Takeover Schools Fail

Click here to read the Baton Rouge Advocate article on yet another school takeover in Baton Rouge. My question is how in the world can this action be justified considering the following recent revelations?

It is now official. The State Department of Education has finally admitted that all of the state takeover schools in the Baton Rouge area are dismal failures. (The same can be said of all takeover schools in Pointe Coupee, St Helena, and Caddo) Patrick Dobard, RSD Superintendent admitted that the schools in the Baton Rouge area after almost 4 years in the RSD have failed to make any progress. In fact the LEAP and ILEAP results show a decline in student performance in almost all testing areas. (see our earlier post on this)  In addition, most of the schools have suffered major losses in student enrollment. It looks like parents have been utilizing “choice” even before the major choice legislation was passed by the legislature this year. Dobard wants to form an "Achievement Zone" for 20 Baton Rouge schools patterned after the Harlem Children's Zone. (I guess they are giving up on modeling after the New Orleans RSD)

Many of the takeover schools in Baton Rouge have been run as charter schools by Advance Baton Rouge, a community organization comprised mostly of “do gooder” junior league types and heavily supported by the business community in Baton Rouge including major blow hards like Rolfe McCollister, editor of the Baton Rouge Business Report. (Rolf's daughter who had no education credentials was hired at one time to help administer some of the ABR schools). Another charter management organization that failed and turned their schools back to the state was the 100 Black Men group which had contracted out two schools to the for-profit Edison Group.

Don't believe it when the reformers tell you that all charter operators are non-profits. An increasing number of charter managers are hiring “for-profit” groups to actually run the schools. The same is happening with the groups approved by BESE to run the two new virtual charters schools. One Virtual Charter is run by the Connections Academy group and another by the K-12 Education group. These for-profits are major funders of the ALEC group (The American Legislative Exchange Council). They have taken lead roles in the drafting of much of the “reform” legislation Governor Jindal rammed through the legislature this session. Does this look like a conflict of interest? How much of our school tax dollars are going into the pockets of wealthy Jindal supporters? (ALEC gave Jindal its top “leadership” award last year)

Advance Baton Rouge which has now demonstrated total failure in its efforts to run schools, was highly favored by groups such as the Gates Foundation and the Milken Foundation which now has a partnership with the US DOE to administer TAP grants to local school systems and charters. ABR had received a six million dollar grant to run the TAP program in its charter schools. ABR also billed itself as a trainer of principals in a program related to 21^st Century Skills. Throughout their efforts with charter schools ABR has brought in highly paid principals from as far away as New York, only to have every one of them fail in turning around a single school.

Another charter group that is still struggling to keep control of its Baton Rouge school is The Pelican Educational Foundation affiliated with the Turkish Gulen Movement. This charter group had its charter school in New Orleans taken over by BESE because of several major infractions of state and federal regulations. Its school in Baton Rouge is supposedly under investigation by the State Dept. for possible violations. The former school secretary is suing the Pelican Foundation based on a claim that she was fired because she blew the whistle on efforts by administrators to implement selective enrollment in violation of state law. Charters in Louisiana are notorious for firing teachers who blow the whistle on their illegal activities. None of these teachers had union membership.

Also yesterday, the teachers at Crestworth Learning Academy in Baton Rouge are said to have staged a walkout because of a 20% cut in their salaries and benefits. My understanding is that these teachers have no union protection and could be fired without any form of due process. Did you notice that the Jindal administration is also pushing through legislation (HB 1023) that would ban teachers from having payroll deduction privileges for joining teacher organizations that are involved in political activities.

Teachers wake up! Jindal is not only taking away all of your due process rights, and making your employment totally dependent on student test scores, but he wants to make it much harder for you to join organizations that work to protect your rights and benefits! It is ironic that the teaching profession in Louisiana seems to be a tartget of attacks on consitutional protections.

Are All Schools Mandated to Find 10% of Teachers Ineffective?

Is Superintendent White really serious about requiring that 10% of public school teachers be rated as “ineffective”? If so, will this be mandated on a school-by-school basis or on a school system basis or on a statewide basis? Comments from some of my readers this week prompted me to research this issue further. The following is an exact reprint of a statement in the Act 54 evaluation plan recently submitted by White to the US Dept. of Education as part of the ESEA Flexibility Request. Judge for yourself what it means.

“4. Establishing Measures of Effectiveness: For teachers where value added data is available, the composite percentile is converted to a 1.0-5.0 scale to use in the teacher’s final evaluation. Teachers and leaders (school-wide) whose value added, composite percentile fall within the bottom 10% will receive an ineffective rating. Teachers in the middle 20-80% range will receive a rating of effective. The top 10% of teachers will receive a rating of highly effective.”

Since that plan was submitted, White has announced that the rating scale will be changed from a 5 level scale to a 4 level scale. Will that change the 10% factor? This brings up the following questions that may need to be asked of Supt. White at the teacher town hall meetings:

1. Would it make sense to apply the 10% ineffective factor on a school-by-school basis since some schools are rated A and some are rated D and F?
2. Since the teachers of non-tested subjects and grades will be evaluated using a somewhat different system, will the 10% “ineffective” group include only teachers of state tested subjects? Or will there be two categories of 10% ineffective rankings (one for state tested subjects and grades and another for non tested)?
3. Will the teachers of non tested subjects and grades have an advantage since they and their principals will set their performance goals for the value added portion of their evaluation?
4. Is it true that a formerly tenured teacher can now be terminated without a tenure hearing as soon as he/she receives an “ineffective” rating using the Act 54 evaluation? The new law states that a teacher loses tenure as soon as he/she gets an “ineffective” evaluation. Once you are non-tenured you become an “at will” employee, subject to dismissal with only a notice of such by your Superintendent.
5. Isn't the new tenure hearing process really just a mockery of due process since the Superintendent and the Principal get to pick 2 out of 3 of the hearing officers?

Since this is a blog and I get to give my opinion, I want to make the following point:

I think the letter grading system adopted by BESE for public schools is very misleading and can lead to real dilemmas when it comes to classifying teachers as “ineffective”, “effective”, and “highly effective”.

 In the document referred to above, White points out that one-third of Louisiana's public school students are performing below grade level. He then asserts that in the past too many teachers in Louisiana have received satisfactory ratings. In doing so he implies that teachers are primarily responsible for the sub par performance of the students in some schools.

 The Act 54 evaluation system is supposed to determine the effectiveness of teachers in all types of schools. Consider a comparison of teachers teaching in high poverty schools with teachers teaching in academically selective magnet schools. Throughout the state, most high poverty schools and particularly alternative schools that work with difficult to teach students are rated "D" and "F". At the same time most selective magnet schools are rated "A". Does it make sense to expect that a large number of teachers working in alternative or extremely high poverty schools will get an "ineffective" rating and that many teachers in  magnet schools will get a "highly effective rating"? Or is it fairer to decide ahead of time that 10% of the teachers in all schools should be rated ineffective? No matter what course our education Czar chooses the end result is highly arbitrary and potentially unfair. This whole teacher evaluation and school letter grading system stinks!

I urge all teachers who care about their profession to attend the town hall meetings in their areas. I do not believe it is appropriate to limit each school to only 3 teachers allowed to attend. These issues are of great concern to all teachers!

White town hall meetings

Superintendent White announced yesterday that he will host a series of town meetings . (click on the link above to see the schedule.) with teachers and superintendents across the state to discuss the new reform laws and the No Child Left Behind waiver request. The new initiative announced by the Superintendent is titled Louisiana Believes! Apparently the superintendent, fresh from major legislative victories that destroy teacher tenure rights, ban the use of seniority in personnel decisions, order local school systems to revise teacher salary schedules that may freeze many teacher salaries for years and diminish the importance of experience and degrees in calculating salaries, rip students and much MFP funding from local school systems causing increases in class sizes and decreased funding for education supplies, and impose a punitive new teacher evaluation system, believes that he will be able to enlist enthusiastic teacher and administrator support for this damaging program!
The gall of this guy is truly amazing!

I hope many teachers attend these town hall meetings in their areas and ask a few critical questions of our new czar of education. Here are some I would suggest:

• What makes you (Superintendent White) think that teachers are going to embrace a reform program that blames teachers for all deficiencies in student's performance and makes teachers responsible for correcting some of the ills of society over which they never will have control?
• Why does the new superintendent assume that teachers are not already trying their best to help students succeed? Does he really believe that he who has minimal qualifications for his job and zero experience dealing with Louisiana public education can motivate teachers to do the job that they have always tried their best to do?
• Since the legislative reforms have not given teachers one additional tool for improving instruction, apparently White believes that all that has to be done is for teachers to teach harder or stop being so lazy and incompetent and students will automatically succeed. Don't the reforms just assume that teachers have not being doing their job and that threats and incentives will make them more effective?
• Suppose the theory that teachers have to be whipped into shape to improve education is not correct. Suppose that classifying 10% of all teachers as ineffective each year does not improve student achievement on the state tests or on the NAEP tests. What will White do then?
• Since White believes in firing ineffective teachers and administrators, will he resign if his reforms fail to make any significant improvement in student achievement? What if the schools taken over by the state continue to rank second to last in the state? Will he resign then?

These are just a few of the questions that popped into my head when White announced that he would hold these town hall meetings with teachers. I'm sure my readers have good questions of their own and that many will attend these meetings.

If you would like to read something positive about the work teachers in Louisiana do for a change, please click on this link to Teacher in a Strange Land. Its good to read about real education reform in Louisiana.

Ed Reform May Increase Segregation

Options galore! That's how the Baton Rouge Advocate describes school options within the next few years for Baton Rouge public school parents. Now in addition to expanded charters and vouchers, a new breakaway district is in the process of being approved by the legislature for another mostly white section of the East Baton Rouge Parish school system. One would assume that expanded school choice, should increase the racial mixing of all students by allowing students to transfer to successful schools and by forcing the closing of unsuccessful mostly segregated schools. It is quite likely instead that racial segregation will intensify as a result of the radical reforms approved this year by the legislature. Governor Jindal's contention that vouchers and charters will allow many low income parents to exercise better educational opportunities for their children will turn out to be mostly an empty promise. Other large school systems such as Caddo may soon follow the example of EBR in allowing the breakaway of mostly white or affluent sections of the school system also resulting in poor, mostly black inner city districts with decreased financial resources compared to the suburbs! I believe that much of the reform effort will eventually result in a reduction in opportunities for poor and black students!

Re-segregation has happened before following the federal courts' push to end racial segregation in many Louisiana public school systems. Part of the rationale for desegregation was to equalize opportunities for black and other minority students. Take the East Baton Rouge Public school system for example: Prior to 1976, as the courts fully implemented busing of students to achieve desegregation, the school system had reached a peak enrollment of 68,000 students of which 42,000 or 62% were white. Now after 30 years of desegregation efforts, there are only 5,000 white students left in EBR comprising less than 12% of the student population of only 43,000. The rest of the white students have mostly moved to Livingston, Ascension, Zachary and Central. Many others are in private and parochial schools. Their families are still part of the greater Baton Rouge population, but the students are pretty much re-segregated. Of the three breakaway districts, only Zachary has a well integrated student body with 44% black students. Baker is almost all black and Central is predominately white. I think it is correct to say that court ordered desegregation in Baton Rouge has been a dismal failure.

This new round of education reform is also supposed to be all about equal opportunity, particularly for students from low income families. The concept of mixing races is not the primary emphasis of the recent school reform although the demographic data shows that it is mostly black students who are considered to be “trapped” in so called “failing schools”. Governor Jindal and Superintendent White's theory is that by providing opportunities for low income families to transfer their children to private and charter schools, the free market will work to provide most children with an improved education. This is supposed to happen because some students will benefit by moving to better schools and the remaining students will benefit because the traditional public schools will have to improve or die in the competition for students. To Jindal and his supporters, it looks like an obvious solution. Privatization and the free markets are bound to finally transform Louisiana education from failure to success.

If we look more closely at the track record of the reform movement in Louisiana, it turns out that success of the Governor's plan is far from assured. The New Orleans Recovery District which is held up as the model for reform, upon close examination is not very successful. When all the schools that were below the state average in performance were taken over by the Recovery District in New Orleans, some of the more sophisticated charter groups were able to use a process that attracted highly motivated students and parents while culling out low achievers to gain an advantage over other schools. This handful of schools have demonstrated up to “B” level success, while almost all other Recovery district schools remain at “D” and “F” levels. The much criticized East Baton Rouge system for example, performs significantly better overall than the New Orleans Recovery District. So this begs the question; why are the reformers so eager to apply the New Orleans reform model to EBR?

It turns out that the few “successful” charter schools use a formula that has worked very well for many years for the successful private schools but also for the many successful public magnet schools. This formula can be summarized by one word; Exclusivity. The best way for a school to be effective is to be exclusive of low performing or poorly motivated students. While the traditional public schools have been forced by both the U. S. Department of Education and our own State Department of Education to try to educate every student regardless of motivation or often serious disciplinary behavior, the successful schools choose to work mainly with the successful students. If we look at the transfer records for the higher performing charters in the New Orleans Recovery District, we find an extremely high turnover rate. That's because these mostly unregulated schools toss kids out who do not perform well or who habitually disrupt the education of other students.

There is another side to the Recovery District that is carefully hidden from the eyes of the media and the public. In almost every case where a so called failing school was taken over by the RSD with no significant change in the student population, average student performance has actually declined!
(see my post of March 23) Superintendent White is trying desperately to cover up an embarrassing failure of all 12 takeover schools outside of New Orleans. Unfortunately the news media has been compliant in allowing the RSD to falsely claim success. The fact is that both the New Orleans voucher students and charter schools have continued sub-par performance. Except for the few charters that are allowed to counsel out poorly motivated and non-compliant students, charters and vouchers are failing to deliver.

At the same time that charters are allowed to be generally free of interference, our LDOE pushes traditional public schools to implement a program called Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports (PBIS) in the place of enforcing effective discipline. The highly touted (by the LDOE) PBIS system often results in classrooms plagued by disruptive students who are allowed to interfere with the education process day after day with minimal consequences. The combination of restrictive discipline rules for special education students and state and legal pressure discouraging student suspension plagues many public schools. That's why the most common complaint of parents who want to pull their children out of public schools is that they fear for the safety of their child and feel that classrooms are too chaotic and dumbed down to provide effective instruction. The real problem in low performing schools is not lack of teacher expertize or commitment. The real problem is the destruction of an effective learning environment by the lack of order, discipline and respect for teachers.

Let me describe what I think will be the real result of major education reforms now taking place in Louisiana. (1) The new breakaway districts will drain even more white and affluent students from the large school systems producing mostly segregated districts. (2) Very few minority and poor students will be accepted by the private and parochial schools that maintain good standards. The only students who will be allowed to retain their vouchers are those who work hard and follow the rules. (3) Takeover charters will continue providing a very poor education. (4) The new virtual charter schools will serve a growing number of students whose parents want them out of the increasingly chaotic public schools. Many of these students will fail to receive an adequate education because of the lack of structure of virtual schools. (5) Public schools will experience further erosion of high performing (black and white) students because of the approval of new charter schools throughout the state by BESE. These new charters will cherry pick the best students from the remaining public schools. The end results of reform will be an increasingly segregated system of schools with even fewer opportunities for most poor and minority students. Expect Louisiana's prison population to grow.

When you add to the above, the general demoralization and decline of the teaching profession caused by increased focus on personnel policies based on test results, we can expect a very dismal future for our Louisiana school systems. Jindal and White will have moved on to other careers by then.

Teachers Are Right to be Concerned

The attempt to base all personnel decisions on student test results

Governor Jindal and his state superintendent John White believe that basing all school personnel decisions on student performance as measured by state tests will produce dramatic improvements in student performance. The legislation that was recently passed is based on the incorrect assumption that the quality of teaching is the most important factor in the academic performance of students. In one of its descriptions of the Act 54 evaluation system, the LDOE makes the following assertion:

 “Research has shown that teacher effectiveness is the greatest determinant of student outcomes followed closely by principal effectiveness.”

This statement is patently incorrect! It ignores or severely underestimates the influence of socioeconomic factors that can have a dominant impact on the education process. Click here to view the Educators for All analysis of this potentially harmful  misinterpretation of research on student performance.  In addition, many education researchers question the accuracy and validity of the value added formulas in setting expected academic gains for both high performing and low performing students.

In basing school reform efforts on major distortions of education research, the new legislation chooses to target large numbers of professional educators for extreme sanctions based on student test scores. The legislation mandates that personnel decisions including layoff, dismissal, and merit pay will be based on an untested value added system that may often produce invalid results. (Click on this link to read about invalid results in other states) Such misguided and punitive policies could cause general demoralization of teachers in Louisiana resulting in many dedicated educators leaving the profession. Teachers should be concerned about the following mandates of HB 974:

• The use of seniority will be banned in the selection of teaching personnel for dismissal in the event of layoff. The primary criteria for layoff, once categories of personnel are identified for layoff, will be the performance of teachers on the Act 54 evaluation. Serious budget shortfalls in many local school systems caused by the Governor's freeze in the MFP and unfunded State mandates may force layoffs of significant numbers of teachers. Erratic and inaccurate results of the new evaluation could result in the dismissal of many competent, dedicated, experienced teachers who happen to be fall victim to errors in this untested system.
• For 80% of all school systems in the state (any school system rated C or below) employment and retention of all professional staff from superintendents to teachers, must be based upon the achievement of student performance targets. The renewal of local superintendent's contracts will be contingent upon the achievement of goals which include the percentage of teachers who are rated effective or highly effective and student performance and graduation rates. Principals will be rated based partly on the number of teachers on their faculties who are rated effective or highly effective. The new law is designed to encourage dismissal of significant numbers of teachers based upon the Act 54 evaluation.
• The Act 54 evaluation plan was supposed to base 50% of the teacher's evaluation on the Principal's qualitative evaluation, and 50% on the value added quantitative measure. Yet in certain circumstances, the evaluation is automatically skewed toward producing an “ineffective” evaluation. The following rule is part of the present Act 54 evaluation plan:  “As a final check on evaluator bias and assurance that no educator in need of assistance is overlooked, educators receiving an Ineffective rating in either measure [qualitative or quantitative] will be rated overall as Ineffective and provided intensive support.”  This arbitrary rule violates the requirements of Act 54 for the teachers who happen to fall into this particular category. The real “bias” of the evaluation seems to be in favor of classifying  teachers as ineffective.

• The present plans for implementation of the Act 54 evaluation require that 10% of the teachers evaluated in the state tested subjects and grades must be rated ineffective just as 10% must be rated highly effective. The 10% rated ineffective are to be placed on a path to possible dismissal and the 10% rated highly effective are to be placed on a pathway to tenure and merit pay. It is not clear how or if this 10% rule applies to teachers of non-tested grades or subjects. It is also not clear whether or not the 10% ineffective factor will be continued for one year, two years , several years, or without limitation. If the system continues to classify 10% of teachers as ineffective for several years, there could be a very large number of teachers targeted for dismissal. However, if it is assumed that the evaluation system should result in improvement in the overall performance of teachers over time, it is not logical that the system would continue to find a particular percentage of teachers unsatisfactory over an extended period of time. Such inconsistencies in the evaluation plan leads educators to believe that the system has not been carefully thought out.
• HB 974 mandates that all teacher salary schedules be revised by January 2013 to go into effect for the 2013-14 school year based on three factors:  effectiveness, demand, and years of experience. By law no one factor of the three can account for more than 50% of the salary calculation. All teachers rated effective or above would have their present salary grandfathered at at least at their 2012-13 level, but regular step increases may no longer be guaranteed. Advanced degrees would become part of the demand factor and may have lower weights in the new schedules. These mandatory revisions of salary schedules may result in teachers having salaries frozen for several years or for the remainder of their teaching career. The new salary schedules may result in teachers who have worked for years to obtain advanced degrees not being compensated as expected according to previous policies. School boards under pressure from budget limitations may be tempted to provide only minimal weighting to years of experience and advanced degrees. Such salary revisions may actually result in the lowering of average Louisiana teacher salaries in the next few years.
• As discussed in my post of last week, the revision of the tenure law makes this designation nothing more than a status symbol. It provides almost no real protection to teachers who are recommended for dismissal.

Teachers are right to be concerned!

Governor's Education "Deform" Passes Senate

Click on this link to read the Times Picayune article about HB 974.

HB 974 passed the Louisiana Senate Wednesday afternoon by a vote of 23-16. I will report the names of the Senators voting for and against the bill in my next post. The bill must now go back to the House floor for a vote because several amendments were added on the Senate floor. If the House approves the bill as amended, it would then go to the Governor for his signature. If the House rejects the amended bill, it would be sent to a conference committee that would most likely be controlled by allies of the Governor who would probably act to put the bill back close to its original form.

This an issue because the amendments to the bill may make it slightly more difficult for teachers to be fired for invalid reasons or because of personality conflicts between the teacher and the principal. One amendment added by Senator Adley would allow that a teacher who received a highly effective rating on the quantitative portion of the Act 54 evaluation, but an unsatisfactory rating by the principal on the qualitative portion of the evaluation, a chance to be reevaluated by a separate team of evaluators. I believe this scenario would be a rare occurrence that would affect very few teachers, but it is still good to have it in the bill. Unfortunately there is no such reconsideration for a teacher who receives a highly effective rating from his/her principal but who because of glitches in the value added formula or because of a class composition that does not perform as the mathematical model predicts it should, receives an ineffective rating on the quantitative portion. That teacher, according to the current plans by Superintendent White must be rated “ineffective” no matter how highly the principal has rated the teacher. The bottom line is that HB 974 does so much damage to the teaching profession based on ill conceived theories of teacher culpability for student under performance that no amendments can make it acceptable to the profession, in my opinion.

HB 976, which greatly expands charter schools, and adds almost unlimited vouchers for more students to attend private schools at taxpayer expense passed the Senate also. Senator Appel handled this bill as part of the Governor's reform package. HB 976 is equally ill conceived, and destructive to public education as HB 974. Unbelievably, in the name of education reform, this bill drops all education credentials for persons teaching in charter schools! My question is where were the deans of the Colleges of Education when this travesty to professional educators was debated in committee? How can they now justify the professional education curriculum in their colleges since they have not bothered to object? Maybe the Chancellor of their university said they should remain quiet for fear that the college funding would be further reduced by our all powerful governor. There is absolutely no excuse for this deafening silence!

Senator Appel in describing HB 974 and HB976 made it abundantly clear that he and the Governor believe that teachers are totally responsible for the performance or lack of performance of all students. In his introduction to HB 974, Appel portrayed all 700,000 plus students and their parents as hard working and hungry for a good education which they are being denied by many teachers! I just wish I could require him to substitute teach in one of our public schools plagued by absenteeism, discipline problems and disrespect for teachers. He would not survive even one day! Such an attitude by lawmakers and the Governor demonstrates a horrendous level of disrespect for the teaching profession. . . . . in my opinion!

Capitol Rally April 4

Educators, concerned parents and school board members should make every effort to attend the rally on the capitol steps this Wednesday morning starting at 9:00 a.m. If you care about the education profession and the future of public schools please attend so your protest can be seen by the legislature and the public!

In case you had any doubt . . .  HB 974 basically does away with due process for all educators, even those that are rated "highly effective". Just read the bill carefully. For example, the revision of the tenure law on page 12 amounts to a cynical hoax. It changes the tenure hearing process from a hearing before the local school board to a hearing before a three member panel. But two of the members are chosen by the local superintendent! The superintendent directly chooses one member, another member is the teacher's principal, and the third member is chosen by the teacher. This amounts to a kangaroo court. If the principal and the superintendent have agreed beforehand to dismiss the teacher, the teacher does not have a chance. It makes a mockery of due process.

The teacher can appeal to the courts but the expense of this action may be prohibitive for most teachers. In addition the language for judicial appeal is changed to remove the language "if found guilty" so that the review panel does not have to prove anything to allow dismissal. On page 13, line 22, the new language limits the court review to allow overturning the dismissal if the dismissal is found to be "arbitrary and capricious".

This sorry process applies to so called tenured teachers without regard to their Act 54 performance rating! Getting an effective rating does not protect any teacher from dismissal. For example, if a teacher refuses to sell tickets at the school football games, his/her job could be jeopardized. This new law allows the local superintendent to rewrite any teacher's job description to include after school duties, tutoring or even Saturday work etc. If the teacher refuses, he/she could be dismissed for willful neglect of duties. So basically all teachers become "at will" employees who serve at the pleasure of the local superintendent if this bill passes. 

To add insult to injury, HB 976 does away with the need for teacher certification for persons teaching in the new charter schools. You had to complete a teacher education program and pass the NTE or Praxis exam to become a teacher. These charter school teachers are exempted from all that unnecessary red tape.  Superintendent John White says he sees no special benefit to teacher education credentials (that may be because he has minimal credentials himself) or even National Board Certification, and the legislature is going along with him by passing this legislation.

In addition, the voucher schools will have basically no accountability except that which the Jindal controlled BESE decides to implement. Students in the public schools must pass the high stakes tests in 4th and 8th grades to be promoted, and all public school students must pass end of course exams to graduate.  But students attending the private voucher schools funded by taxpayer dollars can be promoted to the next grade even if they do no pass the state tests. There is also no requirement that voucher students pass the state end of course tests in high school in order to graduate. This double standard hypocrisy is called the Jindal Education Reform Plan!