We Must Support Rather Than Bash the Teaching Profession

Congratulations to the Louisiana Federation of Teachers for their victory yesterday in once again having Act 1 of 2012 declared unconstitutional. Judge Caldwell made the right decision in ruling again against this poorly conceived and executed law.

When we couple this legal victory with the decision last year on the teacher tenure case pursued by the Louisiana Association of Educators and decided in Judge Jones' court, we find some hope for the teaching profession as a respected profession. In that case, Judge Jones ruled that the state had no right to strip teachers of all due process by stacking the tenure hearing panel in favor of the administration. These two decisions have restored some of the dignity of the teaching profession that Jindal sought to destroy.

In my opinion this law was Jindal's attempt to reduce the status of teaching to nothing more than that of a teenage grocery store clerk. It was an abominable attack on the entire teaching profession. The only thing the different parts of the law had in common to tie them together was a general contempt for everyone in the teaching profession from the first year teacher to the 30 year Parish Superintendent with a Phd. Jindal still believes that if he crushes all the professionalism out of every segment of the teaching profession and makes every job in education totally dependent on student test scores that our student test scores will rise.

Jindal and his supporters have totally missed the true causes of the problems in public education. Instead of stigmatizing teachers and schools where students are struggling, we should have given them support. Teachers who commit to working with at risk students should not have to constantly worry about their job security. We can only improve student performance when we respect and support our teachers.