It is absolutely critical that educators in large numbers make contact with the Governor, state legislators and members of Congress in an effort to maintain adequate funding for public education. Funding for education is an investment in the future of our state and its citizens, especially its young people. If we allow education funding such as the recent edu-Jobs fund to be transferred to other purposes in the state budget, our children and grandchildren will suffer.
The article in The Advocate points out that Senator Landreu has sent a letter to Governor Jindal requesting that the Edu-Jobs fund be used only for the education purposes described in the legislation. The idea is that present funds going to the MFP should not be removed and supplanted by this new money. That defeats the purpose of the legislation. We applaud Senator Landreu for making this effort. Also, if necessary, local school systems should consider legal action to stop this misappropriation of federal money.
Unfortunately there will be many more battles in the months and years to come to defend the funding of public education, and it is up to those of us who have dedicated our careers to the education of children to fight this battle at every opportunity. Because of the budget and political climate we face, these battles will be especially difficult.
A large part of the problem we face was caused by the partial repeal of the Stelly Plan a couple of years ago by legislators who acted for political reasons rather than for the good of the state. The Stelly Plan passed in the first part of this decade was designed to restructure Louisiana's taxes removing some of the sales tax burden on citizens for purchase of food and medicine and replacing these revenues with a slightly higher income tax. The plan was originally revenue neutral but by its nature was designed to be more of a growth tax to allow Louisiana tax revenues to keep up with inflation pressure on the cost of state services. One example is the increased cost of school employee and teacher retirement, which has been an increasing burden on local school systems. By repealing the growth part of the Stelly Plan, the legislature guaranteed that the state will not be able to properly fund local school systems in the coming years. Thank you to Senator Nevers for suggesting that the Stelly plan tax revenues should be restored to their original level for at least the next few years.
In addition to normal growth of costs, the legislature every year adds unfunded mandates such as the recent law requiring formal evaluations of all teachers each year with the inclusion of student testing results as 50% of the evaluation. Mark my word, this will end up being a totally unnecessary financial burden on all local school systems in Louisiana. This plan will do nothing at all to improve education, and can actually be counterproductive, because it is not based on solid principles of good teaching. With the renewed emphasis by voters to get big government out of our lives, it does not make sense for the State to dictate how teachers should be evaluated by local school boards.
Please for the sake of the children we teach, all educators must maintain constant contact with our governor, legislators, and members of congress to insure adequate funding of education and to prevent the addition of unfunded mandates that do not advance education.
Friday, November 19, 2010
Monday, November 15, 2010
Stealing Education Jobs Money
Educators! Wake up!
This link to the Advocate article describing how the Jindal administration plans to take the Federal Education Jobs money (Called the EduJobs Fund) and use it to patch up other holes in the state budget is a wake up call! This action is WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! And must be protested vigorously by all educators and their organizations. If we do not take strong action on this, local school systems had better be prepared to be r**** repeatedly by the governor as the the state budget crises worsens.
This appropriation was clearly designated by the Congress to prevent educator job losses by local school systems and should not be used for other purposes or supplanted in such a way that local school systems do not end up getting the federal money. Those so called education leaders who talk about creating a “world class” education system in Louisiana but who do not so much as raise the slightest objection to this theft of school money are just cheap politicians and are not by any stretch of the imagination “education leaders”.
This link to the Advocate article describing how the Jindal administration plans to take the Federal Education Jobs money (Called the EduJobs Fund) and use it to patch up other holes in the state budget is a wake up call! This action is WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! And must be protested vigorously by all educators and their organizations. If we do not take strong action on this, local school systems had better be prepared to be r**** repeatedly by the governor as the the state budget crises worsens.
This appropriation was clearly designated by the Congress to prevent educator job losses by local school systems and should not be used for other purposes or supplanted in such a way that local school systems do not end up getting the federal money. Those so called education leaders who talk about creating a “world class” education system in Louisiana but who do not so much as raise the slightest objection to this theft of school money are just cheap politicians and are not by any stretch of the imagination “education leaders”.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Myths Driving Education Reform
There are so many myths and misconceptions driving education reform in the US today, it makes my head spin. My training in science with emphasis on use of the scientific method for solving problems leaves me perplexed and frustrated by education reform based on false assumptions. Our state and nation seem to be on a wild goose chase of education reform schemes that are not supported by legitimate education research. This is happening at the same time that a newly elected, fiscally conservative Congress wants to cut spending. It looks like public schools will be asked to produce higher student achievement in narrow tested areas with less money at the same time that privatization of schools is being pushed by powerful business interests. Here are some of the crazy reform mandates educators in Louisiana will be dealing with in the near future:
Under the latest wave of education reform, the perceived under performance of our public schools is to be solved by closing schools, firing principals and a certain percentage of teachers, and allowing untested, mostly unsupervised private groups to take over public schools. The idea that public schools funded by tax dollars should be managed by democratically elected school boards seems no longer important to the reformers.
Recent studies have revealed that when under-performing schools in Chicago were closed by Arne Duncan, the students continued to perform just as poorly in their newly assigned schools. But never mind that fact, he now intends to apply the same false solution to many other schools throughout the nation. The proposed re-authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act by the Obama administration calls for a complete restructuring of the lowest performing public schools using either charter schools, school closings, or mass administrator and teacher firings.
In another reform effort, big chunks of federal grants are going to school systems that will implement teacher merit pay systems. This comes just after a major study was released by Vanderbilt University which shows that a teacher merit pay system made little or no difference in student achievement. According to the article in Education Week, this was the most rigorous study of performance based teacher compensation in the US. How can our government continue to defy logic and science and expect education to improve?
Lets look at the predicament educators face here in Louisiana. Several years ago, BESE and the Board of Regents decided that public elementary and secondary schools should prepare students better for college. It was determined (without consultation with the educators in the field) that the best approach would be to require a strong college prep curriculum of all students as a requirement for high school graduation. The business community loved the idea. It would mean that all students would leave high school proficient in English, math and science and could therefore be prepared for the high tech jobs of the future whether they attended college or not.
Its a little early to tell for sure, but my assessment is that this scheme will be a total failure. Here's why: Public schools in Louisiana regularly lose most of the top 20% of its academically inclined students to one of the strongest private school system in the nation. Statistics tell us that only the top 30% of academic performers will succeed in four year colleges. So even if we wanted to be ambitious in preparing more of our public school students for 4 year colleges, we can expect no more than 30 to 40 percent of our public school students to make it to a 4 year degree. These students need the best college prep curriculum we can provide them in middle through high school. But the system we have in place in most public schools provides our true college prep students with much less of a rigorous education than they need. Why? Because in attempting to provide a college prep curriculum to all students we force our teachers to water down the critical courses in math, English and science to accommodate the large number of students who are not college material. In designing our education system as one size fits all, we end up shortchanging most of our students. We have weakened our college prep curriculum and at the same time, set up many of our other students for failure and denial of a high school diploma. This plan while well intentioned was stupid, and ignored the facts on the ground in our pubic school system. It guarantees that a huge percentage of our students will not get the education they really need in preparing for critically needed skills and service jobs which are the only ones growing in Louisiana's economy. It guarantees that a large percentage of our unemployable young people will be added to the welfare roles or to our huge prison population. It also guarantees that many of our schools will continue to look like failures because they are not producing larger numbers of college prepared students.
What are the college performance results of the new policy? ACT scores which are the best predictor of college performance are the same as they were 4 years ago, and I read recently that Louisiana now has the second lowest college graduation rate in the nation. The present structure of our public high schools as mandated by BESE and the Board of Regents insures that we will stay at that level.
Late addition: Click on this link to read the story in The Advocate about the low ranking of Louisiana in offering advanced placement courses. Why don't we use more of our scarce resourses to offer more advanced placement courses to the students who really need them? The Zachary school system is somehow getting this done. Thanks on behalf of my grandchildren!
Under the latest wave of education reform, the perceived under performance of our public schools is to be solved by closing schools, firing principals and a certain percentage of teachers, and allowing untested, mostly unsupervised private groups to take over public schools. The idea that public schools funded by tax dollars should be managed by democratically elected school boards seems no longer important to the reformers.
Recent studies have revealed that when under-performing schools in Chicago were closed by Arne Duncan, the students continued to perform just as poorly in their newly assigned schools. But never mind that fact, he now intends to apply the same false solution to many other schools throughout the nation. The proposed re-authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act by the Obama administration calls for a complete restructuring of the lowest performing public schools using either charter schools, school closings, or mass administrator and teacher firings.
In another reform effort, big chunks of federal grants are going to school systems that will implement teacher merit pay systems. This comes just after a major study was released by Vanderbilt University which shows that a teacher merit pay system made little or no difference in student achievement. According to the article in Education Week, this was the most rigorous study of performance based teacher compensation in the US. How can our government continue to defy logic and science and expect education to improve?
Lets look at the predicament educators face here in Louisiana. Several years ago, BESE and the Board of Regents decided that public elementary and secondary schools should prepare students better for college. It was determined (without consultation with the educators in the field) that the best approach would be to require a strong college prep curriculum of all students as a requirement for high school graduation. The business community loved the idea. It would mean that all students would leave high school proficient in English, math and science and could therefore be prepared for the high tech jobs of the future whether they attended college or not.
Its a little early to tell for sure, but my assessment is that this scheme will be a total failure. Here's why: Public schools in Louisiana regularly lose most of the top 20% of its academically inclined students to one of the strongest private school system in the nation. Statistics tell us that only the top 30% of academic performers will succeed in four year colleges. So even if we wanted to be ambitious in preparing more of our public school students for 4 year colleges, we can expect no more than 30 to 40 percent of our public school students to make it to a 4 year degree. These students need the best college prep curriculum we can provide them in middle through high school. But the system we have in place in most public schools provides our true college prep students with much less of a rigorous education than they need. Why? Because in attempting to provide a college prep curriculum to all students we force our teachers to water down the critical courses in math, English and science to accommodate the large number of students who are not college material. In designing our education system as one size fits all, we end up shortchanging most of our students. We have weakened our college prep curriculum and at the same time, set up many of our other students for failure and denial of a high school diploma. This plan while well intentioned was stupid, and ignored the facts on the ground in our pubic school system. It guarantees that a huge percentage of our students will not get the education they really need in preparing for critically needed skills and service jobs which are the only ones growing in Louisiana's economy. It guarantees that a large percentage of our unemployable young people will be added to the welfare roles or to our huge prison population. It also guarantees that many of our schools will continue to look like failures because they are not producing larger numbers of college prepared students.
What are the college performance results of the new policy? ACT scores which are the best predictor of college performance are the same as they were 4 years ago, and I read recently that Louisiana now has the second lowest college graduation rate in the nation. The present structure of our public high schools as mandated by BESE and the Board of Regents insures that we will stay at that level.
Late addition: Click on this link to read the story in The Advocate about the low ranking of Louisiana in offering advanced placement courses. Why don't we use more of our scarce resourses to offer more advanced placement courses to the students who really need them? The Zachary school system is somehow getting this done. Thanks on behalf of my grandchildren!
Thursday, November 4, 2010
2010 Election, Push for Jobs, Education
Recent federal election results could have a major impact on education policies in the near future. For example the re-authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and other education policies could be affected by the shift of power in the US House to Republicans. The following is an excerpt from an Education Week article written on the eve of the recent mid term elections:
“If the GOP does take the House, Rep. John Kline of Minnesota, the top Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee, would likely become chairman of the panel.
Rep. Kline has expressed skepticism about core elements of President Barack Obama’s education agenda. For instance, he said in an interview this fall that he wouldn’t favor extending for an additional year the $4 billion Race to the Top competition, which rewards states for making progress on education redesign goals.
And he said that he wants to make sure that a portion of the stimulus-funded Race to the Top program that provided $350 million to 44 states to create more uniform, richer academic assessments doesn’t lead to a “national test.”
But Mr. Kline also said he and the administration see eye to eye on important issues, including the need to encourage the proliferation of high-quality charter schools and identify ways to reward effective teachers, and remove those that are ineffective.”
We now know that Republicans have won a majority in the House of Representatives and that they will have a major impact on federal education policy. Its ironic that current education fads such as adding more charter schools and firing a certain percentage of teachers are the few areas where there is agreement between liberals and conservatives. Educators should brace for more disruptive reforms that have little or no basis in education research but are knee jerk reactions to our poor ratings on international measures of educational attainment and the recent so called “education documentaries”.
The other development that really should have a major affect on education is the increased emphasis by voters, news commentators, and elected officials on the need to restructure our economy and education system to provide more jobs for unemployed adults and for young people entering the labor force.
Fareed Zakaria, a highly regarded news commentator, hosted a one hour program recently on CNN titled “Restoring the American Dream” where successful CEOs of Coca-Cola Google, Alcoa, and IBM gave their advice on revitalizing the US economy.
Their strongest recommendation was that our young people and our displaced workers need a continuing reeducation program that prepares and retrains them for the changing job needs of the new economy. This continuing education program should focus on career training and essential skills. More emphasis is needed on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) training as well as training for the growing service industries.
It was pointed out that the recent recession has had minimal unemployment impact on Germany for example, because that country has a sophisticated education and retraining program that continually prepares its workers for new jobs. It was clear to me that the growth in education these leaders were recommending is in the area of Community and Technical Colleges, not in the traditional 4 year institutions. Most workers they said, need at most 18 month training programs. Governor Jindal and the director of the Louisiana Workforce authority made the same point recently when recommending more efficient use of our higher education system. A good example are the courses recently offered in the Louisiana Community College system for installing home solar electrical systems and for converting autos and trucks to compressed natural gas systems. These are some of the jobs in demand in the next few years that do not require 4 year college training. And they have the added advantage that they cannot be farmed out to other cheap labor countries. The same cannot be said of some software engineering and other high status jobs that may require a college degree.
I believe that Louisiana would do well to break with the current elitist system pushed by the State Department of Education and higher education officials and concentrate on high tech and practical skills that will make our young people more employable and at the same time revive our Louisiana economy.
“If the GOP does take the House, Rep. John Kline of Minnesota, the top Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee, would likely become chairman of the panel.
Rep. Kline has expressed skepticism about core elements of President Barack Obama’s education agenda. For instance, he said in an interview this fall that he wouldn’t favor extending for an additional year the $4 billion Race to the Top competition, which rewards states for making progress on education redesign goals.
And he said that he wants to make sure that a portion of the stimulus-funded Race to the Top program that provided $350 million to 44 states to create more uniform, richer academic assessments doesn’t lead to a “national test.”
But Mr. Kline also said he and the administration see eye to eye on important issues, including the need to encourage the proliferation of high-quality charter schools and identify ways to reward effective teachers, and remove those that are ineffective.”
We now know that Republicans have won a majority in the House of Representatives and that they will have a major impact on federal education policy. Its ironic that current education fads such as adding more charter schools and firing a certain percentage of teachers are the few areas where there is agreement between liberals and conservatives. Educators should brace for more disruptive reforms that have little or no basis in education research but are knee jerk reactions to our poor ratings on international measures of educational attainment and the recent so called “education documentaries”.
The other development that really should have a major affect on education is the increased emphasis by voters, news commentators, and elected officials on the need to restructure our economy and education system to provide more jobs for unemployed adults and for young people entering the labor force.
Fareed Zakaria, a highly regarded news commentator, hosted a one hour program recently on CNN titled “Restoring the American Dream” where successful CEOs of Coca-Cola Google, Alcoa, and IBM gave their advice on revitalizing the US economy.
Their strongest recommendation was that our young people and our displaced workers need a continuing reeducation program that prepares and retrains them for the changing job needs of the new economy. This continuing education program should focus on career training and essential skills. More emphasis is needed on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) training as well as training for the growing service industries.
It was pointed out that the recent recession has had minimal unemployment impact on Germany for example, because that country has a sophisticated education and retraining program that continually prepares its workers for new jobs. It was clear to me that the growth in education these leaders were recommending is in the area of Community and Technical Colleges, not in the traditional 4 year institutions. Most workers they said, need at most 18 month training programs. Governor Jindal and the director of the Louisiana Workforce authority made the same point recently when recommending more efficient use of our higher education system. A good example are the courses recently offered in the Louisiana Community College system for installing home solar electrical systems and for converting autos and trucks to compressed natural gas systems. These are some of the jobs in demand in the next few years that do not require 4 year college training. And they have the added advantage that they cannot be farmed out to other cheap labor countries. The same cannot be said of some software engineering and other high status jobs that may require a college degree.
I believe that Louisiana would do well to break with the current elitist system pushed by the State Department of Education and higher education officials and concentrate on high tech and practical skills that will make our young people more employable and at the same time revive our Louisiana economy.
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