Public to Public Vouchers Only First of Many Failures

Part of the Jindal reform legislation is supposed to allow students in so called D and F schools to have an opportunity to transfer to other public schools in a different public system that has achieved a rating of B or better. The problem is that the receiving school system must first agree to offer seats to such students. The Zachary school system had initially offered to accept 30 such voucher students for the 2012-13 school year, but protests by parents to their locally elected school board members nixed the deal. The superintendent of the Ouachita parish school system has also announced that his school system would opt out of the public to public voucher program.

I believe these announcements are just the tip of the iceberg of failure of much of the governor's education “deform” package as education officials attempt to implement the poorly thought out programs. (See also Diane Ravitch's latest blog on Louisiana ed reform)The entire reform package was rammed through the legislature early in the session with orders from the governor to the majority Republican legislature that amendments would not be allowed. As a result, much of the legislation which was based on ALEC templates drawn up by big business lobbyists and TFA corps members (you've got to read this story!) who have no clue what really works in education, is not only harmful but also very impractical. So much of what is being proposed by Jindal and his Superintendent John White is so totally impractical that it will never get off the ground.

For example, White has proposed that all students in all Louisiana public schools will achieve proficiency in ELA and math by the 2014 school year, yet there is nothing in the data collected by the Department of Education to show that anything close to this goal is possible. It looks like most of Louisiana's education reform goals are based on wishful thinking rather than on solid programs. Such “bold initiatives” set up our public schools for unnecessary failure in the eyes of the public.

Superintendent White still touts school takeovers by the Recovery District as Louisiana's primary strategy for turning around failing schools, yet all direct takeovers have been absolute failures to the point that parents have been pulling students out and re-enrolling them in the regular public schools. In East Baton Rouge the Department made the dramatic announcement recently that it is now taking over failing schools and creating an “achievement zone” run by the RSD. What was not reported about this initiative is that all but one of the schools taken over had already been under the direction of the Recovery District for several years and all had failed! Shame on the news media for regurgitating the propaganda generated by the Education Dept. instead of reporting the facts.

Preliminary figures indicate that very few students will have any opportunity to utilize the new vouchers. This fact makes a mockery out of the so called choice legislation. The only individuals who will exercise choice are the private and parochial administrators who see a way to improve their bottom line.

Virtual charters are being extensively expanded without a shred of evidence that virtual charter students are performing satisfactorily. One thing is known however. Virtual charters are extremely profitable in Louisiana for the wall street tycoons who have basically written the legislation and BESE guidelines that allow such schools to get twice the true per pupil cost of educating a child in a virtual charter.

The new requirement that all students be prepared for and required to take the ACT is another example of wishful thinking dictating bad education policy. One of the principals I talked to last week said he has no confidence that we can expect many of his low performing students to travel to the ACT testing centers even though their testing fees are fully paid by the state! Does anyone expect our governor to provide one penny of funding for students scoring 16 and lower on the ACT to attend college? Has the new Superintendent bothered to look at the college dropout statistics? What about the student loan debt burden most students who drop out of college are now being saddled with? Do we really want to foist another empty promise on our non-college prep students? As we have pointed out in this blog, even in Finland which is considered to have the most successful educational system in the western world, only 40% of the student population is prepared for college. Louisiana has a 60% poverty student population while Finland has only 5% of its students living in poverty. Those who believe that poverty has no effect on school performance and readiness for college are solid adherents to the wishful thinking school of education reform.

The new charter schools that would be created by the new charter authorizers in the reform package, are supposed to prepare students for good jobs that are in demand in each geographical region of the state. Such schools according to the legislation must achieve a rating of B or better to retain good standing. Someone has apparently alerted the governor to the fact that the Louisiana educational system is currently not providing enough skilled workers in non degree fields. So in addition to preparing kids for college, these new charter schools are supposed to train their students in technical and vocational areas. I've got news for the Governor. Louisiana cannot mandate a modern vocational-technical training program out of thin air. There has to be real planning and funding. And to insist on a combined college prep and vocational curriculum for all is just plain ignorant!

Finally the Governor and White are betting everything on a plan that will wipe out all due process rights for the teaching profession and base all employment decisions on student performance. The flaw in this proposal is that it assumes that most of student under-performance is caused by lazy and/or incompetent teachers. The theory is that the firing and replacement of a certain percentage of teachers based on student test scores will dramatically raise student scores in public schools. There is not a shred of evidence for this assumption. What we can expect is that as impossible performance goals are mandated, cheating scandals will hit Louisiana just as has happened in Georgia and the District of Columbia. Four years from now, Jindal and White will move on to other things, and the citizens of Louisiana and the professional educators who survive will have to pick up the pieces and restructure our educational system, hopefully this time using sound educational principles.

Better yet, should not the professional educators who live in large numbers in every representative district in the state begin immediately to demand accountability of our legislators and our Governor! As has been pointed out, the children can't afford to wait any longer for real reform.