Four Courageous Teachers in Louisiana

Last spring, four teachers in Calcasieu Parish in Louisiana decided “enough is enough” when Governor Bobby Jindal rushed through his legislation targeting teachers and attacking public education.

They decided they would launch a campaign to recall Jindal and House Speaker Chuck Kleckley. None had ever been politically active before.

You have to understand that Bobby Jindal–at this moment in time–owns Louisiana politics, lock, stock, and barrel. The teachers’ campaign was akin to a petition drive against the emperor of Rome.

Their campaign didn’t get very far. They didn’t have an organization or money, and they didn’t collect enough signatures to get on the ballot.

“The petitions required signatures from at least one-third of the registered voters in an election district. In the case of Jindal, it would have been about 965,000 signatures statewide. For Kleckley, it was roughly 9,000 signatures.

In each case the required reports were filed 56 days late. When they were filed, the reports reflected little financial activity.

The Jindal recall campaign showed $525 in receipts and no disbursement.

The Kleckley effort showed $1,600 in receipts and no disbursements.”

The Republican party spent $100,000 to quash the recall effort, and it filed a complaint with the state Ethics Board because the teachers did not file their campaign disclosure documents in the required 45 day period; they were 11 days late.

The two teachers who led the effort, such as it was, were fined $1,000 each.

I had planned to ask readers of this blog to raise the money to pay their fines, but an anonymous donor in Louisiana has already stepped up and done it.

The teachers were acting on their own, as citizens in a democracy. I would have gladly shown my support for them.

This is the same Ethics Board that ruled a few weeks ago that it was no conflict of interest for a member of the State Board of Education to award a contract to a business that had given him or her a campaign contribution.

Source:  http://dianeravitch.net/2012/12/24/four-courageous-teachers-in-louisiana/

Jindal Approval Sinks Like A Stone - School Vouchers Opposed By Majority

Source:  http://dailykingfish.com/2012/10/02/jindalsinking/

64-61-51

Those are Bobby Jindal’s last three approval numbers in a SMOR Survey.

This is what a flailing Governor looks like.

Jindal is watching his political career tumble down the drain, and he has started to panic.

Earlier this week Jindal announced a very startling staff shake-up, dumping his Chief of Staff without a cited reason:

In two weeks, Gov. Bobby Jindal will have a new budget adviser and a new chief of staff.

The governor’s chief of staff, Stephen Waguespack, announced his resignation Monday, severing career ties with the governor that began during the 2007 campaign.
“From the beginning of our work to build a better Louisiana, Stephen has been by my side as a trusted adviser and a friend. He helped shepherd through monumental policy reforms that will have a lasting and positive impact on our state,” the governor said in a prepared statement.Commissioner of Administration Paul Rainwater will replace Waguespack on Oct. 14. Replacing Rainwater will be the governor’s deputy chief of staff, Kristy Nichols.

And now a Southern Media and Opinion Research Poll Find Jindal sinking. It’s no surprise, but 89% of those surveyed don’t like Jindal’s slash and burn of the public Charity Hospital.

More startlingly, Jindal’s prized voucher program is opposed by 54% of Louisianians:

The poll shows Gov. Bobby Jindal with a 51 percent approval rating. That compares with 61 percent last spring and 64 percent a year ago.

Reductions for the LSU-operated charity hospital system are particularly unpopular. Eighty-nine percent said they were concerned by the cuts. Seventy-nine percent said the charity system would not be able to provide the same quality of health care, and 80 percent said Louisiana residents would lose access to health care as a result.
Among the poll’s other findings:

• On the issue of school vouchers, 54 percent were opposed.
• Salaries for state executives and political appointees were a hot button issue with 86 percent saying annual salaries of $175,000 and above are excessive or not justified.
• 47 percent favor eliminating tax exemptions to increase state revenue compared to 35 percent opposed, which tracks with widespread opposition to deeper budget cuts.
• 69 percent said the Legislature should be more independent from the governor

Bad news all around. #Vouchergate is going well for Team Jindal. Nor are his high-priced public employee hires.

And it looks like the tax credit monster is about to bite Jindal back…

Jindal isn’t worried, however. He’s spent the last week campaigning for judges in Iowa, in some fields of dreams.

Top 10 Reasons Wealthy Segregationists Want Urban Charter Schools

• Urban charter schools require minimal public investment in physical plants, library programs, the arts, science labs, athletics, personnel, and transportation infrastructure.
  
• Urban charter schools are cheaper because they depend upon an endless stream of young beginning teachers with few benefits, no retirement payouts, and no collective bargaining.
• Urban charter schools make it easy to segregate based on race, economics, gender, and disability.
• Urban charter schools allow for the exclusion or dumping of problem students whose abilities, behaviors, or test performance that could damage to the charter brand.
• Urban charter schools make it easier to hide the problems of the poor by pointing to testing success by those who survive the charter gauntlet.
• Urban charter schools allow for the imposition of cultural and psychological control techniques in urban areas that are not subject to public scrutiny.
• Urban charter schools put decision-making and control into the hands of unelected executives with no oversight beyond hand-picked board members.
  
• Urban charter schools (not-for-profit CMOs) allow corporations and wealthy donors to reap huge tax benefits for their generosity to corporate charter schools.
• Urban charter schools (for-profit EMOs) expand business opportunities for the education industry & testing-industrial complex.
• Urban charter schools make it possible to take the state tax dollars saved from the forced choice of urban charters and use that money to enrich suburban public schools without raising taxes.

Read entire article here.

Education Reform in Louisana: A Metaphor

Jo Bob's Car Dealership in NY wants to start selling repo'd cars in Louisiana. The cars have no warranties, and Jo Bob sure doesn't drive one (he's got a limo), but he knows he can charge double for these cars if he sells them out-of-state because nobody outside of NY knows Jo Bob's reputation when it comes to selling questionable, after-market cars with no warranties.

So Jo Bob flies to Louisiana in his fancy corporate jet. He starts wining & dining politicians to get their permission to sell his questionable cars in Louisiana. The politicians really enjoy eating Kobe steak and drinking expensive wine, so Jo Bob gets his way.

The governor tells Jo Bob he can come on down here and sell his cars to people in LA. He won't even have to register his cars in LA because the governor feels pretty sure he's going to tell consumers the truth about the quality of his repo'd cars. Jo Bob goes to the same church as the governor, after all - he's gotta be a good guy!

Jo Bob knows lots of poor people live in LA, so he figures out a way to sell his cars here - even to poor folks! He proposes that, if someone wants to upgrade their clunker of a car for one of his cars, the state will pay for it with public tax dollars! It's helping the PUBLIC, after all, right?? "What a great idea - I can make that happen," says the governor!! They celebrate at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse, then Jo Bob flies the governor to NY in his private jet for a week to raise some money for his wife's foundation. (It's for the kids, of course.)

Word gets out about Jo Bobs car deal, and ol' Mary Lou decides she doesn't like her 1992 Dodge Caravan. It runs, and could be fixed - but she is unemployed, has four kids, a deadbeat ex-husband, and a mortgage she can't pay. Mary Lou hears that she can get a "BRAND NEW CAR" from Jo Bob, who is a fancy car salesman from NY - and she can get her new car for FREE because the governor passed a law saying: if you don't like your car, lemme get you a new one on Mike Stone's nickel just because I'm a swell guy & want you to have the best car EVER.

The governor tells her, "We'll just send the monthly car note to good ol' Mike Stone (a random name) and he'll cover it for you. ln fact, I'll guarantee that Mike will pay that note for you," says the governor," because I'll deduct it out of his paycheck! Now, I won't let him vote on it...I'll just get all the wined & dined legislators to vote in Jo Bob's favor because Jo Bob sure seems to have a sweet deal going in NY, and ALL the politicians in NY love him, and he's spent ALL this money wining & dining us. It's a win/win situation for everybody! And good ol' Mike is legally obligated to back us on this decision because I committed to the deal with Jo Bob two weeks ago while Mike was in the hospital recovering from a near-death experience!"

The governor listens to Jo Bob while they're lounging at the Country Club one Wednesday. Jo Bob assures him that can sell more cars than Yokem, Wray Ford, Red River Chevy and Holmes Honda combined. The governor know these dealerships have been here for a long time, built the economy, warrantied their cars, contributed to the tax base, created lots of jobs, and been generally good corporate citizens, but heck, they don't WINE AN DINE US like Jo Bob does!

Jo Bob is the charter school industry.

You are Mike Stone, buying questionable cars for other people against your will.

Mary Lou is the parent who doesn't get involved in fixing public education because she's just trying to survive a crappy economy and raise her kids the best she knows how. Now, she's gonna have an un-warrantied car which may or may not get her & her children to work and school. Oh, and by getting a car from Jo Bob, she forfeited public transportation for her & her kids FOREVER.

The existing car dealerships are our public schools - they were doing what they were supposed to be doing based on the rules they'd been given, but now the rug's been pulled out from under them and they're scrambling to compete on a suddenly unequal & largely politicized playing field.

And Jo Bob is laughing all the way to the bank. He'll cash out & fly back to NY, leaving a few cars sputtering along I-20 for a year or so until their owners realize they'd have been better off buying a dang used Honda from Fred, their next-door neighbor who works at Holmes Honda. But no one can do that now because Holmes went out of business when everybody decided to buy Jo Bob's shitty cars, and his next-door neighbor Fred is now unemployed & living on welfare in his mom's basement.

L.E.A.R.N. Protests Gov. Jindal's Privatization of Public Education in LA

See photos from the protest here.

"I grew up in the public education system in Louisiana and I got a fantastic education. It pulled me out of a family that had lived in poverty forever. My son will be graduating next year and going to a state school, and every child in the state of Louisiana should have the same opportunities that he does," says member of the movement and parent, Debbie Engle."

Read entire story here:  http://www.ktbs.com/news/Citizens-gather-to-protest-education-reform-bill/-/144844/12533166/-/k3ibjj/-/index.html
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Visit the L.E.A.R.N. website for news and updates.
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"Teacher Mike Myers said the future of Louisiana's education will no longer be in the hands of community members who hope to better the areas in which they grew up, but instead will be corporate start-up charters looking to make a profit off of Louisiana's $8 billion-a-year education system.

'These carpetbagger schools are going to come in solely to get their hands on public money,' he said. 'They have no interest in bettering local education.'

Debbie Engle, a parent of a junior at C.E. Byrd High School, said her son is a successful student garnering excellent grades and acing standardized tests. However, she wishes more students had the same opportunities as her son and the state was working more to help teachers and classroom instruction.

'Public education is under attack, and it's about money and political favor,' she said."

Read the entire story by Times reporter Mary Nash-Wood here:  Grass-roots organization assembles ed reform protest

Schools for the Corporate Era

Gov. Bobby Jindal (Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster)

Gov. Jindal has reshaped Louisiana's public education system based on ALEC's blueprints

By Julianne Hing, Colorlines.com

Gov. Bobby Jindal has remade the Louisiana public schools system with impressive speed over the past legislative session. Last week, he signed into law a suite of landmark reform bills that will likely change the direction of public education in Louisiana forever. But not all change is good, and critics say both Jindal’s agenda and the strategy to move it come right from the playbook of conservative advocacy group ALEC, in an effort to revive Jindal’s national political profile.

Louisiana is now home to the nation’s most expansive school voucher program. Charter school authorization powers have been broadened. And teacher tenure policies have been radically transformed. Louisiana already had something of a reputation as a radical-reform state, thanks to the post-Katrina educational climate in New Orleans. But not all change is good, and education advocates have deep concerns about the efficacy of Jindal’s overhaul, and the interests that have pushed it.

“With these laws Gov. Bobby Jindal has sold our kids out for his political aspirations,” said Karran Royal Harper, a Louisiana parent activist and education advocate.

The bills all sprinted through the state legislature. Committee hearings were conducted at a breakneck speed, Democratic lawmakers complained, and members were asked to vote on amendments they didn’t actually understand. When the House took up a bill changing teacher-tenure rules, it ran the session past midnight, refusing to break until they called for a vote.

“There’s just so much more here than what our group can handle,” said Minh Nguyen, executive director of the Vietnamese American Young Leaders Association of New Orleans, a community advocacy group. “We don’t even have the capacity to handle all the bills that are being proposed right now and it’s been really challenging to us.”

ALEC’s 2010 “Report Card on American Education” (PDF) suggested that lawmakers overwhelm their opposition in exactly this manner. “Do not simply just introduce one reform in the legislature—build a consensus for reform and introduce a lot,” the report authors told ALEC members.

“Across the country for the past two decades, education reform efforts have popped up in legislatures at different times in different places,” the report authors wrote. “As a result, teachers’ unions have been playing something akin to ‘whack-a- mole’—you know the game—striking down as many education reform efforts as possible. Many times, the unions successfully ‘whack’ the ‘mole,’ i.e., the reform legislation. Sometimes, however, they miss. If all the moles pop up at once, there is no way the person with the mallet can get them all. Introduce comprehensive reform packages.”

One new law Jindal moved in this fashion will make Louisiana among the most aggressive states in the nation for pushing charter schools and publicly funded vouchers for private institutions. It also includes a “parent trigger” provision, where parents whose children are enrolled in a failing school can hand the school over to Louisiana’s Recovery School District if a majority choose to do so.

However, the key provision expands New Orleans’ current pilot voucher program so that now, students from high-poverty families enrolled in schools that have been rated a C, D or F by the state may move to a private school at the state’s expense.

More than half of Louisiana’s student population, or around 385,000 students, are expected to qualify for the voucher program, according to Tulane University’s Cowen Institute. Only 4,000 vouchers will be available in the first year, experts estimate, but the law makes Louisiana’s program the most expansive in the nation.

Jindal’s set of reforms hews closely to the model reform legislation set out by ALEC, which advocates for the privatization of traditionally public services, like health care, prisons and education. ALEC and Jindal’s school agenda is driven by a conservative ideology that believes private markets can help introduce efficiency and healthy competition into public institutions. As ALEC’s education report card in 2010 laid out, “Families need a market for K-12 schools. The market mechanism rewards success, and either improves or eliminates failure.”

ALEC and Jindal have kept close ties for some time now, education watchers in the state say.

“This is really ALEC at work. It’s a feather in Gov. Bobby Jindal’s cap—he has spent a lot of time traveling around the country lining up donor money and now he can say Louisiana is one of the few states that has a large choice environment,” said Harper, who pointed out that many of the key committee members who supported the legislation are ALEC members or have received campaign contributions from groups with ties to ALEC. Indeed, at its annual meeting last August, ALEC recognized Jindal with its coveted Thomas Jefferson Freedom Award for “outstanding public service.”

“It was a huge defeat for us,” said Damekia Morgan, the statewide educational policy and campaign director of Families and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children.

Public “Accountability,” Private Free-for-All

Critics say the rushed process hampered conversation on the bills. The voucher bill in particular is still light on specifics about implementation. The state has yet to create a plan for evaluating the private schools that take public vouchers. Evaluation wasn’t even mentioned until a vague amendment that calls for “an accountability system for participating students at participating schools” to be hammered out by the state board of education by Aug. 1.

The lack of an accountability plan is telling, says Morgan. The standards that are devised don’t need to come again before the public before they are codified. “This is all supposedly about demanding accountability for public schools and here we’re handing off our students to private schools without any checks,” Harper also said.

In addition, the parent trigger provisions are also too vague, education advocates say. In California, the lack of specificity around that state’s parent trigger law led to protracted court battles when a community first made use of the law.

These sorts of bills have an undeniable appeal for parents, especially poor parents of color who’ve been locked out of decision making circles and feel like their concerns have often gone ignored by public school administrators. Yet education advocates say that these bills provide only the veneer of choice for parents, while removing parents’ avenues for demanding accountability via collective action.

The parent trigger portion of the new Louisiana laws, for instance, allows for public schools to be converted only to charter schools. The laws give parents no avenue for re-triggering a failing charter school, of which there are many. And while lawmakers hope that parents feel empowered by school vouchers, their options for where they can place their children will be limited to the private school options on the table.

“Clearly these options are not full choice for parents,” said Andre Perry, associate director of Loyola University’s New Orleans’ Institute for Quality and Equity in Education. Perry said his concern was that these reforms, while bold, don’t get to the heart of how educational inequity is created in the first place. Instead, what lawmakers are voting for, Perry said, “is a belief in a philosophy that’s being applied in the name of choice.”

“It’s a catch-22 for parents,” said Damekia Morgan, the statewide educational policy and campaign director of Families and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children. “Parents are desperate for change. But as a parent myself, I know that the more money we take away from public education systems to go to private entities, the less control I have over what public education looks like.”

Hijacking Obama’s Agenda

These days, the push to deregulate public education is a popular, bipartisan issue. Many of the states that have passed school reform overhauls in recent years did so to become eligible for the Obama administration’s $4.3 billion competitive grants program Race to the Top.

“Republican governors, shrewdly, jumped all over it and packed on their version of choice,” Perry said. “That’s how you see what we have now, where many different political bedfellows are coming together in a strange way.”

Indeed, Jindal spoke the language of the Obama administration last Wednesday when he touted his reform package as a way to help Louisiana children better compete in the global economy.

“[Louisiana children] are going to be competing with kids not only from Texas, Georgia, and other states, but they’re going to be competing for jobs with kids in China and other countries around the world,” Jindal said. “That is why it is so important we give every child in Louisiana a great education.” It could have been a line out of one of President Obama’s own education speeches.

This is one of the reasons why Perry says the presence of ALEC in the school reform policy arena isn’t reason enough for an outcry. Not only is ALEC not the only conservative group pushing for a free market approach to public education, but “there are pillars of each party that push the agenda.”

“The question is more about: what is so compelling about their arguments that is helping advance their agendas? Again, Jindal has been able to usher this through partly because the traditionally based system has failed in many ways. And that’s just the reality.”

Do politicians know anything at all about schools and education? Anything?

Tenth-graders in Springfied, Ill., last October. (AP photo)

ASK THIS | February 07, 2012

Diane Ravitch poses a dozen piercing questions on education and school policy. Some of them turn conventional thinking on its ear, and each could be a starting point for reporting on elections, from the presidency on down to local school boards.

By Diane Ravitch
gardendr@gmail.com

 

1.     Both Republican candidates and President Obama are enamored of charter schools—that is, schools that are privately managed and deregulated. Are you aware that studies consistently show that charter schools don’t get better results than regular public schools? Are you aware that studies show that, like any deregulated sector, some charter schools get high test scores, many more get low scores, but most are no different from regular public schools? Do you recognize the danger in handing public schools and public monies over to private entities with weak oversight? Didn’t we learn some lessons from the stock collapse of 2008 about the risk of deregulation?

 

2.    Both Republican candidates and President Obama are enamored of merit pay for teachers based on test scores. Are you aware that merit pay has been tried in the schools again and again since the 1920s and it has never worked? Are you aware of the exhaustive study of merit pay in the Nashville schools, conducted by the National Center for Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt, which found that a bonus of $15,000 per teacher for higher test scores made no difference? 

 

3.     Are you aware that Milwaukee has had vouchers for low-income students since 1990, and now state scores in Wisconsin show that low-income students in voucher schools get no better test scores than low-income students in the Milwaukee public schools? Are you aware that the federal test (the National Assessment of Educational Progress) shows that—after 21 years of vouchers in Milwaukee—black students in the Milwaukee public schools score on par with black students in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana?

 

4.     Does it concern you that cyber charters and virtual academies make millions for their sponsors yet get terrible results for their students?

 

5.     Are you concerned that charters will skim off the best-performing students and weaken our nation’s public education system?

 

6.     Are you aware that there is a large body of research by testing experts warning that it is wrong to judge teacher quality by student test scores? Are you aware that these measures are considered inaccurate and unstable, that a teacher may be labeled effective one year, then ineffective the next one? Are you aware that these measures may be strongly influenced by the composition of a teacher’s classroom, over which she or he has no control? Do you think there is a long line of excellent teachers waiting to replace those who are (in many cases, wrongly) fired?

 

7.     Although elected officials like to complain about our standing on international tests, did you know that students in the United States have never done well on those tests? Did you know that when the first international test was given in the mid-1960s, the United States came in 12th out of 12? Did you know that over the past half-century, our students have typically scored no better than average and often in the bottom quartile on international tests? Have you ever wondered how our nation developed the world’s most successful economy when we scored so poorly over the decades on those tests? 

 

8.     Did you know that American schools where less than 10% of the students were poor scored above those of Finland, Japan and Korea in the last international assessment? Did you know that American schools where 25% of the students were poor scored the same as the international leaders Finland, Japan and Korea? Did you know that the U.S. is #1 among advanced nations in child poverty? Did you know that more than 20% of our children live in poverty and that this is far greater than in the nations to which we compare ourselves?

 

9.     Did you know that family income is the single most reliable predictor of student test scores? Did you know that every testing program—the SAT, the ACT, the NAEP, state tests and international tests—shows the same tight correlation between family income and test scores? Affluence helps—children in affluent homes have educated parents, more books in the home, more vocabulary spoken around them, better medical care, more access to travel and libraries, more economic security—as compared to students who live in poverty, who are more likely to have poor medical care, poor nutrition, uneducated parents, more instability in their lives. Do you think these things matter?

10. Are you concerned that closing schools in low-income neighborhoods will further weaken fragile communities? 

 

11. Are you worried that annual firings of teachers will cause demoralization and loss of prestige for teachers? Any ideas about who will replace those fired because they taught too many low-scoring students?

 

12.  Why is it that politicians don’t pay attention to research and studies?

Add end

 

And another question that came to mind after the initial posting of this article: 

 

13.  Do you know of any high-performing nation in the world that got that way by privatizing public schools, closing those with low test scores, and firing teachers? The answer: none.

 

 

Photo by Jack Miller

Diane Ravitch is Research Professor of Education at New York University and a distinguished historian of American education.

Bobby Jindal Is Mooning Louisiana

Source:  http://cenlamar.com/
by Lamar White, Jr. on February 5, 2012

A few days ago, The Wall Street Journal compared Governor Bobby Jindal’s plans for education reform to Newt Gingrich’s plans for a moon colony. And they weren’t being facetious or ironic. Quoting from their article “Jindal’s Education Moon Shot“:

Newt Gingrich wants the U.S. to return to the moon, but as challenges go he has nothing on Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s school reform plans.

Mr. Jindal wants to create America’s largest school voucher program, broadest parental choice system, and toughest teacher accountability regime—all in one legislative session. Any one of those would be a big win, but all three could make the state the first to effectively dismantle a public education monopoly.

In an attempt at praising Jindal’s “reform” efforts, The Wall Street Journal unwittingly reinforced something most rational people already understand: Like Gingrich’s pitch for a colony on the moon, Jindal’s plan for education is irrational, untested, grandiose, and absurd. But at least they got one thing right: While Jindal and company attempt to convince us that they’re merely proposing scholarships, the simple and obvious truth is that they are calling for “America’s largest school voucher program.” Let’s get this out of the way: Jindal’s voucher plan is comically infeasible and impractical. From The Times-Picayune:

Under Jindal’s plan, about 380,000 students would qualify to receive state aid for tuition at a private or religious school, (Senator) Landrieu pointed out.

But even if every private elementary school in the state could immediately grow its enrollment by 10 percent to accommodate an influx of voucher recipients, only about 8,000 seats would be available. Include private high schools and that figure rises to about 11,200.

Jindal, by the way, did not dispute these numbers. He didn’t dispute that his voucher plan cannot and will not work, that there is no possible way he could ever deliver on his promise. Instead, his spokesperson said that Senator Landrieu was “missing the point.” No, no, she’s not. She’s speaking precisely on point: Jindal cannot deliver right now.

Thus far, unfortunately, teacher unions and the superintendents are playing right into Jindal’s hands. The teacher unions are harping on teacher pay and benefits; the superintendents, who stand to gain even more discretionary powers, are distancing themselves as quickly as possible, hoping to appear as apolitical as possible. I wonder, though: Are any of these people aware of the end-game here? Because Jindal’s proposals about performance-based pay and tenure are just window-dressing. On their own, they’re radical, to be sure, but not nearly as radical as Jindal’s end-game. Ultimately, Jindal’s goal, as The Wall Street Journal notes, is not merely to create the country’s “largest voucher program;” it’s about using taxpayer dollars to establish an undemocratic, unprotected parallel education system.

Senator Landrieu points out that we simply don’t have enough private-school openings to accommodate even a fraction of the kids to whom Jindal plans to give vouchers. She’s right, and on its surface, this makes Jindal’s plan foolish. Except vouchers aren’t really the issue either. Surely, Jindal is smart enough to know his numbers simply don’t add up, that there is no possible way he could ever deliver vouchers to even 5% of the kids who qualify. It’s a sham. And it’s meant to be a sham. It’s meant to provide the Governor with the ability to establish a threshold of public dollars per student that Louisianans would be willing to contribute toward the development of a parallel charter and for-profit education system and infrastructure. And he’s aiming at $8,500 per student per year. Again, this is precisely why Mr. Jindal unveiled his program in front of the largest group of business lobbyists in the State of Louisiana; there is a ton of money to be made in privatizing public education.

Mr. Jindal’s proponents will likely point to the charter school model created in New Orleans after the storm. There are many good people doing exceptional things in charter schools and in the Recovery School District, but sorry, it’s absolutely absurd to attribute any marginal successes in New Orleans education to a business model. When charters fail and when charters go bankrupt, which is the case more often than proponents would have us believe, it can be abruptly catastrophic for students and their families. And because of the way most charters are structured, there is little to no accountability when they fail.

I, for one, am tired of Bobby Jindal “experimenting” with Louisiana. Despite the fact that his diploma is from one of the finest public high schools in the country, Baton Rouge Magnet, I don’t believe he is an advocate for public education. For months, my buddy Zack Kopplin, a fellow graduate of Baton Rouge Magnet, pestered the public and the media about the Louisiana Science Education Act (the LSEA). If you need any evidence that Mr. Jindal doesn’t care about the quality of public education, then all you need to do is look at the LSEA, a pernicious and likely unconstitutional piece of legislation that allows public schools to substitute science with religion, a piece of legislation that was brought to you and funded through the generous contributions of the radical religious right– groups like the Discovery Institute and the (in my opinion, shady) Louisiana Family Forum. Mr. Jindal, a Biology major from Brown, likely knows better; he was even criticized by his own college biology professor. But while Mr. Jindal doubled-down on the radical right and signed a bill undermining the integrity of science education in our public schools, Zack did something else: He received endorsements from over 71 Noble Prize laureates calling for a repeal of the law. You know how many Nobel laureates have endorsed Governor Jindal? None. Zero.

When he signed the LSEA, Governor Jindal wasn’t guided by any metrics of academic performance; he wasn’t concerned with preserving the integrity of the institution of public education. Mr. Jindal was merely playing politics. And so it is with his proposed overhaul of education.

The inconvenient truth, ironically, is that public schools in Louisiana have improved during the last few years. Our graduation rates have increased by nearly 6% since 2001; we’re closing the so-called “achievement gap;” test scores are up. There’s no reason to suddenly panic, and certainly, there’s no basis for attempting to completely overhaul the entire education system.

Louisiana, we don’t need to be, once again, turned into Bobby Jindal’s experimental laboratory. We tried that once before, when he was Secretary of the DHH, and it didn’t work out well at all.

Mr. Jindal, despite his impressive academic pedigree, is and has always been manifestly and vehemently opposed to a robust and successful public education system. Our charter schools in New Orleans may be performing better than comparable schools were before the storm, but, really, so what? Who is to say that our public schools wouldn’t have rebounded just as well, had they only been given the same resources, priorities, and treatment as our charters? We strip money from public education, give it to private and quasi-private charters, and then, we wonder about why charters are out-performing public schools. We’re being dangerously naive.

Louisiana is still at the bottom of many public education rankings, and without any doubt, there is a lot of work to be done. But think about this: Every single state that is ranked higher than Louisiana is working with the same toolkit. They’re not giving millions and millions of taxpayer dollars to build a parallel system of education more adept at maximizing private-sector profits (no, this is definitely Bobby Jindal’s “moon shot”); they’re beating Louisiana because they’re investing in themselves. We, on the other hand, are being led by a man who seems all too eager and willing to privatize the most important public institution in the United States of America- the right to an education.

If Bobby Jindal wants to reform public education in Louisiana, then he needs to go back to the drawing board. If he is serious, then he needs to begin talking with educators instead of business lobbyists and radical fundamentalists. If anyone should profit from public education, it should be the people who actually invest their own money, not those who use public dollars for the expressed purpose of dismantling public education.

And if not, Jindal will continue to moon all of us, as he flies toward America’s newest extraterrestrial colony, a slab of rock hurling around the earth, a place that appears in phases and adheres to its own cycles, a land called Gingrich.

Why the Racist History of the Charter School Movement Is Never Discussed

Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com

 March 9, 2012

Source:  AlterNet / By Christopher Bonastia

As a parent I find it easy to understand the appeal of charter schools, especially for parents and students who feel that traditional public schools have failed them.

As a historical sociologist who studies race and politics, however, I am disturbed both by the significant challenges that plague the contemporary charter school movement, and by the ugly history of segregationist tactics that link past educational practices to the troubling present.

The now-popular idea of offering public education dollars to private entrepreneurs has historical roots in white resistance to school desegregation after Brown v. Board of Education (1954). The desired outcome was few or, better yet, no black students in white schools. In Prince Edward County, Virginia, one of the five cases decided in Brown, segregationist whites sought to outwit integration by directing taxpayer funds to segregated private schools.

Two years before a federal court set a final desegregation deadline for fall 1959, local newspaper publisher J. Barrye Wall shared white county leaders’ strategy of resistance with Congressman Watkins Abbitt:

“We are working [on] a scheme in which we will abandon public schools, sell the buildings to our corporation, reopen as privately operated schools with tuition grants from [Virginia] and P.E. county as the basic financial program,” he wrote. “Those wishing to go to integrated schools can take their tuition grants and operate their own schools. To hell with 'em.” 

Though the county ultimately refused to sell the public school buildings, public education in Prince Edward County was nevertheless abandoned for five years (1959-1964), as taxpayer dollars were funneled to the segregated white academies, which were housed in privately owned facilities such as churches and the local Moose Lodge.

Federal courts struck down this use of taxpayer funds after a year. Still, whites won and blacks lost.

Because there were no local taxes assessed to operate public schools during those years, whites could invest in private schools for their children, while blacks in the county—unable and unwilling to finance their own private, segregated schools—were left to fend for themselves, with many black children shut out of school for multiple years. 

Meanwhile, in less blatant attempts to avoid desegregation, states and localities also enacted “freedom of choice” plans that typically allowed white students to transfer out of desegregated schools, but forced black students to clear numerous administrative hurdles and, not infrequently, withstand harassment from teachers and students if they entered formerly all-white schools.

When some segregationists began to acknowledge that separate black and white schools were no longer viable legally, they sought other means to eliminate "undesirables."

Attorney David Mays, who advised high-ranking Virginia politicians on school strategy, reasoned, “Negroes could be let in [to white schools] and then chased out by setting high academic standards they could not maintain, by hazing if necessary, by economic pressures in some cases, etc. This should leave few Negroes in the white schools. The federal courts can easily force Negroes into our white schools, but they can’t possibly administer them and listen to the merits of thousands of bellyaches.” (Mays vastly underestimated the determination of individual black families and federal officials.)

These nefarious motives may seem a far cry from the desire of many charter school operators to “reinvent” public education for students whom traditional public schools have failed.

In theory, these committed bands of reformers come with good intentions: they purport to bring in dedicated teachers who have not been pummeled into complacency; energize their students by creating by a caring, rigorous school environment; and build a parent body that is inspired (in some cases compelled) to become more involved in their children’s education both inside and outside the school. And in some cases, charter schools deliver what they promise. In others, however, this sparkling veneer masks less attractive realities that are too often dismissed, or ignored, as the complaints of reactionaries with a vested interest in propping up our failed system of public education.

Read the entire article here.

School Vouchers in Louisiana...already failing!

An Independent investigation and analysis
By Heather Miller -  Photos by Robin May
[Editor's Note: Read the accompanying editorial, "We Can't Vouch for School Choice," here.]

The state Department of Education is either cooking the books or simply incompetent in establishing the success of the voucher program Gov. Bobby Jindal wants to expand.

Because the numbers just don’t add up.


More than 150 fourth graders in New Orleans took the state’s LEAP test in a private school setting last year through the state-run private school voucher program. If any or all of them failed, there is nothing on the books to stop them from advancing to the fifth grade.

The same can’t be said for fourth graders in Louisiana’s public schools, where achievement standards are clearly outlined by state law and students must meet those benchmarks to move on to the next grade.

The hypothetical scenario — hypothetical because the state would not confirm whether this has actually occurred with voucher students in New Orleans — is one of several critical oversight issues The Independent discovered through an examination of the New Orleans voucher program, also known as the pilot of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s push for a statewide launch of publicly funded private education.

The expansion of vouchers, which fund private school tuition for low-income students, is among the most controversial pillars of Jindal’s education reform agenda. The governor’s plan to potentially add 380,000 students to the private school voucher rolls has raised seemingly endless questions on how the program would work on a statewide level and, more important, whether private schools in New Orleans are showing measurable gains for the students they serve.

But few conclusions can be drawn from the data provided by the state Department of Education, and a further review of the numbers reveals limited measurable data marred by inaccuracies. The state has poured $26.2 million into the 4-year-old program that serves more than 1,800 students. So far, the state can vouch for the success of 50.

In a public records request submitted to DOE Jan. 24, The Independent asked for a grade-level breakdown of the voucher program’s enrollment, specifically the total number of students in third, fourth and fifth grade who are required to take the state’s LEAP test. The records request was, in part, a means of verifying that private schools are really testing the voucher students they accept. Private schools using voucher money must administer the LEAP and iLEAP tests to voucher students, but unlike public schools, private schools face no repercussions for failing scores because they aren’t bound to the accountability standards built into public schools.

Three days after the state received the records request, DOE spokeswoman Rene Greer conceded that there are discrepancies in the data and asked for more time.

The state agency did, however, provide an annual report on the voucher program to supplement The Independent’s research, and at first glance it appeared that the 15-page document would answer most, if not all, of the newspaper’s questions about the program. The same report was presented to the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education in November. It was referenced by BESE President Penny Dastugue during a Jan. 17 BESE meeting.

Gov. Bobby Jindal

The Times-Picayune presumably received the same data, too, some of which was included in a Feb. 4 Times-Pic analysis of the voucher program’s success.

Using the numbers in the report, The Independent calculated 600 voucher students who should have taken a standardized test in the 2010-2011 school year. Of those 600 students, less than half of them (294) had test scores, according to the report provided by DOE.

Fortunately, the numbers provided by the state Department of Education are dead wrong.

The state attributes the errors to a variety of factors, among them the department’s use of projected enrollment numbers as opposed to actual student counts, Greer says. DOE now says that the number of voucher students who should have tested last year is 498, of which 479 scores were reported.

DOE maintains that the percentages of students scoring at grade level or above are correct in the report, but the dismal figures clearly show that voucher schools have not proven more successful than their failing public school counterparts in New Orleans. And as The Times-Picayune points out, even if the test scores were significantly better than public schools, the state has failed to track the students and raw data in a way that can effectively measure the program.

“The best data the state has made available tracks an initial group of third-grade students who began in the voucher program when it started in 2008,” The Times-Picayune’s Andrew Vanacore writes in that Feb. 4 report. “Although it makes no comparison with students in public schools, it at least shows growth over time among a consistent group of students. But this comparison tracks only 38 students, leaving considerable uncertainty.”

The state department has since retracted that number, replacing the 38 students with an equally unimpressive cohort of 50 voucher students whose progress has been tracked over the duration of the program. Of the 104 students who started in 2008, 70 remain in the program today, leaving 20 students unaccounted for.

Greer confirms that the department has omitted from the cohort the test scores of students who weren’t promoted to the next grade (in all likelihood some of the lowest scores in the batch).




In the program’s first year, almost 16 percent of voucher third graders in private schools did not have test scores reported to the state.

“People are interpreting things differently in accountability, and we need to do a better job of looking at what’s happening even if the laws don’t require it,” Greer says.

State Superintendent John White says the department will accept responsibility for the number of discrepancies, but still denies that the data prove anything other than the program’s intent: Choice.

“A lot of it’s yet to be worked out,” White says. “It’s going to come down to BESE and the legislative process. The program is a pilot for a larger program, and we need to have a strong, regulated program. We need to do better in that area. But I will not accept people’s criticisms that a choice-based system in New Orleans has not worked. Student outcomes have shown this is a positive reform. We can’t levy criticism on schools that are choices for kids. We are providing an option for which government did not. That’s why I say that with this parsing of the data, there can be no gaming.”

But the irregularities in the report clearly exhibit that there are too many choices in the interpretation of what should be raw and irrefutable numbers, the same numbers state officials are using to sell the voucher brand and silence the program’s critics.

Citing the DOE report at a recent BESE meeting, Dastugue took issue with public-education advocate Karran Harper Royal, who raised concerns over the state’s monitoring process of nonpublic schools.

“I have a copy of the annual report for the 2010-2011 scholarship program presented some time in the fall,” Dastugue said. “It basically says that the program retention rates were [that] 95 percent of the families submitted applications to return.”

State Superintendent of Education John White

Dastugue, using what the department maintains is correct info on how many voucher school parents submitted applications to return to the program, inaccurately relates the 95 percent figure to actual program retention rates. The slight slip from Dastugue may have never occurred had the DOE included in the report the program’s real retention rate of 86 percent.

“The statement that parents are dissatisfied and leaving the schools is not supported by the report presented by the Department of Education to the board back in the fall,” Dastugue says. “And I will make sure you all get a copy of it.”

But no matter how you “parse” the rest of the numbers in that DOE report, only one conclusion can be drawn: The state has failed to adequately monitor the 1,800 students who attend private school on the public’s dime.

If the only accountability measure we have after three years of data isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on, are taxpayers ready to jump on board with 400,000 more kids? Then again, as DOE has repeatedly implied, it all depends on how you look at it.

Source:  The Independent Weekly.com's article: "Incomplete"