Indiana is skeptical precisely because it is conservative, but its conservatism is of an older brand. Modern conservatism is sometimes defined as the disgruntled resentment of elites and government. In Indiana, where the cultural clock ticks slowly, it more often means the love of local institutions, which do not lose public support even when they are imperfect. Not least because Bobby Plump, one of the Mighty Men of Milan, made that shot in the final seconds of the 1954 state championship that was memorialized in the movie Hoosiers. Much of this community loyalty might evaporate if local schools were badly failing children.
Loyalty goes only so far.
Yet a majority of parents in suburbs and small towns give their local schools high marks, more so now than in recent years. The discontent that does exist with public schools focuses on moral values, expressed in things like sex education, and not academic standards. While no state is as basketball-obsessed as Indiana, other conservative locales share the view that public schools are important community institutions. According to one June 1997 poll, people in the liberal Northeast supported it more readily than did those in the conservative Midwest. This would do little for the disadvantaged, who, studies show, do gain greatly from private, particularly Catholic, education.