tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53929528200962058742024-03-16T02:08:03.094-05:00Louisiana EducatorAn analysis of the latest happenings in the area of Elementary/Secondary education with emphasis on state level policies as they affect teachers and school administrators. Send any comments or suggestions to louisianaeducator@gmail.com
By: Michael DeshotelsMichael Deshotelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05080847575738076946noreply@blogger.comBlogger631125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5392952820096205874.post-60424194117566924352022-08-09T19:41:00.003-05:002022-08-09T20:02:30.232-05:00<h2 style="text-align: left;"> <i><span style="color: red;">Defeating the Purpose of Education</span></i></h2><div><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Most people would agree that the primary purpose of education is to prepare children for a good and productive life. </i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Having been involved in education for over 50 years I would describe the proper education of children as preparing them to earn a good living doing work that pays well and is fulfilling, learning to live in harmony with others and in compliance with society's laws, to understand and enjoy science, the beauty of nature, enjoy and produce art, literature, and to generally find happiness in life. The U.S. Declaration of Independence emphasizes "the pursuit of happiness".</span></div><div><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"><br /></span></div><div><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">In the past few months I have reviewed the results of education reform in Louisiana to see if it was accomplishing these important goals for our precious children. I have come to the conclusion that almost everything teachers are required by their bosses (the legislature, BESE and the DOE) to do in Louisiana education is defeating the purpose of education. </span></div><div><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"><br /></span></div><div><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">One of the highest priorities of education should be to prepare students for the world of work. There are common skills we need to instill in students for any career whether it be academic or physical labor. Our students need to learn a set of values and habits that can be referred to </span><b style="caret-color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"><i>good work ethics</i></b><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">. That means that you show up for work on time every day, that you do your job right, and are generally dependable. We should be teaching that attending and doing well in school is the same as a job. Students need to be taught good work ethics in their school performance. We are now teaching the exact opposite in our schools today. Students don't have to show up consistently at school, they can skip a lot of school (see <a href="https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/education/article_c3e78bb8-1403-11ed-bad4-cf26e18eb24a.html">this article</a> on truancy), they can be disrespectful to their teachers, disrupt classroom activities without real consequences, they can refuse to do homework or prepare for tests and they can fail all their tests and they are still promoted to the next grade and are seldom disciplined. (<a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SCYzS6p9JDIjhYUFdtT8K4-GMa8uymHv/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=103860468788404188166&rtpof=true&sd=true">see my study </a>on state test results and automatic promotion) Just look at the statistics: 40% of students are classified as truant every year, they seldom make up the days they missed without an excuse, 30% fail two or more of their LEAP tests and they still get promoted to the next grade. School authorities regularly violate state law on compulsory attendance and testing and promotion laws with the tacit approval of the Department of Education. The school's performance score would go down if they enforced these laws. Our schools are teaching almost zero responsibility and a terrible work ethic. <b><i>This defeats the purpose of education.</i></b></span></div><div><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"><b><i><br /></i></b></span></div><div><span><b><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Don't expect BESE to approve real accountability for students and parents. Don't expect BESE to insist on schools enforcing the mandatory attendance law, and don't expect BESE to enforce </i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"><i>the</i></span><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"> laws </i><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">requiring denial of promotion to students who </i><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"><i>repeatedly miss more than 10 days of school and</i></span><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"> fail all their state tests.</i></b></span></div><div><span><b><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"><br /></i></b></span></div><div><span><b><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">BESE instead will continue making teachers and administrators the scapegoats for the lack of courage in enforcing mandatory standards that are clearly described in state law. </i></b></span></div><div><span><b><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"><br /></i></b></span></div><div><span><b><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">I just don't want to hear any more education officials or politicians</i><i style="caret-color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"> talk about "raising the bar".</i></b></span></div><div><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"><br /></span></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="caret-color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"><br /></span></div><div><i><span style="color: red;"><br /></span></i></div>Michael Deshotelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05080847575738076946noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5392952820096205874.post-41518491194889403862022-08-07T20:25:00.019-05:002022-08-09T04:43:44.780-05:00<h2 style="text-align: left;"> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-align: center;"><span style="color: red;">The Inconvenient Truths About Education Reform</span></span></h2><h2 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: medium;">During the last 16 years, the agencies in charge of public education in Louisiana, namely the Louisiana Legislature and the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) have tried out almost every major education reform attempted by any state. It would be correct to conclude that Louisiana is now the most educationally reformed state in the nation.</span></h2><h2 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: medium;">Most of the education reform efforts have been either initiated or promoted by the Louisiana Association Business and Industry (LABI) using lobbying and political action. Over the last 10 years, LABI has helped finance and elect almost all BESE members that hold elected positions. It would be fair to say that for the last 16 years LABI has pretty much controlled education reform in Louisiana.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> <span style="font-size: medium;">This post is a report card on LABI's education reform record.</span></span></span></h2><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The following are the education reform initiatives promoted and controlled by LABI over the last 16 years: <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">1.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Many public schools with student state test scores below the state average have been taken over by the State Recovery District and converted to charter schools that are privately managed. Such schools are exempted from many school regulations in exchange for producing better student performance, mostly on state tests.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">2.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The state legislature has also allowed children attending failing schools (as determined by average state test scores) to transfer to private or religious schools with state funding following the students. This voucher system has been in effect for over ten years now and is heavily promoted by the big business lobby.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">3.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">BESE has required that all public schools since 2012 teach students according to the new Common Core Standards, particularly in math and English courses. The Common Core standards are considered college prep standards.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">4.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Since 2012, the Legislature and BESE have required that teachers be evaluated with half of their evaluation based on the progress or educational gains of their students. Teachers can be fired and lose certification based on these evaluations. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">5.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Schools and parish school systems are rated and compared with each other by an accountability system based primarily on state test results and preparation of students for college.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">One would assume therefore that because of the reforms pushed by the big business lobbyists, public schools would now be providing school children with the most cutting-edge educational training in the country. Inconveniently however, data shows that the exact opposite has happened. Here are the major results of education reform in Louisiana:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">#1. New Orleans public schools, before schools were taken over and converted to charter schools on average were performing in the bottom one-fifth compared to all other public schools in the state. Now these schools, which have recently been returned to the New Orleans school board, are performing in the bottom one-fifth compared to all other public schools. There is no perceptible change in the performance of their students, and very few students from RSD takeover schools are prepared for college. Those that have attempted college have mostly dropped out in less than a year, many burdened with debt for money borrowed to attend college. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span> </span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Other schools in the state Recovery School District included students from public schools in EBR, St. Helena, Pointe Coupee, and Caddo. The state has since given back the schools in St. Helena, and Pointe Coupee after disastrous results with some schools approaching collapse. Most of the schools taken over in Caddo and East Baton Rouge still in the Recovery District continue to be failing schools by all major measures.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span><br /></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">#2. For the students attending various religious and private schools by use of “opportunity scholarships”, studies conducted by the University of Arkansas and Tulane show mostly a decline in performance of Louisiana voucher students compared to similar students that did not transfer from public to private schools. </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-weight: bold;">The latest average test scores of these students as reported by the Department of Education are far below the state average. The 8th grade math test scores released last week reveal that less than 12% of voucher students scored proficient in math. </i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Even so, LABI and its allies are demanding more "school choice". </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span><br /></span></span></i></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span> </span></span></i></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">#3. The new testing of students based upon the Common Core standards had two primary goals: (a) To close the achievement gap between underprivileged (low-income students) and students from homes with higher income (b) Greatly boost the preparation of all students for college attendance. Graduates were expected to produce higher ACT scores, and many more students were expected to attain college diplomas. </span><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">All of these efforts have been dismal failures. </b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">ACT scores have declined steadily and the gap between privileged and underprivileged students has grown wider. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The Board of Regents recently predicted that for every 100 students entering high school</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> today, only 18% will gain a college degree of any kind. </span><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><i>That would be the lower college performance than before the reforms.</i></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span> </span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The average scores of students taking the new state tests are extremely low. The real achievement on the new state tests is so low that the State routinely keeps the real achievement secret by only publishing the so called “scale scores”. Citizens can only see the real raw scores by filing public records requests. The raw scores for passing are set so low that some students pass some of the high school tests by random guessing. Students are routinely promoted from one grade to another even if they fail to score satisfactory on any of their state tests. </span><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><i>Many students graduate as functional illiterates because the state has removed almost all real standards for a diploma.</i></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SCYzS6p9JDIjhYUFdtT8K4-GMa8uymHv/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=117998094109170022165&rtpof=true&sd=true" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">This link</a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> is to a study I conducted using the actual data behind the deceptive scores and promotions of students today. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span> </span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">#4. The reforms have mandated that teachers be evaluated partially based on the test results of their students. In the original evaluation plan designed by the LABI endorsed State Superintendent John White, the bottom 10% of teachers evaluated by their student’s test results were destined for eventual dismissal and decertification if they did not improve their student test scores sufficiently. The problem with this new system of evaluating teachers, was that there were serious defects in the scoring system that gave incorrect evaluations particularly to teachers of both high performing and low performing students. Teachers of some high performing magnet school students were getting ridiculously low evaluations. By the time flaws became evident, the university professor who had devised the test-based scheme had left the state leaving the system unfixable. This entire fiasco that played out over several years seriously damaged teacher morale and resulted in many highly respected teachers leaving or retiring early. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">I</span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">n addition to disrespect of teachers by big business lobbyists, recent emphasis on reducing student suspensions by the State Department of Education has resulted in many teachers having their hands tied in enforcing classroom discipline in violation of the state law called the </span><a href="https://www.louisianabelieves.com/docs/default-source/advisory-council/advisory-council-on-student-behavior-and-discipline-teacher-bill-of-rights-la-rs-17_416_18.pdf?sfvrsn=3" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Teacher Bill of Rights</a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">. Many teachers are experiencing extreme disrespect and even threats by students who experience almost no consequences for serious disciplinary infractions. Teachers are simply advised to "de-escalate" when students blatantly defy their teachers. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><i><br /></i></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><i>In recent years many teachers started retiring early and discouraged their children and relatives from seeking education degrees. Now Louisiana is experiencing a serious teacher shortage </i></b><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">causing a major lowering of the standards for entry into teaching in Louisiana. Almost any college graduate can now get a teaching certificate with no training in teaching.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span><br /></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">#5. The entire scheme of rating and ranking schools by student performance has basically produced exactly the opposite result from what was promised. Now instead of preparing more students for college, the school scoring system encourages promotion and graduation of students without regard to real achievement. In recent years, it became evident that the system was neglecting to prepare the great majority of students who would not or could not attend college. The new State Superintendent, Cade Brumley, has recently made major efforts to beef up vocational/technical training, however, many students who would benefit more from vocational or skills training stayed in the college prep track while still performing below standard. When efforts were made to add courses in pre-nursing, business management, training in carpentry, electrician, plumbing, air conditioning and refrigeration, etc. it was found that relatively few students were willing to sign up for such careers. Local superintendents are finding that, in addition to Louisiana having placed a stigma on vocational training, the watering down of standards in the college prep courses meant that most students were not worried about failing such courses. But the vocational courses require real work and meeting proficiency standards. Now it’s hard to fill up classes in some excellent vocational courses. Many kids would rather get an automatic diploma by staying in the college prep track. Many underprivileged students that graduate now are scoring too low on the ACT to qualify for TOPS scholarships. It they do attend college after graduation, they often take out loans that become a burden when most of them drop out of college. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span> </span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span>Now after 16 years of reform, fewer students are truly qualified for college, few are preparing for careers, and Louisiana students are performing academically worse than before the reforms. These are the inconvenient truths about education reform.</span></span></i></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><style class="WebKit-mso-list-quirks-style">
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</style>Michael Deshotelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05080847575738076946noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5392952820096205874.post-67521334961134623002022-06-16T06:25:00.001-05:002022-06-16T15:55:47.883-05:00<p><span style="color: red;"> <b style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 24pt;">Converting Public Schools into Charters</span></i></b></span></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-align: center;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Is the privatized “business” approach producing better results?</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">School reform supporters for years have promoted the conversion of public schools into charter schools as a way of improving efficiency and installing more businesslike management of public schools. Legislatures in most states have been pressured to authorize more and more charter schools as the way of producing better academic results for children. Sixteen years ago there seemed to be no better place to experiment with charter schools as the ultimate school reform model than the New Orleans public school system. That school system was thought to be failing in providing students with the kind of education they needed to prepare for college and careers. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In 2005, as hurricane Katrina physically destroyed much of the Orleans public school system, the Louisiana legislature passed a law allowing the State Department of Education to take over approximately three-fourths of New Orleans public schools. According to the new state law, school takeover (only in New Orleans) became automatic for any school producing less than the state average score on state tests. Any such school was arbitrarily declared to be a failing school in need of takeover. The Department of Education was authorized to turn such schools over to charter school management organizations in an agreement that removed many state requirements and standards in exchange for greatly improved academic results. Over the term of the charter, if the schools improved average test performance significantly, the managers could continue running the school. But if they failed to produce academic results, their charters would be revoked.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The majority of charter management organizations came into the Orleans system starting with the 2006-07 school year. State officials had fired almost 7,000 experienced teachers and staff as a way of cleaning house and allowing the new managers a fresh start, unhampered by previous teacher contracts. Most charter groups began by hiring new, mostly younger teachers with no education credentials. Most new teachers were provided by Teach for America. Also, many of the charter school managers had no education credentials. The New Orleans business community and the state authorities believed that a strictly business approach focused primarily on academic results was the medicine that the New Orleans public schools needed. Now, over the last 16 years almost all public schools in New Orleans have been converted into charter schools. It is now basically the only all-charter school system in the United States.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://pelicanpolicy.org/reports/dashboard/" style="color: #954f72;">This recently released report</a> by the Louisiana Pelican Policy Institute, a business funded “good government” group has produced a dashboard that compares the most recent data on all public-school systems in Louisiana. It provides a way for us to compare expenditures and results in public schools. We can now get a good idea about whether the school reforms in New Orleans have lived up to their promises.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It is important to note that not all public schools in New Orleans at the time of takeover had been deemed to be failures. Even though the Orleans public school system, as a whole, fell into the bottom quartile of public school systems in the state based on academic achievement, there was a group of public schools in New Orleans that were performing well, even before 2006. Several highly selective schools had been producing high academic achievement and great college prep results. So approximately one-fourth of the Orleans schools were left intact because of acceptable results. Those schools, even though now converted into charters, continue to be selective in the students they serve and continue to produce exemplary results. But there is still a major problem with the state test scores of the other three-fourths - the reformed takeover schools.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The recent study shows that taken as a whole, the New Orleans all charter system is still ranking in the bottom quartile of all public-school systems in the state. This is in a state that performs near the bottom of all states on national testing and college preparedness. For example, </span><a href="https://pelicanpolicy.org/reports/dashboard/" style="color: #954f72; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">the new dashboard</a><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"> reveals that for the four academic subjects of math, reading, science and social studies, only 18% of all New Orleans public school students are now rated proficient or better. (I averaged the results of the 4 academic subjects) </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"> In the key subjects of math and reading, Orleans performs at the 24</span><sup style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">th</sup><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"> percentile compared to all other state school systems. </span><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><i>This is approximately the same as the Orleans school system performed before Katrina! <o:p></o:p></i></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">What about efficiency in the use of per pupil dollars? Has the new business-oriented model resulted in more efficient use of tax and grant dollars?<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">One thing that the all-charter system has been successful in doing is attracting a generous flow of charitable foundation money to these new experimental schools. A sizable portion of per pupil dollars in the reformed Orleans public system come from charitable and foundation grants. So the reformed all charter school system is certainly well funded. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The <a href="https://pelicanpolicy.org/reports/dashboard/" style="color: #954f72;">Pelican Policy Institute study</a> has provided a rough measure of how the school money in Orleans is now allocated. Total per pupil funding of the New Orleans system now adds up to $24,434 per student. For Louisiana, this is lavish funding by any measure. The state average per pupil funding is now $11,755, less than half the per pupil amount for New Orleans. How do the New Orleans schools allocate their per pupil funding compared to all other public schools? According to the Pelican Policy dashboard, New Orleans now spends 23% of all its funding on administration and 36% on classroom instruction. (Salaries of the Charter managers are not published as far as I know) The state average for other systems in Louisiana is 8% for administration and 56% for the classrooms. (All non-charter public-school administrators and teacher salary schedules are public records) <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Did the increased funding allow the reformed Orleans school system to hire a better quality of teachers? The state auditor recently found that more than half of the Orleans teachers are not certified as teachers. In addition, most of the teachers now employed in Orleans are Caucasian while 90% of the students are African American. This ignores studies that show that children learn better from real role models of their own ethnic type. So much for the new business approach. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Finally, on average, the other school systems in the state have 31% of students achieving proficiency in the 4 basic subjects tested. This compares to 18% achieving proficiency in the new reformed Orleans system. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The standard for school failure and state takeover in Louisiana has changed drastically in the last 16 years since the great charter school experiment was launched in New Orleans. Now there are practically no schools being taken over by the state based on academic performance. Now, few charters are revoked even when they continue to produce extremely low performance, but there is still a major movement to add even more charters statewide. Charter organizations have found it to be more advantageous to start new charters where the managers can attempt to attract mostly higher performing students instead of being expected to actually improve the performance of low achievers. My question: Is this happening because charters are deemed to be more efficient in producing better results, or is it because charter school operators see to it that generous contributions go to state politicians?<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i>Comment:</i></b> The statistics cited above, I believe, make a very convincing case that the school takeovers and conversion to mostly unregulated charters have not improved the overall academic performance of New Orleans students. In addition, there have been many cases of fraud and abuse by some unsupervised managers. There have been numerous cases of data manipulation, and corruption to ensure that charter managers could keep their jobs where they often determined their own high salaries. The very young, inexperienced TFA corps members were not in a position to blow the whistle on abuses because they needed positive recommendations as they went on to pursue their real careers outside the teaching profession. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Unfortunately, I believe there has been serious damage done to the futures of many New Orleans children. Students have often lost their neighborhood schools and been forced to bus to unfamiliar environments. The scramble for higher test scores among charter managers has often caused the loss of resources and neglect of students with disabilities who could not be used to improve test scores. Also, the push to teach only college prep subject matter to all students has resulted in the neglect of vital vocational and technical training that could have prepared many students for productive and rewarding careers that do not require college training. True college prep students have received less rigorous college prep because teachers were also trying to tend to the needs of lower performing students. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Finally, the greatest loss to New Orleans students, in my opinion, was the removal of thousands of excellent role models when experienced African American teachers were fired and often forced to leave the communities at the beginning of the reform effort. It is my belief that fewer students in the Orleans system are now inspired to attain college degrees than before the reforms because students have lost many role models in their communities of their own ethnic group who were college graduates and wonderful teachers.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-align: center;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 24pt;"> </span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16pt;"> </span></b></p>Michael Deshotelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05080847575738076946noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5392952820096205874.post-84112636990262592132022-05-15T16:27:00.001-05:002022-05-15T16:27:41.043-05:00<h1 style="text-align: left;"> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20pt; text-align: center;"><span style="color: red;">Important notice to all teachers</span></span></h1><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></i></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I am pleased to announce that my new book on parenting titled <i>Parenting According to Nature </i>will be available <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Parenting-According-Nature-How-Successful-ebook/dp/B09TYG5TQ9/ref=sr_1_1?crid=38CCXQTKBBZHS&keywords=parenting+according+to+nature&qid=1652649419&sprefix=parenting+accordi%2Caps%2C958&sr=8-1">from Amazon</a> as a Countdown Deal in the Kindle or eBook format for 77 hours for only 99 cents starting at 4:00 PM Central time May 19, then at $3.99 for the next 77 hours! The regular price is $6.99 for the eBook format and $14.95 for the paperback version. I am hoping that many teachers will take advantage of this great discount to study this new approach to parenting and teaching and provide me with comments and suggestions. You can make these at my blog at <a href="http://thelouisianaeducator.blogspot.com">The Louisiana Educator</a>. I would also really appreciate any positive reviews readers may want to post to the Amazon book description. Any such positive reviews would help promote sales of the book, but more importantly, could help parents to learn more effective methods of parenting. The book also describes the growing threats to children’s health and welfare arising from the internet, social media, and many bad nutrition and pharmaceutical choices. The book is based on exciting recent findings about the natural drive for learning in all children discovered by evolutionary scientists. Understanding this special drive for learning should help all of us to utilize better approaches to parenting and teaching based on our genetic programming. Please help me spread the word.<br /></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> <br /></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">See the previous posts on this blog for excerpts.<br /></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> <br /></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Also, Amazon allows you to read the preface and the first two chapters for free on <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Parenting-According-Nature-How-Successful-ebook/dp/B09TYG5TQ9/ref=sr_1_1?crid=38CCXQTKBBZHS&keywords=parenting+according+to+nature&qid=1652649419&sprefix=parenting+accordi%2Caps%2C958&sr=8-1">their website</a> by checking the arrow above the cover photo titled "Look inside".</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3HvSrzwF2RhBG_ACrCBWVR-N71cEHGnPxqGxFynBz65cV1txiKimkQmC1foNg-MlEyOAsejAidAm5Z72tX1T432D1sdo0h3eJL-Wsql1dgrZDqmoox3yvmHjriZPsSj4BEvteTuyp4k3CPmMVCwCAOwzUjTg6xHgZtc2scLuqEi7C1xhtX168Cshg/s1350/Parenting-AVAILABLE-NOW-2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1350" data-original-width="1080" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3HvSrzwF2RhBG_ACrCBWVR-N71cEHGnPxqGxFynBz65cV1txiKimkQmC1foNg-MlEyOAsejAidAm5Z72tX1T432D1sdo0h3eJL-Wsql1dgrZDqmoox3yvmHjriZPsSj4BEvteTuyp4k3CPmMVCwCAOwzUjTg6xHgZtc2scLuqEi7C1xhtX168Cshg/s320/Parenting-AVAILABLE-NOW-2.jpg" width="256" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p>Michael Deshotelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05080847575738076946noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5392952820096205874.post-51746404790366483682022-04-26T13:15:00.003-05:002022-04-26T13:28:32.661-05:00<h1 style="text-align: left;"> <b style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; text-align: center;"><i><span style="color: red; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Hidden Threats to Our Children</span></i></b></h1><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-align: center;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Parenting Excerpt #3<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></b></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-align: center;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Many American parents today are losing control of the social lives of their children. Children today are being exposed to serious dangers coming from the internet and social media.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The following excerpt shows how children are distracted from family life and the proper influence of their parents in acquiring social values. Many children today are vulnerable to peer groups, deadly drug sources and even child molesters posing as children. Facebook recently did a study indicating that teen girls may have higher incidences of <a href="https://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/local/instagram-taking-its-toll-on-teen-girls-mental-health-report/2582713/" style="color: #954f72;">suicide</a> caused by Instagram.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">(<i>Excerpt from <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Parenting-According-Nature-How-Successful/dp/B09XC1SGY3/ref=sr_1_1?crid=Y3PV42SI75O7&keywords=parenting+according+to+nature&qid=1650996664&sprefix=parenting+according%2Caps%2C798&sr=8-1">Parenting According to Nature</a>)<o:p></o:p></i></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">“Take another candid photo or a short video of a typical family sitting at the dinner table, if you can ever catch them all there. When you examine the photo or video, you will probably not see an image of a happy family enjoying dinner together and conversing with each other. What you are likely to see instead is about half the family looking at and furiously texting on their smartphones—while sitting together at the dinner table! They seem to be totally uninterested in members of their own family. I will return to this mismatch between our brains and our technologically distracted culture in the how-to section.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">For all the above reasons that threaten our happy lives and the very existence of our nation, we must prioritize education for survival in rearing our children, very much like what prehistoric hunter-gatherers did for their children. We are not so special or better than early humans we sometimes disparage as “cavemen.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span><b><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: large;">Harmful peer groups can have an impact on our children</span></i></b></span></h3><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Millions of young people are attracted to social groups that often have their own cultural norms that are contrary to a healthy culture. Some peer groups dabble in crime, form dangerous gangs and are destructive to society. Many parents and school authorities seem to be unaware of the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><a href="https://toogoodprograms.org/blogs/blog/peer-influence-good-and-bad" style="color: #954f72;">powerful influence of peer groups</a></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> on our children until bad things happen that can be lethal or that can seriously damage a young person’s chance for a healthy and prosperous life.<w:sdt citation="t" id="716159015"> </w:sdt>The epidemic of street crime in many major cities is produced by a subculture of young people that have created their own dysfunctional culture right under the noses of parents and public officials. In addition to the damage caused to young people from high poverty communities, there are many young people from economically advantaged families that can easily get influenced and have their lives threatened by the drugs and violence and even sexual predation generated in these dysfunctional sub-cultures.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> As I was writing this, there was a <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/18/health/fentanyl-fatal-overdoses-middle-schoolers/index.html" style="color: #954f72;">news report</a> that during the same time that 700,000 Americans died of Covid-19, 100,000 mostly young people died of drug overdoses. It seems that many of the victims had no idea that lethal amounts of fentanyl had been added to recreational pills they were taking. Why would young people today trust the word of drug dealers that these drugs are safe?</span></i></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> Parents and school health programs should provide intensive training programs to teach our children the dangers of taking any unnatural substances into their bodies. These unnatural substances include opioids, methamphetamine drugs, unnecessary pharmaceuticals, and even highly processed fast foods. These issues that are critical to good health should be addressed in a redesigned health and physical education part of the school curriculum.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The only time we should allow our children to be actively involved in peer groups is when we as parents are monitoring these contacts and are certain that these groups do not pose dangers to our children. Some peer groups that are beneficial for instilling positive cultural norms are those organized by religious communities as a way of providing valuable cultural training outside of the formal school setting. Church groups of teenagers and preteens are often effective in providing children with values that include generosity, social good works, healthy group exercise, and creative expression such as choirs, sports, and values education. One of my grandchildren participated in a church group that spent a couple of weeks each summer working in a Habitat for Humanity project. Both valuable social skills and work skills were learned.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">My book: <i>Parenting According to Nature </i>accessible <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Parenting-According-Nature-How-Successful/dp/B09XC1SGY3/ref=sr_1_1?crid=Y3PV42SI75O7&keywords=parenting+according+to+nature&qid=1650996664&sprefix=parenting+according%2Caps%2C798&sr=8-1">here</a> on Amazon does a lot more than sound an alarm to modern parents about losing control of the social lives of their children. It gives parents a practical how-to guide for building strong bonds with their children and guiding them to appropriate religious and social development. It includes suggestions for the development of healthy cultural values that will ensure that children develop productive careers and healthy bodies and minds. Please consider this new approach to rearing healthy, happy children.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p>Michael Deshotelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05080847575738076946noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5392952820096205874.post-1245431210163011102022-04-22T13:55:00.001-05:002022-04-22T13:55:15.270-05:00<h2 style="text-align: left;"> <b style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20pt;"><span style="color: red;">Louisiana Rediscovers the Career Diploma</span></span></b></h2><div style="text-align: left;">(Includes an excerpt from my new book, <i>Parenting According to Nature) </i></div><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20pt;"> </span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2022/04/18/louisianas_bold_move_to_overhaul_high_school_career_and_technical_education_827517.html" style="color: #954f72;">This is an article</a> in the national publication, <i>Real Clear Policy</i>, touting Louisiana’s major push recently to provide Louisiana high school graduates with a variety of vocational/career certifications. The article is proclaiming this shift in the Louisiana graduation emphasis by State Superintendent Cade Brumley as a bold new initiative! Superintendent Brumley certainly deserves credit for finally beginning to provide thousands of Louisiana high school graduates with valuable career training, but this change in emphasis was mandated by a law passed in the Louisiana legislature almost over 13 years ago. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The article in </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Real Clear Policy </i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">calls this a "bold move" to overhaul career and technical education in Louisiana high schools. According to the story "the program will develop economically relevant graduation pathways for high school students." When I read the article, it reminded me that I had discussed this issue in my new book on parenting. Here is an excerpt from <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Parenting-According-Nature-How-Successful/dp/B09XC1SGY3/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2FOOUYEQ5YVAZ&keywords=parenting+according+to+nature&qid=1650653573&sprefix=parenting+according%2Caps%2C956&sr=8-1">my book</a>, <i>Parenting According to Nature </i>on the subject of career education:</span></span></p><h1 style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 12pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="background-color: white; font-weight: normal;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></h1><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">“In 2009 I took these ideas to local school superintendents across the state, and with their support drafted legislation (SB 249) which was </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">called T</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><a href="http://www.legis.la.gov/legis/law.aspx?d=80003" style="color: #954f72;"><span style="color: black;">he Career Diploma Law</span></a></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">, and g</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">ot it passed through the Louisiana legislature that year. The bill had almost unanimous support of both Representatives and Senators and was signed by the Governor. The Career Diploma law provided a vocational pathway for graduation to students who wanted to pursue a career that did not require preparation for four-year colleges.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Here is a direct quote from the career diploma law passed 13 years ago in Louisiana:<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><span style="font-family: TimesNewRoman, serif;"> “(</span></i><i><span style="font-family: "TimesNewRoman,Bold", serif;">b) Students pursuing a career major shall be afforded the opportunity to dually enroll in a community or technical college or participate in a business </span></i><i><span style="font-family: TimesNewRoman, serif;">internship</span></i><i><span style="font-family: "TimesNewRoman,Bold", serif;"> or work-study program,” </span><o:p></o:p></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">“The only problem for this legislation was that the state superintendent of education in Louisiana at that time, who had no credentials in education, had opposed the legislation providing for the career diploma, and basically refused to implement the law. That’s because he and members of the State Board of Education had been convinced to adopt a new education reform strategy that was the national rage at the time, particularly among non-educators, that aimed to prepare <i>all students</i> for college. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Philanthropist Bill Gates had been convinced to support and promote a new curriculum for all public-school students in the U.S. called the Common Core State Standards. The Common Core State Standards also came to be strongly supported by the Obama administration. The Louisiana State Board of Education adopted this new curriculum, even before it was written, at the urging of the Gates Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education. The actual set of standards was then hurriedly designed by a small group of mostly testing company executives and their experts. The goal of the project was to have all states “voluntarily” adopt the new Common Core State Standards. The leader of the effort was David Coleman, the president of the College Board, which produces the SAT tests and tests for advanced placement (AP) courses in high schools. Coleman had never spent one day as a classroom teacher in the K–12 education system. In fact, most of the writers of this new curriculum had little experience as classroom teachers and sought almost no input from professional educators in writing the standards. This was part of a new trend where non-educators apparently decided to take education reform into their own hands with little or no consultation from professional teachers. This new college prep curriculum flew in the face of recommendations from educators who saw a greater need for vocational and career education for most students who would not attend college.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 12pt 0in 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The article in <i>Real Clear Policy</i> gives Bill Gates credit for announcing 20 years ago that U.S. high schools were not doing a good job of preparing students for lifetime skills. Here is a quote from a Gates speech at that time: “America’s high schools are obsolete. By obsolete, I mean that our high schools – even when they’re working exactly as designed – cannot teach our kids what they need to know today.” <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Ironically Gates, who had dropped out of college to develop a software company that made him one of the richest persons on earth, now spent over a billion dollars of his foundation’s money to force all American children to be taught a lot of stuff they would never use in real life. The Louisiana Career Diploma law however, had been passed specifically to allow our high schools to teach “kids what they need to know today”. The adoption of the Gates supported Common Core standards basically paralyzed all efforts to make our high schools more relevant to the 70% of our students who were not going to attend 4-year colleges. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">So now, after an entire generation of Louisiana children have attended schools under the Common Core standards, our Board of Regents has projected that only 18% of today’s ninth graders can be expected to achieve any type of college degree. So, the program had made our college attendance rate even lower than before in Louisiana. Now, all these years after passage of the Career Diploma law in Louisiana, our Department of Education and even the business community have rediscovered this law and decided to implement it as a “bold move to overhaul high school career and technical education”. <b><i>It sure would have been great if our education reformers had done this 13 years ago.<o:p></o:p></i></b></span></span></p><h1 style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; line-height: 12pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></h1><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p>Michael Deshotelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05080847575738076946noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5392952820096205874.post-60216052035033879502022-04-21T06:55:00.000-05:002022-04-21T06:55:42.485-05:00<h2 style="text-align: left;"> <b style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: 0.25in;"><i><span style="color: red;">Parenting According to Nature: Excerpt #1</span></i></b></h2><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Why cultural learning is now a critical part of rearing children</span></h3><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This excerpt from my new book describes examples of why teaching our children is so important to producing competent and successful young adults. This is <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Parenting-According-Nature-How-Successful/dp/B09XC1SGY3/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3M5AW8P2U9QZX&keywords=parenting+according+to+nature&qid=1650541616&sprefix=Parenting+According+%2Caps%2C1404&sr=8-1">the link</a> to the Amazon ad for my book.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">"Scientists have found that cultural adaptation and learning are different for different cultures and are usually precisely matched to the environment. Even today, people of different cultures find it very difficult to move to a different geographic area such as from high rainfall plains to the desert, or the tropics. They must be specifically trained for each environment.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It takes a tremendous amount of highly sophisticated training to create a successful human, well adapted to his environment. Here is just one example: Anthropologists studying a very primitive tribe in Tierra del Fuego, South America, were amazed at the complex process used by the hunters of the tribe to create weapons. Sitting with highly skilled elder hunters, the researchers found that there are 17 different precise steps in the production of an arrow. The elders explained how to straighten the shaft, which is preferably made from branches of a certain tree that are not originally very straight. Just adding the feather fletching requires several steps using particular wing feathers of a particular kind of hawk, with the left-wing feathers used in a different way than the right-wing feathers. Young boys spend many hours and days learning the construction of and perfecting their weapons, not to mention how much practice it takes to hunt rabbits and birds with these weapons. Let’s just say that it takes probably a lot more sophistication for primitive del Fuegians to learn the skills needed to construct effective arrows than it takes today’s teenagers to learn algebra. Another key point I will address later is that the primitive young hunters are much better motivated to learn their arrow-making skills because their skills are much more relevant to their everyday survival than algebra is to teenagers.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b><i>Cultural evolution has become the most rapid form of human evolution</i></b></h3><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in; text-align: center; text-indent: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Genetic evolution is still occurring within the human species, but that process is too slow to provide the adaptations humans need in our rapidly changing environment. Cultural evolution is a better and faster alternative. Now, our large brains with their huge capacity for learning allow us to pass on innovations to our young, resulting in an accelerated rate of human progress to create more and more complex societies. This modern form of evolution is suitable for transmission to offspring by making use of the long training and enculturation period for which human children are genetically designed. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Humans did not genetically inherit the knowledge or skills needed for making fire, bows, arrows, boats, pottery, or computers. They had to learn these skills from their parents or other, wise elders in the tribe or, in our case, sometimes from modern scientists. Compare these learned skills to the inherited skills used by bees to give directions to other worker bees to a newly discovered pasture filled with nectar rich flowers. Bees are not taught this direction giving system, which consists of a sort of “dance” that tells other bees the direction and distance of the flowers. That system of direction-giving which is encoded in their genes probably developed over millions of years and cannot easily be changed to adapt to new conditions. In humans, giving directions to other humans to a beehive loaded with honey can be much more precise and more versatile because it is learned behavior conveyed by using language. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The development of language in humans was a form of cultural adaptation based on the need to communicate information about the construction of complex tools, hunting and fishing techniques, plant identification, seasonal changes, and transmission of knowledge to succeeding generations. It is believed that spoken languages in human ancestors were gradually developed probably starting over a million years ago. The development of language caused a type of genetic co-evolution in humans that selected for improved adaptations of the mouth, throat, and larynx making speaking easier and allowing language to be more complex. Language has continued to evolve, giving us the ability to transmit ideas more effectively, which Henrich (see note below) believes raises the average IQ (intelligence quotient) of the species. Researchers have found that the IQ of children is very closely related to the number of words they know and their resultant ability to communicate and even to think more effectively. This is an important discovery that should be utilized in teaching our children to be better adapted to the modern environment using a greater mastery of vocabulary and language."<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Note: Joseph Henrich, a leading evolutionary scientist, has developed successful new theories explaining the importance of cultural learning in humans. His work shows why it is so critical that we carefully train our children for success in life.</span><o:p></o:p></p>Michael Deshotelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05080847575738076946noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5392952820096205874.post-76302946962933910102022-04-18T05:50:00.002-05:002022-04-18T10:32:46.905-05:00<h2 style="text-align: left;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 18pt;"><span style="color: red;">Parenting According to Nature </span></span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 18pt;"><span style="color: red;">Now Available on Amazon</span></span></h2><h2 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I am very happy to announce that my book on parenting is now available</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Parenting-According-Nature-How-Successful-ebook/dp/B09TYG5TQ9/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1IRP4HHG3X9EP&keywords=parenting+according+to+nature&qid=1650277198&sprefix=Parenting+According%2Caps%2C812&sr=8-1" style="color: #954f72; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">here on Amazon</a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">! The eBook version is only $6.99. The paperback is $15.99</span></span></h2><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I wrote this book because I believe the most important job we parents have in life is that of properly rearing our children. In researching and writing this book I wanted to provide young parents with a practical how-to guide for preparing their children for a successful and happy life. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This new book is a unique approach based on two years of research on the latest discoveries of evolutionary biologists and anthropologists about successful child rearing. My book attempts to describe the most effective ways parents can prepare their children for survival and for living a happy life in the complex environment of today. There are some very good time-tested methods used by parents throughout human experience for raising happy, successful children that can be very effective today if properly adapted to our modern world. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Here is the thing: Children are born ready and quite willing to learn what they need to succeed in life from their parents and other teachers. Kids are born hungry to learn from us. All we need to do is feed them lots of useful information, great life skills, and a heathy culture if we want them to be successful. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Unfortunately, there are many pitfalls and dangers to our children in our modern environment today. Everything from the food they eat, the games they play, and the peers they associate with are very critical to their success in life. It is up to us as parents to keep them on the right path to success and happiness. It takes about 20 years to properly train a young human to be a successful adult. That’s quite a challenge for parents. A lot of things could go wrong. But we also know that raising children can be a very joyful and rewarding experience. We know that the happiest people on earth are those that have a great family life where our legacy as social beings can be fulfilled.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Take a good look at</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Parenting According to Nature. </i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">You may just find some great ideas for successfully rearing children in the crazy, exciting world of today.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span> Here's an image of the new cover art for the book:</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXKuU3SsqeYCCrEdrVawWPMrNAebOW2S39-0D1ASlrMKoRerCkv3RHvjv_mpJddiA_Z44FMRJgBeEqHvHH9Bx8NLVfCy-w9Gfy4H-e0lqOBVSQ8nJsz_8bhNzhfRobxHRpLPXVp4a4Aszw5pGF7WRxPmohORhjU8fG8zBs0y9LZiC6xN7J2zd_8ful/s1350/Parenting-Mockup-Available-Now.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1350" data-original-width="1080" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXKuU3SsqeYCCrEdrVawWPMrNAebOW2S39-0D1ASlrMKoRerCkv3RHvjv_mpJddiA_Z44FMRJgBeEqHvHH9Bx8NLVfCy-w9Gfy4H-e0lqOBVSQ8nJsz_8bhNzhfRobxHRpLPXVp4a4Aszw5pGF7WRxPmohORhjU8fG8zBs0y9LZiC6xN7J2zd_8ful/s320/Parenting-Mockup-Available-Now.jpg" width="256" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>Michael Deshotelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05080847575738076946noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5392952820096205874.post-48962238889776420682022-02-15T03:30:00.000-06:002022-02-15T03:30:50.163-06:00<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"> My new book on parenting is coming soon!</span></p></blockquote><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj4CqVk0n2xWnjDAHJSfXD02mx_dZ2wnE6tE_9PTR56k3LJ7v-PjUgsmB5B6wiK-n9ZS0nR11yvBZQT1NvDlAv-upNcOZboBKlA0LoIURJeXdbZX_-wfCnkng8K4CeW5GQUruwx566AG74YPq5WXGz-3476JaPaEFDQzNsG83OUD2uXvVXPS6lg8Rrm=s1350" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1350" data-original-width="1080" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj4CqVk0n2xWnjDAHJSfXD02mx_dZ2wnE6tE_9PTR56k3LJ7v-PjUgsmB5B6wiK-n9ZS0nR11yvBZQT1NvDlAv-upNcOZboBKlA0LoIURJeXdbZX_-wfCnkng8K4CeW5GQUruwx566AG74YPq5WXGz-3476JaPaEFDQzNsG83OUD2uXvVXPS6lg8Rrm=w320-h400" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">I have been very busy for the last year and a half researching and writing this book on parenting. It is based on the latest research about why and how children learn, and why we teach our children.</span></p></blockquote><p><br /></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">I am planning to make the ebook version available on the Amazon web site by March 15, 2022. Soon after, a paperback version will be available also from Amazon. It may also be available for pre-ordering in a couple of weeks.</span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;">Stay tuned for more information on how this book came about Thanks, Mike Deshotels</span> </p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></p></blockquote>Michael Deshotelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05080847575738076946noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5392952820096205874.post-27822394769568968352020-12-21T04:52:00.001-06:002020-12-21T04:56:01.250-06:00Science vs Superstition and Stupid Politics<p>More than 40 years ago the brilliant musician Stevie Wonder released an interesting and highly relevant song called: "Superstition". Part of the lyrics to the song are as follows: </p><div class="yiv1247026409ujudUb" style="color: #3c4043; font-family: Roboto, HelveticaNeue, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 16px;"><i>When you believe in things<br />That you don't understand,<br />Then you suffer,<br />Superstition ain't the way</i></div><div class="yiv1247026409ujudUb" style="color: #3c4043; font-family: Roboto, HelveticaNeue, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 16px;">Stevie Wonder's song is amazingly relevant today when people refuse to wear masks or practice social distancing because they believe that the whole Covid-19 pandemic is not real. They have chosen to believe crazy political conspiracy theories that the virus is not really dangerous as thousands of people die in overwhelmed ICU wards. Some of the victims of Covid-19, just a few days before they die of the disease continue to spout denial that the disease that has caused them to be hospitalized is not real. So they are actually dying of this crazy political superstition. Note: I wrote <a href="http://louisianaeducator.blogspot.com/2020/04/america-needs-more-science-and-less.html">this post</a> in early April about the dangers of this disease that so many still refuse to recognize.</div><div class="yiv1247026409ujudUb" style="color: #3c4043; font-family: Roboto, HelveticaNeue, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 16px;">Millions of Americans today actively seek out biased "news" sources that somehow claim that the whole pandemic situation we are in today is really not a dangerous disease but a plot by political enemies of the president to help steal the presidential election. This is political superstition that is being maliciously spread by irresponsible individuals who have figured out that many Americans rather believe crazy conspiracy theories instead of the solid advice coming from infectious disease scientists like Dr Fauci, about the dangers of this disease. "<i>When you believe in things that you don't understand, Then you suffer</i>".</div><div class="yiv1247026409ujudUb" style="color: #3c4043; font-family: Roboto, HelveticaNeue, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 16px;">Superstitious political beliefs is why more Americans die in one day than the total number of people in Vietnam, Korea, or New Zealand that have died in the entire 10 months of the Covid-19 pandemic. The government in those countries took important science based steps early in the pandemic that has protected their populations and maintained the strength of their economies while the U.S. succumbed to the destruction of the disease. </div><div class="yiv1247026409ujudUb" style="color: #3c4043; font-family: Roboto, HelveticaNeue, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 16px;">Some of the same people who don't trust scientific advice about Covid-19 don't believe in the scientific principles in the theory of evolution. They lobby hard at our state government to prevent the teaching of evolution in our schools. But evolution is happening right now. Just a few days ago the Coronavirus that causes Covid-19 mutated in Great Briton to become about 70% more highly communicable. This is just another example of evolution. Such mutations are the way that some life forms on earth adapt and become more successful. The Coronavirus is not consciously trying to become more communicable, but the principles of evolution allow more successful mutations to reproduce in greater numbers. But if you don't believe in science, then you don't take necessary steps to protect yourself from the more dangerous mutations of diseases. As Stevie Wonder predicted: "<i>Then you suffer</i>." </div><div class="yiv1247026409ujudUb" style="color: #3c4043; font-family: Roboto, HelveticaNeue, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 16px;"><br /></div><div class="yiv1247026409ujudUb" style="color: #3c4043; font-family: Roboto, HelveticaNeue, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 16px;"><br /></div>Michael Deshotelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05080847575738076946noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5392952820096205874.post-61672452663335900122020-11-30T16:45:00.002-06:002020-11-30T16:56:06.350-06:00Why Distance Learning Will Always be Just a Supplement to Classroom Learning<p><span style="font-family: Cambria;">The Covid-19 pandemic shutdowns have destroyed a major myth upon which some of the recent attempted reforms to public education are based. The myth is that classroom teachers can be replaced with remote/distance learning. One of the leading promoters of this myth is former Florida governor Jeb Bush. Bush has proposed that computers and distance learning could somehow take the place of in-person classroom teaching by real live teachers. Many of our current education reformers have longed for a way to replace classroom teachers with much cheaper forms of instruction using technology and automated teaching. Jeb Bush and others have invested heavily in teacher replacement technology, even starting technology companies that supposedly could greatly cut education costs and possibly make a lot of money for the companies providing automated teaching systems.</span><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p>These education entrepreneurs were convinced that children could get though K-12 schooling without the need to attend a physical school. These for-profit non-educator executives have welded much political power in convincing state legislatures to allow the creation of a type of charter schools that could supposedly provide a much more efficient means of educating children by piping in instruction directly to children in their homes using computers and various distance strategies. These charter management companies are now profiting greatly by being granted most of the per pupil tax support going to traditional brick and mortar schools for their much cheaper methods of teaching. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">The Federal Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, had been aggressively pushing for the replacement of traditional public schools with on-line distance learning private schools. School privatization advocates such as DeVos, without evidence, had proposed that such “choice” schools could provide superior education by giving parents the freedom to escape supposedly “failing” public schools. The concept expressed often in testimony to state legislatures was that "parents know best what type of schooling would be most effective for their child" and the parent should be granted the power to place their children in schools of their choice bringing with them their allocation of education tax funding. None of this type of education reform had ever been field tested to see if it was an effective replacement for traditional classroom based public education. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Education researchers who have studied this trend to privatization and distance learning have demonstrated for several years that the actual results of distance/computer based learning as measured by standardized test scores are <a href="https://www.shankerinstitute.org/blog/offline-implications-research-about-online-charter-schools">generally much inferior</a> to traditional classroom instruction. Probably because of the powerful political influence of the privatizer advocates, most of the data demonstrating the inferiority of distance learning has been ignored.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">But now with the Covid-19 shifting of instruction of many public school students to at-home remote learning, parents have been able to see for themselves how little their children are progressing in their remote learning studies. Many parents have been shocked at how difficult it seems to be to keep their children on task with computer learning even if the teachers are providing assignments and tutorials for children to view online. Education does not seem to work as well when the teacher is not working directly with children in a real classroom situation. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I am writing this post to highlight some of the most recent research about learning which demonstrates very clearly why remote/distance learning does not work as well as in-classroom learning.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">It is a coincidence that I was in the middle of reviewing some of the most recent research on cultural evolution and cultural learning when the pandemic hit, forcing this recent shift to remote learning. Cultural evolution is a relatively new science that is contributing greatly to modern learning theory. It is now believed that the great advances of mankind in just the last 10,000 years have occurred because of a rapid process called cultural evolution. That is, instead of relying on the extremely slow process of genetic evolution to help our species cope with changes and challenges in our environment, mankind has been able to rely on our highly developed brains to help figure out how to survive and to pass this knowledge on to our children. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">This process of cultural evolution happens, according to cultural scientist Joseph Henrich, with the invention or adaptation of various tools and procedures that allow humans to deal effectively with often lethal changes such as harsher climates, food shortages, deadly competitors, overpopulation and many other challenges to survival. In his recent book: <i>The Secret of Our Success: How Culture is Driving Human Evolution, </i>Henrich<i> </i> uses extensive studies of various primitive cultures to show how humans adapt to survive by passing on highly complex learning of skills, tool making, and survival techniques to their young during the long period from childhood to adulthood.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">In other words, humans teach their children what they need to know in order to survive and thrive in their environment. These are skills that are learned, not inborn, compared to skills exhibited by many other animals, which are inherited genetically. For example, it is known that bees inherit the ability to direct other bees to a particularly rich patch of flowers from which other bees can harvest honey. They inherit the ability to do a sort of dance that gives other bees the direction and distance to the honey source. Humans on the other hand, would use language they had learned from parents and others that allow them to give much more explicit directions to a food source they have discovered. This ability to use and pass on learning has given humans a huge advantage over most other forms of life on earth. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">So even though our present system of public schooling funded by taxpayers for all children is fairly new, the process of passing on vital knowledge from adults to offspring has been going on for many thousands, maybe millions of years. The use of various forms of schooling of children is what allows humans to adapt very rapidly to changing conditions and to pass on knowledge that will allow their offspring to survive. Schooling is actually the process of cultural evolution that has made mankind the ruler of the earth over all other living species. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">This is how an understanding of cultural evolution can be essential to understanding how schooling can be made most effective: It turns out that human beings in addition to being smart, are also social creatures. That is we depend greatly on our close connections with other humans for knowledge about obtaining food, shelter, mental support, security, and feelings of wellbeing. We naturally cooperate with other humans to provide for the wellbeing of the whole society. Children depend on close connections and communication with adults they trust to teach them what they will need to know to get along in life. Books, video, audio, and other teaching aides are useful tools in the learning process, but the human connection is the most important ingredient in learning survival skills. A kid can learn a lot from a two-dimensional TV or computer screen, but he trusts much more what he/she learns from a real live human being whom he has accepted is a mentor. In-person adult mentors (teachers) are most effective in passing on the complex culture of human beings. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Experienced teachers know how to use the social dynamics of the classroom to produce cooperation, healthy competition in learning, encouragement and motivation for each child. That is the secret to effective schooling. Mercedes Schnider makes important points about the social nature of learning in <a href="https://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2020/11/26/a-well-rounded-education-cannot-be-digitized/">her recent post here</a>. There needs to be a human-to-human connection. That’s what happens in most classrooms in our public education systems that makes learning most effective and efficient. The promoters of distance learning are wrong about this impersonal process as a substitute for the human-to-human connection. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p>Michael Deshotelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05080847575738076946noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5392952820096205874.post-33324404601152170602020-07-31T04:06:00.012-05:002020-08-02T06:46:23.095-05:00Warning! Sending Our Children to School This Fall May be Deadly!<h3 style="text-align: left;"><font color="#2b00fe">Researchers Find That Children May Carry High Coronavirus Loads in Their Nasal Cavities.</font></h3><p style="text-align: left;">Many Louisiana public school parents are in the process of deciding on options for their children's school setting this fall. Based on guidelines adopted by BESE, many school systems in Louisiana are providing options that include some level of actual on-site attendance by children in school this fall. These decisions should be made with consideration of the latest scientific findings about the affect of the disease on children and their immediate families, especially since<a href="https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/2020/08/01/louisiana-second-covid-19-wave-worse-than-first-no-1-per-capita/5558862002/"> Louisiana is again one of the hot spots </a>for spread of the disease. Parents may not yet have been alerted to the latest findings about the possibility of children as carriers of the Coronavirus because new findings are occurring almost daily. This post is an effort to alert parents to the latest research findings on children and COVID-19.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Sending our children to school this fall may be hazardous to our health. For elderly or certain susceptible individuals who come into contact with children who have been exposed to the Coronavirus, such contact may be deadly! <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/30/health/coronavirus-children.html?searchResultPosition=1">Just yesterday, the New York Times </a>reported on a study finding that children may carry large quantities of Coronavirus in their nasal cavities. Even though the article cautions that the study does not prove that infected children transmit the disease, the research indicates that small children may carry up to 100 times more virus in their noses than do older children or adults! In my opinion, any sneeze or cough could spread millions of possibly deadly virus containing droplets to anyone nearby, especially in a closed building. This new information may overshadow some findings that younger children seem to have lower risk of serious damage from the disease. It is now well known that many people who are asymptomatic may still be just as dangerous as all other victims in transmitting the disease. </p><p style="text-align: left;">I am issuing this warning to my readers because parents need to act on the best information possible in choosing to possibly send their children to school in just a few days. Parents, keep your options open, especially if someone in your family has preconditions that may make them particularly vulnerable to COVID-19. This includes persons who have certain chronic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, or who are cancer survivors. Persons who are over age 65 also have much greater chances of serious symptoms or even death if they contract COVID-19.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><font color="#2b00fe">Please, if you care about your family trust the experts!</font></h3><div>As you can see from my previous post on this blog, I believe that Dr Fauci is our supreme expert on this disease and its spread. Fauci in an interview just yesterday called attention to this important study on the possibility of children as carriers of COVID-19. I suggest that we all continue to monitor the real experts and the latest scientific findings as a guide to making decisions about sending our children into gatherings of any kind.</div><h3 style="text-align: left;"><font color="#2b00fe">Economist Paul Krugman provides this chart showing what happened to Israel when they opened up schools.</font></h3><div><img alt="Image" class="css-9pa8cd" height="361" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EeVIem-WsAETcio?format=png&name=900x900" width="540" /></div><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"> </p><br />Michael Deshotelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05080847575738076946noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5392952820096205874.post-91277835491232227322020-04-11T18:31:00.000-05:002020-04-13T13:54:48.141-05:00America Needs More Science and Less Stupid Politics<b style="color: blue; font-family: cambria;"><i>Note to readers of this blog:</i></b><i style="color: blue; font-family: cambria;"> Most of my readers know that I started my career in education as a science teacher at the high school level. I still consider myself primarily a science teacher. That’s why I feel compelled to examine our country’s reaction to the current Covid-19 pandemic from the point of view of the relevant science. In addition, I believe there are critical lessons to be learned as we fight though this dangerous challenge. These lessons should be anchored in a reliance on science instead of knee jerk reactions of some of our inept and unethical politicians.</i><br />
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Someone recently sent me a slick public relations video of the city of Wuhan China. This is the city of 11 million people where the Corona virus got its start. The video showed an aerial view of a fabulous city featuring beautiful architecture and amazing infrastructure including complex highway systems, attractive high-rises, and even beautiful public art works in the center of the city. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I was skeptical of such an obvious propaganda video, so I went to the Internet and did a little research. I found that Wuhan does have some amazing architecture and much of the infrastructure represented on the PR video. I concluded that Wuhan was quite an impressive city, regardless of the problems that we know would carefully be excluded from a PR video. I am not including a link to the PR video here because I don’t want to be part of any propaganda effort by the Chinese government.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But none of this keeps me from concluding that any society or country that could build such a fabulous city must have more going for it than just one-sided-trade policies. (Some popular media sources have been blaming China for many of our country’s failings in dealing with Covid-19 by pointing to what they claim to be one-sided trade agreements. Speaking of propaganda, these sources very seldom feel the need to explain or document their claim of one-sided trade agreements). <o:p></o:p></div>
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My reaction to all this finger pointing is that the Covid-19 pandemic is far too serious for our country to continue dwelling on Bogymen. We in America can’t continue to just blame the Chinese for some of the obvious shortcomings of our own government and our inability to deal with serious health dangers to our country. <o:p></o:p></div>
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It is believed by epidemiologists that Covid-19 started as a crossover disease caused by a virus infecting bats that mutated to the point that it could thrive in other mammals, including humans. It probably started in Wuhan, China when probably just one human came into contact with infected mammals that were being sold as food. Unfortunately, it was highly communicable. This caused the first cases of Covid-19. From then on it spread like wildfire for the many reasons that we find it hard to stop the spread today. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Of course many Americans are disgusted by the thought of strange food practices in some countries, along with the fact that the early cases of Covid-19 were kept secret as the Chinese struggled unsuccessfully to stamp out the epidemic. So some TV talking heads apparently now believe that punishing the Chinese government would be in order. That may be true, but it does not at all address the fact that such a pandemic could probably start almost anywhere in the world. Even with complete transparency by the country of origin, there is no guarantee that the world could be warned in time to stop the development of a pandemic. Trump’s so called Chinese travel ban certainly did not stop the spread of Covid-19 to America. There are no nations that succeeded in stopping its spread to their populations.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Without going into the scientific details, it occurred to me that it would have been just as easy for a bunch of Cajuns in Louisiana to set off a similar pandemic of a crossover disease, such as mad cow disease, by their habit of eating squirrel brains. (Fortunately for my Cajun buddies and relatives that claim turned out to be groundless). Or maybe some high status Midwesterner could contract a new flu virus from coming into contact with infected pork, like the American woman in the movie <i>Contagion</i>. (Louisiana’s own Steven Soderbergh made that extremely well researched movie.) Often our health authorities can’t know if meat is infected with a novel virus because there can be no test for it. A contagion or a pandemic could start for completely innocent reasons anywhere in the world. You can’t pass a law banning pandemics. <o:p></o:p></div>
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It makes no sense therefore, to label a particular country or society as evil just because a deadly disease started on their shores. Nor is any big company in this country prepared to stop trading with or manufacturing products in China simply because their government leaders cheat and lie. (Think about that one for a minute.) Not only that; my God, we’d be shutting down Walmart and all the Dollar Stores! <o:p></o:p></div>
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Crossover diseases have caused serious epidemics such as AIDS, the recent H1N1 flu, and even the Bubonic Plaque. The present conditions in the modern world, because of our dense populations and the explosion of business and tourism travel are now more dangerous than ever for the proliferation of numerous horrendous pandemics that could sweep across the entire earth in the coming decades. Some of our most brilliant biological scientists have been trying to sound the alarm about the need to prepare defenses against infectious disease pandemics for the last 20 years. Because of recent discoveries in the field of genetics, there are now effective ways of battling even novel infectious diseases if we have the will and intelligence as a nation set up defensive systems. But those warnings by our scientists have been almost totally ignored by several of our recent federal administrations. The last administration had at least created a branch of our public health system devoted to pandemic response, which was promptly dismantled by the Trump administration for no announced reason, just in time for this recent outbreak.<o:p></o:p></div>
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My point in bringing up this issue it that we Americans simply need to wake up and renew our efforts to advance science, rebuild our health infrastructure, and rely more on our most competent scientists and engineers to protect and renew our own country, instead of blaming everyone else for our lack of vision and planning. <o:p></o:p><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dr Fauci can be depended on to give us the facts</td></tr>
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What good will it do us if we succeed in proving that China didn’t tell us soon enough about the danger of the Corona virus? South Korea got their first Covid-19 case on the same day the U.S. did and got the same information on the genetics of the disease, and somehow they were able to produce enough tests and launch an initiative to greatly reduce the spread of the disease while we let it run out of control in our country. Was that the fault of the Chinese? <o:p></o:p></div>
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We can deal effectively with this problem if we forget about these unproductive excuses and get to work. Did anyone make excuses for possible failure in 1960 when our nation chose to launch a project to land Americans on the moon in less than a decade? That moonshot resulted in technological advances for America over other countries that we still enjoy today, but that advantage is rapidly evaporating. We could still be producing great leaps forward in all the areas of science and commerce if we made science and technology a national priority. Let’s stop pointing fingers and feeling paralyzed by numerous outside enemies, and instead start taking care of our own business. I can’t help but feel that our dysfunctional government, where ignorant politicians claim to know more than the scientists, is the beginning of our downfall as a nation. <o:p></o:p></div>
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In just a few short years we have dismantled some of the most effective departments of our Federal government because a few political hacks said that we needed to shrink down the size of our federal government down to where it could be drowned in a bathtub. (Look up lobbyist Grover Norquist) But remember that our successful moonshot happened because of a big government creation called NASA. Our entire economy benefited when we utilized all the amazing technologies developed by and for the moonshot and NASA. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Now government deregulation, not trade policies, has allowed our big corporations to build vital products in China instead of in America. (Our big 3-M company makes their surgical facemasks in China). When congress passed the massive tax cut last year that benefited our big corporations most, there were no amendments made by Democrats or Republicans to require that our corporations bring vital manufacturing back to the US as a condition of those tax cuts. Lack of action by our dysfunctional federal government refused to put price controls on drugs (like most other countries do) that could have saved thousands of lives over the years. All because we were told that our big companies and free enterprise would solve all of our problems more efficiently if “big government” would step out of the way. So now we have every state competing for vital testing kits, medical equipment and supplies that our free enterprise system allowed our companies to make in China. This happened as a result of deregulation, and control of our government by greedy American tycoons. Not because of bad trade policy. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Our own major corporations did this to us because we trusted them instead of our government to take care of us. There has to be a balance of power with government protecting the general welfare of its people against the false promise by the rich to give us trickle down prosperity. Our big corporations are screwing us, not because our federal government is too big and is regulating too much. The big corporations are screwing us because their lobbyists have bought out our incompetent and unethical politicians of both parties to make their executives obscenely rich at the expense of the middle class workers of our country. Don’t blame our unions who now represent only a tiny percentage of workers. Their influence on government has been reduced to no more than a minor nuisance compared to big business. Big business PACs whose donors are secret, spend a hundred times more than unions in buying politicians.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The advantage of a Federal government, <b><i>run correctly,</i></b> is that it can mobilize all the enormous resources of the nation to address a problem like a pandemic (or a moon shot) that does not recognize state borders. The Chinese government did not depend on the governor of Wuhan province to suppress their epidemic. They understood that it could soon spread to the entire population of 1.4 billion people if the central government did not take control. Covid-19 doesn’t care about political parties or how it will affect the next election. It just multiplies as fast as we will let it because of our refusal to follow the advice of our health scientists. We suffer in direct proportion to the incompetence of the politicians who insist on making political decisions on medical strategy instead of letting our health scientists run the show. <o:p></o:p></div>
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We will not gain one life saved now by blaming China for this. We just need to get our act together just like we did when our government helped us recover from the great depression, and when we “nationally” mobilized our industries to build thousands of B-17s to defeat Germany in World War II. Surely we can mobilize our industries to build sufficient ventilators and millions of 60-cent facemasks to protect our doctors and nurses and even average people who want to buy groceries during this lockdown. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I have a personal problem with this pandemic and the fact that our country cannot make enough ventilators for very sick Covid-19 patients. I am 75 years old and if I get a bad case of Covid-19 I may have to be denied a ventilator so that a younger person could have access to that last ventilator available at my local hospital. I wouldn’t be dying for any worthwhile cause. I’d be dying because of our incompetent and unethical politicians! Surely we can mobilize our industries to build sufficient ventilators and millions of 60-cent facemasks to protect our doctors and nurses and even average people who want to buy groceries during this lockdown. Surely our government could order enough antibody tests to find out who is now immune to Covid-19 and therefore could go back to work without fear. Listen to our health care scientists: <b><i>We need testing, testing, testing! </i></b>This can only happen at the direction of a competent federal government. No private companies will organize such an effort and the states could not coordinate it. It has to be done by “big government”. You know, the government that Grover Norquist wanted to drown in a bathtub. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Our misfortune in being number 1 in the world in Covid-19 cases is not because of all the other countries conspiring against us, or bad trade deals, even though I’m sure that our trade deals could be improved in the way I have suggested here. Maybe our failure to meet this challenge is because we have an incompetent government totally controlled by big business leaders who don’t realize that they are hurting themselves as well as our general population with this stranglehold they have on our government. Maybe we should get to work fixing our real problems by throwing out all the unethical and corrupt politicians financed by the Koch brothers and other big business PACs, and instead insist on competence and ethical behavior at all levels of our government. Wuhan, China did not get where it is by doing away with big government. I am certainly not endorsing the dictatorial government of China. Democracy, done right, by and for the people is much better. But that’s not what we have in America today. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Mike Deshotels, retired science teacher <o:p></o:p></div>
Michael Deshotelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05080847575738076946noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5392952820096205874.post-27337742887677223862020-03-15T09:15:00.002-05:002020-03-16T13:25:32.954-05:00Why Education Reform is Failing<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: center;">
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<b><span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">Education reform is based on wishful thinking, not science</span></b></div>
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Starting with the <b>No Child Left Behind Law</b> in 2002 and then proceeding to <b>The Race to the Top,</b> and now to <b>The Every Student Succeeds Act,</b> every reform of public education in the last 18 years has failed. In Louisiana, even though our Department of Education regularly reports imaginary success, like the <a href="https://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2019/11/03/john-whites-2019-la-naep-and-act-failure/">phony improvement in 8<sup>th</sup> grade math scores,</a> most of the data collected is indicating total failure of the reforms. The latest average raw scores in math and English on our state tests is only 40% for all children tested in 2019. The reforms have failed to improve student achievement!<o:p></o:p></div>
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How could it be that no improvement is occurring when the entire purpose of education reform was to produce better test scores, and more students succeeding in college? We are producing more high school graduates, but that is because we are now graduating almost any kid with a pulse. There are essentially no standards for graduation in Louisiana. We claim to be preparing students for college, but the latest reports from our Board of Regents for Higher Education indicate that<a href="http://louisianaeducator.blogspot.com/2020/01/louisianas-k-12-curriculum-is-not.html"> only 18% of our</a> students go on to get any type of higher education degree. This is failure, not reform! <o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">We should look to science for the answers</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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Let’s review the basics of learning. Scientists working with rats, pigeons, monkeys, and other lab animals have found that learning primarily occurs because of motivation. Motivation is simply the rewards or punishments that causes learning to happen. Motivation can be either positive or negative. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Here’s an example: Lab rats can be taught to push a “white” lever if they get a reward of food when they push the correct lever. Rats can also be taught by getting negative feedback (a slight electric shock) when they push the wrong (“black”) lever. That’s how learning happens, whether it is in a highly controlled lab or in the rat’s natural environment. Learning works the same way with children.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">Human children are like supercharged learning machines</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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Learning scientists have come to believe that humans as a species have an extra powerful natural instinct for learning. Just observe little children who naturally investigate their surroundings without prompting of any kind by adults. Teachers in Finland regularly let children run around freely outdoors because they learn a lot through natural play activities. Humans have an accelerated ability to learn language at an early age. Many toddlers start automatically picking up and repeating words. By age six, most children are learning 6 to 8 new words every day! So human children have a natural super-charged desire and ability to learn. That should make schooling a cinch! It actually takes a lot of negative motivation to stop children from learning! But our modern education reform efforts have succeeded in killing much of the drive for school learning in millions of children each year.<br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">Motivation is essential to learning</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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Let’s go back to the lab rat experiment. Motivation for learning can be either a reward or a punishment. Reward for learning is what educators seek to do. Teachers often report observing a positive reinforcement when children get an intrinsic reward for learning a concept they have worked to achieve. Teachers often say, “I saw a child’s face light up when he finally solved the problem, or understood the concept. Or a teacher calls on a student who answers a question correctly and the teacher says “very good” so that the whole class hears it. The positive rewards for children can be that simple. It’s the pleasure sensation they get from learning or being praised for learning. It’s what locks in the learning and inspires children to seek more learning. But somehow education reform has managed to convert much of our school activities into more punishment rather than reward.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">Education reform mandates mostly produce negative feedback<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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The common core state standards that are the basis of our curriculum now require children to learn rather obscure, complex, and often highly abstract tasks that seldom relate to real life. Then children have to demonstrate their learning by taking standardized tests where often the questions are tricky and are expressed in words and phrases that many students don’t recognize. Many children are getting immediate negative feedback as they take these tests, because they just don’t know the right answers. Many parents report that some little children come home from their testing days crying. <o:p></o:p></div>
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To make things worse, there is no immediate reporting of results of the testing. The results from the spring testing of our students don’t come back until the Fall. By this time the student has a different teacher. So the students and the teachers don’t get to see their results in a time frame where action can be taken to teach kids to solve he problems or questions they missed. Also, because of test security rules, teachers and students never get to see the actual questions the students got right or wrong. So the constant testing is traumatic to children instead of a reward. It would be like the lab rat getting a whole bunch of shocks by pushing a lot of wrong levers. A huge percentage of our children are missing most of the questions on their spring tests. So putting all this together, it amounts to kids receiving a lot of negative motivation relative to their schoolwork. Kids are getting the message: “Don’t bother trying to learn. Schoolwork is unpleasant and is to be avoided. (Just like the lab rat avoids the black lever.)<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">Most of the feedback kids get teaches them that school instruction is irrelevant</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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But here’s the kicker that turns motivation on its head with our crazy education reform system. Eventually the children find out that it makes no difference whether they learn or fail to learn the lessons taught in school. Their parents are often never told how poorly they are doing and they automatically get promoted to the next grade. In Louisiana, automatic promotion happens all the way to graduation. So for almost half the kids, formal instruction in the classroom becomes irrelevant. Many of those kids begin getting a perverse reward by disrupting the class to get the attention they crave that they are not getting from the boring stuff the teacher is forced to present every day. In many classrooms today, misbehaving children do not experience any penalty for misbehaving because the schools have been forced to prohibit almost all forms of punishment. (There is a bill in the legislature right now that will make discipline problems even worse. <a href="http://www.legis.la.gov/legis/ViewDocument.aspx?d=1163988">See HB 663</a>) It seems that punishment is thought of as unacceptable no matter the student’s infraction. So many of the kids that consistently fail their state tests <b><u>are </u></b>learning! But its not what teachers are trying to teach.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">Just like we can’t make the corona virus go away by holding back on testing for it; we can’t make our students learn more by rigging the state test scores to make it look like learning is happening. Science does not respond to wishful thinking or cheating.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Michael Deshotelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05080847575738076946noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5392952820096205874.post-31066734711465793452020-03-04T14:44:00.001-06:002020-03-11T06:58:19.557-05:00Almost Everything Recently Done in the Name of Education Reform Has Backfired<a href="https://www.collective-evolution.com/2017/03/04/several-texas-schools-tripled-recess-time-and-it-has-been-helping-the-growing-adhd-problem/">Here is an article </a>informing us that the reduction of recess time so that children could spend more time being drilled for the almighty standardized tests has actually resulted in lower test performance! How can that be? Why isn't constant drilling on test taking skills at the expense of recess, PE, art, music, vocational education, and other "less important" instruction producing higher test scores? Maybe because the current trend to ignore fundamental child development principle's is harmful in every way, including killing the joy of schooling for both children and teachers! Teachers in Finland, whose students perform at the top of the rankings on international achievement tests, routinely take young children outdoors where they can play, investigate nature and develop normally as they are programmed by their genes to do. Why do American reformers insist on counteracting nature and instead have transformed our education system to motivation killing test drudgery?<br />
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<a href="https://www.edsurge.com/news/2020-02-27-what-public-school-teachers-want-less-disruption">Here is another new article</a> challenging the removal of teachers from the decision making process of what kids really need in school. This outrageous trampling on the rights and critical input of the teaching profession in education decisions has actually resulted in the opposite of what our non-educator reformers said they wanted to do. Do you think our government can stop the Corona virus by ignoring the recommendations of the highly trained experts in disease prevention? The same is true of refusing to listen to real teachers about education reform. Do you believe, as the reformers would have you believe, that education reform in Louisiana is really working in preparing students for college and careers? Are you willing to ignore the most recent devastating revelation by our own Board of Regents that after all the reforms imposed on K-12 education in Louisiana, only 18 out of one hundred of our students will attain a college degree of any kind. Not even a two year associate's degree! These are the worst results I have ever seen! Don't blame the teachers. Teachers attended the legislative committee proposing these changes by the thousands to protest these untested ideas, only to be scolded for having the nerve to come to Baton Rouge on a school day (but that was the only time the Education committee was meeting!). Now the chickens are coming home to roost and thousands of our most dedicated teachers have left the profession.<br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">The stranglehold over control of public education by the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry promises even more failure with the upcoming appointment of John White's replacement.</span><br />
Make no mistake about it, LABI has had almost total control over K-12 education for over 4 years since they used Michael Bloomburg's and Walton family contributions to totally purchase all the BESE elected positions. They have made nothing but bad decisions with all this power. The school privatization they pushed has been almost a total failure <a href="https://educationresearchalliancenola.org/publications/how-has-the-louisiana-scholarship-program-affected-students-a-comprehensive-summary-of-effects-after-three-years">with data showing</a> that students who stay in their public schools do significantly better than they do when they move to a voucher or charter school.<br />
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Now LABI intends to hand pick John White's replacement. If they select Jessica Baghian as the next Superintendent, Lousiana education will continue to be crippled by uninformed and ineffective leadership. Bagahian has been the right hand assistant to White in putting over the hoax of progress of our current reforms.<br />
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Let's look at some of the real results of LABI supported reforms. <a href="https://labi.org/issues/education-and-workforce-development">On their web site,</a> LABI claims that Louisiana is closing the achievement gap between privileged and underprivileged students. Data demonstrates instead that the exact opposite is true. They are also dead wrong claiming that ACT scores are improving. LABI is now down to apparently basing its education policies on wishful thinking rather than evidence.<br />
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The same is true of teacher evaluations based on student test scores using our defective state tests. LABI has insisted that Louisiana evaluate its teachers partially on student test scores. But all the data proves that the VAM system used is unstable and inaccurate. So a couple of years ago I got thrown off of a state committee studying changes to VAM because I had the nerve to state on my blog that LABI was like the dog that caught the truck with this whole VAM fiasco. They don't have any idea what to do with VAM but they will never admit they were wrong. Meanwhile some very competent and dedicated teachers have had their careers ruined by VAM and thousands of great teachers have left the profession.<br />
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My most recent public records requests for actual data are showing a totally different picture from the propaganda-type announcements of great strides in producing better results for our students. Here are just a few revelations that have so far been kept hidden from the voters and parents of our students.<br />
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<li>Louisiana's ranking in comparison to all other states has only gotten worse for both ACT performance and NAEP averages if you compare the results for 2019 to our results in 2011 (Before John White took over). The recent blip <a href="https://www.louisianabelieves.com/newsroom/news-releases/2019/10/30/superintendent-of-education-releases-statement-regarding-louisiana-students'-achievements-on-national-assessment-of-educational-progress">highlighted here</a> by White's spin-masters indicating improvement in 8th grade math is extremely misleading. There was <a href="https://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2019/11/03/john-whites-2019-la-naep-and-act-failure/">actually a decline </a>in 8th grade math over the term of office of John White. My most recent research reveals that about 50% of our students on free lunch which make up almost 70% of our students, flunked the 8th grade NAEP test in 2019! The parents of our students deserve to get the facts, not propaganda!</li>
<li>The achievement gap between economically underprivileged and other students has widened on every NAEP test given. We are definitely not closing the achievement gap. In fact my public records findings indicate that free lunch students are mostly failing all their state tests in math and ELA year after year and BESE policy is now allowing the promotion and graduation of students who are functional illiterates.</li>
<li>Analysis of our state LEAP tests reveal that the secret lowering of cut scores have made it appear that our students are achieving a much higher proficiency than that indicated by NAEP. This artificial inflation of our proficiency rate is in violation of state law.</li>
<li>My most recent public records requests reveal that some of our End-of-Course tests have had cut scores secretly manipulated by the LDOE and the testing companies to allow many students to get a passing score by just making random guesses on multiple choice questions instead of demonstrating any knowledge whatsoever!</li>
<li>It is clear that the boring test and retest culture forced on our schools by the LDOE has caused a huge proportion of our students to simply turn off to what they are being forced to do in our reformed classrooms and are not learning any academic material at all. I mean zero learning! That's what the raw data is showing. Don't believe anything you see relative to so called "scale scores". My public records findings show that the reported scores for our students are pure propaganda, not fact.</li>
<li>Teachers who have really studied the results of our state tests will tell you that the state LEAP tests and the standards upon which they are based are not age appropriate, are discriminatory against underprivileged students because they assume a vocabulary and academic sophistication totally unfamiliar to many of our students. Our state tests demonstrate the epitome of socio-economic bias! We have kids who miss many of the math questions simply because the questions are poorly designed.</li>
<li>Because of the VAM component of teacher evaluation, some teachers are losing their tenure and even the latest pay raise passed last year based upon invalid tests. This is an atrocity!</li>
</ul>
Look, I've been studying K-12 education in Louisiana for my entire professional career, and my best judgement tells me that the methods teachers are being forced to use with our children are just about the worst approach I could have ever have imagined. Our kids could learn so much more if teachers would be freed of mandated test prep and allowed to use their creativity to inspire children to love reading, to love science, to look forward to going to school every day. Most teachers instinctively know what works in the classroom and it's not what they are being forced to do. We need to have the courage to take back our schools for the sake of our children and for the future of our state.<br />
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Michael Deshotelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05080847575738076946noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5392952820096205874.post-86979038920940403922020-01-27T05:06:00.000-06:002020-01-27T17:25:10.688-06:00Some of Our Graduates Don't Even Know How to Tighten a Nut<span style="background-color: #fcfcfc;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "georgia" , "cambria" , "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: large;">Are schools neglecting practical knowledge and skills?</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #fcfcfc;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "cambria" , "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: small;">Many of our students are graduating from high school with extremely limited practical knowledge essential to success in most jobs and everyday life. A good example is demonstrated by one large Louisiana company, which asks the following question to its job applicants: "In what direction would you turn an ordinary screw or nut to tighten it (clockwise or counterclockwise)?" Amazingly, a rather large proportion of applicants don't know that the correct answer is "clockwise". This begs the question: With all our emphasis on college prep for all students, are we neglecting practical knowledge needed for students to function effectively in all careers and in everyday life?</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #fcfcfc;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "cambria" , "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: #fcfcfc;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "cambria" , "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: small;">Before the shift to college prep for all, students in Louisiana in grades as early as 7 and 8 were required to take courses often labeled as "industrial arts" and "home economics". Such courses provided introduction to basic tools used in homes and work, budgeting, cooking, and introduction to various crafts and trades. All students, whether destined for college or careers were taught practical life skills. Our education reformers seem to have forgotten that young adults need practical knowledge as well as preparation for college.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">Vocational/technical training along with practical math skills could <span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 255);">really help to close the wealth gap.</span></span><br />
We are now trying to teach students the solution of quadratic equations that most of them will never use, not even once in their lifetimes. The new college prep curriculum requires a technique called "close reading" of various texts without reference to background knowledge. Many experts in reading question this requirement for elementary students. But <b><i><u>we are not teaching</u></i></b> students how to avoid the entrapment of payday loan sharks that are now gobbling up much of the income of many young workers. Almost none of our students today are taught the power of compound interest for example, in utilizing a Roth IRA for retirement planning. Such practical knowledge for all students could help close the wealth gap.<br />
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Reformist minded charitable foundation managers who contribute millions to the current school reforms have pushed college prep for all as <b><i>the way </i></b>to close the achievement gap. But it's not working! Nationwide, indications are that fewer students are now prepared for college, nor can they afford college. The most recent statistics from our Board of Regents show that Louisiana is leading the downward spiral. Less than 40% of our students who start college actually get a degree of any kind. Our Department of Education keeps pumping out propaganda about improvements in our high school graduation rate and the higher number of students <b><i>registering </i></b>for college. But the Board of Regents report shows that the key factor should be the percentage who actually get a college degree. Another major problem in pushing college for all is that students who drop out still have to pay off their college loans, often putting a debt burden on them for several decades.<br />
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The education reformers would have done better by supporting a broad modern curriculum that could actually teach kids how to overcome the wealth gap using practical knowledge and training for a variety of careers. We wonder why the curriculum in our schools today, despite the valiant efforts of our teachers, does not motivate most of our students to learn more and improve their state test scores. The answer is simple: there is very little in our current curriculum that will be useful to the majority of our students' lives and careers, and they have figured this out!<br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">Some academic skills requiring college are a cheap commodity.</span><br />
Here's the core of my argument: The assumption that training most of our students for academic jobs requiring college degrees is highly questionable. For example, it is extremely likely that the jobs of writing code and software for U. S. companies and providing technical support will more often be farmed out to cheap workers in India than to our college graduates. Just call up tech support for one of your electronic gadgets and see who answers the phone.<br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">A critical job that cannot be farmed out is under our feet. </span><br />
So let's look at just one of the many <u> real jobs</u> of the future. The job of a skilled plumber will require workers who must be here, not in India, to do this vital job. The plumbing infrastructure of most of our cities is extremely old and deteriorating. Fresh water, sewerage, and natural gas are now leaking out of city utilities in intolerable quantities. The rebuilding of our municipal infrastructure for the entire nation is an urgent need, particularly in the area of replacing worn out plumbing. Modern plumbing work is highly sophisticated work requiring extensive training, mostly using apprenticeship methods, which don't leave a young worker with debt. That one job will employ thousands of well paid workers for many years to come. A job that must be done on the ground or more specifically "in the ground" here in America cannot be farmed out to low wage foreign workers. As a bonus, the new cadre of young plumbers who do that work could be taught in our schools to achieve early retirement with the wise investment of their earnings. Very little<b><i> of this is being taught in our schools today!</i></b><br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">What would Einstein say about our school <span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 255);">reforms?</span></span><br />
State law requires that our students be exposed to career exploration starting in middle school. But this requirement has been neglected as our education leaders have pushed teachers to do mostly preparation for the Common Core tests. Even though the career diploma law has been in effect since 2009, our LDOE forces students to remain in a college prep mode until their junior year. The problem is that our highly touted Core 4 college prep curriculum is simply not working! In Einstein's famous words: "The definition of insanity is to continue doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result".<br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">Standards are not high if someone secretly lowers cut scores</span><br />
The lack of success of the new so called "higher standards" has been purposely covered up by secretly setting the cut scores for a passing grade on the tests to extremely low levels.<br />
For several mandatory high school courses, the cut scores on the end-of-course tests have been set so low that a third grader could possibly pass the EOC test by just random guessing at the multiple choice questions. So now all students get much less preparation for college than when the standards for those courses were reasonable. We are not preparing students for college and we are not preparing them for careers. That's why we need to reintroduce modern, relevant, vocational courses early, beginning with career exploration starting in middle school and not make students wait until their junior year to start career courses.<br />
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The way Core 4 was sold to BESE was by insisting that all students, even those not choosing college, would greatly benefit from the more rigorous courses. That has not happened. The so called rigorous courses have been watered down so education reformers can falsely claim success. We could make a much better case that a modern, well designed home economics course would be more valuable to all our students than advanced math.Michael Deshotelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05080847575738076946noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5392952820096205874.post-63501403992113697052020-01-23T06:47:00.000-06:002020-01-25T07:12:14.107-06:00Louisiana's K-12 curriculum is not preparing students for college or for life!<h3>
<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">Part I of a two part examination of our failing graduation standards</span></h3>
<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">The Louisiana Commissioner of Higher Education announced recently that only 18% of our students are succeeding in college.</span><br />
<a href="https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/education/article_de919954-1c1c-11ea-871d-bfd166fdb08d.html">At the joint meeting</a> of BESE and the Board of Regents in December 2019, the Commissioner of Higher Education, Kim Hunter Reed, reported on studies that reveal that:<br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "lora" , "libre baskerville" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 21px;">of 100 ninth-graders, only 45 enter college and 18 will earn a two- or four-year degree.</span><br />
This is a tacit admission that the <i style="font-weight: bold;">big push for college prep by BESE and the Department of Education for the last 20 years has been a dismal failure. </i><span style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/education/article_de919954-1c1c-11ea-871d-bfd166fdb08d.html">But the Advocate report of the joint meeting</a> quotes the education leaders promising to double down on college prep for all by offering more dual enrollment courses. The only positive result of this version of college for all is that now, vo-tech courses will be added to the menu.</span><br />
<b><i><br /></i></b>During the school years spanning from 2000 to 2015, our state education officials had abandoned almost all support for career and vocational education in our K-12 schools. BESE had shifted to pushing virtually all students to take a college prep curriculum without regard to student aptitude or preferences. At the urging of education reformers, BESE had adopted the Core 4 curriculum for high school graduation which was designed to prepare all students for college. The education reformers and business leaders breathed a sigh of relief that soon almost all students in Louisiana would be prepared for college. The assumption was that even students who chose to seek technical careers that did not require college would benefit from this superior, more <i>rigorous</i> education. But those of us who study the dismal performance of many of our graduates in the classrooms and on state tests know that most students have not benefited from the new standards which are really far from rigorous. This blog has revealed that students can pass some of the supposedly rigorous college prep courses by knowing as little as 10 to 20 percent of the tested material. If the college prep courses of today had the same rigor as 30 to 40 years ago, more than half of our students would not graduate. <a href="http://louisianaeducator.blogspot.com/2010/01/wrong-future_29.html">Here is a link</a> to a blog post I wrote in January of 2010 titled <i>The</i> <i>Wrong Future</i>, predicting that the Core 4 curriculum would produce the opposite of what was intended. My only mistake was that I thought that the Core 4 courses would maintain a reasonable level of difficulty.<br />
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As a result of the heavy emphasis on enrolling almost all students in the Core 4 curriculum, the Vo-Tech departments of most high schools were decimated and hundreds of highly experienced vo-tech teachers were laid off. By focusing on <i style="font-weight: bold;">college prep for all </i>the education reformers had just about strangled vo-tech out of existence.<br />
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But starting about 2015, Superintendent John White and his staff realized that a large number of students were falling though the cracks created by Core 4. Someone pointed out to Superintendent White that there was a provision in state law called the Career Diploma that was designed to provide a good alternative to students that could not, or would not attend college. The only problem is that the Career Diploma had been denounced by reformers as a watering down of standards. White realized that if he somehow renamed or rebranded the program as part of his school reform campaign, maybe by calling it something new like "Jump Start program", it may become acceptable to his puppet masters at LABI and across the reform community.<br />
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So the Career diploma was rebranded as the Jump Start initiative. The career diploma law had been passed by the legislature at the request of many local superintendents in the 2009 legislative session. Unfortunately the career diploma had been sabotaged by the previous State Superintendent, Paul Pastorek, who wanted to promote only college prep . But even White's recent efforts have fallen far short of what was contemplated by the authors of the career diploma law. The Jump Start courses are designed only for high school juniors and seniors, severely restricting vo-tech courses in earlier grades. Under John White, the career diploma is intentionally regarded as a second class diploma, which does not bring schools the recognition or credit they get from offering college prep courses such as AP. White's administration has refused to provide the career exploration activities for middle school students that have been in state law since before 1998. As teachers spent more and more time in the school year drilling students for the college prep Common Core based state tests, there was no time in middle school to implement any vo-tech exploration courses.<br />
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In addition to the short changing and stigmatizing of vo-tech training, instruction in the arts, physical education, health, social studies, and civics, have all been neglected so that students could be drilled incessantly in preparation for state tests that were expected to insure success in college. The most useful education to most students for future careers was all but abandoned and sacrificed in the push to prepare all students for college. Unfortunately this sacrifice was in vain, as is demonstrated by Louisiana being ranked second to last among the states in ACT performance and by having only 18 percent of students succeeding in college.<br />
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<h2>
<span style="color: red; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Note: Soon after I posted this blog, one of my readers texted me asking for an explanation of the poor college performance of our students after a much larger number started taking the college prep curriculum. Here is my best guess:</span></h2>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Soon after the adoption of the Core 4 curriculum for high school, several other changes were made. (1) The state started awarding high schools credit on the school grading system for a better graduation rate. Pressure increased on principals and teachers to pass almost all students even in the so called college prep courses. (2) The state stopped requiring that students pass their 8th grade LEAP tests in order to enter high school and BESE stopped requiring most remediation for students who failed. (3) Louisiana shifted to the Common Core standards (4) The cut scores for passing the high school end-of-course tests were lowered to extremely low levels. All of these factors resulted in more students graduating high school (some of them as functional illiterates). That's why so many students can't handle college. Its all about the law of unintended consequences. Unfortunately, our education leaders don't have a clue about the real results of their "reforms". Even with the new changes proposed by BESE and the Board of Regents to add more dual enrollment, we can expect further declines in college success because the full effects of the decrease in standards have yet to be observed.</span></div>
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<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">Vocational and technical education is a most vital need that has been neglected nationwide</span><br />
<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholaswyman/2015/09/01/why-we-desperately-need-to-bring-back-vocational-training-in-schools/#517554e587ad">This excellent article</a> in Forbes magazine makes the case for bringing back modern vocational training to our K-12 curriculum. I strongly recommend that all persons interested in improving our school curriculum read the entire article.<br />
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The Forbes article points out the following<b><i> "</i></b><span style="background-color: #fcfcfc;"><b style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 18px;"><i>Yet despite the growing evidence that four-year college programs serve fewer and fewer of our students, states continue to cut vocational programs."</i></b><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "cambria" , "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: medium;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #fcfcfc;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "cambria" , "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: #fcfcfc;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "cambria" , "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: medium;">I would add that pressuring virtually all of our students to take a college prep curriculum in K-12 education, leaves literally no time for teaching modern vocational skills or even vital life skills including proper nutrition, physical education, and money management. Medical researchers know that many of our graduates will live a life shortened drastically by the onset of diabetes and heart disease directly caused by a cheap fast food diet. Louisiana has one of the highest obesity rates in the nation (35%) but our schools have no time to educate children about healthy diets, nor is anyone teaching them how to cook! (remember home economics?) These critical needs of our students are being neglected so that our education reformers can continue to chase the illusive "college for all" dream. </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #fcfcfc;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "cambria" , "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: #fcfcfc;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "cambria" , "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: medium;">Watch for Part II of this post titled:</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #fcfcfc;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "georgia" , "cambria" , "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: large;">Some of our graduates don't even know how to tighten a nut!</span></span>Michael Deshotelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05080847575738076946noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5392952820096205874.post-41697733386242894542020-01-09T07:22:00.000-06:002020-01-10T13:30:49.762-06:00The Legacy of Superintendent John White<h2>
<span style="color: blue; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/education/article_81d73f70-316b-11ea-b0ca-67fb123cfffe.html">John White</a> has submitted his letter of resignation from the position of Louisiana State Superintendent of education.</span></h2>
<span style="font-size: large;">In his resignation letter White claims the following:</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "lora" , "libre baskerville" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 21px;"><span style="color: red;">"Louisiana is better educated today than any point in its history," </span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "lora" , "libre baskerville" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 21px;">BESE Vice-President Holly Boffy, said</span><span style="background-color: white; color: red; font-family: "lora" , "libre baskerville" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 21px;"> the state made "great strides" during White's time.</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">This post examines the key measures that John White himself set as standards for determining success and therefore the legacy of his superintendency.</span><br />
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John White was appointed State Superintendent of Education for Louisiana in January 2012 for the purpose of raising achievement standards, closing the achievement gap between rich and poor students and to insure that our high school diplomas indicated real achievement and eliminated diploma mills. White was appointed at a time when Louisiana’s education performance was considered to be embarrassingly low compared to all the other states. It was expected that White would get Louisiana off the bottom of the state rankings and also take steps to close the gap between high poverty students and more privileged students. In addition, White and his TFA staff members at the LDOE set a goal of preparing all high school graduates for college or 2 year Associate degrees.<br />
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White has claimed repeatedly that Louisiana’s students were just as smart as kids in other states and that there was no excuse for our low ranking among the states. White had never been trained as a real teacher but instead was one of those "no excuses" TFA trained reformers.<br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">White embraced the theory that teachers were to blame for low student performance</span><br />
White immediately teamed up with the big business lobbying group, The Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, with the goal of totally reforming our K-12 educational system. LABI had just succeeded in electing almost all of the BESE members just as White came on, and Governor Jindal was passing legislation that blamed the teaching profession for all imagined failings of education. White eagerly implemented those reforms including placing 10% of teachers on a path to dismissal each year based on student performance on state tests. White also implemented a new, untested teacher evaluation system that was so poorly designed that principals did not have enough hours in the school year to evaluate teachers, even if they neglected all their other duties. That evaluation system had been written by an LDOE staff member who had never taught a day in her life.<br />
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The White teacher evaluation system began imploding after only one year, with some of the most highly respected teachers getting failing evaluations. The combination of the draconian evaluation system along with the shift to requiring teachers to spend most of their teaching day rehearsing students for state tests drove thousands of the best teachers to quit or retire early. The original legislative author of the requirement that teacher evaluations be based on student test scores wanted to repeal his own legislation, but White and LABI would have none of it. They succeeded in retaining a large part of the defective evaluation including the link to student test scores. But then, because of a growing teacher shortage, White had to push BESE to allow the permanent employment of <a href="https://www.louisianabelieves.com/newsroom/news-releases/2019/10/17/louisiana-enhances-support-provided-to-teachers-seeking-alternate-certification">alternatively certified persons</a> as teachers. White thought that was OK because new teachers needed only to be trained to teach to the state tests. Teaching and learning was steadily converted to a boring process, with little teacher creativity allowed.<br />
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<span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 255); color: blue; font-size: large;">The new Common Core standards have proved to be a failure</span><br />
White promised that he would raise education standards in Louisiana and insure that our students would achieve those higher standards. He often expressed the ideology that Louisiana students would respond favorably to higher academic expectations. The new Common Core standards had just been approved when White began his term. White embraced the new standards even though parents revolted against Common Core and Jindal changed his position to opposition of the standards. LABI and White fiercely defended the untested standards. The legislature ordered a revision of the education standards, but White rigged the revision process to allow only minor revisions of the Common Core standards. The new standards have been in effect for seven years, and student performance is now so poor now that White has had to secretly lower the passing scores on state tests to an average of 30% correct answers for a rating of "basic". White's stated goal of "mastery" requires only about 45% correct answers, but the majority of students have failed to get to that level. Over 20% of Louisiana students regularly fail both math and ELA state tests but are promoted to the next grade anyway. The new standards have resulted in a widening of the achievement gap between white and black students and between rich and poor students.<br />
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White is now completing his 8th year as the top education leader in Louisiana. He is the longest serving state superintendent in the nation. He has had more time than any other education reformer to improve student performance. So using the criteria described by White himself, what exactly is the measure of success of the John White era?<br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">Louisiana is now at its lowest ranking <b><u>ever </u></b>on standardized tests</span><br />
Louisiana is now <a href="https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/education/article_e85cfaec-1540-11ea-a0df-5f709c250be8.html">49th out of the 50 states</a> in average ACT scores, 47th out of 50 states in NAEP scores, and the gap between rich and poor students in Louisiana is now the widest ever in recent history. The takeover charters that White authorized are still some of the lowest performing schools in the state. The standards for student promotion from one grade to the next have been dropped altogether by BESE at the urging of White. The cut scores for end-of-course graduation tests have been set so low that an average third grader could pass some of the high school tests just using random guessing. <b><i>These lowered standards easily account for White's highly touted improved graduation rate.</i></b><br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">The Louisiana Recovery District is still on life support</span><br />
Early in his term, White eagerly took over low performing schools and turned them over to charter groups for the purpose of raising their performance. The local and national news media have been fed propaganda about how the Louisiana Recovery District, which White originally oversaw in New Orleans deserves to be seen as a model for the country to imitate. But despite the huge infusion of extra state and federal funding and lavish support for Teach for America, and the multimillion dollar grants by charitable foundations, the Orleans school system is now performing at the bottom 20 percentile compared to all public school systems in the state. That is extremely low level performance in a state that ranks very close to last in the entire country! The RSD schools outside of New Orleans are doing even worse. Toward the end of his tenure White has avoided school takeovers by the state. Now his charter managers are going after high performing students, leaving the low performers to be educated by the real public schools. Not a great model for other states to imitate.<br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">Some shocking statistics have been carefully hidden until now</span><br />
<span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 255);">A critical study by the LA Board of Regents was revealed at a </span><a href="https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/education/article_de919954-1c1c-11ea-871d-bfd166fdb08d.html" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 255);">recent joint meeting</a><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 255);"> of BESE and Regents. Commissioner of Higher Education Kim Hunter Reed reported the shocking statistic that <b><i>out of every 100 students entering 9th grade today, only 18% will actually achieve either a 2 or 4 year college degree. </i></b>This reveals that one of the highest priorities of White's administration has been a disaster. The propaganda coming out of the LDOE about college preparation of our students focuses on <a href="https://www.louisianabelieves.com/newsroom/news-releases/2019/09/10/in-case-you-missed-it-louisiana's-financial-aid-access-policy-serves-as-national-model">FAFSA applications completed</a> and on how many of our students are <a href="https://www.louisianabelieves.com/newsroom/news-releases/2019/05/22/number-of-louisiana-graduates-enrolling-in-college-climbs-to-all-time-high">accepted for college</a>. High school ratings depend in part on guidance counselors getting students to fill out applications for college. There are some so called "colleges" that would accept a ham sandwich if the application is filled out correctly. So sure enough, a higher percentage of graduates are now being accepted by college admissions. But that does not mean that students actually attend college or that those who start college actually get a degree. The LDOE, up until now, had not reported this vital statistic about White's effectiveness in preparing students for college.</span><br />
<span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 255);">Another sad example of the hyped up phony success of charter schools is <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/sci-academy-graduation-new-orleans/">this article </a>in <i>The Nation </i>where the reporter actually followed up on the college experiences of graduates from the highly touted Sci Academy charter school in New Orleans. A tiny percentage actually succeeded in college.</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">The teaching profession in Louisiana has been severely damaged</span><br />
In his first few months as Superintendent, White testified before the legislature that a teacher's experience did not matter, that seniority should not be considered, and that teacher tenure should be made almost impossible to achieve. White and LABI decreed that Louisiana would transition to a merit system for teachers where the best teachers could command higher salaries. This new system would revolutionize teaching to transform it to a much more desirable profession.<br />
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White's reforms of the teaching profession have been a disaster. The dream of high salaries for excellent teachers never materialized. Teacher salaries in Louisiana had stagnated severely until Governor Edwards passed a $1,000 across the board raise effective this school year. Today almost no practicing teachers are encouraging their own children and nieces and nephews to go into the teaching profession. Teachers today are sick of doing almost nothing but rehearsing kids for state tests. One major legacy White has produced is fewer qualified, experienced teachers, lower teacher morale, and a growing teacher shortage in Louisiana. Not exactly a model for other states to imitate!<br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">Reformist propaganda does not educate children. The true John White legacy is that he has let down our students and failed on all the measures he, himself, had established for success.</span><br />
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<br />Michael Deshotelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05080847575738076946noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5392952820096205874.post-71284548294870196672019-11-27T06:58:00.000-06:002019-11-27T07:01:17.938-06:00School Discipline Needs Enforcement!<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3Z9K-s0KUM&app=desktop">Here is a youtube video </a>featuring an Ohio teacher placed on Facebook by Lee Barrios, decrying the lack of support for teachers in maintaining discipline in the classroom. We have exactly the same problem in Louisiana! The big difference is that while the Ohio teacher proposes that there needs to be a written policy specifying effective consequences for student misbehavior, Louisiana has exactly such a policy in state law and in the Teacher Bill of Rights. The problem is that the pressure from our Louisiana Department of Education acts to discourage local school systems from enforcing the law and supporting teachers in maintaining classroom discipline.<br />
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Teachers in St. Tammany led by longtime teacher advocate Lee Barrios, are speaking out about the need for the school system to enforce the law on discipline. But the problem is that the non-educator administrators in the LDOE have erected obstacles to discipline enforcement, especially if it results in student suspensions. The fact is that most school systems provide more that sufficient alternatives to suspension. The problem is that if a school administrator assigns a disruptive or disrespectful student to after school detention, and the student does not show up, out-of-school suspension often becomes the only remaining option. The school should not be down rated on the LDOE website for taking necessary action to back up teachers in maintaining order.<br />
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Let me be clear: I agree with the teacher in the video. If one student is depriving the rest of the class of their instruction time, then that one disruptive student needs to go. In addition, I would suggest that in serious or repeated cases of violation of discipline policy, the parents should be required to take appropriate action to get the student to behave properly if the student is to be readmitted to school. All of that is already provided in state law. But there are serious flaws in enforcement.<br />
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The problem is that the Louisiana State Department of Education is so determined to hand out diplomas, earned or not, to greater and greater percentages of students that the rights of the majority of students are being taken away. The present situation is that almost any wrongdoing can be ignored just so a student can be handed a worthless piece of paper (diploma). Excessive absences in violation of the state's mandatory attendance law are routinely excused, worthless credit recovery courses are given to students who fail required courses, and cut scores on required courses are low enough to allow illiterate students to get credit. This is what school "reform" has done to our pubic schools.<br />
<br />Michael Deshotelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05080847575738076946noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5392952820096205874.post-35088636437987706892019-11-21T07:11:00.002-06:002019-11-23T05:02:37.742-06:00John White, Common Core, Education Reform, and the Widening Learning GapWhere are we going with Louisiana education for the next 8 years of education reform? How did we get here? The education policy we have been pursuing for the last 10 years was actually created without input from the parents and teachers who are closest to the delivery of education to our children. The present policy of poorly designed, unteachable standards was dreamed up by a bunch of self appointed elites who have never spent a day a the head of a classroom.<br />
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Common Core standards that were implemented in Louisiana starting in 2012, have proved to be a disaster for our students because they were untested in actual classrooms, were not age appropriate for most children, are full of abstract concepts that are dull and boring to most of our students, and that will never be used in a person's lifetime. I am talking about stuff like quadratic equations in math, close reading in English where students are taught no context that connects with real life, and state testing where passing scores have to be secretly set at 12% just to make it look like our students are learning this stuff. We have been experimenting with our kids lives for 10 years and the experiment has failed, but none of the architects of this disaster are willing to admit it.<br />
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Here is <a href="https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/politics/elections/article_e07bd6cc-ee94-11e9-a8be-af84e74ae51b.html">the most recent fluff piece</a> by the pro-reform education reporter for the Baton Rouge advocate, Will Sentell, fawning over the complete sweep of LABI endorsed candidates in the recent BESE elections. LABI has actually been in full control of Louisiana education since January 2012 when the LABI engineered takeover of BESE first occurred. January 2012 is when their hand picked eduction reformer and privatizer, John White was installed as State Superintendent. Sentell in his article seems to pronounce the first phase of reform as a big success because there are now fewer schools rated D and F. Only he neglects to mention that these improved ratings are totally rigged by White to portray false progress. Why not evaluate the success or failure of reform by using the very statistics that justified the reform to begin with? In a nutshell, here are the vital statics that show the true lack of success of the Louisiana education reform movement.<br />
<ul>
<li>ACT scores have declined significantly for the last three years in a row and are now just about the lowest in the nation.</li>
<li>The NAEP ranking of Louisiana compared to other states is just about the lowest it has ever been.</li>
<li>The achievement gap between White and Black students and rich and poor students is significantly greater for math and reading than when White and the reformers took over.</li>
<li>Charter schools in New Orleans still rate in the bottom 20% among parish school systems and lead the state in scandals such as grade fixing and phony diplomas. (see the ranking in my previous post on this blog) They also lead in financial mismanagement with several charter schools going bankrupt and dumping their debts and students to local school boards. I know of no traditional public school ever going bankrupt.</li>
<li>The two remaining Recovery Districts rank at the very bottom of the state systems in academic performance. (See my previous post)</li>
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These are indications of complete failure, not progress. White has succeeded in muddying the statistics with his rigged school ratings that simulate success, but the reforms have failed totally when measured using the unbiased statistics above that were the justification for the reforms in the first place. (What about the higher graduation rate? Sorry, it was rigged too, by removing almost all standards for graduation).<br />
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Let's go back to a conference held in January 2012 that was organized by the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry titled "Leadership for Change" <a href="http://louisianaeducator.blogspot.com/2012/01/have-you-been-invited.html">Here is my post</a> at that time titled "Have You Been Invited?" That conference was sponsored by LABI to launch their new course for public education in Louisiana. Participants were mostly business types, but the organizers forgot to invite any practicing educators. My blog that day points out the following:<br />
<span style="background-color: yellow;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span><span style="background-color: yellow;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">"The event is apparently by invitation only. One would assume that it would include local superintendents or at least officers of the Superintendent's Association, school board officials and local school supervisors of curriculum, local accountability supervisors, and even classroom teachers. These are the people who have dedicated their careers to the education of our Louisiana public school students. They are the ones who know the most about what works and what does not work in our schools. They should be the first ones invited to any education summit where the future of Louisiana education will be discussed and planned."</span></span><br />
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The keynote speaker at the Leadership for Change conference was Joel Klein, a super rich attorney who had just served as Eduction Chancellor for the New York city system for Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg was one of the big out-of-state contributors who financed the takeover of BESE. Klein was introduced as a great reformer who had just finished turning around the New York city public school system by significantly raising student test scores and introducing a real business model for the operation of schools. It was only learned much later that Klein had created the illusion of success by secretly lowering the cut scores for the city tests. Later, Klein's scheme to monetize <a href="https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/city-schools-dumping-95-million-computer-system-article-1.2012454">tracking of student data </a>was abandoned after hundreds of millions spent on no-bid contracts. Does this look familiar? Looks like John White, who worked for Klein before he was brought to Louisiana, was not the first innovator of rigged test scores and privatization.<br />
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John White is now assured his continued role as the Tsar of Louisiana education. So what's the next phase of Louisiana education reform? I would expect that White would double down on his failed policies of test and punish for our schools and teachers, with zero accountability for students and parents.<br />
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Maybe because he is not a true educator, there is a critical factor that White has overlooked. That is the simple principle well recognized by all educational psychologists and backed up by education research. That is: No real learning takes place without motivation! For the majority of children in our public education system today, there is almost no attention to motivation that will actually cause them to want to learn what we are attempting to teach in school. Our present curriculum is so boring, so irrelevant to real children, and so irrelevant to real jobs in the workforce today that all of White's efforts at reform are doomed to continued failure.<br />
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Ask any teacher or any guidance counselor and they will tell you that by the time our average students reach the 6th or 7th grade, school has lost all relevance and motivation for children to learn what we are trying to teach. We need to change our curriculum to make it relevant to real life. Much of the Common Core math we are teaching in middle school will never again be used by 98% of our students. The boring reading assignments produced by Common Core are destroying any love of reading. Real motivation is the secret to boosting learning as explained <a href="https://pivotaleducation.com/hidden-trainer-area/training-online-resources/why-is-motivation-so-important-for-learning-success/">here</a> and <a href="https://www.blogger.com/"><span id="goog_111075097"></span>here<span id="goog_111075098"></span></a>. We need to encourage children to experience the joy of reading before we can expect them to slave away at close reading exercises.<br />
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But most of all, we need to encourage teachers to do what works best. That's allowing teachers to be creative in what they know will interest and motivate children to learn the concepts and skills that are really useful in life. We need to cut back drastically on the state testing and test prep that is poisonous to student motivation. Don't expect John White and the non-educator reformers to adopt any of these ideas.<br />
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According to the Sentell article, the next phase of education reform will include tackling the wide gap in academic performance of black and underprivileged students compared to white middle class students. This is sometimes called the equity gap. What will the reformers do about bringing up the performance of the key subgroups addressed in the ESSA plan? Maybe the reformers haven't figured it out yet, but the new Common Core curriculum does not work well with low performing students. Will the LDOE continue to take over schools that have large numbers of minority and free lunch students who underperform? I think not. The Recovery District is a total failure. Look at their ranking in my previous post. John White no longer wants to take responsibility for these difficult problems. His strategy is to continue chastising the administrators of schools that serve such students and keep pretending that poverty should not make any difference. But it does. So it's going to get harder and harder to keep dedicated educators in high poverty schools. What we can expect is more demoralizing test and punish, <b><i><u>without</u></i></b> state takeover.<br />
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What about charter schools and privatization? The voucher schools seem to be stalled because of terrible performance. But the bad news is that the LDOE has finally found a model of charter schools that works, but not for at-risk students. The secret to high performing charter schools is implementation of a system of student selection that attracts the high performing students and shuns the at-risk. This is already happening with the KIPP schools and the BASIS charter schools. Baton Rouge is now experiencing increased segregation of students by race and class as BASIS carefully recruits high performing students while shunning handicapped and black students. The new portfolio model for a school district is heading toward a two tiered system with elite charter schools getting the high performers (both black and white), and leaving the low performers to the real public schools. The federal courts used to frown on intentional segregation. Are they willing to allow the portfolio model to segregate students to greater levels than before court ordered desegregation?Michael Deshotelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05080847575738076946noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5392952820096205874.post-58650450613242993142019-11-14T12:47:00.000-06:002019-11-16T05:59:29.803-06:00Poverty vs District School Performance<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTYu7Wbs54lmoQQWhETBSOuCDGImPjyMAW8K3JtMhK3WBhN7Y5KoUsaJEn0vHEYCsgr2cvloh0Wkd4ZSCqek9RS4GP_FYOe82YADTcmMpoHW34Q0VLfkWuf-4GexYrl3LFUn3UEtjqNyQ/s1600/image001.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="631" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTYu7Wbs54lmoQQWhETBSOuCDGImPjyMAW8K3JtMhK3WBhN7Y5KoUsaJEn0vHEYCsgr2cvloh0Wkd4ZSCqek9RS4GP_FYOe82YADTcmMpoHW34Q0VLfkWuf-4GexYrl3LFUn3UEtjqNyQ/s640/image001.png" width="251" /></a></div>
<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">This ranking lists all Louisiana school systems and certain individual schools in order of increasing poverty. The table includes the district performance scores and the letter grade as assigned by the LA Department of Education for 2019. </span><br />
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(Click on the image to magnify)</div>
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It is noteworthy that the districts and schools with the smallest percentage of high poverty students achieved the highest district and/or school performance scores and the highest letter grades. Conversely, the three school districts with the greatest student poverty received the lowest performance scores and the lowest letter grades in the state.<br />
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The highest scoring schools in the state are the school for math/science/arts and the LSU lab school. These are selective admissions schools but they also have the lowest percentages of high poverty students in the state.<br />
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The Zachary Community school district, which has the highest district performance score, has only 3 percentage points higher poverty than the wealthiest school system . The school systems in Louisiana that rank in the top 10% according to wealth, with the exception of Livingston Parish, all received "A" grades from the LDOE.<br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">A few good words about the Zachary Community school system</span><br />
The Zachary school system is celebrating its 15th year in a row as the highest performing school system in the state based on standardized test scores. Zachary administrators and teachers certainly deserve much credit. My wife and I both taught in the Zachary school system many years ago, long before school systems were ranked by student test scores. It was an excellent school system even then. Like all other school systems, Zachary teachers spend a lot of time preparing students for the almighty annual state tests. But in my opinion, that is not what makes Zachary a great school system. The teachers and administrators in Zachary have always taught the whole student with great attention to each student's talents, strengths, and weaknesses. Teachers are allowed to use great creativity in addition to test prep. My grandson who was a co-valedictorian at Zachary also enjoyed taking great courses in shop, art and athletics.<br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">Very few school systems have managed to perform better than expected</span><br />
There are four school systems that score significantly above their expected scores according to the level of poverty: Plaquemines Parish which achieved an "A" performance with a 70% poverty rate and Catahoula, St. Bernard and St Mary Parishes which achieved "B" grades with 78% poverty rates.<br />
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However, with few exceptions, school systems generally perform closely as an inverse proportion to their poverty ranking.<br />
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Another exception to the rule above is represented by the three virtual schools in the state. (look up how they rate on the test rankings) These schools all score lower than would be predicted by their poverty rates. If test scores are so important, why are these schools provided 90% of the student MFP funding, even though <b><i>they <u>do not</u> have to pay</i></b> for buildings, buses, custodians, librarians, school lunch and many other costs that real schools are expected to provide with almost the same funding?<br />
<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">With very little variation, districts' performance scores are inversely proportional to the rate of poverty.</span><br />
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<span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 255);">The creation of so called "Recovery Districts" that are supposed to turn around so called "failing schools" have had almost no impact. Just see where the two remaining Recovery districts are performing in the table above. The New Orleans school district has only recently been restored control of its Recovery district. Their school performance score places Orleans in the bottom 20% of a state that is ranked third to last among all states. his expensive program has done little to improve test scores.</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 255);">School performance scores and letter grades based on test results and graduation rates have encouraged corruption</span></span><br />
<span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 255);">The pressure on schools to raise test scores has produced more corruption than actual improvement in student academic achievement. Some school administrators, particularly in takeover charter schools whose continued existence may depend on student test scores, have devised creative ways of cheating to raise their school performance score. Cheating is made more likely by the LDOE policy that allegations of wrongdoing at a school are primarily investigated by the local district or charter operator. That allows for a lot of cover up. But some of the most blatant cases have come to light. These include revelations of answer corrections by computer erasure analysis. But no one goes to jail like the teachers and administrators in Atlanta who had their test corrections investigated by the FBI. In Louisiana, where the school letter grade is determined by several factors, we are getting more creative cheating such as the recent <a href="https://www.wwltv.com/article/news/investigations/fix-your-gradebook-emails-direct-abramson-sci-academy-teachers-to-raise-averages/289-4b7fe3dd-4de2-4fd3-95d5-6ff45339ee93">"fix your grade books"</a> scheme or the <a href="https://thelensnola.org/2019/06/21/review-finds-that-nearly-half-of-kennedy-high-schools-2019-seniors-were-not-eligible-for-graduation/">awarding of diplomas</a> to half a 12th grade class by awarding credits that were not earned.</span><br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">Why does Louisiana stigmatize and demoralize educators whose only apparent sin is that they serve high poverty students?</span><br />
Schools are not buildings. Schools are communities of human beings composed of students who are served by dedicated, caring, teachers and administrators. The data above demonstrates that there is a strong correlation between standardized test scores and the rate of poverty of students who make up the student body of a particular school. The American Statistical Association has determined that the impact of teacher quality in a school accounts for only between one and 14% of student test performance. What is to be gained by spending hundreds of millions of dollars every year on standardized testing when we can already accurately predict the average test scores in a school by the level of poverty of its students. BESE no longer requires students to pass these tests to be promoted, so why give them? Unfortunately, because of the stigma produced by low school grades, it is only that much harder to attract the best and most dedicated teachers to schools that serve the neediest students.<br />
<br />Michael Deshotelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05080847575738076946noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5392952820096205874.post-5890674067348375182019-11-05T06:42:00.001-06:002019-11-09T05:56:47.781-06:00Common Core and Ed Reform; Overwhelming Evidence of Failure<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">Louisiana adopted Common Core standards sight unseen.</span><br />
Louisiana adopted the Common Core State Standards in 2010, before they were even written, partly because the Louisiana power brokers (LABI) and some out-of state billionaires said "the children could not wait". Strong medicine was needed to cure the ills of public education. Our reform oriented leaders thought we could cash in on generous grants offered by the O'Bama administration to implement this scheme without the need for clinical trials. The only problem was that since there was not enough federal money appropriated to fund all the states that took the plunge on Common Core, only a few states were selected for the grants. Louisiana passed laws, and regulations forcing all our public schools to adopt and implement the standards even though we did not get the grant money. On top of what was done to our students, our teachers were stripped of tenure rights that had been working well for many years, and instead changed to test based evaluations putting teacher’s jobs in constant jeopardy based on error prone VAM formulas.<br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">We would never allow completely untested medicine or drugs to be used on our children; not so with education experiments.</span><br />
This idea of administering strong untested medicine to cure the ills of education was sort of like how parents used to give their children caster oil and fraudulent patent medicines before they had access to modern medicines tested using clinical trials. Also, today, for education strategies, we have well established methods of field testing and validation that should be completed before we try new ideas on innocent children. But unfortunately the self appointed education reformers like Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, the Waltons and others who would never use untested practices on there own businesses, decided that "the children could not wait" for studies of new reform standards to be validated. Billions of dollars of Gates money were spent on promotion of the untested standards to push fo adoption in all the states before any real opposition could build up. In addition, charter schools were promoted, supposedly so that children could "escape" failing public schools.<br />
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<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/24/opinion/sunday/the-common-core-costs-billions-and-hurts-students.html">Here</a> is what Diane Ravitch ( a highly respected historian of education practice) thought of this education reform "medicine". That opinion piece in the New York times was written three years ago. It revealed that <b><i>the new standards were not working. </i></b>But the reformers responded that the new standards had just not yet been given enough time to demonstrate their real curative effects on children. Just give it more time and work harder at implementation and the success would come. In Louisiana, John White and LABI decided that what we needed was more test prep, more data checks on student progress, and more punishment of teachers and schools based on test scores. That would do it. Stay the course.<br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">The low test scores used to justify reform are now stagnant or lower than they were before the reforms.</span><br />
Now the latest average scores of the 2019 NAEP and ACT tests are even more dismal. Louisiana's ACT average scores have been dropping like a rock for the last three years. After all that test prep done at the expense of real teaching! <b><i>The very test data that was used to justify Louisiana's headlong plunge into reform, privatization and repeal of teacher rights, shows that our reward was lower, not higher, student performance.</i></b> But now White has rigged it so that we are graduating thousands of functional illiterates using lowered graduation requirements so that our graduation rate can go up. Wasn't it the business community that insisted we needed to hire John White so that he could eliminate diploma mills and make our high school diplomas mean something?<br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">John White's deception revealed by several educator bloggers.</span><br />
John White's continued deception is verified in <a href="https://garyrubinstein.wordpress.com/2019/11/03/does-louisiana-really-lead-the-nation-in-8th-grade-math-gains/">this recent blog</a> by math teacher Gary Rubinstein and <a href="https://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2019/11/03/john-whites-2019-la-naep-and-act-failure/">this blog </a>by Mercedes Schneider both of which debunk John White' propaganda about NAEP results for Louisiana. (<a href="http://louisianaeducator.blogspot.com/2019/10/john-whites-pitiful-record-as.html">This blog</a> exposed the deception first) <b><i>The Rubinstein blog also reveals that Louisiana's 8th grade math performance is now lower than in 2007, after all that test prepping and all that teacher bashing!</i></b> It's just not working, and we have now wasted 8 years on this disastrous project. So what's the reformer reaction now? John White repeats that higher student expectations will eventually work. Based on what? Wishful thinking? That's after he quietly lowered all promotion and graduation requirements so our graduation rate would artificially go up.<br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">Most other states adopted the same defective standards.</span><br />
But Louisiana is not alone in producing stagnant results on all the tests used to measure the success or failure of education reform. <a href="https://thefederalist.com/2019/10/31/first-common-core-high-school-grads-worst-prepared-for-college-in-15-years/">This article</a> reveals the nationwide failure of reform. It is my opinion that Common Core, which was adopted in one form or another by most of the states, is dragging down our entire nation's performance. Common Core is not the right curriculum for a large percentage of our students who need career training. The strict, poorly designed college prep stuff in Common Core is lousy for the college bound and disastrous for career bound students. As we spend millions on standardized testing, students nation-wide are being denied vital training that would actually produce rewarding careers that do not require a bachelor's degree. Instead, teachers are forced to drill students in boring "close reading" and quadratic equations that most will never use even once in their lifetimes.<br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">The teachers and schools serving poor children are not to blame.</span><br />
Teachers never asked for these poorly designed reforms. From the very beginning teachers complained that the standards were not age appropriate, that the reading requirements (close reading and reading dry instruction guides) and the Eureka math, needlessly complex math calculations were killing kids' love of learning. When teacher tenure was repealed without due process and replaced with test based "accountability" John White told teachers this would "empower" the best teachers to personally negotiate better salaries. Ask any good teacher you know if she/he has been empowered. White who once said we did not need real teacher education, is now pushing teacher training and mentoring. Many of our best teachers are retiring early because of these attacks on the profession and now we have a teacher shortage. At one time White proposed placing 1/10 of teachers on a path to dismissal each year until student test scores improved. I think he has given up on that one.<br />
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Almost all schools now being rated as D or F simply have a high percentage of high poverty students. The standardized tests scores and therefore the school grades are directly related to the poverty level of a school and almost nothing else. We don't need to close these schools down or turn them into charters. We need to provide smaller classes, lots of age appropriate books that children want to read and make sure poor children have access to pre-school and a release from the Common Core. There is absolutely no incentive for our best teachers to teach in high poverty schools. Instead teachers continue to be demoralized by the unfair teacher and school grading system and the defective merit pay system.<br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">What if the reform billions had actually been spent on at-risk children and pre-school for all?</span><br />
In pushing this useless education reform, the Gates Foundation, The Broad Foundation and others have established what we now call Astroturf local organizations whose sole purpose is to push the exact same failed reform year after year. In Louisiana we have New Schools for New Orleans, New Schools for Baton Rouge, Stand for Children, etc. which are all funded by out-of-state foundations. Why do they insist on throwing away millions of dollars on failed reforms in little old Louisiana? Couldn't they just have given our schools that serve at-risk students a few million to really help kids? Pre school for at-risk students is one program that has actually been shown to work. Why not fund pre school? I guess they just can't give up this pet project that they would never try on their own children. As long as the carpetbaggers in the Astroturf organizations are paid to "deform" our schools, we will continue to neglect the real needs of our students, while our tax dollars are used to fund charters and more and more tests.Michael Deshotelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05080847575738076946noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5392952820096205874.post-14124702722458736552019-10-31T07:16:00.000-05:002019-11-01T09:31:16.545-05:00John White's Pitiful Record as Louisiana's Education Reformer<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">After over 7 years of John White as Louisiana's education reformer, Louisiana ranks 47th on national reading and math tests, and 49th on the ACT.</span><br />
John White's propaganda mill had the unmitigated gall to put out <a href="https://www.louisianabelieves.com/newsroom/news-releases/2019/10/30/superintendent-of-education-releases-statement-regarding-louisiana-students'-achievements-on-national-assessment-of-educational-progress">this press release</a> Tuesday claiming that Louisiana was "number one in the country in 8th grade math improvement" as measured by <i>The Nations Report Card. </i>This tiny bit of data selection is insignificant compared to overall achievement of our students in reading, math and college readiness. The press release neglected to mention that despite all this "improvement" <b><i>Louisiana still ranks third to last compared to the 50 states in 8th grade math. </i></b>There is also no mention that Louisiana ranks 47th out of the 50 states in overall performance on all the latest NAEP tests. No mention was made that the latest ACT tests now rank Louisiana <a href="https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/education/article_5ee1f3a6-fa62-11e9-bf30-53687400ffb4.html">second to last in the country</a> in college readiness! Our ACT test score averages have been declining significantly for the last 3 years. <b><i>White's press release trying to portray total stagnation in student performance as "nation leading outcomes" is pathetic.</i></b><br />
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<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">An analysis of White's record as measured by objective NAEP and ACT testing</span><br />
The example of selective data analysis in the press release above to find just one little nugget of apparent success while ignoring all of the overwhelming data indicating total stagnation in education results is a shameful attempt to mislead the public. Here is an analysis of the overall performance of White as the reformer of Louisiana's public schools:<br />
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There are a total of 4 NAEP tests given every two years to a representative sample of students in each state that allows us to compare the performance of our students to other states. Focusing on only one of the four tests over a period of only two years, especially if it is not statistically significant, can be highly misleading. But combining the results of all 4 tests over a period of several years gives a much better measure of progress over a more reliable time frame. John White has been in charge of Louisiana education for a total of seven and one-half years, so we should look at the total results of both NAEP and ACT over that time period.<br />
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I took the average scores on NAEP in 4th grade reading, 4th grade math, 8th grade reading, and 8th grade math and added them together for the year 2011, which was the year of testing just before John White was appointed state superintendent. Then I added together the average test scores on the same 4 tests for the most recent test given in the Spring of 2019. The total scale score of the 4 tests for 2011 was 969 which ranked LA at 49th in the nation. The total scale score on the same 4 tests for Louisiana in 2019 was 970 (an insignificant gain of one point). In 2019 Louisiana outperformed only three states: Alabama scored 964, Alaska scored 962, and New Mexico scored 960.<br />
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For ACT scores, there is no press release at all from the LDOE, probably because they have not yet found a way to spin three years in a row of declining ACT scores as some type of success. Average ACT scores in Louisiana was 19.6 in 2017, 19.2 in 2018, and 18.8 in 2019. This is a very significant drop in three years. Don't just take my word for it that Louisiana is performing poorly in college readiness, just take a look at <a href="https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/education/article_5ee1f3a6-fa62-11e9-bf30-53687400ffb4.html">this article by Will Sentell</a> in <i>The Baton Rouge Advocate</i> casually mentioning that Louisiana has now fallen to 49th in the nation on the ACT.<br />
<span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">Millions spent by privatization groups to keep John White</span><br />
Despite the dismal results of the 8 year White administration, he has just been assured at least a 4 year extension of his job. This will be the result of the recent election of a state board of education committed to White, with their campaigns financed by obscene contributions amounting to millions by the business community and out of state billionaires.<br />
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White and his supporters are determined to keep the charter school industry in Louisiana growing despite numerous scandals such as the wholesale awarding of <a href="https://thelensnola.org/2019/06/21/review-finds-that-nearly-half-of-kennedy-high-schools-2019-seniors-were-not-eligible-for-graduation/">bogus diplomas</a> at Kennedy charter school, or the "<a href="https://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2019/10/29/nola-admins-book-cooking-fix-your-gradebook-email-more-teacher-responses/">Fix your grade books"</a> scandal at Sci Academy, that's just in the last few months!<br />
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White has totally failed in his stated missions of raising standardized test scores (White's state test results have been <a href="http://louisianaeducator.blogspot.com/2018/07/how-valid-is-louisiana-leap-tests.html">found to be inflated </a>compared to the national tests), closing the achievement gap, (The gap between rich and poor is widening), and preparing students for college (The ACT scores are dropping like a rock), but he still has the nerve to provide the following quite in his press release about the non-existant progress on NAEP:<br />
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<span style="background-color: #e1f1ea; color: #374245; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">White: "When we raise expectations for students and support our teachers, we will see progress. It is critical that we keep the progress going." </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">My public records requests reveal that John White has done the opposite of raising expectations. He has used his almost absolute power over education to insure that almost all students are promoted to the next grade without regard to actual performance. The standards for passing end-of-course tests for graduation are so low that students can pass by random guessing. (17% correct answers for English I, 15% for Algebra, 10% to 12% depending on the test form for Geometry etc.) These are not "raised expectations".</span></span><br />
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Michael Deshotelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05080847575738076946noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5392952820096205874.post-78447759235036511492019-10-18T07:33:00.000-05:002019-10-18T15:24:26.563-05:00Lane Grigsby, Kingmaker and Education ManipulatorThis is<a href="https://www.bayoubrief.com/2019/01/17/erector-set-the-power-behind-the-hoped-for-throne/"> an excellent article</a> by Sue Lincoln, veteran reporter, for <i>The Bayou Brief </i>about how Lane Grigsby and a few super rich businessmen decided to take over our public education system as part of an overall plan to become the kingmakers of Louisiana politics. Grigsby and his allies are very close to achieving their goal of controlling virtually all Louisiana governmental functions including possibly the office of Governor.<br />
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As we predicted in several recent posts on this blog, with the buying of almost all elected positions on the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, LABI has virtually achieved total control of K-12 education. Basically every rule, every directive to school principals and teachers now comes from the state education bureaucracy totally controlled by LABI which is dominated by Grigsby and his rich friends. All the complaints by teachers of excessive standardized testing costing millions that do absolutely nothing to benefit students, inaccurate and unfair test-based teacher ratings, can now be laid at the feet of Grigsby and LABI.<br />
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To emphasize the aggressiveness and dishonesty used in the takeover of BESE, here is part of an <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xWmNiOP02HDuCl7_tTbcpEP_pJZD8p30/view?usp=sharing">exact script </a>of one of the radio ads (Paid for by Louisiana Federation for Children which is really financed by <a href="https://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2019/10/11/over-3m-in-out-of-state-cash-poured-into-la-bese-election-waltons-pay-1-3m/">an out-of-state group</a>) used against independent BESE candidate Timmie Melancon: <b><i>"There are two choices for BESE; Timmie Melancon who has taken thousands from liberal unions like those who spent millions electing O'Bama, Nancy Peloci and Hillary Clinton, . . . who raised money as a member of a radical online group where members promoted socialism, they even referred to our president as a Russian operative . . . The conservative choice is Holly Boffy who voted to give teachers a pay raise, and whose record includes higher test scores." </i></b>This political ad is almost 100 percent flat out lies. Melancon is a retired school teacher who is a beekeeper who has never before been involved in any liberal causes. She got just a fraction of the donations Boffy got, who was funded mostly from out-of-state billionaires and LABI controlled PACs. Our student test scores on national tests have long been near the bottom, but after the 8 years of Boffy and her fellow reformers, LA is at the absolute bottom of the ranking of the states on national test scores.<br />
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In the linked article by Sue Lincoln, we find that Grigsby made the decision to take over public education and redirect much of our school taxes to private schools and charter schools because he became irritated at having to pay the engineers of his construction company based on the number of school age children that they chose to send to private schools. What monumental arrogance!<br />
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So John White and BESE, as the tools of LABI, are systematically usurping the powers of local school boards in operating public education, by approving more charter and voucher schools and by forcing teachers to spend an extraordinary portion of the school year prepping children for state tests.<br />
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Now, Grigsby and LABI, having achieved almost total control of BESE and the legislature, have their sights set on the office of Governor and the few remaining legislative districts they want to control. This would make their control of state government complete. Recent news reports have revealed that <a href="https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/politics/elections/article_426591e6-f11c-11e9-976d-673ad5d0018a.html">Grigsby offered support </a>to one of the candidates for Senate district 16 to drop out of the race in seeking a judgeship as a consolation prize so that Grigsby's choice could win District 16. One Republican candidate actually resigned from the party in protest of Grigsby's attempt to corrupt the elections.<br />
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LABI's new goal, now that they have achieved total control of education, is to elect Eddie Rispone (A major Common Core promoter and a promotor of his own tax breaks for supporting private schools) as Governor. He and his rich kingmakers also intend to achieve a veto proof majority of the legislature. The achievement of these political goals would do no less than allow LABI to control basically every function of state government. What could LABI do with all this power? Here are just a few possibilities:<br />
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<li>Even more outrageous tax exemptions for super-big businesses in Louisiana along with a much bigger tax burden for the cost of services such as education, police, road repairs, health care, etc. shifted to average tax payers and small buisnesses.</li>
<li>An increasing segregation of our schools to allow more wealthy families to send their children to better funded and staffed schools while the neediest students would receive less and less support to reach educational equity.</li>
<li>A severe curtailment of the legal rights of citizens and workers who are literally being poisoned by industry (check out one of the <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cancer-alley-reserve-louisiana-denka-plant-health-risk-higher-national-average-2019-07-24/">many articles </a>about Louisiana's cancer alley) and recovery of damages for job injuries where big businesses are responsible.</li>
<li>Reduction of Industry liability for coastal restoration and pollution cleanup.</li>
<li>Continued squashing of the rights of labor unions to represent their members.</li>
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This is where we are headed with the control of State Government by big business and self appointed king makers.</div>
Michael Deshotelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05080847575738076946noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5392952820096205874.post-40105207973992322822019-10-14T03:44:00.000-05:002019-10-14T03:44:27.107-05:00LABI and out-of-state donors still dominate BESEIt is so painful to me personally to review or recount the results of the BESE election this past weekend that I am grateful to <a href="https://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2019/10/12/la-bese-has-been-bought-once-again-maybe-not-completely/?fbclid=IwAR3qSHkYStnp0RYdFDU8wVmCNoqCXjS9Oth2uumvifH2GgpCsH5neFs9Oow">Mercedes Schneider</a> for having done an excellent job of telling the continuing sad story of the LABI victory over education. I urge all of my readers to take the time to read Schnieder's post.<br />
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I want to express my sincere appreciation to the excellent and independent candidates who did their very best to present themselves to the public as good alternatives to the insanity that has controlled and will continue to control education in Louisiana. Unfortunately they could not compete with the effect of big money on an election that most voters know little about. Most of the voters in our state continue to assume credibility for those candidates who spend enough to get their signs and ads out in the media. Most people do not take the time to read facebook posts from candidates who do not enjoy funding by the real decision makers in this state.<br />
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For my part, I will continue to monitor and report the actions of BESE as well as the legislature for as long is I am able to do so. I am very hopeful that at some time in the not-too-distant future we can restore the creativity of teachers and make effective attempts to better prepare our students for life using our K-12 public education system.Michael Deshotelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05080847575738076946noreply@blogger.com