The La State Dept. of Education has been releasing its list of schools rated as failing based on school performance scores for the past school year. See the Advocate story. The list of failing schools has increased over last year solely because the state has raised the passing score from 65 to 75. Purely arbitrary! No reason given except that BESE wanted to raise the bar. Why not simply decree that all students must score above average or their school would be rated as failing?
Jindal claims to be trying to attract industry and jobs to Louisiana. What will this arbitrary grading system for our public schools do to the attractiveness of our state? These people on BESE are not experts in determining the success of a school (and neither are the TFA'ers and other non-educators occupying our Department of Education).
What will this increased threat to the survival of public schools accomplish?? In my opinion it will encourage more teaching to the the test, outright cheating, (see Campbell's law) and much less real education.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Saturday, July 28, 2012
How to Create Failing Schools and Privatize Education
Our Governor and the news media have done a great job of creating “the failing schools of Louisiana”. This creation was a brilliant plan for the privatization of our k-12 school system. Once the government and the media announced that approximately 40% of our children in Louisiana are attending failing schools, it was an easy step to convince the public that something must be done! Any reform is good because at least it is not the status quo. Anyone who is against reform must be for keeping kids in failing schools and a defender of the status quo. In this environment almost anything the governor wants to do to education is considered good, even if it is not supported by research of any kind.
Why do I say that the Governor and the news media have created the failing schools of Louisiana? That's because the term “failing school” is a purely arbitrary designation. It is not necessarily valid, but once the government announces it has identified hundreds of failing schools, most people believe that such a designation must be based on fact.
To demonstrate how arbitrary the definition of a failing school is, let's conduct a thought experiment. Let's pretend that Louisiana had a great educational system, and that every single teacher was doing the best job possible in educating children. Let's assume that in this perfect school system there was not one bad teacher in our public schools! Let's assume that every teacher had complete knowledge of his/her subject matter and followed the state curriculum guide perfectly, used the best teaching techniques and worked with each student providing individualized instruction etc, etc.
But at the same time let's stipulate that those teachers and that the public education system would still be educating our current Louisiana students where about 60% qualify for free lunch because of the high poverty in our state, a large percentage of our students come from single parent homes, many do not have good nutrition, many do not have a quiet place in the home to study, many are not required by their parents to attend school regularly, and many have learning disabilities. But they would all be taught by perfect teachers, go to schools with great facilities, and have the best opportunities possible.
Let's also require in this system that at the end of the year the state would test all of these students in the basic skills to see how much each had learned. What do you predict would be the scores produced by our students in this ideal school environment? Would all students make the same scores as their classmates at their grade level in all schools in the state? Would the scores for each school across the state; some serving wealthy communities, some middle class communities, and the majority serving high poverty communities be pretty much the same? Would all the schools produce high student scores?
Common sense tells us that even if all the teachers are perfect and all the schools have good facilities and good administrators, there will still be major differences in student performance across the state caused by the many other factors that affect the academic performance of students. We can also reasonably conclude that the students from the wealthiest communities would do the best in school and those from the poorest communities would do the worst. (The statistics on this are irrefutable)
So now suppose we assigned each school a performance score that was based on the average performance of all students attending that school. The schools with high student scores would get a high performance score and the schools with low student scores would get a low performance score. Now suppose we came up with a letter grading scale so that the schools with the highest performance scores would be assigned an “A” and the schools with the lowest performance scores will get an “F”. Then suppose we allowed a committee of citizens to set the lowest score for a “D” at a level where approximately 10% of the schools will fall below the D level and establish a scale so that all the other schools are distributed between D and A. Then we would publish the results for all schools and announce that we have identified the "failing schools" of our state and that we are very disappointed in those schools and also in the schools that have been rated “D” and “C”. In addition, we are concerned that many thousands of students are “trapped” in these failing schools and that parents need other options for their children other than being forced to attend “C” through “F” public schools. Those options, we would decree, must be private schools where the students have never been tested by the standardized tests we have given to the public schools students. Some of those schools teach Creationism instead of Science, and we really have no idea what their curriculum looks like. But the one thing we know is that many of their teachers are not certified and many are not teaching in their field. By this system we would have “created” a huge number of failing schools and we could propose to fire the ineffective teachers in those failing schools. But wait, how would that make sense if all the teachers in all the schools were perfect to begin with. Also, how would it make sense to allow some students to transfer to schools with questionable curricula and untrained teachers?
The above thought experiment demonstrates how our state could create failing schools even if all of the children had been given the greatest opportunity possible. That's because anytime you test students from different backgrounds you will get a huge range of scores. All the testing experts know that student scores vary greatly no matter what school they attend and that students from poor neighborhoods score worse than those from wealthy neighborhoods. Of course not all teachers are effective in the real schools of Louisiana, but the point is we have no way of knowing how much of the low performance of our students is caused by poor teaching.
Then there is the issue of grade level performance. Here is an important revelation. It is mainly statisticians that have created the concept of grade level performance using the natural distribution of achievement scores produced by a representative group of test takers from across the nation or across the state. The statisticians look at the distribution of all scores and slice off a section around the median of all scores and that becomes the grade level range. Any tester who scores above that arbitrary range is considered “above grade level” and all those scoring below that arbitrary range are considered to be performing “below grade level”. Here's the important point We will always have a significant number of students scoring below grade level because the statisticians have designed the system that way, and because students always perform at different levels no matter how effective the teachers are. Guess what! Even where you have mediocre teachers, some students will still perform above grade level! That's because the students, and their aptitude and motivation have a lot to do with achievement in school, maybe even more than the effectiveness of the teacher. Thomas Jefferson was considered one of the best educated persons of his time even though he had almost no formal education. He apparently had a tremendous thirst for knowledge.
I have written all of the above to point out that the so called “failing schools of Louisiana” were created by the Governor, Superintendent White and the News media. There is absolutely no basis for assuming that the teachers in a “D” or “F” school are not doing their job as well as is humanly possible, just like it is wrong to assume that the teachers in an “A” school are all great teachers. Yet this is what the public has been led to believe and why this system is so unfair to educators and students. I believe that if you switched the teachers of the top performing school in a parish with the teachers in the lowest performing school in a parish, you would still get basically the same student scores as before the switch!
One more thing: There is no evidence that transferring students from low performing schools to other schools makes any difference in the performance of those students. This was done in Chicago under Arne Duncan, and studies have shown that the transferred students have not done any better than before their transfer. Milwaukee has had a system of Voucher schools for years and the results for students in those schools is no better than for their cohorts in regular public schools. Finally, in the case where vouchers have been tried in Louisiana in the New Orleans area, the voucher students have produced lower average scores than those attending the Recovery District schools which have the second lowest scores in the state!
I believe that what Jindal has done in Louisiana by creating this misleading grading system for schools is designed to privatize our schools and to allow his friends in the business community and for those in the far right religious factions to profit from children no matter how damaging it may be to the future of these children. This system and the privatization of schools is a giant step backward, and will be damaging to students and will eventually cripple our public school system. We must do every thing we can to stop it!
Why do I say that the Governor and the news media have created the failing schools of Louisiana? That's because the term “failing school” is a purely arbitrary designation. It is not necessarily valid, but once the government announces it has identified hundreds of failing schools, most people believe that such a designation must be based on fact.
To demonstrate how arbitrary the definition of a failing school is, let's conduct a thought experiment. Let's pretend that Louisiana had a great educational system, and that every single teacher was doing the best job possible in educating children. Let's assume that in this perfect school system there was not one bad teacher in our public schools! Let's assume that every teacher had complete knowledge of his/her subject matter and followed the state curriculum guide perfectly, used the best teaching techniques and worked with each student providing individualized instruction etc, etc.
But at the same time let's stipulate that those teachers and that the public education system would still be educating our current Louisiana students where about 60% qualify for free lunch because of the high poverty in our state, a large percentage of our students come from single parent homes, many do not have good nutrition, many do not have a quiet place in the home to study, many are not required by their parents to attend school regularly, and many have learning disabilities. But they would all be taught by perfect teachers, go to schools with great facilities, and have the best opportunities possible.
Let's also require in this system that at the end of the year the state would test all of these students in the basic skills to see how much each had learned. What do you predict would be the scores produced by our students in this ideal school environment? Would all students make the same scores as their classmates at their grade level in all schools in the state? Would the scores for each school across the state; some serving wealthy communities, some middle class communities, and the majority serving high poverty communities be pretty much the same? Would all the schools produce high student scores?
Common sense tells us that even if all the teachers are perfect and all the schools have good facilities and good administrators, there will still be major differences in student performance across the state caused by the many other factors that affect the academic performance of students. We can also reasonably conclude that the students from the wealthiest communities would do the best in school and those from the poorest communities would do the worst. (The statistics on this are irrefutable)
So now suppose we assigned each school a performance score that was based on the average performance of all students attending that school. The schools with high student scores would get a high performance score and the schools with low student scores would get a low performance score. Now suppose we came up with a letter grading scale so that the schools with the highest performance scores would be assigned an “A” and the schools with the lowest performance scores will get an “F”. Then suppose we allowed a committee of citizens to set the lowest score for a “D” at a level where approximately 10% of the schools will fall below the D level and establish a scale so that all the other schools are distributed between D and A. Then we would publish the results for all schools and announce that we have identified the "failing schools" of our state and that we are very disappointed in those schools and also in the schools that have been rated “D” and “C”. In addition, we are concerned that many thousands of students are “trapped” in these failing schools and that parents need other options for their children other than being forced to attend “C” through “F” public schools. Those options, we would decree, must be private schools where the students have never been tested by the standardized tests we have given to the public schools students. Some of those schools teach Creationism instead of Science, and we really have no idea what their curriculum looks like. But the one thing we know is that many of their teachers are not certified and many are not teaching in their field. By this system we would have “created” a huge number of failing schools and we could propose to fire the ineffective teachers in those failing schools. But wait, how would that make sense if all the teachers in all the schools were perfect to begin with. Also, how would it make sense to allow some students to transfer to schools with questionable curricula and untrained teachers?
The above thought experiment demonstrates how our state could create failing schools even if all of the children had been given the greatest opportunity possible. That's because anytime you test students from different backgrounds you will get a huge range of scores. All the testing experts know that student scores vary greatly no matter what school they attend and that students from poor neighborhoods score worse than those from wealthy neighborhoods. Of course not all teachers are effective in the real schools of Louisiana, but the point is we have no way of knowing how much of the low performance of our students is caused by poor teaching.
Then there is the issue of grade level performance. Here is an important revelation. It is mainly statisticians that have created the concept of grade level performance using the natural distribution of achievement scores produced by a representative group of test takers from across the nation or across the state. The statisticians look at the distribution of all scores and slice off a section around the median of all scores and that becomes the grade level range. Any tester who scores above that arbitrary range is considered “above grade level” and all those scoring below that arbitrary range are considered to be performing “below grade level”. Here's the important point We will always have a significant number of students scoring below grade level because the statisticians have designed the system that way, and because students always perform at different levels no matter how effective the teachers are. Guess what! Even where you have mediocre teachers, some students will still perform above grade level! That's because the students, and their aptitude and motivation have a lot to do with achievement in school, maybe even more than the effectiveness of the teacher. Thomas Jefferson was considered one of the best educated persons of his time even though he had almost no formal education. He apparently had a tremendous thirst for knowledge.
I have written all of the above to point out that the so called “failing schools of Louisiana” were created by the Governor, Superintendent White and the News media. There is absolutely no basis for assuming that the teachers in a “D” or “F” school are not doing their job as well as is humanly possible, just like it is wrong to assume that the teachers in an “A” school are all great teachers. Yet this is what the public has been led to believe and why this system is so unfair to educators and students. I believe that if you switched the teachers of the top performing school in a parish with the teachers in the lowest performing school in a parish, you would still get basically the same student scores as before the switch!
One more thing: There is no evidence that transferring students from low performing schools to other schools makes any difference in the performance of those students. This was done in Chicago under Arne Duncan, and studies have shown that the transferred students have not done any better than before their transfer. Milwaukee has had a system of Voucher schools for years and the results for students in those schools is no better than for their cohorts in regular public schools. Finally, in the case where vouchers have been tried in Louisiana in the New Orleans area, the voucher students have produced lower average scores than those attending the Recovery District schools which have the second lowest scores in the state!
I believe that what Jindal has done in Louisiana by creating this misleading grading system for schools is designed to privatize our schools and to allow his friends in the business community and for those in the far right religious factions to profit from children no matter how damaging it may be to the future of these children. This system and the privatization of schools is a giant step backward, and will be damaging to students and will eventually cripple our public school system. We must do every thing we can to stop it!
Friday, July 27, 2012
Legal Challenge
The Baton Rouge Advocate today carries a story about letters sent to voucher schools by the LAE attorney Brian Blackwell warning them that they may be subject to lawsuits from the LAE for participating in the voucher program. Some see this as an unfair scare tactic, and some believe the LAE is using strong arm "Union" tactics. I disagree. And I know who really used strong arm tactics to pass this privatization scheme with the use of our tax dollars. That "scholarship" money is money we all contributed for public education, not for the enrichment of a few greedy preachers and for the large corporations who are pushing to enlarge their virtual schools in Louisiana.
The following is the comment I submitted to the Advocate in response to this article:
I am a member of LAE and I know Brian Blackwell the LAE attorney. He is an excellent lawyer and he just doing his job as dictated by normal legal practice. He is simply covering all the bases by notifying the voucher schools that by accepting vouchers they may be participating in an activity prohibited by the Louisiana constitution. This is not a scare tactic, it is a legal tactic if your position is that our tax dollars cannot be legally used to support private schools. The governor on the other hand has played real hardball by allowing the firing of state employees and the punishing of legislators that have the nerve to disagree with his policies. For example we have seen the firing of an education official who had the nerve to report possible illegal activities of one of the Governor's favored charter schools. Later on the school was closed when the evidence could not be ignored by BESE.
The following is the comment I submitted to the Advocate in response to this article:
I am a member of LAE and I know Brian Blackwell the LAE attorney. He is an excellent lawyer and he just doing his job as dictated by normal legal practice. He is simply covering all the bases by notifying the voucher schools that by accepting vouchers they may be participating in an activity prohibited by the Louisiana constitution. This is not a scare tactic, it is a legal tactic if your position is that our tax dollars cannot be legally used to support private schools. The governor on the other hand has played real hardball by allowing the firing of state employees and the punishing of legislators that have the nerve to disagree with his policies. For example we have seen the firing of an education official who had the nerve to report possible illegal activities of one of the Governor's favored charter schools. Later on the school was closed when the evidence could not be ignored by BESE.
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
BESE Approves Whitewash on Voucher Accountability
Yesterday BESE approved the so called “accountability” rules developed by Superintendent White for private schools accepting public school voucher students under the Act 2 legislation. This was just a formality since White had been given sole authority by the legislature to make the rules. As I have pointed out before, BESE has become irrelevant since it has become clear that all but two of the members are firmly under the direction of Jindal and his hand picked superintendent. But the meeting was valuable in that it allowed members of the public and representatives of education organizations to point out the many flaws and areas of non-accountability in the rules. Click here to see the Reuters new story on this issue and compare it to the Advocte support for the Whitewash.
One of the most important criticisms of the accountability rules for voucher schools pointed out by several speakers is that they are not truly rules since the policy allows the state superintendent to waive them or make exceptions to the rules. The only real potential for the accountability rules is that they provide for the continued testing of voucher students and the reporting of results to the state (but that was already in state law). In addition, for some voucher schools, the state will calculate a Scholarship Cohort Index (SCI) which will be similar to the School Performance Score (SPS) which is now published for all pubic schools. Voucher schools with an SCI below 50 would not be allowed to accept new voucher students in succeeding years. Unfortunately, many of the schools will not have SCI scores and no public reports because they enroll fewer than 10 voucher students in a grade or fewer than 40 voucher students overall. Others will not have scores at all because they will enroll most of their voucher students in grades K-2 initially.
Here are some of the important issues pointed out to BESE by various individuals and groups:
BESE members Carolyn Hill and Lottie Beebie pointed out that BESE may not have followed their own rules for adoption of new policy in setting up the meeting on Tuesday. Adequate notice was not given of the new rules and publication rules for the new policy may not have been followed. Ms Hill and Ms Beebie should be commended for standing up to extreme pressure from the Governor and his allies and voting their conscience by voting “no” on White's voucher rules. They both pointed out that White's Rules did not amount to real accountability for the voucher schools.
It was also pointed out by members of the audience that some groups who were voucher supporters apparently got to review the rules before the public or even BESE did because they were quoted in the original press release from the Department announcing the new rules. Parent advocate from New Orleans Karan Harper Royal half jokingly said that in the future she wanted to be put on the list of persons who get “pre” notifications of new policies.
LAE Associate Executive Director, Wayne Free pointed out that there were no assurances to the public that voucher schools came anywhere near meeting state curriculum standards. He questioned the rule that allows the state superintendent to make changes in the rules pretty much at will and the fact that already one of the private-for-profit virtual charter schools was allowed to increase their enrollment by almost double even though student performance on state tests are far below state acceptable standards. The young science advocate Zack Kopplin pointed out that the religious voucher schools he checked into would be teaching all kinds of non-standard science curricula and various forms of creationism.
Scott Richard of the Louisiana School Boards Association pointed out that letter grades should also be assigned to voucher schools based on the performance of voucher students so that parents could have a measure similar to that used for public schools. He also informed the Board that many of the new voucher schools have not been approved by federal authorities as meeting Brumfield-Dodd standards for non-discrimination in enrollment of students. This would be a violation of federal desegregation rules that must now be followed by all public schools.
Donald Songy representing the Superintendent's Association said that since three fourths of the voucher schools will have no reports made to the public about their student performance (because they have been exempted by the White rules), at least the state could publish an aggregate SCI score for all voucher students so that the public could get an idea of the success of the program.
All of the valid recommendations above were ignored by BESE in accepting the Whitewash.
Just for Fun if you want to see how some teachers view the new trend of teaching the test go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5wkJxTwXnk. I think this youtube video/audio will become the official theme song for this blog.
Here's a button one of my readers sent me. Pleas use it any way you like:
One of the most important criticisms of the accountability rules for voucher schools pointed out by several speakers is that they are not truly rules since the policy allows the state superintendent to waive them or make exceptions to the rules. The only real potential for the accountability rules is that they provide for the continued testing of voucher students and the reporting of results to the state (but that was already in state law). In addition, for some voucher schools, the state will calculate a Scholarship Cohort Index (SCI) which will be similar to the School Performance Score (SPS) which is now published for all pubic schools. Voucher schools with an SCI below 50 would not be allowed to accept new voucher students in succeeding years. Unfortunately, many of the schools will not have SCI scores and no public reports because they enroll fewer than 10 voucher students in a grade or fewer than 40 voucher students overall. Others will not have scores at all because they will enroll most of their voucher students in grades K-2 initially.
Here are some of the important issues pointed out to BESE by various individuals and groups:
BESE members Carolyn Hill and Lottie Beebie pointed out that BESE may not have followed their own rules for adoption of new policy in setting up the meeting on Tuesday. Adequate notice was not given of the new rules and publication rules for the new policy may not have been followed. Ms Hill and Ms Beebie should be commended for standing up to extreme pressure from the Governor and his allies and voting their conscience by voting “no” on White's voucher rules. They both pointed out that White's Rules did not amount to real accountability for the voucher schools.
It was also pointed out by members of the audience that some groups who were voucher supporters apparently got to review the rules before the public or even BESE did because they were quoted in the original press release from the Department announcing the new rules. Parent advocate from New Orleans Karan Harper Royal half jokingly said that in the future she wanted to be put on the list of persons who get “pre” notifications of new policies.
LAE Associate Executive Director, Wayne Free pointed out that there were no assurances to the public that voucher schools came anywhere near meeting state curriculum standards. He questioned the rule that allows the state superintendent to make changes in the rules pretty much at will and the fact that already one of the private-for-profit virtual charter schools was allowed to increase their enrollment by almost double even though student performance on state tests are far below state acceptable standards. The young science advocate Zack Kopplin pointed out that the religious voucher schools he checked into would be teaching all kinds of non-standard science curricula and various forms of creationism.
Scott Richard of the Louisiana School Boards Association pointed out that letter grades should also be assigned to voucher schools based on the performance of voucher students so that parents could have a measure similar to that used for public schools. He also informed the Board that many of the new voucher schools have not been approved by federal authorities as meeting Brumfield-Dodd standards for non-discrimination in enrollment of students. This would be a violation of federal desegregation rules that must now be followed by all public schools.
Donald Songy representing the Superintendent's Association said that since three fourths of the voucher schools will have no reports made to the public about their student performance (because they have been exempted by the White rules), at least the state could publish an aggregate SCI score for all voucher students so that the public could get an idea of the success of the program.
All of the valid recommendations above were ignored by BESE in accepting the Whitewash.
Just for Fun if you want to see how some teachers view the new trend of teaching the test go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5wkJxTwXnk. I think this youtube video/audio will become the official theme song for this blog.
Here's a button one of my readers sent me. Pleas use it any way you like:
Thursday, July 19, 2012
The Need for Educators to Unify
I was very pleased this week to accept an invitation by my professional organization, the Louisiana Association of Educators to write a guest blog for the Association web site. I am now a retired member of LAE but I find that the Association has welcomed me to participate in education issues just as much as if I were still an active classroom teacher. I have enjoyed renewing old friendships with teachers and administrators in our common fight for public education, and my blog has brought me many new friends who encourage me every day.
I hope my readers will click on this link to the LAE Blog site and read what I had to say to both members of LAE and to all other public school educators and even parents of public school children. I believe that public education in Louisiana is in serious crisis created by the actions of our Governor with his so called education reforms.
Yes, public education in Louisiana has been struggling for years partly because of court ordered desegregation, the accompanying white flight, federal interference and a serious lack of support and motivation particularly of our high poverty students. Many teachers have been reporting for years that they are appalled by the lack of respect for teachers exhibited by students and parents of all socioeconomic levels. Education seems to be the only profession where everyone thinks they know just as much or more about how to run the system as the professionals who have devoted their careers to educating children. People who would never question what their doctor or lawyer or even their auto mechanic prescribes think they should second guess every homework assignment, every report card grade and every disciplinary action taken by a teacher or school principal. In some public schools basic classroom discipline has broken down and disruption by a relatively small number of students interferes almost daily with proper instruction. Yet our state and federal education authorities have imposed rules that interfere with the use of proper disciplinary measures in those schools.
This environment of frustration by members of the public with our schools and a general feeling by many that our education system is not putting enough critical knowledge into our children's brains and not preparing them well enough to compete for a good future in worlwide job competition has set the stage for this radical revamp of our public education system.
The sad thing, as I have pointed out many times in this blog is that education reform is attacking the wrong problems and making scapegoats of the very persons who should be most trusted in working on the problems of education. The only thing some of the charter schools have proven in Louisiana is that if you carefully cull out the low performers and classroom disruptors, a school can produce higher overall student achievement. We already knew that. Good examples of this strategy have been demonstrated by the excellent performance of our public magnet schools such as the one attended by Governor Jindal. Those schools have been labeled as “A” schools as though such performance was not a foregone conclusion. I am in no way minimizing the dedicated efforts by teachers in magnet schools. They deserve the high rating.
On the other hand if you require a school in a high poverty neighborhood to take all students, even those that are not interested in school, and you tie the hands of teachers and administrators in implementing effective disciplinary policies, students will exhibit low overall performance. That school is then labeled by our so called accountability system as a “D” or “F” school and the teachers and administrators are considered by our State Superintendent as “ineffective” educators. No matter that the teaching environment and the policy makers have stacked the deck against them; all of a sudden, its the teachers who are to blame. Then the Governor and his supporters can lament about the students “trapped” in failing schools who need to be given a voucher to escape these ineffective teachers.
As many of us have tried to explain to the legislators and to the news media, the letter grading system implemented in Louisiana schools is a deceptive abomination! It wrongly accuses teachers of failing our students and encourages less cooperation by parents who should have been involved in intensive efforts to produce better parent-teacher cooperation. Our Governor has branded thousands of dedicated teachers and many struggling schools as failures instead of giving them the support they needed to improve their school's environment. If the teachers were so bad in those D and F schools, why is it that for years many of the ethnic Vietnamese students attending some of the low rated schools in their neighborhoods have received some of the highest academic honors in their school systems? I guess those “ineffective” teachers were only good at teaching Asian students who start school with poor English skills. Obviously the home environment was a huge influence for those students. Why have we not tried to learn why some home environments make students more successful and tried to implement programs that encourage positive parental involvement?
Instead the Governor and his allies have chosen to take over schools and convert them to charters. This strategy has been a huge failure. (see my post of Feb. 19, 2011) Now the legislature has added a law implementing a statewide voucher system to allow students to “escape” often to substandard religious schools that use video lessons and teach Creationism while the preacher/principal stands to rake in a huge salary and rental fees from our tax contributions to his little enterprise. We also have a major potential for other “out-of-the-mainstream religions” to use our taxes to promote their causes through the unregulated schools promoted by our new education laws. Louisiana could soon move from being simply a low performer in education to a laughing stock of the nation with potential businesses shunning our state as though it had a plague in K-12 education. Take a look at this article from the Atlanta Journal Constitution to see what I mean.
That's why in my guest blog for the LAE and on this site I repeatedly encourage teachers to join and become very active in their professional organizations/unions such as the LAE and LFT. Forget about APEL. They are on the other side. I also encourage administrators to join either the LAE (LAE does not limit its membership to non-administrators) or an administrator group that is willing to advocate for and fight for public education. I would encourage parents to join their parent organizations and advocate for support rather than dismantling of our public schools. Finally, I hope that school board members through the LSBA will begin a renewed effort to defend our democratic system of public school management which allows every citizen to elect their school board member who answers to the voters rather than to a corporate, religious or private group. All of the groups mentioned above are participating in the Coalition for Louisiana Public Education. This unified effort of many individuals working for common goals is the only hope we have for survival and true improvement of our public education system.
I hope my readers will click on this link to the LAE Blog site and read what I had to say to both members of LAE and to all other public school educators and even parents of public school children. I believe that public education in Louisiana is in serious crisis created by the actions of our Governor with his so called education reforms.
Yes, public education in Louisiana has been struggling for years partly because of court ordered desegregation, the accompanying white flight, federal interference and a serious lack of support and motivation particularly of our high poverty students. Many teachers have been reporting for years that they are appalled by the lack of respect for teachers exhibited by students and parents of all socioeconomic levels. Education seems to be the only profession where everyone thinks they know just as much or more about how to run the system as the professionals who have devoted their careers to educating children. People who would never question what their doctor or lawyer or even their auto mechanic prescribes think they should second guess every homework assignment, every report card grade and every disciplinary action taken by a teacher or school principal. In some public schools basic classroom discipline has broken down and disruption by a relatively small number of students interferes almost daily with proper instruction. Yet our state and federal education authorities have imposed rules that interfere with the use of proper disciplinary measures in those schools.
This environment of frustration by members of the public with our schools and a general feeling by many that our education system is not putting enough critical knowledge into our children's brains and not preparing them well enough to compete for a good future in worlwide job competition has set the stage for this radical revamp of our public education system.
The sad thing, as I have pointed out many times in this blog is that education reform is attacking the wrong problems and making scapegoats of the very persons who should be most trusted in working on the problems of education. The only thing some of the charter schools have proven in Louisiana is that if you carefully cull out the low performers and classroom disruptors, a school can produce higher overall student achievement. We already knew that. Good examples of this strategy have been demonstrated by the excellent performance of our public magnet schools such as the one attended by Governor Jindal. Those schools have been labeled as “A” schools as though such performance was not a foregone conclusion. I am in no way minimizing the dedicated efforts by teachers in magnet schools. They deserve the high rating.
On the other hand if you require a school in a high poverty neighborhood to take all students, even those that are not interested in school, and you tie the hands of teachers and administrators in implementing effective disciplinary policies, students will exhibit low overall performance. That school is then labeled by our so called accountability system as a “D” or “F” school and the teachers and administrators are considered by our State Superintendent as “ineffective” educators. No matter that the teaching environment and the policy makers have stacked the deck against them; all of a sudden, its the teachers who are to blame. Then the Governor and his supporters can lament about the students “trapped” in failing schools who need to be given a voucher to escape these ineffective teachers.
As many of us have tried to explain to the legislators and to the news media, the letter grading system implemented in Louisiana schools is a deceptive abomination! It wrongly accuses teachers of failing our students and encourages less cooperation by parents who should have been involved in intensive efforts to produce better parent-teacher cooperation. Our Governor has branded thousands of dedicated teachers and many struggling schools as failures instead of giving them the support they needed to improve their school's environment. If the teachers were so bad in those D and F schools, why is it that for years many of the ethnic Vietnamese students attending some of the low rated schools in their neighborhoods have received some of the highest academic honors in their school systems? I guess those “ineffective” teachers were only good at teaching Asian students who start school with poor English skills. Obviously the home environment was a huge influence for those students. Why have we not tried to learn why some home environments make students more successful and tried to implement programs that encourage positive parental involvement?
Instead the Governor and his allies have chosen to take over schools and convert them to charters. This strategy has been a huge failure. (see my post of Feb. 19, 2011) Now the legislature has added a law implementing a statewide voucher system to allow students to “escape” often to substandard religious schools that use video lessons and teach Creationism while the preacher/principal stands to rake in a huge salary and rental fees from our tax contributions to his little enterprise. We also have a major potential for other “out-of-the-mainstream religions” to use our taxes to promote their causes through the unregulated schools promoted by our new education laws. Louisiana could soon move from being simply a low performer in education to a laughing stock of the nation with potential businesses shunning our state as though it had a plague in K-12 education. Take a look at this article from the Atlanta Journal Constitution to see what I mean.
That's why in my guest blog for the LAE and on this site I repeatedly encourage teachers to join and become very active in their professional organizations/unions such as the LAE and LFT. Forget about APEL. They are on the other side. I also encourage administrators to join either the LAE (LAE does not limit its membership to non-administrators) or an administrator group that is willing to advocate for and fight for public education. I would encourage parents to join their parent organizations and advocate for support rather than dismantling of our public schools. Finally, I hope that school board members through the LSBA will begin a renewed effort to defend our democratic system of public school management which allows every citizen to elect their school board member who answers to the voters rather than to a corporate, religious or private group. All of the groups mentioned above are participating in the Coalition for Louisiana Public Education. This unified effort of many individuals working for common goals is the only hope we have for survival and true improvement of our public education system.
PS: If you have not already done so, please send me an email today at louisianaeducator@gmail.comand join my Defenders of Public Education data base. It is free and totally confidential. The “Defenders” data base does not take the place of a real professional organization or union which I strongly urge all my readers to join. The Defenders data base is simply my small contribution to coordination of efforts by many groups who comprise the Coalition for Louisiana Public Education to help us speak with a unified voice to the legislature. Please include you home address so I can categorize you by your legislative district.
Monday, July 16, 2012
Where Were the Deans?
The Deans of our colleges of education were apparently absent during the battle at the Legislature over the Governor's education reform package. It made me wonder if the Deans of our Colleges of Education in Louisiana believe there is value in their programs.
One key part of the Governor's reforms was the removal of the requirement that teachers in public charter schools be certified. The only requirement now to teach any subject or grade in a charter school is a bachelor's degree in anything. Amazingly our Deans of the colleges of Education whose sole reason for getting a salary is that of preparing college graduates to be teachers, did not appear before the legislative hearings to object to the hiring of persons without credentials to be entrusted with the future of our children!
A parent recently pointed out that the legislature has laws on the books to protect the public in Louisiana from unqualified landscape designers, uncertified florists, uncertified manicurists, or barbers etc etc. A judge would certainly not allow a citizen to be represented in court by a non-lawyer. You could sue the hospital if they let a veterinarian do surgery on you (although I have one I would trust).
But now with the Governor's desperation to make it easier and cheaper for charters to operate, using our tax dollars, he has dropped all credentials for teachers in those schools. That should be no surprise since he appointed a person with no real credentials to be our State Superintendent. Mr White also apparently has no track record of improving a single school in his short career as an administrator in the New York school system.
Finland on the other hand, increased its certification requirements for teachers and then saw student performance rise to the highest level in the western world. Finland also does not use high stakes testing and does not use student test performance to rate its schools or teachers. The government in Finland actually treats its teachers as professionals. Teachers there are truly "empowered".
Removal of certification requirements for teachers, in addition to putting Louisiana students at risk, is a huge insult to all of our colleges of education! Yet the Deans hid out in their ivory towers while the governor made a mockery of their profession as teacher educators.
This formalized disrespect for the teaching profession in Louisiana will surely drag our educational system down. It is hypocritical that our business community represented by The Louisiana Association of Business and Industry (LABI) has called for higher standards for our students while they supported the Governor in lowering standards for those who teach them.
When did insanity become education reform? Why should any real teacher have any respect for the Governor, the State Superintendent, or the Legislature.
One key part of the Governor's reforms was the removal of the requirement that teachers in public charter schools be certified. The only requirement now to teach any subject or grade in a charter school is a bachelor's degree in anything. Amazingly our Deans of the colleges of Education whose sole reason for getting a salary is that of preparing college graduates to be teachers, did not appear before the legislative hearings to object to the hiring of persons without credentials to be entrusted with the future of our children!
A parent recently pointed out that the legislature has laws on the books to protect the public in Louisiana from unqualified landscape designers, uncertified florists, uncertified manicurists, or barbers etc etc. A judge would certainly not allow a citizen to be represented in court by a non-lawyer. You could sue the hospital if they let a veterinarian do surgery on you (although I have one I would trust).
But now with the Governor's desperation to make it easier and cheaper for charters to operate, using our tax dollars, he has dropped all credentials for teachers in those schools. That should be no surprise since he appointed a person with no real credentials to be our State Superintendent. Mr White also apparently has no track record of improving a single school in his short career as an administrator in the New York school system.
Finland on the other hand, increased its certification requirements for teachers and then saw student performance rise to the highest level in the western world. Finland also does not use high stakes testing and does not use student test performance to rate its schools or teachers. The government in Finland actually treats its teachers as professionals. Teachers there are truly "empowered".
Removal of certification requirements for teachers, in addition to putting Louisiana students at risk, is a huge insult to all of our colleges of education! Yet the Deans hid out in their ivory towers while the governor made a mockery of their profession as teacher educators.
This formalized disrespect for the teaching profession in Louisiana will surely drag our educational system down. It is hypocritical that our business community represented by The Louisiana Association of Business and Industry (LABI) has called for higher standards for our students while they supported the Governor in lowering standards for those who teach them.
When did insanity become education reform? Why should any real teacher have any respect for the Governor, the State Superintendent, or the Legislature.
Thursday, July 12, 2012
Spin on Voucher Applications
Lance Hill of the Southern Institute for Education and Research has a slightly different take about the success of the new Jindal voucher program than that of the Baton Rouge Advocate.
State Superintendent John White and the Education Department announced yesterday in a press release that over 10,300 applications for vouchers had been received this year. This was presented as a major success of the program. Last year, there were about 2,000 vouchers that had been limited to the New Orleans area. This year because of the new Jindal voucher law, students attending any public school rated “C” or lower became eligible to apply for a voucher to a private school.
So the Baton Rouge Advocate, taking its cue from Superintendent White led its article on vouchers with the enthusiastic headline:
Voucher demand soars
followed by the Sub head:
10,000 ask to attend new school
Lance Hill looked at this from a slightly different angle. He started with the number of students and parents who were notified by the State that they were eligible to apply for a voucher and compared it to the number who actually applied and found the percentage of parents who were interested in vouchers. So Lance compared the 9,000 new applications with the 450,000 students who were now eligible to apply and came up with the following suggested headline:
98% of parents say no to vouchers
State Superintendent John White and the Education Department announced yesterday in a press release that over 10,300 applications for vouchers had been received this year. This was presented as a major success of the program. Last year, there were about 2,000 vouchers that had been limited to the New Orleans area. This year because of the new Jindal voucher law, students attending any public school rated “C” or lower became eligible to apply for a voucher to a private school.
So the Baton Rouge Advocate, taking its cue from Superintendent White led its article on vouchers with the enthusiastic headline:
Voucher demand soars
followed by the Sub head:
10,000 ask to attend new school
The Advocate article goes on to gush about how the voucher applications this year are well above initial estimates.
But the New Orleans Times Picayune which is usually also favorable to the Jindal reforms did a little more digging and found out that there were really less than 9,000 new applications because over a thousand of the applications this year are from students that were already attending the New Orleans voucher schools. So the Advocate was a little bit inaccurate in its reporting of the figures about the number of students wanting to change schools, and I believe totally misleading to its readers by using its headline to promote the spin put out by Superintendent White.
Lance Hill looked at this from a slightly different angle. He started with the number of students and parents who were notified by the State that they were eligible to apply for a voucher and compared it to the number who actually applied and found the percentage of parents who were interested in vouchers. So Lance compared the 9,000 new applications with the 450,000 students who were now eligible to apply and came up with the following suggested headline:
98% of parents say no to vouchers
This just demonstrates how the media can be willingly sucked into the spin on the news generated by the pro-voucher Jindal administration. I think The Advocate editors should be ashamed!
Monday, July 9, 2012
False Progress
The education reform movement in Louisiana requires that improved student performance must be demonstrated by schools each year. In fact the goal is to soon have all students performing at grade level or better (a statistical impossibility sometimes called the Lake Wobegon effect). Another major goal upon which the futures of our education reform leaders depend is that all students should be prepared for college by the time they graduate from high school (another statistical impossibility). Never mind that both of these goals are impractical and impossible, they are politically correct and therefore must appear to happen. Each year that the reform effort progresses in Louisiana we create a more dishonest system.
Operating under the threat of state takeover and the embarrassment of a "D" or "F" being assigned to their schools or school system, local administrators are somehow producing improved results on LEAP and high school end of course tests. Also, faced with a mandate that by 2014 the statewide high school graduation rate must increase to 80%, school systems are scrambling to make the numbers. Each year dropout percentages are decreasing. That's what the statistics show. But the statistics may not be real!
The problem is that the official statistics of progress in Louisiana education often do not agree with other statistics that are less open to manipulation. Here are some examples.
Last year, the Recovery District in New Orleans announced a major reduction in the percentage of dropouts in the district. The district claimed that the annual dropout rate for 9th through 12th grades had been reduced from 9% per year to only 5% per year. Simple math tells us that the total dropouts in a 4 year period for each student cohort would amount to a total of approximately 20%. That means that the 12th grade class size compared to the 9th grade class size for the RSD should be approximately 80% as big. But when one compares the actual number of students in 12th grade to the number in 9th grade, the 12th grade class is only 50% the size of the 9th grade class. 30% of the students have disappeared apparently without dropping out! At the same time the New Orleans School Board operated schools have a senior graduating class that is almost as big as the 9th grade class. Even though they operate in the same geographical area, the school board operated system does not seem to have disappearing students. Also the official cohort graduation rate for the RSD is still in the neighborhood of 60% instead of the 80% predicted by the percentage of drop outs.
What about the state as a whole? Each year students across the state have produced steadily higher LEAP scores on the statewide tests. These LEAP tests are supposed to measure student proficiency in basic skills primarily in English/language arts and Mathematics. The only problem is that when students statewide are given the NAPE test which is supposed to measure the same basic skills, Louisiana students have barely improved. Meanwhile teachers complain that it seems that at least half of the school year is spent drilling students for the LEAP.
Another contrary indicator compared to official state tests is the ACT. Louisiana high school students are scoring only 1% better than they were scoring 5 years ago on the ACT (from 20.1 in 2006 to 20.2 in 2011) even though they are passing their end of course tests at a much better rate than several years ago. A major push for credit recovery (a way of giving credit to students who have failed high school courses) has helped more students get a high school degree. But, even though the high school graduation rate is steadily increasing, Louisiana student success in college is still dismal.
Why is there such disagreement in important statistics? I believe that Campbell's law is really at work here. Campbell's law is an adage that was developed by social scientist Donald Campbell in the 1970s. It states the following: "The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor." Campbell also stated that "achievement tests may well be valuable indicators of general school achievement under conditions of normal teaching aimed at general competence. But when test scores become the goal of the teaching process, they both lose their value as indicators of educational status and distort the educational process in undesirable ways." In other words people manipulate the process or just plain cheat to get the desired result!
Enough time has elapsed in Louisiana since student achievement goals were set that the state education administrators and local administrators are now in the same boat. The state administrators can no longer just blame the lazy or incompetent local educators for lack of progress because the present state reform regime has now been in office long enough (If you combine Pastorek and White as one regime) and have implemented every measure imaginable to produce success. Progress must occur or all administrators and maybe even the Governor will be found to be at fault. That's why you can expect to see everyone with a position to defend quietly supporting the distortion of actual progress predicted by Campbell's law.
Right now, the state Department of Education does not investigate allegations of cheating on state tests. Instead the official BESE policy is that local authorities should conduct an investigation and report their results to the state. Only if there are obvious flaws in the local investigation will the state step in and invalidate the results. When this has happened in the past, it was done quietly and the scores were changed with minimal consequences to the alleged cheaters. Whistle blowers on the other hand have been fired for reporting real improprieties. (See my posts of August 4 and August 22, 2011.) Now that tenure has been basically abolished by the state, expect very few whistle blowers.
So in Louisiana, we pretend to be preparing all students for college even though everyone involved knows this is a sham. Some of the charter schools in Louisiana heavily advertise their goal of preparing all students for college. According to the charter propaganda the only decision for the child and his/her parents seems to be to choose the ivy league college the student will attend. What a shock it must be to graduating seniors of these so called college prep charters when they find that the only colleges that will accept them are academically suspect private Internet schools whose admission requirements are non-existent. That's because despite "passing" all high school requirements, ACT scores at these schools average well below 20. The so called colleges that are willing to enroll such students depend on heavy government subsidies and student loans. Most of their students drop out of the "college" carrying a heavy burden of debt. Some owners of these Internet colleges are well connected with the politicians in Washington DC, and so far investigations of their terrible dropout numbers have been quashed. Have you noticed that Congress seems to be incapable of correcting corporate abuse and waste of tax dollars if it affects their wealthy contributors?
Take a look at my post on this blog in January 2010 to see how Louisiana is misleading students about college for all. Diane Ravitch recently added a post of her own on the same subject dated July 4.
So next time our state education officials announce "dramatic progress" think about Campbell's law and how all this is just a house of cards. Someday it will collapse and the deception will be evident. I only hope it happens before we lose too many more dedicated teachers and place too many more students on "nowhere" career paths.
Operating under the threat of state takeover and the embarrassment of a "D" or "F" being assigned to their schools or school system, local administrators are somehow producing improved results on LEAP and high school end of course tests. Also, faced with a mandate that by 2014 the statewide high school graduation rate must increase to 80%, school systems are scrambling to make the numbers. Each year dropout percentages are decreasing. That's what the statistics show. But the statistics may not be real!
The problem is that the official statistics of progress in Louisiana education often do not agree with other statistics that are less open to manipulation. Here are some examples.
Last year, the Recovery District in New Orleans announced a major reduction in the percentage of dropouts in the district. The district claimed that the annual dropout rate for 9th through 12th grades had been reduced from 9% per year to only 5% per year. Simple math tells us that the total dropouts in a 4 year period for each student cohort would amount to a total of approximately 20%. That means that the 12th grade class size compared to the 9th grade class size for the RSD should be approximately 80% as big. But when one compares the actual number of students in 12th grade to the number in 9th grade, the 12th grade class is only 50% the size of the 9th grade class. 30% of the students have disappeared apparently without dropping out! At the same time the New Orleans School Board operated schools have a senior graduating class that is almost as big as the 9th grade class. Even though they operate in the same geographical area, the school board operated system does not seem to have disappearing students. Also the official cohort graduation rate for the RSD is still in the neighborhood of 60% instead of the 80% predicted by the percentage of drop outs.
What about the state as a whole? Each year students across the state have produced steadily higher LEAP scores on the statewide tests. These LEAP tests are supposed to measure student proficiency in basic skills primarily in English/language arts and Mathematics. The only problem is that when students statewide are given the NAPE test which is supposed to measure the same basic skills, Louisiana students have barely improved. Meanwhile teachers complain that it seems that at least half of the school year is spent drilling students for the LEAP.
Another contrary indicator compared to official state tests is the ACT. Louisiana high school students are scoring only 1% better than they were scoring 5 years ago on the ACT (from 20.1 in 2006 to 20.2 in 2011) even though they are passing their end of course tests at a much better rate than several years ago. A major push for credit recovery (a way of giving credit to students who have failed high school courses) has helped more students get a high school degree. But, even though the high school graduation rate is steadily increasing, Louisiana student success in college is still dismal.
Why is there such disagreement in important statistics? I believe that Campbell's law is really at work here. Campbell's law is an adage that was developed by social scientist Donald Campbell in the 1970s. It states the following: "The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor." Campbell also stated that "achievement tests may well be valuable indicators of general school achievement under conditions of normal teaching aimed at general competence. But when test scores become the goal of the teaching process, they both lose their value as indicators of educational status and distort the educational process in undesirable ways." In other words people manipulate the process or just plain cheat to get the desired result!
Enough time has elapsed in Louisiana since student achievement goals were set that the state education administrators and local administrators are now in the same boat. The state administrators can no longer just blame the lazy or incompetent local educators for lack of progress because the present state reform regime has now been in office long enough (If you combine Pastorek and White as one regime) and have implemented every measure imaginable to produce success. Progress must occur or all administrators and maybe even the Governor will be found to be at fault. That's why you can expect to see everyone with a position to defend quietly supporting the distortion of actual progress predicted by Campbell's law.
Right now, the state Department of Education does not investigate allegations of cheating on state tests. Instead the official BESE policy is that local authorities should conduct an investigation and report their results to the state. Only if there are obvious flaws in the local investigation will the state step in and invalidate the results. When this has happened in the past, it was done quietly and the scores were changed with minimal consequences to the alleged cheaters. Whistle blowers on the other hand have been fired for reporting real improprieties. (See my posts of August 4 and August 22, 2011.) Now that tenure has been basically abolished by the state, expect very few whistle blowers.
So in Louisiana, we pretend to be preparing all students for college even though everyone involved knows this is a sham. Some of the charter schools in Louisiana heavily advertise their goal of preparing all students for college. According to the charter propaganda the only decision for the child and his/her parents seems to be to choose the ivy league college the student will attend. What a shock it must be to graduating seniors of these so called college prep charters when they find that the only colleges that will accept them are academically suspect private Internet schools whose admission requirements are non-existent. That's because despite "passing" all high school requirements, ACT scores at these schools average well below 20. The so called colleges that are willing to enroll such students depend on heavy government subsidies and student loans. Most of their students drop out of the "college" carrying a heavy burden of debt. Some owners of these Internet colleges are well connected with the politicians in Washington DC, and so far investigations of their terrible dropout numbers have been quashed. Have you noticed that Congress seems to be incapable of correcting corporate abuse and waste of tax dollars if it affects their wealthy contributors?
Take a look at my post on this blog in January 2010 to see how Louisiana is misleading students about college for all. Diane Ravitch recently added a post of her own on the same subject dated July 4.
So next time our state education officials announce "dramatic progress" think about Campbell's law and how all this is just a house of cards. Someday it will collapse and the deception will be evident. I only hope it happens before we lose too many more dedicated teachers and place too many more students on "nowhere" career paths.
Monday, July 2, 2012
Jindal Choice Law: An Invitation to Fraud and Abuse
Note to readers: Soon this blog will carry a report on the voting records of all legislators relative to the Jindal school reform package. At that time I will include suggestions for approaching our legislators about possible repeals or other modifications needed in the laws. Again I am encouraging all readers to submit an email to louisianaeducator@gmail.com so you can be added to my DEFENDERS OF PUBLIC EDUCATION data base. Please include your name and preferred email address and home address so that I can classify all participants according to thier own legislative districts. We have much work to do to save our public education system from destruction. Please be part of this effort!
Key portions of the recently passed Jindal Education legislation are being challenged in court by the LFT, the LAE, and by the Louisiana School Boards Association. The student scholarship (voucher) program is being challenged on the basis that the state is not authorized by the Louisiana Constitution to fund student enrollment in private schools. These groups are attempting to prevent the implementation of this law before the beginning of the 2012 school year. At this point, the court challenges may be our best hope of preventing the new laws from doing serious damage to our educational system.
In addition to the questionable legality of paying for children to attend private and religious schools, in my opinion, the law is an open invitation to unscrupulous individuals to use our taxes for personal enrichment of a few at the expense of the education of children. This blog has pointed out recent newspaper revelations that several of the private religious schools that had been initially approved for relatively large numbers of public to private “scholarships” apparently did not have adequate facilities, staff or materials of instruction at the time of approval. Superintendent White subsequently assured legislators that private schools offering scholarship seats would be carefully screened to insure that they were capable of providing a quality education program before being given the final go ahead. This policy was obviously created only after the potential abuse was discovered by reporters. (See the new article linked here from the Monroe News Star that incicates that White attempted to mislead the Legislature and the media media about due diligence efforts of the Department!)
Since private schools are not required to meet accountability standards, such as high stakes tests for promotion and end of course tests as a requirement for graduation, there is no way for Louisiana to insure that our tax money is being used to actually provide quality instruction to students and that the diplomas awarded are valid. There is no way to prevent private school administrators from paying themselves exorbitant salaries while hiring cheap unqualified teachers and charging excessive rent for school facilities using our tax money!
Another portion of the new law inviting possible abuse is the new choice course option. This is an even greater opportunity for fraud and abuse. The provision of Act II that allows students enrolled in public schools to draw upon MFP funds from their school system to attend one or more courses provided by private virtual schools or by private individuals I believe, is another instance of unconstitutional use of public school funds which should also be challenged in court. Meanwhile the state will soon begin to accept proposals from various providers to offer such classes at state expense to students attending public schools rated “C” or below by BESE. The new law provides that such course offerings be approved by BESE by January 1, 2013 so that students may enroll for the 2013-14 school year.
I want to refer my readers again to the Recall Jindal website for the most current information on recall efforts on both Governor Jindal and certain legislators. I encourage all my readers to participate in the recall efforts. There can be no justification for the harm done to public education and to the teaching profession by the Governor and his allies in the recent legislative session. Recall is a legitimate tool of opposition!
Key portions of the recently passed Jindal Education legislation are being challenged in court by the LFT, the LAE, and by the Louisiana School Boards Association. The student scholarship (voucher) program is being challenged on the basis that the state is not authorized by the Louisiana Constitution to fund student enrollment in private schools. These groups are attempting to prevent the implementation of this law before the beginning of the 2012 school year. At this point, the court challenges may be our best hope of preventing the new laws from doing serious damage to our educational system.
In addition to the questionable legality of paying for children to attend private and religious schools, in my opinion, the law is an open invitation to unscrupulous individuals to use our taxes for personal enrichment of a few at the expense of the education of children. This blog has pointed out recent newspaper revelations that several of the private religious schools that had been initially approved for relatively large numbers of public to private “scholarships” apparently did not have adequate facilities, staff or materials of instruction at the time of approval. Superintendent White subsequently assured legislators that private schools offering scholarship seats would be carefully screened to insure that they were capable of providing a quality education program before being given the final go ahead. This policy was obviously created only after the potential abuse was discovered by reporters. (See the new article linked here from the Monroe News Star that incicates that White attempted to mislead the Legislature and the media media about due diligence efforts of the Department!)
Since private schools are not required to meet accountability standards, such as high stakes tests for promotion and end of course tests as a requirement for graduation, there is no way for Louisiana to insure that our tax money is being used to actually provide quality instruction to students and that the diplomas awarded are valid. There is no way to prevent private school administrators from paying themselves exorbitant salaries while hiring cheap unqualified teachers and charging excessive rent for school facilities using our tax money!
Another portion of the new law inviting possible abuse is the new choice course option. This is an even greater opportunity for fraud and abuse. The provision of Act II that allows students enrolled in public schools to draw upon MFP funds from their school system to attend one or more courses provided by private virtual schools or by private individuals I believe, is another instance of unconstitutional use of public school funds which should also be challenged in court. Meanwhile the state will soon begin to accept proposals from various providers to offer such classes at state expense to students attending public schools rated “C” or below by BESE. The new law provides that such course offerings be approved by BESE by January 1, 2013 so that students may enroll for the 2013-14 school year.
According to the new law, such courses (equal to one Carnage unit) are to be funded at the amount billed by the provider up to one sixth of the MFP funding for the public school system the student attends less 10%. Local school systems are prohibited by the law from discouraging student participation in such courses. (But there is nothing in the law to prevent these private providers from using a portion of our tax support to wage advertizing campaigns aimed at recruiting students from public schools) The law allows students to take vocational or college level courses not provided by their home school but also to take replacements for regular core courses that are already offered by their school if their public school is rated “C” or lower. By passing this provision, the Governor and the Legislature apparently assume that private providers that have little or no track record can provide core courses more effectively than our highly regulated public schools. I believe that the two virtual for-profit schools that are already operating virtual charter schools in the state are uniquely positioned to raid students and critical funding from the public school systems. They already have a major advertizing campaign going to recruit public school students. While their BESE approved charters limit the number of students they can enroll in the two charters, this new law increases their pool of potential students taking numerous virtual courses by tens of thousands!
The “choice course” option amounts to an open invitation for for fraud and abuse by unscrupulous operators. The greatest flaw in this hastily adopted legislation is the provision that 50% of the funding be paid to the provider at the first attendance reporting period on October 1 of each year. There is no provision in the law for reimbursement of any of this 50% in the event that the student does not attend the course after the initial reporting period. The experience of virtual schools provided by K-12 in Colorado is that many students who initially enroll in the virtual program end up dropping out early and re-enrolling in local public schools. This allows the virtual school provider to keep state funds while the local school system which lost the funding is still required to provide the education. Because of the nature of virtual schools, it is almost impossible for the state to enforce the mandatory attendance law. There are clear checks for attendance and guaranteed instruction in a traditional public school, yet it may be almost impossible to check to see of students are doing the required work in a virtual school. Such schools could easily become diploma mills. The opportunities for abuse are almost limitless. It is critical that BESE adopt safeguards to prevent abuse of this section, but in my opinion is there is no way to monitor these programs effectively.
The primary rationale used by the Governor and his supporters for public to private “scholarships” or “choice courses” is that parents are the best judges of the best educational program for their children. Not only is there no evidence for this conclusion, but it must be noted that the money being spent by these parents on scholarships or choice courses is not their money. It is the public's money. Some choice parents may have paid only a small portion of the tax money allocated to the scholarship for their student. Public school funding is provided by all taxpayers; even those who have no children in school. Those other taxpayers have a right to demand that their money is used properly and not wasted or paid to fly-by-night-providers. The problem is that big money and the profit motive could soon fuel major advertizing campaigns that can cause parents to make poor choices with our tax dollars.
My opinion is that the opportunities and the incentives for fraud and abuse in the "choice" programs are so great that no safeguards implemented by BESE or the Department of Education will be adequate to insure proper use of our tax dollars. It is ironic that those who want less government involvement in our lives will eventually be forced to fund a huge regulatory bureaucracy or accept serious misuse of tax dollars. Jindal, in the name of education reform, and in his determination to replace public schools with private providers has created a regulatory nightmare.
I want to refer my readers again to the Recall Jindal website for the most current information on recall efforts on both Governor Jindal and certain legislators. I encourage all my readers to participate in the recall efforts. There can be no justification for the harm done to public education and to the teaching profession by the Governor and his allies in the recent legislative session. Recall is a legitimate tool of opposition!
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