Last week, Florida Education Commissioner Tony Bennett was forced to resign after the Associated Press reported that Bennett, in his previous position as state superintendent of Indiana schools, had “fixed” a performance grade assigned to a charter school that was funded by a wealthy Republican backer. The backer, Christine DeHaan, is a multimillionaire who helped champion Bennett’s development of the largest voucher school and charter school program in the country.

The moment cast a new spotlight on a series of scandals in education throughout Indiana that have also engulfed Bennett’s former boss — Indiana’s last governor — Mitch Daniels. In 2012, a local controversy ensued when Purdue trustees hired sitting Republican Indiana governor Mitch Daniels to be the college’s next president, which violated both state law and the board’s code of ethics. Later that year, the FBI designated Purdue second in the nation for reported “hate crimes” among American universities. Just two weeks ago, the school made national headlines when the Associated Press reported that as governor in 2010, Daniels directed his staff to make sure no Indiana schools were teaching the work of historian Howard Zinn. Daniels called Zinn “anti-American” and his A People’s History of the United States “a truly execrable, anti-factual piece of disinformation that misstates American history.”