and jobs to the state as well as incentivize growth among our existing headquartered companies.  But ultimately, it will be our ability to encourage new businesses from the ground up that will yield the best returns in jobs, innovation and wealth creation.  (Start-up firms are responsible for all net job creation in the U.S. over the last thirty years, and the knowledge-intensive employment base created by fast-growing businesses in technology and the life sciences are critical to erasing Indiana’s per capita income gap.)

Legendary entrepreneurs like Colonel Eli Lilly, W.G. Irwin (of Cummins Engine) and Bill Cook helped reshape the Hoosier economy to this day.  Supporting their future counterparts through efforts like the Indiana Seed Fund is essential to building the economy of tomorrow.  Read more about the BioCrossroads’ announcement here.

An excellent editorial ran in the Indianapolis Star late last week by former IPS School Board President Kelley Bentley, who makes an inarguable point with unique credibility – IPS is a broken system. 

Bentley’s piece is published in the midst of an ongoing pattern of actions and statements by the district that shows its commitment – not to the students in its care, but to defending what it views as its rightful monopoly on education within its boundaries.

IPS has engaged in a running feud with area charter schools over funding and enrollment practices.  It fought the recent state takeover over several schools by demanding special treatment on how scores were calculated and threatening litigation.  Now the district resorts to stonewalling the turnaround operators tasked by the State Board of Education with turning around these schools.  IPS officials have long been vocal opponents of voucher programs designed to give students and parents more choices.

While IPS spends significant time and energy seeking to stop the migration of students out of district schools – and therefore preserve its budget and justify its bureaucracy – its academic performance continues to falter.  Less than half of IPS students pass Math and English I-STEP requirements. Graduation rates lag the state average by more than twenty percent.  And six of the seven schools statewide identified as chronic failures under Indiana law are IPS schools.

Bentley points a finger at a major cause of this mess – the very structure of the traditional urban school district, a ‘command and control’ system where success is too often measured by enrollment and budget figures, not the achievement of students.  When you exist within a large bureaucracy, the preservation of that bureaucracy inevitably becomes the primary goal.

Read the editorial here: