Louisiana Educator

No Evidence for Voucher Choice

2012-02-06T07:26:00.001-06:00

The heart of Governor Jindal's education reform package this legislative session will be a proposal that any low income family whose children attend a "C" or lower rated public school could receive a "scholarship" to attend a private or parochial school instead of his or her public school. The governor makes the claim that parents are the best judges of the best school for their child. To drive his point home the governor made a big indignant fuss over a statement by LAE Executive Director, Michael Walker-Jones that some low income parents may not have a clue as to which school is actually better for their child. Here's why Walker-Jones is correct and the Governor is guilty of misleading demagoguery on this issue:

So far the only accepted measure of a successful school has been the School Performance Score which is based primarily on student performance on state tests and which has been used quite arbitrarily by BESE to assign letter grades to schools. At the same time, no such data has been collected on private and parochial schools because these students are not tested by the state. So the governor and his supporters use state test scores to rate some public schools as unacceptable, so that parents can receive "scholarships" to switch their children to private schools, yet there is no such data on the private schools. The parents really don't have a clue based on the data used by the state to rate the private schools as good or bad.

There is however a small amount of data that has been collected on students in the New Orleans area where the public to private "scholarships" have been allowed for several years. This linked article from the Times-Picayune does a good job of analyzing the results of such limited public to private vouchers to date. The author also presents data from other systems such as the Milwaukee school system which have more extensive data on such programs. The title of the article makes it clear that the Governor has no legitimate justification to unleash this destruction of our Louisiana public education system. But just as he proposes to privatize the state group benefits health insurance program with absolutely no evidence of improved value for taxpayers, he is doing the same to the education of our children.

Do I think the Governor's vouchers will produce an immediate mass exodus of public school students to private and parochial schools? Absolutely not! The existing private and parochial schools do not have the capacity or the willingness to take on public school students en mass. That's not the danger. The problem is private schools are by their nature "exclusive". They will definitely take on some students but they will systematically exclude the lowest performers, the discipline problems, and the special needs students. In many cases, parents will not be the ones choosing schools for their children. The administrators of the private schools will be doing the choosing.

But there is another more destructive trend that will grow with time. When it becomes clear that there is money to be made by capturing public school students, new private schools are sure to spring up. If such schools are not carefully regulated by those entrusted to guard our taxpayer dollars, we cannot even imagine how many ways our taxes can be wasted and we cannot yet estimate how many students will be harmed. We see many abuses already in some of the semiprivate charter schools that have sprung up to handle takeover schools. The state has done a poor job of monitoring such schools and there is much evidence of artificially inflated school performance scores, huge salaries paid to administrators, unreported child abuse cases, and on and on. How will our state department possibly monitor dozens of new schools that are totally private. Yet the governor proposes to hand over millions of our tax dollars to these unregulated untested programs.

It is quite ironic that the public schools that have been micromanaged by the state for years will now be damaged and weakened in favor of profit making schools that have almost no safeguards for the taxpayers or parents. The LAE Exec. Walker-Jones is right. Many parents who are being used to support this scheme don't have a clue!

Jindal's Good Ideas

2012-01-30T08:46:00.000-06:00

Not everything about Governor Jindal's reform plan is wrong or misguided. There are definitely some good ideas in the plan that should be considered. Here are some suggestions for making important parts of his reform package work.

Streamline the Tenure Process and Remove Political Influence: All teachers want from tenure is a fair process that provides a review for possible errors or bias in the event they are recommended for dismissal. Sometimes personality conflicts occur on the job that have nothing to do with a teacher's performance. In rare instances there may be an effort to remove a teacher so that a politically favored person can have the job. That's what tenure should prevent. If the changes maintain reasonable due process, it is good for everyone to streamline the tenure process.
Revising Teacher Pay Schedules: The Governor is right about wanting to allow flexibility in some areas of teacher pay. It is a good idea to provide a special incentive pay supplement for teachers who agree to teach in some of our most difficult turnaround schools. This extra pay could easily be justified by the fact that more work is expected of teachers in a school with a high proportion of at risk students. One of the most critical areas in such schools is a major effort to improve communication with parents and to produce an increase in positive parental involvement. It takes extra time for teachers to communicate with parents, often after regular working hours. It is not a good idea however to "rob Peter to pay Paul". The governor proposes in his speech that pay increments for years of experience be abolished so that the money can be used to pay those who are more deserving or valuable. What about an experienced teacher who has put down roots in a community and who has a family to support and a mortgage to pay? Does it make sense for a school system to pay more to an inexperienced teacher who is much more mobile and will more easily leave the school system no matter what he/she is being paid. The Governor also suggests in his speech that persons who take advantage of alternative certification methods to become teachers should be allowed to receive higher pay from "day one". How can such higher pay be justified when the person has not yet demonstrated the ability to teach? In considering pay for experience, there should be such a thing as a social contract with long time employees that rewards commitment to the school system. Part of Jindal's plan would destroy that social contract and the loyalty long time employees have to a school system. Instead of forcing local systems to reduce the pay of some teachers to pay others more, the state should help fund incentive pay to attract good teachers to difficult to staff positions.
Paperwork Reduction: The Governor talks about reducing needless paperwork that takes away from teaching time. Great idea! Often the state's efforts to ensure compliance with all kinds of mandates generates huge amounts of time consuming paperwork for administrators and teachers. Teachers need this time for classroom planning and for actual time with students.
More Flexibility With Education Dollars: The Governor wants to request a waiver from burdensome federal regulations on the use of federal dollars. Many federal mandates on the use of federal funding have not produced acceptable results. Yet many local educators believe they can get better results by using the funds in more productive ways. The same may also be true of state funding. With money as tight as it is today, flexibility would be a welcome change.
Early Childhood Education: This is one area where effective programs have been shown to produce good results for students for their entire school careers. Any change that would ensure that the most effective programs such as LA-4 are expanded would be desirable. Many educators question however, why the Governor recently passed up possible federal funding in this area.
Empowering Teachers: Both Governor Jindal and Superintendent White talk about empowering teachers. This is also a good idea because teachers are smart and empowering teachers would recognize their status as professionals. I do not see anything however, in the Governor's reform proposals that would empower teachers in any way. On the contrary many of the proposals place teachers in constant jeopardy of suffering from mistakes in a rushed evaluation system, reduction of due process rights, seniority rights, and subject teachers to whims of the State Department of Education. This is the opposite of teacher empowerment.

Those are the potentially good ideas in Governor Jindal's reform package that could make improvements in our public education system. The problem is that some of the Governor's other initiatives such as more vouchers, and more charters will take vital funding from public schools at a time when MFP freezes and increases in mandated costs have already devastated local school system budgets.

The worst thing about the Governor's reform package is that as presently proposed it will make it even more difficult for educators to close the achievement gap for our high risk students. Struggling schools in high poverty areas need the best administrators and the best teachers and, yes, even more resources. The new evaluation plan is guaranteed to drive the best teachers and administrators away from such schools because the system will be punishing educators for factors over which they have no control. In addition, the vouchers and charters will only draw away the highest potential students from high poverty schools leaving the students that are more expensive to educate. Finally, switching to site based budgeting may make it more difficult for school systems to allocate extra resources to such schools.

It is unfortunate that the Governor's good ideas may be overshadowed by the destructive ones.

School Choice; A Short History Lesson

2012-01-23T13:11:00.002-06:00

"Freedom of Choice" That was the title of some of the original plans for school desegregation proposed by many school systems in Louisiana in the early stages of federally mandated school desegregation. Some school boards in Louisiana had originally proposed to desegregate schools by allowing students who had previously been "trapped" in racially segregated schools to transfer to a school with a majority of other race students. The purpose was also to guarantee equal opportunity to such students to receive their education in a school that was perceived to have better opportunities than their segregated school. This looks a lot like Governor Jindal's more recent proposal doesn't it? Although the Governor's proposal is not a racial desegregation plan, it is supposed to work in a similar way. Students would be allowed to transfer to another school that is perceived by parents to offer better opportunities. Another difference is that the Governor now assumes that the "superior" schools parents could choose would be private and parochial schools. These are schools that have never participated in the accountability program that has labeled some of our public schools as failing.

The "freedom of choice" desegregation proposals across the nation however, were struck down by the federal courts as not sufficient to reverse the many years of entrenched segregation. Instead the courts in most cases implemented a system of forced transfers of students to balance the ratios of black and white students in schools. This plan was referred to by many opponents as "forced busing". After 50 years of desegregation efforts it is obvious from the numbers that many of these efforts to achieve desegregation failed. In cities such as Baton Rouge, many white parents either moved to neighboring parishes or enrolled their children in private schools. The East Baton Rouge school system over a period of 40 years therefore went from a black-white ratio of 40% black and 60% white to 81% black, 11% white, and 8% other. Even so, the East Baton Rouge parish school system has now been declared by the federal courts as unitary or desegregated.

Soon the legislature will consider Governor Jindal's new "school choice" proposal. The two new criteria for "school choice" will be that a student be originally enrolled in a "C" or lower rated public school and that his/her parents have an income below a certain level. If the new choice legislation does not contain additional careful restrictions, it is quite possible that it will result in a new variety of segregation. Since private schools by their nature can choose which students they are willing to enroll, and since most such schools have only limited slots available for new students, it makes sense that they will choose to enroll mainly the students with the highest potential for achievement. So it turns out that most of the "choice" will be in the hands of private school administrators rather than with parents. Incoming State Superintendent John White seemed to endorse this idea when he stated recently that parents of "promising" students who are presently enrolled in low performing public schools should be able to choose another school where the parents believe their child will be more successful.

This new segregation could occur when students who "show promise" are "chosen" to attend private schools and some of the new charter schools that will spring up under the Governor's plan, leaving the low achievers, discipline problem students, and special needs students in the public schools. Such student transfers would result in a decline of average student achievement in many public schools. This trend would be the exact opposite of what the No Child Left Behind law and Louisiana's accountability system were intended to rectify.

The idea that creating "competition" for low performing schools (that in fact are serving high poverty communities) will somehow force improvement is wrong. It has not been shown to work anywhere in this country! Such a scheme is based on the assumption that low performance is caused by lazy or incompetent teachers and administrators. The real reason for low performance is, to paraphrase Carville; "It's the poverty stupid!" To chastise such schools with D or F ratings and to encourage some selected students to transfer out is destructive. What Louisiana needs to do is to work hard to provide quality education to students in their communities by encouraging positive parental involvement and by providing incentives for teachers and administrators who have demonstrated an ability and willingness to work effectively with high poverty students. The Jindal "choice" plan will only set education back.

Jindal Reform Effort Misguided; Destructive

2012-01-19T06:37:00.006-06:00

I have been involved with Louisiana education for over 40 years now and never have I seen such a misguided and wrong headed attempt to implement change in our educational system as was announced by Governor Jindal on Tuesday! If you study the Governor's proposals you can only come to the conclusion that he believes that the teaching profession in Louisiana is rife with incompetent or lazy teachers and administrators, and that if we simply fire and replace them our students will magically start doing much better on the state tests. Almost everything in the Governor's plan is based on this incorrect assumption.

Probably the most dangerous part of the plan is the proposal to expand tremendously the school voucher programs that have apparently failed to produce results in the New Orleans area. According to the local charter school advocates in New Orleans led by former BESE member Leslie Jacobs, the students who got "scholarships" to attend private and parochial schools have performed at an even lower level than the students in the Recovery District. So the Governor wants to take an ineffective program and allow it to drain students from over 70% of the public schools in the state (any school rated as "C" or lower by the new school grading system). This program could become a huge drain on public school funding as students get free tuition to attend private schools. This would effectively become the largest (in terms of percentage of population) school voucher program in the country. All this damage would be done to public schools without a shred of evidence that it improves the education of the transferring students!

The Governor claims that the "scholarship" students will still be tested using the state testing program in their new schools to insure accountability. This is what I predict to be the long term result of this expanded voucher program: The private and parochial schools will carefully select the students they want for the limited amount of space for new students in their schools and cull out many using expulsions until they have retained only the higher performing students. The public schools will then have to contend with more lower performing and more special needs students than before with less money. Contrary to what some parents are being led to believe, this process will result in an even greater disparity in the education of high poverty students.

In addition to expanded vouchers, the Governor plans to propose that any group wanting to set up a charter school in any parish or city school system rated as D or F would be able to go directly to BESE (which is now controlled by charter school advocates) to have new charters approved. This rule would apply to over 50% of the student population in Louisiana. Some charter organizations would even benefit from an expedited approval process. All this means that there would be huge drains on the MFP for many of our local school systems without the opportunity for the local citizens in that area to have any input in the process! The "smarter" charter management organizations also know how to use public money for recruitment campaigns that also drain off the higher potential students from public school systems.

The Governor also wants the new untested teacher evaluation program to form the basis for firing or demoting large numbers of teachers based on student test scores. His plan would also encourage local systems to reallocate teacher salary money to give merit pay raises to teachers who are deemed proficient by the new evaluation system. The problem with this plan is that it is based upon an untested value added model similar to one that is already failing in Tennessee and New York. Principals there are reporting that all the VAM evaluation does is produce much more of a bureaucratic burden on principals with highly questionable results. In Louisiana the two chief architects of the new Value Added Model have resigned from their roles in the program, passing this potential monster on to other staff. Such an inaccurate, inappropriate system for evaluating and rewarding teachers can only destroy the morale of an already besieged teaching force in Louisiana.

There is much more to this destructive list of reform priorities announced by the Governor that needs to be analyzed, particularly after it is drafted into legislation. I intend to use this blog to attempt to inform educators of the details and potential hazards of this reform plan as it unfolds. I hope that educators will make their voices heard by the Governor and the Legislature about the real consequences of these proposals on the welfare of our students.

Click on this link to see the text of the Governor's speech on this plan to LABI

A Serious Blow to the Teaching Profession

2012-01-12T07:21:00.000-06:00

BESE has now formally appointed John White, a man from far away with almost no professional credentials as our State Superintendent of Education. To accomplish this, the Governor and BESE were willing to waive all of the professional requirements in Louisiana Law. The following is my comment on this appointment:

This appointment of the new State Superintendent by BESE deals a serious blow to teaching and school administration in Louisiana as a profession. Mr White may be a fine person, but his credentials as a professional educator are too minimal for him to be respected as the leader of education by the 50,000 teachers and administrators in the field who have real education credentials. It is permissible to have the Board overseeing education to be composed of lay people but it is bad policy for BESE to waive all the professional requirements for the position of State Superintendent that are in Louisiana law. How can this man be leader of a profession of which he is not a true member? I believe this appointment is bad for the morale of professional educators in Louisiana. The fact that we are all frustrated with the poor performance of many of our Louisiana students does not justify the scapegoating of the entire teaching profession. If we look carefully into this issue we will find that we are punishing the very professionals who are working the hardest to prepare our students for the future. Once we discourage these dedicated teachers, and they leave the profession, they will be almost impossible to replace.
Michael Deshotels, Retired Educator

Have You Been Invited?

2012-01-10T07:48:00.005-06:00

According to the notice linked here, on January 30, Louisiana will conduct an education summit titled LEADERSHIP FOR CHANGE! 2012 Louisiana Education Summit, where presumably proposals for education reform for Louisiana will be discussed. The conference will be led by Governor Jindal and Representative Stephen Carter (Rep. Carter was just appointed chairman of the House Education Committee).

This education summit should be a big deal! 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.

Instead the agenda and presenters for the conference makes it look more like an indoctrination session for selected persons by a group of education reform carpetbaggers who seem to be selling schemes for education privatization to Louisiana. In this scenario, the Louisiana education system is considered by the new carpetbaggers as backwards, ineffective, wasteful, and dominated by entrenched defenders of the status quo who only want to protect their cushy jobs. The new carpetbaggers want to encourage the Legislature to remove or modify teacher tenure so that a certain percentage of teachers can be fired based on student test performance. EBR is already considering a plan that would fire 25% of their teaching force based on student scores (see my Dec. 23 post). The main thrust of the summit though seems to be to recommend that Louisiana make "bold" changes in the educational system that would expand school choice in the form of more charters and more vouchers. Governor Jindal has already implied that he favors an expansion of the voucher system now operating in New Orleans. Leslie Jacobs of New Orleans reports however, that the test performance of the voucher students has been even lower than that of the students who stayed in the Recovery District. Take a look at this recent article from the Times-Picayune where the reporter Andrew Vanacore claims to have the scoop from some of the Governor's insider power brokers about his plans for education reform in the coming legislative session.

Representative Carter said he thought Louisiana leaders should hear from leaders in other states who had been successful at education reform. Lets take a look at some of the presenters at this Leadership for Change Summit:

The keynote speaker is Joel Klein, former chancellor of the New York City public education system. His background is that of a very high priced lawyer. As New York schools Chancellor he presided over a reportedly dramatic improvement of student performance in that system only to find a few years later that it was the standard for student performance that had been lowered. When the standards were restored to their former rigor, it turned out that the system had made almost no progress. Mr Klein is now directing a new "for profit" education software and distance learning venture for NewsCorps tycoon Rupert Murdock.
The present Vice Chancellor of the New York school system will also speak, along with soon to be appointed State Superintendent, John White.
Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush is on the agenda. He is a major promoter of school choice and a virtual schools proposal called Digital Learning Now. We are informed that Jeb Bush is the one who suggested to Jindal the new school letter grading system which has inadvertently labeled 87% of the Louisiana Recovery District schools as "D" or "F".
Dr Howard Fuller, the founder of the Black Alliance for Education Choice will be a principal speaker. There may be a pitch here for school vouchers for black children.
Ben Austin of The Parent Revolution in California and Scott Shirley of Kipp Charter schools in Arkansas will serve on a panel

It looks like Louisiana is in for another major education reform push. This time the goal seems to be to let the private entrepreneurs with minimal education background have a go at it.

Real Education Improvements!

2012-01-03T06:11:00.000-06:00

As we start off the new year in Louisiana education I believe it is appropriate to highlight some of the real improvements in elementary secondary education we have witnessed in the past year. This blog often dwells on criticizing bad ideas, punitive reform plans and false promises made to the Louisiana public, so it is appropriate that we start off the new year with what we believe is working in public education. I believe that use of the combined intelligence of 70 local superintendents and 50,000 public school teachers is the best way to implement real education reform in Louisiana schools.

Public School Enrollment Increases: Though it causes a problem for the Governor and the Legislature to fund the increase cost of the MFP, public school enrollment increased significantly this school year. I believe the increase in public school enrollment shows that more parents believe their children can get a good education from the public schools. It means that local school systems all over the state are putting great emphasis on providing better services to our customers the parents and their children who attend public schools.

Graduation Rate Improves: The graduation rate in 2011 improved from 67 % to 70.9%. This did not happen by accident. It means that local school systems have concentrated their efforts on keeping students in school who normally would have dropped out between the 9th and 12th grades. In Assumption Parish, Superintendent Tibby Martinez gives credit to an effort to provide more career prep courses in high school. More students are motivated by better training programs for job entry or technical training after high school. In Natchitoches, the emphasis has been on credit recovery for at risk students. This school system's efforts were featured on an NBC Education Nation TV report on education advances.

Advanced Placement Courses Increased: Advanced placement courses which award college credit for high school students who demonstrate a certain level of mastery by passing an AP course culminating with an advanced placement test have increased across the state. In June, 2011 BESE approved a goal of having advanced placement courses offered in all school systems. Local school systems were already in the process of adding more and more AP courses, so this was an idea whose time had come. Students who pass AP courses have a much better chance of succeeding in college. For many of our high performing students this is just the kind of challenge they needed.

Virtual Schools Implenented By Local School Systems: The Advocate article linked here shows how St Martin Parish Schools will be utilizing virtual courses to attract and retain more students to their school system. In the Zachary Community School System my grandson has benefited from taking an extra math course offered using internet based instruction. According to the State Department of Education, some of the public school enrollment gains this year were due to transfer of students from home study programs and private schools to state approved virtual schools. In my post of January 6, 2011, I suggested that local school systems should take advantage of new technology to offer virtual school options to parents and students who prefer to receive instruction in an "at home setting". Such an offering could win significant numbers of students back from home schooling or private schools. I want to caution again however, that virtual instruction methods will only work for a small percentage of students who with the support of parents have the self discipline to establish an instruction routine in the home that approaches the structured instruction provided in a brick and mortar school. In most cases virtual instruction will not be effective for high-risk students.

The above developments represent real improvements in our public schools!

Flawed Plan Could Continue School System Decline

2011-12-23T07:22:00.002-06:00

The following is an analysis of the recently proposed EBR School System Strategic Plan. Thanks to Noel Hammatt for providing me with a paper pointing out some of his and other researchers major concerns with this plan. The link below connects you to the actual plan now awaiting school board approval.

A special citizens and school board committee has just submitted the final draft of a proposed strategic plan for the East Baton Rouge Parish school system. This plan is a poorly thought out attempt to have EBR participate in some of the latest education reform fads without regard to what really works. It contains several major proposals that I believe are contrary to sound educational practices. These tactics could harm rather than improve this struggling school system.

The EBR school board members that took office in 2011 decided that a citizen's committee should be appointed for the purpose of revising the district's strategic plan. This new plan was intended to be a reform plan aimed at boosting student performance and the school system's ranking among public school systems in the state. The final result is a highly impractical plan that mostly ignores the real issues in the school system while scapegoating and needlessly punishing many of the professional educators of the system.

During the past 25 years the EBR system, once a leader in the state, has declined significantly mostly because a self perpetuating flight of upper and middle class students from the system and a corresponding erosion of public support. Now that many parents have pulled their children out of the school system, it is becoming more difficult to maintain citizen involvement and continued funding for the school system. Even so, the school system has managed to produce academic results in some areas that are commendable. Most observers agree on the success of the gifted and talented and magnet school programs.

The school system however, is now comprised of over 82% students classified as high poverty. If you have regularly read this blog you know that many education researchers find that such a student composition produces huge challenges to any school system. We would expect that any strategic plan would have as a main focus the goal of attracting back the thousands of students who have fled to private schools, and some of the families that have moved to neighboring parishes to escape the school system.

The fact is Baton Rouge, like many other high poverty urban school districts, is plagued by many incidents of disruptive behavior and disrespect for authority by some students at many of its schools. Many parents are reluctant to send their children to the public school in their community because they fear for the safety of their child and because fights, bullying, truancy, poor discipline, and classroom disruptions make it difficult for students to receive a good education. Many parents feel that teachers and administrators lack the authority to impose discipline, order, and a healthy learning environment in their public schools. If a child cannot qualify for one of the magnet schools or gifted programs, his/her parents have little hope that regular schools can provide a good education. Those are the issues members of the public expect the school board to deal with effectively. Those are the critical issues that should be addressed in any strategic plan for the school system.

Instead, the proposed strategic plan presented to the EBR Board last week contains one major goal with few practical strategies for accomplishing this goal. The primary "bold goal" proposed is to upgrade the EBR system performance so that it moves up to the top ten of the rankings of public school systems in Louisiana by the year 2020. The bold goal also promises to implement school choice for all families.

The plan authors expect to accomplish this "bold goal" partly by implementing the new state value-added teacher evaluation plan and by firing the lowest rated 25% of the school system's teachers and rewarding the top 25%. The plan makes it clear that teachers and principals will be retained primarily on the basis of their student performance statistics. Such a plan apparently assumes that the low performance of many EBR students has occurred mostly because of  lazy or incompetent teachers and principals rather than the negative impact of an extremely high poverty rate of the students enrolled in the system. This is like a hospital deciding to fire the doctors who work in the intensive care unit because many of the patients there are seriously ill. It is like blaming the Louisiana health care system because so many of our citizens lead unhealthy lifestyles. The major flaw in this plan is that there is absolutely no evidence that firing and replacing a certain percentage of teachers improves student performance! Take a look at the latest results on "miracle" schools by Gary Rubinstein.

Many of the teachers in EBR already feel like they are under siege by state and federal school authorities who blame them for not being able to use their classrooms to correct some of the major problems of our society. They are sick of being forced to teach to the state tests in a way that inhibits the creativity of teachers and destroys much of the joy of learning for students. Many teachers feel that they are not properly supported in maintaining discipline and that some students who behave very poorly in school are coddled and allowed chance after chance to disrupt the education of other students. Teachers will surely see this evaluation and dismissal system based upon factors over which they have no control as an attack on educators by their own school board. This ensuing destruction of teacher morale will only cause further decline of the school system. Did the committee consider the impracticality of firing and replacing 877 teachers? (That's the 25% mandated in the plan. Will the school system go back to hiring ill suited Phillipino teachers?)  What if after damaging the careers of all those teachers, the school system finds that the replacements do not produce any better results?

The proposed plan also recommends the implementation of site based budgeting which could be just an unnecessary headache for principals. When you add this extra duty to the huge burden of the new teacher evaluation system, (now every teacher will have to be completely reevaluated each year using a complex new system) principals may end up neglecting important duties such as campus organization, discipline strategies, critical parent involvement projects, and faculty team building strategies.

One weird component of the strategic plan would tie priorities for school physical plant improvements to a "school climate scorecard" (this is really just an opinion survey of teachers about the effectiveness of the school staff). What possible connection could there between staff effectiveness and the school physical plant? Apparently the committee believed that the school climate referred to air conditioning and heating.

The part of the proposed plan that would provide incentives for effective teachers to teach in high need, low performing schools is commendable, but will possibly be nullified by the requirement that teachers are to be dismissed based on the performance of students. There is no indication at this time that the state value added teacher evaluation will make fair allowances in its rating system for teachers who teach in low performing schools.

My opinion as an observer and retired educator who once taught in EBR is that the most important action that could restore faith in the EBR school system is for the school board to initiate a program aimed at restoring order, student safety, and respect for teachers, principals, and students in all schools. The present system makes it almost impossible for school authorities to deal effectively with a serious incidence of disruptive and violent behavior in schools which is a spillover of an increasingly violent and lawless community (Check the youth murder statistics in Baton Rouge). The proposed plan gives lip service to safety and order but offers no practical solutions.

The strategy #5 to: "Create in each school a safe and supportive environment that promotes academic excellence, healthy choices, and personal character and responsibility" will not occur unless teachers and principals are given full authority to maintain proper discipline in each school with a minimum of bureaucratic obstacles. Many middle and high school teachers believe the PBIS system is ineffective and needlessly bureaucratic for those age levels.  Often by the time the system allows real action to be taken to correct a seriously disruptive student, major damage has been done to the classroom environment and valuable instruction time has been lost. I am not suggesting that only high poverty students be held accountable for proper behavior. It should be understood that all students, rich and poor are expected to behave properly in school.

New principals should be provided intensive training in building a positive school climate in part by implementing effective discipline techniques and by establishing effective communication systems with parents. All administrators need to know how to abide by state and federal rules while still effectively maintaining order and and a productive atmosphere in their schools.

Every effort should be made to encourage positive parental involvement in schools. At the same time, support of law enforcement and the courts should continue to be sought to enforce school attendance and truancy reduction. There have been commendable efforts in this area by the present superintendent and the local DA. These should be continued and reinforced. I guess one of my major concerns with this new plan is that it gives no credit to local administrators and teachers for the many successful programs now in place.

Support of the business community should be sought for developing programs of mentors for at risk students combined with a program that shows the connection between success in school and a good job in the future. The school system needs to develop more good career training programs that are connected with productive careers that require various levels of training instead of focusing mostly on college prep training. (Presently only a small fraction of school system graduates, as indicated by ACT scores, have any chance of succeeding in 4 year colleges).

A plan such as the one used in Iberville Parish for the establishment of special high-expectation math-science and art academies should be considered. Enrollment would be available to all students who meet rigorous requirements of academic performance and discipline. The difference between such schools and magnet schools is that they are basically open enrollment (school choice). Students who do not meet the strict discipline and performance requirements within a specified time period however, lose their right to remain enrolled. This program in Iberville has been shown to attract many students who had previously moved to private schools. The school board should also investigate the possibility of establishing it's own virtual charter school aimed at attracting students whose parents want to guide their children's education from a home environment.

I believe that if the above elements of a strategic plan were written in plain language, adopted, and properly implemented, the school board could count on enthusiastic support from employees and the community for revitalizing the Baton Rouge public school system. I am very much concerned that the new proposed strategic plan will only result in further deterioration of the school system.

Jindal Toys With Merit Pay

2011-12-12T07:26:00.002-06:00

See this Baton Rouge Advocate story for a report on a Jindal speech to CABL (Council for A Better Louisiana) where he thrilled his supportive audience with the possibility that teacher merit pay could be the next "bold reform" he may propose for public education. The Governor naively repeats the false assumption made by many uninformed education reformers that the quality of teachers is the most important factor in improving student performance. I know it is shocking to many "reformers", but in many high poverty schools, the quality of teachers makes very little difference. (Click here for a recent article on the real problem at salon.com) That's because other factors are so overwhelming in their negative impact that many of the efforts of good or even great teachers are inconsequential! Considering the fact that over 60% of Louisiana's public school students are high poverty students, the governor, CABL, and other non-educator reformers are attacking the wrong problem.

Once you read the Advocate article above, I hope you will take the time to read the Advocate reader comments I have reprinted below. Based on their insight about education issues, I suspect that most of these commenters have experience in a real classroom. I don't agree with everything they say here, but I feel that for the most part these observers make it clear how impractical the governor's proposal would be. These comments also tell us a lot about the level of frustration in the education community with the dabbling of amateurs like Jindal, Bill Gates, and John White.

Comment by spqr - Friday, December 09, 2011
No one wants to hear that quality education is available. Like sheep, they believe what they read in newspapers and what comes from the mouth of a governor owing political favors to those wanting such changes in public education. What do we do with the army of students who do not want to learn? What do we do with the masses of uneducated parents, some with criminal records, who do not care for their children? What do we do with the overage population at school only to eat lunch and cause trouble in the face of weakening discipline policies designed to keep kids in school while disrupting instruction? Over crowded classes. Gangs. Drugs. Apathy. Sex. Violence. Disrespect for authority. Refusal to do homework. High absentees (The truancy program is a joke). Welfare. Poor political leadership. Out of touch, but well-meaning educational groups that think they know, but don't know they don't know. Unfunded mandates. School boards members with no teaching experience. Federal bureaucracy. Inflammatory anti-public education editorials written by the rich business classes. Frozen teacher salaries. In the middle of it all trying to help the students achieve are the middle class teachers. And they are despised by the Jindal administration. And the public buys it.

Comment by timesright - Friday, December 09, 2011
Jindal said one of the current problems is that “we treat all teachers the same with our one size fits all system.” What an interesting statement when one test is to fit all students. Not surprising that this "let's reward our effective teachers" is the very next Jindal mantra. Monetary incentives are not why teachers are in the classroom. They wouldn't be there in the first place if that were the case. Comments by spqr are right on. A governor who has been spoon fed the things to say and the media who seems to be eating from the same dish are bringing to the table a public who is offered only one choice from the menu. That choice being anything that gnaws away at teachers and public education. Let's keep teachers and public education on the menu.

Comment by squiggly - Friday, December 09, 2011
The only thing Jindal's plan will accomplish is to increase cheating, by teachers and principals, on standardized tests. What these idiots don't understand is that they are dealing with social issues in the public schools and not teacher/school quality issues. Rating schools and teachers based on standardized tests is a flawed concept because the tests are flawed. I personally know kids who have attended schools that are rated D and F schools, but who nevertheless score above average on the ACT and went on to finish college. If the schools were really bad, how could that be possible. The answer is those kids came mostly from a middle class background. In actuality, what the schools are being rated on is the economic and cultural background of the majority of the students who attend said schools; after all that is what standardized tests measure, not how intelligent the student is or what they are taught in school. Maslow's theory of the hierarchy of needs is what's at play on this issue. Instead of arbitrarily rewarding teachers for fake achievement, that money would be well spent on hiring a group of psychologists and sociologists to figure out how to motivate under privileged students to focus on doing well in school in spite of the hand that has been dealt to them in life.

Comment by bigfatman - Friday, December 09, 2011
Senario : Teacher A teaches honor students at a magnet school. Teacher B teaches low achieving ,over age, socially promoted students. Teacher A gets rewarded because students do well on testing. Teacher B gets the shaft because students showed poor advancement. Evaluations!!!! Where's the fairness????

Comment by mava06 - Friday, December 09, 2011
Bigfatman is absolutely correct. As long as some teachers have classrooms filled with students who bring their baggage to school and other teachers have students who get to school ready to listen, behave and learn, the deck will always be stacked. It's been my experience working in more schools than I can count as an itinerant teacher that teachers of the tough kids work many more additional hours both at school and at home for minimal gains, but gains nonetheless. Teachers who have the "easy" kids typically leave school much earlier because their jobs are somewhat easier. Any growth by the difficult kids should be rewarded, but the current assessment system labels them as "failures" for not making arbitrarily high and unattainable gains. Those teachers who are working the hardest will not necessarily be rewarded for their hard work. Neither will their students. Until the system fully accounts for individual differences and rewards the hard work it takes to take kids from nothing to anything more than they came with then Jindal's idea will stink to high heaven. Just another non-educator making decisions. All people who make decisions for teachers should be contractually required and obligated to spend a number of days actually trying to teach and they should have to do it in the tough schools right before Christmas or spring break or the end of the school year. They should be required to be successful doing it by turning in good test scores. Would Mr. jindal like to have businessmen and politicians telling his doctor how to practice medicine on him and his children? For that matter, where do HIS kids go to school? I can almost bet they don't go to public school.

Comment by redstickhornet - Friday, December 09, 2011
Ok, what I want to know is why should there be more Jindal involvement in this? WHAT TRACK RECORD of success does our state have in rewarding the right people or punishing the wrong people in ANY INDUSTRY or sector in this state? What successful model of oversight and accountability has Jindal developed? How many of us want to work in a profession where the LA legislature devises the pay scale, evaluation, and incentives? What is fundamentally conservative about about some of Jindal's education policy. Education is such a political football in this state. This needs to stop. What other professions would endure this? Are professors at LSU/SU etc. going to be evaluated using value-added analyses? Are physicians and other health care professionals going to submit to value-added? I could go on and on, but I know there is no need.

Comment by Traveler - Friday, December 09, 2011
Many certified educators are necessary to support the work of the classroom teacher. These 'ancillary" certified educators include, but are not limited to, guidance counselors, librarians, speech pathologists, occupational therapists, social workers, physical education coaches, art teachers, and music teachers. Ancillary teachers have no "official" rolls, because they do not teach a core subject----but try running an effective school system without them! At present, there is no plan for evaluating these employees. Since they are not considered "accountable" for the results of students' standardized test scores, there is no plan for how to reward them for students' progress or "punish" them for students' lack of progress. This is just one more example of how poorly thought-out the new teacher evaluation system is. Yet the legislature and BESE approved this half-baked plan!

White: "Charters Are the Answer"

2011-12-05T08:07:00.004-06:00

Former state superintendent Paul Pastorek at least gave lip service to the idea that some traditional schools could be acceptable to the State Department of Education. Incoming superintendent White by contrast is a "one trick pony". He plans to tell the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board ( I suggest educators read this revealing Advocate article very carefully) that the one solution to improving schools is to convert as many low performing schools as possible into charters. Charters in White's mind are the be-all and end-all for improving schools. According to the Advocate article, he wants to bring "the New Orleans strategy" to Baton Rouge and other school districts with low performing schools. He would like to convince the local school boards to convert all low performing public schools into independently run charters. The only problem with that solution is that if they follow the New Orleans strategy, the Baton Rouge schools would be adopting an inferior system!

The truth is that even though the RSD has had control of three fourths of the student population in New Orleans for five and a half years, that school system is still performing below all school systems in the state except for St. Helena (which is already partially controlled by the Recovery District). If all RSD schools (some do not have scores yet because of reorganizations or new start ups) would be given an SPS score, over 50% of the New Orleans Recovery District schools would be rated as "F" by the state's new letter grading system. (The official percentage receiving F is 46.5%) The average ACT score for RSD graduates is below 16, indicating that very few such grads have a chance of getting a college education. The only "success" here is a slick public relations spin pulled off on the news media and much of the general public by the charter school promoters.

Just how did so many elected leaders and some of the major news media come to believe that the New Orleans Recovery District and its charter schools had "saved" the troubled New Orleans public school system? Some of it is wishful thinking. Everyone wants to believe that by simply teaching smarter and harder, and just letting competition and the free enterprise system work, any population of underperfoming students can experience success. Unfortunately most of the perceived success of RSD and its charter schools is a cruel hoax. How was it done?

Much of the false perception, is caused by focusing on a small minority of the charters that have demonstrated pretty good performance by recruiting the best students in the Recovery District. The New Orleans Recovery District is different from other Recovery schools because the special law forming it allowed it to take in some higher performing schools and student populations. These few "successful" schools have then been marketed by the charter advocates as typical of the success that can be obtained by charters. The problem is that this handful of schools has no more of a typical student population than the magnet schools found in most large school systems. So out of the 71 RSD schools that have been assigned scores, only 5 schools or 7% of the total have qualified for a "B" on the new letter grading system. There are no schools in the Recovery District that qualify for an A. Those 5 "B" schools are succeeding at the expense of many of the direct run RSD schools and other charters that have to take the lower performing and discipline problem students rejected by the high performing charters. As a result, approximately 50% of all the other schools in the New Orleans RSD are rated as "F" and another 40% are rated as "D".

The second strategy used by the charter school supporters to claim dramatic success is the use of percentage improvements in the School Performance Scores (SPS) compared to other public schools. By using percentage improvements instead of point increases, the RSD schools which started with low base scores are able to artificially magnify their progress. For example, if we compare a school in the Recovery District with an initial SPS score of 50 to one in EBR for example, with an initial score of 100, and both schools are able to improve their SPS by 10 points, the percentage improvement calculation makes it appear that the RSD school had double the success of the EBR school. That's because going from 50 to 60 SPS seems to be a gain of 20% while going from 100 to 110 SPS seems to be a gain of only 10%. Never mind the fact that the EBR school was already performing at double the rating of the RSD school when the comparison started. Many educators believe it is a greater accomplishment to take a school from an SPS of 100 to an SPS of 110 than for the 50 SPS school to gain 10 points. Average scores in low performing schools can be increased dramatically just by getting students to guess at questions on the LEAP that they normally would not have bothered to answer! That's why it makes no sense to compare schools using percentage improvements rather than actual performance.

John White is quoted as saying that some of the charter management organizations would like to expand to Baton Rouge because they are running out of "real estate" in New Orleans. That's not true. There are a number of schools in New Orleans that have no charter managers and are still run directly by the RSD and there are plenty of low performing charters. Those represent much "real estate" available for chartering. The truth is that the charter organizations do not want to charter these schools because they are filled with the low performing students they have already rejected. What the charters are looking for is virgin "real estate" where they can use their marketing budget (funded with taxpayer dollars) to draw the best students away from the regular public schools. Most public schools don't get to use marketing to draw the best students that are motivated and have supportive parents. Public schools are expected to serve the educational needs of all students. I believe part of the reason the Advance Baton Rouge charters failed was because their managers sincerely attempted to serve the same at risk student population inherited from the previous schools instead of trying to attract mostly high performers. (Also as I have stated before in this blog, they didn't have a clue about how to run a school)

There is a much fairer way to way to compare the East Baton Rouge system to the New Orleans Recovery District schools: A recent demographic study determined that East Baton Rouge Parish now has the greatest concentration of high poverty citizens in the state. Yes, even more poverty than New Orleans. (Don't forget that after Katrina, many of the highest poverty citizens from New Orleans settled in Baton Rouge instead of returning.) What does that have to do with schools? Well it turns out that a measure of poverty of students using the percentage of students qualifying for free or reduced lunch is the most reliable indicator of school performance. So if we want to compare the performance of students in New Orleans with those in Baton Rouge, it makes sense to compare their performance according to poverty. Also, since most of the schools in the New Orleans Recovery District were taken over five-and-a half years ago, a direct comparison seems reasonable. Here are the results from the State Department website. The average SPS for free or reduced lunch students in EBR was 76.6 compared to 69.1 for RSD students. Using the percentage method, that's a 10 percent advantage for EBR. The SPS for paid lunch (non-poverty) students for EBR averages 118. For the New Orleans Recovery District, that number is 81. This is a 46% advantage for EBR! A comparison of Black and White students in the two districts yields basically the same results with EBR outperforming RSD by a large margin. So EBR students outperform all categories of students in the New Orleans Recovery District by a large margin using the percentage comparisons of SPS.

East Baton Rouge has a higher poverty concentration than New Orleans, yet 14.5% of its schools are still rated as A or B schools by the state, while the New Orleans Recovery District has only 7% of its schools rated as B, and no schools rated as A. Why would EBR School Board members want to adopt the New Orleans model anyway?

This is the kind of leadership we can expect from John White when Jindal rams through his appointment as State Superintendent. He does not need a deep understanding of the principles of education or even knowledge of what it takes to run a successful school. His basic approach will be to invite all the charter operators to come in and grab as many public schools as they care to manage. He will then just sit back and pull their charters if they can't produce the minimum SPS, and start a new round of bidding by new charter managers. Pretty soon, most schools will be segregated into high poverty and low poverty, with very little opportunity for the high poverty students to break out of the cycle of low performance.

I believe public schools could do much better than this if we let real professional educators concentrate our best practices and solutions on the schools that need the most help. Unfortunately it may take years of mismanagement of our schools before we wake up.

Correction added 12/8/11. Upon double checking the schools in RSD for the comparison above, I found that I had inadvertently included three schools that are run by the Dept. of Corrections instead of the RSD. Also the comparison with EBR included all the RSD schools, not just the New Orleans RSD. Making the necessary changes would change the percentage of D and F schools a little but if we consider that there are several previously failing schools in New Orleans that do not have reported SPS scores but are likely still failing, the percentages would remain basically the same.

Charter Schools Self Destructing

2011-11-29T07:16:00.008-06:00

Just at a time when the future of charter schools in Louisiana looks brightest, more and more charter school operations are self-destructing. A few months ago, numerous violations of child protection laws and alleged cheating and other improprieties caused the cancellation of the charter for Abramson Science and Technology Charter in New Orleans. A State Department investigation continues of its sister charter, Kennilworth Science and Technology in Baton Rouge.

Now we learn (click for the Advocate story) that all 5 schools managed by the Advance Baton Rouge charter management organization will gradually be taken over or turned over to other managers by the State Recovery District. (There is apparently no consideration of returning these schools to their former parish school boards) The causes as we have reported before on this blog include administrative difficulties and a complete failure to improve academic performance. This is the same company that has proclaimed itself as a trainer of school principals for 21st Century schools. These failures occurred despite many management changes and special funding infusions including a huge federal grant for a Teacher Advancement Program initiative in the ABR schools. Wonder what will happen to the 13.3 million dollar federal grant if ABR loses its charters?

Now we have learned that Sojourner Truth Academy in New Orleans may lose its charter because of unacceptable School Performance Scores and amid allegations that special education regulations have been violated concerning the discipline and suspensions of special needs students. Teachers in this school and others have complained that some suspensions go unrecorded, that the charters "counsel out" undesirable or low performing students and that many students are being promoted improperly by bending or breaking state regulations. As I have pointed out before in this blog, there is an unhealthy and corrupting pressure to produce or even fabricate results in these charter operations. Apparently this school will also be returned to the RSD for reorganization. When this happens, the transition period allows such schools to start over in the calculation of a new School Performance Score (SPS). Several observers claim that this allows the RSD to avoid reporting SPS on some of the lowest performing schools. ( In this case it looks like the school will be closed and the students assigned to other schools)

Added after original post: Karran Harper Royal, an education activist from New Orleans sent us this more complete list of recently failed charters in the New Orleans area.
RSD Charters
New Orleans Free Academy (Charter relinquished, now closed)
Esperanza ( Charter relinquished, now chartered by Choice Foundation)
Harriet Tubman Charter School (non renewed now chartered by Crescent City Schools)
Abramson Science & Technology Academy (Revoked, now run by RSD, and K-8 will be rechartered and 9-12 will be shut down)
Sojourner Truth Academy (Announced that it will relinquish it's charter rather than get revoked)
Langston Hughes board will soon decide whether to relinquish it's charter, although they are supportive of Firstline taking over the school.
OPSP Charters
Priestly Charter School (Relinquished, now OPSB direct run school)

Notice that most of the charters were relinquished rather than revoked. The LDOE usually tries to convince the (charter) board to relinquish to save their good name from the revocation process. I suspect it's so as to keep things low key and avoid a nasty public battle.
Karran Harper Royal

Also, just as Louisiana is ramping up to allow increased enrollment in its virtual charter schools that are managed by for-profit corporations, a study in Colorado of some of the same virtual management organizations that are operating in Louisiana, show mostly dismal results. The study found that many virtual charter students fall behind in their studies compared to students attending traditional schools. Many decide to transfer back to regular schools at mid-year after the charter management organization has locked in state funds for that year. This is placing an unfair burden on the school systems that are forced to accept students without the state funding. Added on 11/30: Wow, this is even more damning! Just a week before the Louisiana Legislature will be indoctrinated by a conservative group to enlarge the Louisiana virtual school enrollment, check out the blog on Virtual Schools this week by Diane Ravitch

Many education "reformers" have made the totally unsupported claim that virtual charter schools should be effective in educating "at risk" students or students that have experienced discipline problems etc. All the evidence shows just the opposite. At risk students compared to students who are self motivated are most in need of direct supervision by strong classroom teachers. Such students usually cannot be relied upon to sit at a computer and do mostly self directed academic exercises required by virtual instructional programs. In addition, the virtual system depends heavily on parent or at home coaches to monitor day to day schedules. The problem is, many at risk students are at risk because they do not have effective parental support and encouragement!

It will be interesting to see if the new students in Louisiana's privately run virtual charters stick with the program and succeed academically or opt to reenter traditional schools at mid year. Will the virtual schools get to keep the generous state funding they have received from BESE if some students transfer at mid year?

This is the danger of Louisiana rushing headlong into privatization of schools without the time to carefully assess results of such programs. For example, the Jindal administration has continued to support the funding of vouchers in the New Orleans area even though statistics show that students getting vouchers to attend parochial schools are performing at an even lower level than the students in the extremely low performing RSD schools.

Jindal Gets His Board

2011-11-21T05:25:00.000-06:00

Governor Jindal and his big business supporters won a decisive victory in the remaining 3 BESE runoff elections. All three of the winners had been supported by the Jindal/Grigsby/LABI machine. With at least 10 times the money spent on Jindal aligned candidates, the election results were a foregone conclusion. In addition to his BESE takeover Jindal also may well have enough support in the legislature for most of his remaining education "reforms".

The appointment of John White, a relative amateur in the management of public education, to the State Superintendent position now seems assured. Next year, even more than in the past few years, BESE will be mostly relegated to doing the bidding of the Governor and his Superintendent. I would expect little controversy and minimal debate at future BESE meetings. All the Governor's priorities should be approved expeditiously. Too bad they will be the wrong "reforms".

What changes can educators expect? It is likely the the legislature will be convinced to repeal the tenure law in the next legislative session. School systems will be allowed to dismiss both new and experienced teachers with minimal procedural protections. Chances are a law will be passed removing seniority rights of teachers relative to layoffs and other employment benefits. Expect the value added teacher and administrator evaluation to go into effect on schedule without regard to the results of the pilot program. The State Department of Education will accelerate the takeover of low performing schools as the minimum SPS score goes to 75 at the end of the 2011-12 school year. In many cases, local school systems will be allowed to continue administering a school if they agree to draconian reorganizations such as faculty and administrator replacement or conversion to a charter school. The legislature will probably approve the expansion of the voucher program for parents sending their children to private and parochial schools. Some vouchers may be reserved for students attending so called "failing" schools. Expect the legislature and the State Department of Education to use funding or reduction of funding to local systems as an incentive for school systems to adopt reforms. A possible incentivized reform may be the implementation of merit pay systems based partially on student test scores. Expect pressure by the state to replace a certain percentage of teachers based on those deemed to be "producing" in the bottom quartile of student performance.

Why do I believe these are the wrong reforms? Primarily because I do not believe teachers are responsible for the low performance of students in most cases. The really important factors and effective remedies such as early childhood education and school discipline reform will be ignored. Instead everything from the definition of a failing school to the criteria for teacher evaluation will be based primarily on student test performance. When merit pay is established based primarily upon student performance, there will likely develop a major morale problem among teachers and even administrators. Education research confirms that teachers perform best in a collaborative work environment where there is trust and cooperation among teachers and between teachers and administrators. The punitive reforms championed by the Governor will needlessly damage such collaborative work environments. Administrators will be buried in paperwork mandated by the new complex valued added evaluation if Louisiana follows the lead of other states that have initiated such programs. Newspapers may publish teacher value added scores including the teacher's name as was done recently in Los Angeles. Schools in high poverty districts will be drained of higher performing students and teachers by the very reforms that are intended to improve schools. This will cause an accelerated spiraling to lower performance for such schools. Such a result will only give ammunition to those who would use a voucher system to fund more students to private schools. As local schools deteriorate, school taxes will fail to be renewed causing an underfunding of public schools. Opportunities for low income students to close the gap will actually diminish in this environment.

Even so the relentless push by the state to graduate a larger percentage of students could cause rampant cheating by local systems on credit recovery and even on state LEAP and exit exams. Somewhere down the line it will be found that Louisiana will be increasingly issuing empty diplomas. Already there is a serious disagreement between LEAP scores and NAEP scores for Louisiana students. NAEP scores and ACT scores show no significant improvement despite the huge expenditures on testing and test related remediation.

Jindal be careful what you ask for! Although my concern here is only for the future of public education, Jindal's takeover of education may backfire. There is so much that could be done to truly improve opportunities for our students and to make teaching a profession everyone can be proud of. Instead it looks like Jindal and his supporters are going to take us in the opposite direction. When that happens the Governor may find that his ownership of and mismanagement of education is his downfall.

Jindal, Public Education Haters May Cause Revolt

2011-11-15T07:57:00.000-06:00

Governor Jindal apparently believes he has a mandate to totally revamp education in Louisiana. The problem is his education reform ideas are mostly based on bad assumptions that when implemented will fail and may very well cause a revolt among educators!

Important reminder: If you live in one of the three BESE districts with runoff eclections, please remember to vote Saturday, Novemeber 19 for Givens in District 2, Songy in District 6 and Guillory in District 8. ( Ask your friends and relatives to help also)

Jindal and his pro business "public education hater" friends don't have a clue about the real problems in education. They assume (incorrectly) that most of the problems with low student achievement are caused by lazy, incompetent teachers and administrators and can easily be fixed by just getting tough on educators. "Tighten the screws on educators, fire a certain percentage of low performers and student scores will go up." Too bad it's not that simple. The Governor's so called "reforms" are so radical and so wrong that educators will finally say "Enough is enough, we're just not going to take it anymore." This conflict may even backfire and damage Jindal's plans for higher office!

Educators and many others are beginning to figure out that Jindal's intentions are not sincere, but are based mostly on creating the illusion that he is an education reformer who deserves public support for his greater political ambitions. He proved this recently by turning down critical federal funding for early childhood education which is one of the most vital and proven programs for boosting performance of our students. Then he helped his business friends by sabotaging a wonderful plan to fund high speed Internet access to rural areas, because it may compete with private Internet providers who did not want to develop these unprofitable markets in the first place.

Recently, Jindal sponsored legislation that assigns schools a letter grade rating that greatly distorts the efforts of educators in our most critical high poverty schools. The new system produced an amazing result: All the alternative schools got "F" and all the magnet schools got "A". Hey I've got it: Why not convert all alternative schools into magnet schools so they can get "A" also? This is basically how simple minded and impractical the Jindal programs are.

Next year the Jindal reform forces will impose a new teacher evaluation system that will base 50% of a teacher's evaluation on student test scores. But most teachers teach subjects that are not part of the state testing program. So the state will come up with some hurry-up testing or base all evaluations on math and English scores. Also, no one has figured out how to factor in student poverty. Let me guess at the results: The teachers in the alternative schools and very high poverty schools will all get "F" and the teachers in the magnet schools will all get "A"! What will be the end result of this? Any teacher with any self respect will start pushing immediately for a transfer out of any poverty school to a school serving more privileged students. But the high poverty schools are where we need the strongest teachers! What kind of reform produces the opposite of its stated goal?

School principals in Tennessee and Long Island, New York are already on the verge of revolt because of their value added teacher evaluation system implemented as part of their "winning" Race to the Top funding. The evaluation program is so complicated, so time consuming and so counter productive that principals believe that they can no longer run their schools effectively.

In addition to the crazy evaluation scheme described above, the reform forces want to put in merit pay based on the new flawed evaluation, revise the teacher retirement system and replace it with something cheaper, want to take away some of the powers of elected school boards yet allow non-elected charter school boards to operate without oversight, want to do away with teacher tenure, and want to grant vouchers for parents sending their children to private schools and privatize as many schools as possible. This is a recipe for disaster in public education!

Look, I know teachers. I have been a teacher, and I have represented teachers all my life and I'd like to describe for you the typical teacher. Most teachers are dedicated and hard working, and most care deeply about the success and welfare of their students. Most did not get into teaching for the money. Recent studies have shown that merit pay for teachers does not work. Contrary to recent media opinion, most teachers are smart and work hard to reach all their students. Teachers have been willing to put up with many ridiculous mandates that had little to do with good teaching and have put up with disrespectful, disruptive students who do not care about learning and with many parents who refuse to do their part all because they love teaching and they love their students.

But most teachers have the courage of their convictions and eventually they are willing to take a stand when they have been pushed too far. I have spoken to many teachers recently who say that they are tired of being forced to teach to the test instead of using their creativity as teachers to really reach and motivate students. They have had enough of stupid mandates and lack of respect from politicians and reformers who have no idea what it is like in the classroom. At some point they will stand together and say it's not worth it anymore to implement counterproductive mandates and to put up with more abuse. At that point they are likely to shut down the entire education system until someone is willing to listen to teachers as the true voice of public education. This is where Jindal's reform movement is taking us!

BESE Run-off Elections

2011-11-09T06:53:00.001-06:00

There are just a few days left for early voting for the BESE run-off elections occuring in Districts 2, 6, and 8. I urge all educators who live in these districts to vote now or on November 19 for one of the candidates recommended to us by the Coalition for Louisiana Public Education. Your involvement could prevent a takeover of this vital policy board by those who would privatize our public schools and deprofessionalize the teaching profession in Louisiana. The following is the press release by the Coalition which explains the reasons for their BESE endorsements:

Coalition for Louisiana Public Education

Endorsements Three in BESE Run-offs

Baton Rouge, LA – The Coalition for Louisiana Public Education has officially endorsed candidates for the three remaining seats on the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) in the run-off elections for Saturday, Nov. 19th, according to Coalition Chairman Jack Loup.

Based on these candidates’ strong advocacy for public education and their overall experience with public education, the Coalition is endorsing Louella Givens, BESE District 2; Donald Songy, BESE District 6; and Dr. Jim Guillory, BESE District 8.

These three candidates are aligned with the core beliefs of the Coalition member organizations, and are deemed most likely to help transform all public school systems in the state. In the next few years BESE members will focus on how to raise the multi-year status quo of school performance scores in the Recovery School District (RSD), along with how to accelerate the current progress already being made in traditional public schools across the state.

Further, none of the candidates endorsed by the Coalition for the state’s highest education board have any potential conflicts of interest with serving on BESE.

“Coalition members have raised concerns about out-of-state political and business interests, including sizable national investments in our state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education races,” according to Loup. While the governor has three appointments, the remaining BESE members are elected by the people of Louisiana. Loup says, “We feel Louisianans are perfectly capable of selecting the right people, without outside interference, who will steer our education system and who can choose an excellent state superintendent from the many outstanding education professionals within our state, who best know Louisiana’s needs. We feel that Louisiana doesn’t need candidates who have recently moved here from, and are supported by, other states with problem school systems. Further, Louisiana doesn’t need out of state advice on candidates, or investment and profiteering on our own taxpayers and children.”

Givens, in District 2, already has several years of experience on BESE, and is not backed by major out of state business and political interests. Her opponent, who moved here from New York City, is the head of Teach for America in New Orleans, which removes experienced, certified teachers from the

classrooms, and puts in their places college students, regardless of their major course of studies, for two-year periods. There is further question as to whether it would be appropriate for her opponent to serve on BESE, given that she has financial ties to Teach for America, which BESE members may vote on.

Songy, in District 6, has a solid background in public education experience, having worked for years as a classroom teacher, principal, in personnel and as former superintendent of Ascension Parish. Songy supports public schools and teachers, and opposes the state seizure and privatization of public schools. Like Givens, Songy is also not supported by out of state business and political interests. Further, Songy believes that state resources should flow to the public school classrooms, rather than to out of state business concerns. In addition, Songy believes that the state Minimum Foundation Program should be fully funded in order to benefit all public school systems. To raise the quality of the profession even higher, Songy supports a fair, consistent evaluation of teachers.

Dr. Guillory has served as a school board member in Avoyelles Parish, and from his experience, he understands the needs of districts that include some of the most challenged urban and rural schools in the state. Like Givens and Songy, Guillory is not supported by out of state business and political interests. Because of his first-hand public education background, strong support for Louisiana public schools, and because he has no ties to big businesses from out of state, the Coalition believes “Dr. Jim” is the best candidate for BESE District 8.

Contrary to descriptions that the Coalition is a group of “teacher unions and school board members,” the Coalition for Louisiana Public Education is actually comprised of the state leaders of Louisiana’s major public education stakeholders: the Louisiana School Boards Association (LSBA); LA Association of School Superintendents (LASS); LA Association of School Executives (LASE); the LA Association of Special Education Administrators (LASEA); the LA Association of Chief Technology Officers; the LA Association of Child Welfare and Attendance Professionals (LACWAP); the LA Association of School Personnel Administrators (LSASPA); the LA Retired Teachers Association (LRTA); state director of National Board of Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS); LA Computer Using Educators (LACUE); LA Association of Educators (LAE): and the LA Federation of Teachers (LFT). In addition, the Coalition includes state representatives of Save Our Schools and Parents Across America; and a bank of independent researchers specializing in education data analysis.

More information about the Coalition for Louisiana Public Education is available on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Coalition-for-Louisiana-Public-Education/191154510928448

For further information on the Coalition, contact Chairman Jack Loup, current president of the St. Tammany Parish School Board, at jackloup@wildblue.net or 985-796-3771.

Outside Political Influence

2011-10-25T17:11:00.000-05:00

It is interesting that the Louisiana media has failed to report on a sizable last minute outside contribution to Louisiana's BESE election campaign by a political group based in New York. The American Independent Newspaper today carries a very well researched article about the contribution of New York Mayor Bloomberg's PAC to the Jindal/Grigsby PAC just a few days before the October primary election. Why was this important development not reported in the Louisiana news media? If the public were to view the Governor's BESE takeover effort as part of a plan by a group of rich New York business guys who are involved in privatization of schools, there may be a public backlash against their candidates. On the other hand if Jindal can sell his BESE takeover effort as a good government move to reduce the influence of unions and school boards who just want to maintain the status quo, the public is more likely to support his hand picked BESE candidates. Unfortunately this revelation did not come in time to cause a public backlash against the defeat of BESE members Keith Guice and Dale Bayard in the Primary.

Heaven knows Bloomberg does not need any more money, but there are recent revelations about his connections with media tycoon Rupert Murdock whose companies have developed computer assisted instructional programs that are being marketed to public and private schools.

The outside connections to Jindal, Grigsby, School Charter Groups and pro-voucher groups with the TFA and New York privatizers are just too numerous and well documented to ignore. One-by-one TFA newcomers have been appointed to the Louisiana Department of Education and BESE staff positions while highly qualified local educators have been passed over. John White, an unproven TFA alumnus is waiting in the wings for his appointment to the top position in Louisiana education while Jindal and his friends build their super majority on BESE. Rolfe McCollister, owner of the Baton Rouge Business Report whose daughter recently worked for one of the charter management organizations is actively involved in this takeover PAC. Chas Roemer's sister who works for the charter schools has been advised that she cannot appear before BESE, yet Chas has been allowed to vote on critical charter takeover issues.

Testing companies are expecting more lucrative no-bid contracts. Many operators of the private and parochial schools across Louisiana are licking their chops at the prospect of a financial windfall of public funds if the Governor is successful in expanding his voucher programs to private schools outside the New Orleans area. A group called the Black Alliance for School Choice is already drumming up support for vouchers and charters in the Black community. Only later will such parents find out that these will mostly benefit the affluent who can already afford a private education for their children. Freedom of choice of schools was outlawed by the courts years ago because it did not reduce segregation. Yet these voucher programs will surely produce an excluded group of high poverty students. This is what we can expect from the takeover of BESE.
As I pointed out in my post of April 3, 2011, "It's not about the children anymore." It's about the adults and their plans to use public school funds for their own benefit.

Jindal Closer to Goal

2011-10-24T07:23:00.001-05:00

The results of the primary election for BESE have brought Governoer Jindal very close to his goal of taking complete control of BESE. The defeat of District 5 and District 7 incumbents, Keith Guice and Dale Bayard make it more likely that Jindal will get his 8 vote super majority to pick the next State Superintendent. Three BESE races, Districts 2, 6 and 8 have yet be decided in the November general election. In District 3, Lottie Beebie, an educator from St. Martin Parish defeated the Governor's choice, incumbent Glenny Lee Bouquet.

I am very disappointed in the loss of Keith Guice and Dale Bayard from the Board because they were solid representatives for sound education policy. They had been targeted for defeat by the Governor and his allies because they refused to support some reforms that they believed were more destructive than helpful to our schools.

Despite huge campaign expenditures by pro-Jindal incumbent Chas Roemer, he has been forced into a runoff with long time educator Donald Songy. Independent minded Louella Givens is in a runoff with TFA administrator, Kira Jones in District 2.

Carolyn Hill, a social worker is in a runoff in District 8 with former school board member Jim Guillory.

Look for more information on these runoffs in future post on this blog.

Negative Campaigning

2011-10-19T08:45:00.002-05:00

Even the Jindal/big business endorsed candidate for BESE District 7 is objecting to the outrageous attacks (Click to view the Advocate story) by the Jindal/Grigsby PAC against BESE incumbent Dale Bayard. The Governor's friends want to make sure that he and big business have total control over education policy and they don't care how they do it. They are so determined to remove all dissenting voices to the big business takeover of public education that their negative campaigning has gotten outrageous. Their chosen replacement to Bayard will be expected to do their bidding without question. Just as was done in the case of Tammie McDaniel who had the nerve to occasionally disagree with (non-educator) State Superintendent Pastorek on some critical issues.

The big money pushing the BESE takeover will not tolerate dissenting voices especially if they come from professional educators. In this "brave new world" of education reform anyone who is a professional educator is automatically considered to be an obstacle to "reform". On the other hand, anyone who comes from a business background or graduated from an Ivy League college with a non-education degree is considered far superior to education graduates for staffing our schools. No matter that the TFA recruits generally only intend to do this bit of public service for two or less years; they are considered experts with only 6 weeks training. No matter that many of the Broad Foundation graduates of the school administrators' academy have no understanding of classroom issues, they are considered superior administrators to those who have toiled in the classroom for years. Their only criteria is: Did the teacher raise student test scores? This is like having an accountant telling the doctors how do do surgery. If the Governor and his friends are successful, public education in Louisiana will be run by amateurs who believe they have all the answers without ever having worked in the classroom.

I am urging all educators and education support personnel to get out and vote for true public education advocates to BESE seats this Saturday. Ask your friends and relatives to also support your recommendations for BESE. This is the only way we can combat the influence of big money over our profession. Please ask all voters to support the condidates that have been recommended by the Coalition for Louisiana Public Education. They are the following:

Update: For BESE the Coalition has endorsed: District 1 - Sharon Hewitt; District 2 - Louella Givens; District 3 - Lottie Beebe; District 5 - Keith Guice; District 6 - Donald Songy; District 7 - Dale Bayard; and dual endorsements in District 8 - Jim Guillory and Domoine Rutledge. Also the Coalition supports District 4 - Walter Lee - who drew no opposition. These candidates fully support public education and the real transformation of Louisiana public schools.

Reform May Not be Progress

2011-10-13T14:51:00.004-05:00

Governor Jindal wants to make sure that BESE members elected this fall will continue to implement his education reform agenda and appoint his hand-picked State Superintendent. That's why he and business groups who support him are pouring money into BESE campaigns. The Governor intends to totally control BESE.

Previous posts on this blog have described Jindal's education reform agenda. See the September 1, post. What is objected to by most educators is that these so called reforms are totally unproven and may actually do more harm than good to Louisiana education. For example, the new teacher evaluation plan now being developed for Louisiana will use a value added formula measuring student academic growth to determine 50% of the teacher's performance rating. The Governor intends to use these evaluations to reward successful teachers and possibly fire teachers whose students don't progress as mandated. But there is a basic flaw in this plan. It is clear that the most critical need for effective teachers is in schools serving high poverty/high risk students. (For example, teaching positions in alternative schools) Yet no matter who their teachers are, these are the students that consistently show the least growth on Louisiana's testing system. So how is the state going to attract the most effective teachers to high poverty schools when teachers know that accepting such a position could result in a bad evaluation, possibly a lower salary, and possibly dismissal?

Another idea that looks good on paper, but may fail in practice is the addition of online virtual schools. Louisiana now has two privately run virtual schools that are expected to grow rapidly. Proponents say that such schools may work for students who have not been successful in a traditional school environment. Supporters say the virtual school allows for more individual attention and may provide a learning program tailored to a student's unique learning style. What the proponents don't emphasize is that for some grades, the pupil teacher ratio may be as high as 50 to 1. Also, these programs require a parent or other adult in the student's home to serve as a "coach" so that day to day learning can be carefully monitored. For a thorough analysis of what could go wrong, take a look at the experience with virtual schools in Colorado. According to the article linked here, we find that Colorado is experiencing serious problems with some of the same companies that are contracted to run the virtual schools in Louisiana. A large number of such students are dropping out and an unfair financial and teaching burden is being placed on the traditional public schools when such students transfer back to them in the middle of the school year.

Jindal also wants to continue expanding charter schools and voucher programs in Louisiana. That's despite the statistics that show that all direct takeover charter schools that have been added outside of New Orleans have shown a decline in student performance. The New Orleans takeover schools are the second lowest performers in the state. Also the average performance of the students receiving vouchers to attend private schools is also lower than when these students attended public schools. Reform apparently does not require improved performance.

I encourage educators to actively support the candidates endorsed by the Coalition for Louisiana Public Education. See these endorsements in my Sept 29 post. These are the candidates that stand for effective education reform.

School Grades: Chicken or Egg?

2011-10-04T08:28:00.002-05:00

Which comes first; an excellent school program or a motivated and academically engaged student body? When the school grades are announced this week by the Department of Education, many parents will be led to believe that their children's teachers are incompetent or lazy or both. They will have one more reason to just blame schools for poor student performance instead of doing their jobs of motivating their children and insisting on students doing their school work. That's because the current education reform craze producing the new school grades has incorrectly decreed that schools and teachers are totally responsible for the academic success of all students who happen to be enrolled.

Added 10/5/11: The school letter grades were released today and there are absolutely no surprises. Out of all the alternative schools in the state (30), all but two were assigned an F. Out of 68 Recovery District schools receiving letter grades, 87% received either a D or an F. Out of all the student selective magnet schools in the state, all but three received an A. Does this mean that all the teachers and administrators in our alternative schools are incompetent and that all teachers in magnet schools are highly effective? Will we get similar results when we apply the new teacher grading system? This is nuts!

All of my analysis of school performance shows that the qualities of student motivation and engagement in school are at least as important as the hard work of teachers in producing school success. The school reformers would probably be shocked to learn that a school could have top notch administrators, excellent teachers and a great academic program and still be rated as a "D" or "F" school by the new grading system. That's because the new school grades are completely dependent upon test data and attendance or graduation rate of students. If many students in a particular school miss a large number of school days, if they refuse to study and do homework, if they fail to get necessary sleep and proper nutrition, and are careless and skip some of the questions on their LEAP test, the school will likely be labeled as bad or failing. How is it that a school rather than the parents can be held responsible for the factors mentioned above?

If public education is to improve, the general public and our education policy makers must understand that it's not just the effectiveness of the school and it's not just the quality and motivation of the students but a complex mix of factors that determine student success.

In a school system like the Zachary Community Schools, we have both factors clicking to produce a truly excellent school system. Administrators and teachers are hard working and demanding of excellence in both their own performance and their student's performance. At the same time, children come to school prepared to work hard and learn. Parents won't let a student miss school unnecessarily and regularly use the Internet and teacher communications to check assignments and insist that students do homework. The school culture has become one of excellence and academic achievement. Everyone, whether educator or student is expected to do his/her part.

The Zachary schools will get A's and B's on the new grading system. The teachers and administrators in Zachary deserve to take their bows and accept credit for a job well done, but they also know that parents and students deserve their share of the credit. Unfortunately many educators in neighboring Baton Rouge will be unfairly demoralized by a grading system that puts the entire burden on their shoulders instead of promoting a unified effort by parents, students, and educators. In those schools, the new school grading system will do more harm than good. Because of this destructive impact on many schools staffed by dedicated professionals, the school grading system itself deserves an F.

Coalition Endorses In 5 BESE Districts

2011-09-29T07:03:00.001-05:00

The Coalition for Louisiana Public Education has announced its endorsements for BESE Candidates. Endorsements were made in 5 of the 8 election districts. They are as follows:
District 1 - Sharon Hewitt - Includes the parishes of St Tammany and northern Orleans and northern Jefferson.
District 3 - Lottie Polozola Beebe - Includes the parishes of St Bernard, southern Jefferson, Lafourche, Terrebonne, St Mary, Iberia, St Martin, west Iberville, southeast St Landry, south Pointe Coupee, and west Assumption
District 5 - Keith Guice - Includes the parishes of Claiborne, Union, Morehouse, West Carroll, East Carroll, Lincoln, Ouachita, Richland, Madison, Jackson, Caldwell, Franklin, Tensas, Grant, LaSalle, Catahoula, Concordia, Rapides, and most of Evangeline.
District 6 - Donald Songy - Includes the parishes of east Ascension, southeast and northern East Baton Rouge, Livingston, Tangipahoa, and Washington
District 7 - Dale Bayard - Includes the parishes of Beauregard, Allen, Calcasieu, Jefferson Davis, Cameron, Vermilion and southwest Lafayette.

Please take the time to inform yourself about the backgrounds and positions of these candidates by going to their web sites and facebook pages.

The Coalition’s member organizations include a comprehensive group of top state education stakeholders. They are:

LA School Boards Association (LSBA);
LA Association of School Superintendents (LASS);
LA Association of School Executives (LASE);
LA Association of Special Education Administrators (LASEA);
LA Association of Chief Technology Officers;
LA Association of Child Welfare and Attendance Professionals (LACWAP);
LA Association of School Personnel Administrators (LSASPA);
LA Retired Teachers Association (LRTA);
LA Association of Computer Using Educators (LACUE);
LA Association of Educators (LAE);
LA Federation of Teachers (LFT);
National Board of Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS);
National School Board Association, immediate past president;
Representatives of Save Our Schools;
Representatives of Parents Across America;
Independent researchers specializing in education data analysis.

The Coalition for Louisiana Public Education includes groups representing the great majority of education professionals and elementary/secondary education boards in Louisiana. I believe it is time that we listen to the advice of our professional educators in choosing our representatives to this important Board. I hope all educators and their families and friends will strongly consider the endorsed Coalition candidates.

Bad Assumptions; Bad Policy

2011-09-27T07:25:00.003-05:00

The Obama administration took action last week to allow waivers to states of some provisions of the No Child Left Behind law. These waivers would allow states to avoid some of the severe sanctions that the law required for schools that did not meet the annual requirements for progress to proficiency for all students in reading and math. Read a good analysis of the waiver plan at this link. The requirement that all students become proficient in reading and math by the year 2014 was ridiculous to begin with and could not be achieved by any school system that served a cross section of regular students.

So what will be required of those states that ask for waivers of the NCLB? Those states will be required by Arne Duncan to remove limitations on the creation of new charter schools, require the adoption of college and career standards for graduation, and require teachers to be evaluated partially based on student scores, and basically do whatever Arne Duncan says. This new waiver policy just puts more power over local school systems in the hands of the U.S. Education Secretary. In exchange for the waiver, we can expect more unreasonable untested mandates to be imposed. And yes, the testing mania will only get worse!

The idealistic goal that all students become proficient in certain subjects was an unrealistic criteria that was sure to create failures out of most of the schools in the country. That's because no government can successfully mandate a Lake Wobegon Effect. (Lake Wobegon is the mythical town invented by radio host Garrison Kheillor where supposedly "All women are strong, all men are good looking, and all children are above average.") It is statistically impossible for all children to be above average, but that's basically what the federal government attempted to require with NCLB.

Another example of a bad or unrealistic assumption is the statement by some politicians that "If our schools are doing their jobs, all children should be on grade level in reading and math". Grade level is really just an average performance determined by testing a cross section of students nation-wide to determine the typical reading level or math performance for a particular age group. Statistics show that a certain percentage of students perform above grade level and a similar percentage perform below grade level. If we could successfully mandate that no student will perform below grade level, the next time the national testing in that subject is done, the measurement of grade level would be re-calibrated upwards, again resulting in some students being below grade level. Children are all different. They are not like widgets built on an assembly line. Bad assumption; bad policy!

Another bad assumption is that if the test performance of students in a particular school is below the government approved standard, then the teachers and the school administration must not be doing their job. Under NCLB, the remedies imposed would have the school authorities close such a school or convert it into a charter school or fire at least half of the faculty and administration. When those remedies were imposed in some schools across the country, no noticeable change occurred. When Arne Duncan closed schools in Chicago and sent the students to more successful schools the transferred students performed no better, but the parents were upset because the transfers resulted in cross community fights and the death of at least one transferred student. When some schools in Baton Rouge were converted into charter schools, the performance of students declined. Under the waiver requirements we will shift mostly to embarrassing or firing teachers based on student scores. But that won't work either because soon the schools serving high poverty students will run out of teachers! Converting schools to charters just allows non-educators to experiment on kids and encourages cheating, and attempts to use public relations in the place of basic schooling. (Just consider the Abramson Charter schools) Bad assumptions cause bad policy!

There are no miracle solutions to education. We know that the only real crisis in our schools is the under performance of students from high poverty backgrounds. Why not just take the millions that would be wasted on more testing, and more complex value added teacher evaluations and spend it on beefing up the programs in our poverty schools. Implement effective parent involvement programs. Add more days to the school year, provide reading specialists, provide incentives rather than disincentives for teachers who are trained to address the needs of disadvantaged students. Schools should be judged based on the learning environment, the culture of positive discipline and time on task in practical learning activities, not on the results of a one-size-fits-all high stakes test. It should not shock us to find that when we compare two excellent schools that have good learning environments, we may find that student scores can still vary greatly!

That's why we need to elect reasonable public education supporters rather than school privatizers and misguided "reformers" to BESE.

Good Choices for BESE Seats

2011-09-20T08:29:00.003-05:00

Several experienced, and dedicated educators have qualified for election to BESE along with several incumbents who have already proven themselves to be friends of public education. Voters will have a choice of electing practical decision makers to the state's most critical school board and to remove those who would privatize our public schools. If elected, I believe the leaders I have highlighted will adopt only tested and effective polices that will move education forward in Louisiana.

The following are highly qualified educators and solid public school leaders who have qualified for election to BESE. Within the next week, this blog will inform you of any endorsements made by the Coalition for Louisiana Public Education for BESE elections. It is my understanding that the Coalition will recommend persons who are qualified, who are supportive of sound education improvements, and who truly believe that schools should be directed by elected school boards rather than self appointed privatization groups.

In BESE District 1, either Lee Barrios or Sharon Hewitt , should be considered. Ms Barrios is a retired teacher who has been active in testifying before BESE and the Legislature and has demonstrated a superior knowledge of education issues. Sharon Hewitt is a highly respected business and parent leader in the St. Tammany public school system. She is highly regarded and trusted by local St. Tammany School Board members. The incumbent, James Garvey, from District 1 has in my opinion blindly followed the dictates of former Superintendent Pastorek. He has been a poor representative of public education.
In BESE District 2, the incumbent, Louella Givens has proven to be a strong supporter of public education. She is knowledgeable about what works in education, and is not swayed by the latest privatization schemes. She is opposed by Kira Jones, the director of Teach For America in New Orleans who would be the worst choice for public education.
In BESE District 3, Lottie Beebie is a personnel director in St. Martin Parish schools who has extensive experience as a teacher and a principal who has served as a school board member in St. Landry Parish. She is very knowledgeable about the critical issues in education. The incumbent, Glenny Lee Bouquet, has not been responsive to the recommendations of public education leaders in her district and had not planned to run until encouraged to do so by Governor Jindal.
In BESE District 4, Walter Lee, the incumbent who is a strong supporter of public education is unopposed.
In BESE District 5, Keith Guice, the incumbent is also a strong supporter of public education. Mr Guice who is a former local superintendent has always been willing to make practical, educationally sound decisions on BESE. He deserves to be reelected!
In BESE District 6, Donald Songy who has extensive experience as a teacher, principal and local Superintendent deserves the strong consideration of all educators and all voters wanting a practical yet innovative approach to public education. He has testified before BESE and the Legislature on critical education issues. He is a member of the Coalition for Louisiana Public Education. His opponent, Chas Roemer, the incumbent BESE member in District 6, has been an enemy of public education and has supported destructive BESE actions such as the new grading system for schools which I believe is very unfair to schools and will damage efforts to get positive parental support.
In BESE district 7, Dale Bayard has been a fighter for public education. He is always willing to listen to the professionals in the field and is not swayed by the privatizers of public education. He deserves to be reelected! His opponent is supported by the Lane Grigsby PAC.
In BESE district 8, outgoing BESE member Linda Johnson is not running for reelection. She has told the Coaltion that she will support attorney, Demoine Rutledge who has experience representing local school boards. Other candidates in the race are Russell Armstrong, Jimmy Guillory, and Carolyn Hill. I am not familiar with these other candidates.

Please watch for future posts on this blog that will inform you of all candidates recommended by the Coalition for Louisiana Public Education in all 8 BESE districts.

The Ultimate Education Reform State

2011-09-01T08:47:00.002-05:00

Governor Jindal is moving to assert complete control of both the legislature and BESE. A recent article in the Advocate describes Jindal's plans to hand pick all key legislative leadership positions. In addition, in an Aug 31 article, The Advocate carries a story about a new PAC formed by Lane Grigsby, Rolf McCollister and Jindal's former Chief Counsel who will commit up to one million dollars on the BESE takeover effort. With no viable opponent to his own reelection bid the Governor aims to help elect more close allies to both the legislature and BESE. Jindal wants no less than total control of state government and the public education system.

Recently, Jindal has enjoyed a one vote majority on BESE in approving major components of his reform agenda including value added teacher evaluations, a new letter grade system for rating schools and the addition of two privately run virtual charter schools that can take students and the per pupil funding from any school system in the state. But at its last meeting, based on an official report of a Louisiana teacher surplus, BESE balked at approving a two million dollar "no bid" contract for Teach For America to recruit non-education college grads to teach in Louisiana schools. Not long after this action, Kira Jones, the Director of Teach For America in New Orleans announced her candidacy to run for BESE against Louella Givens in the second BESE district. Pro Charter groups immediately gushed with enthusiasm in support of her candidacy.

The Jindal/Grigsby group is also targeting the removal of 7th BESE district member, Dale Bayard. Mr Bayard's "sin" against the Governor's reform push is that he insists on getting the opinion of professional educators who have dedicated their lives to the education of children instead of automatically approving every privatization scheme presented to BESE.

If he is successful with his BESE takeover and greater control of the Legislature, Jindal could make Louisiana the uncontested leader in all the latest, unproven, non-research based, standardized test driven, education privatization schemes in the nation! This image would fit neatly into his plans for higher office in the future. His reform agenda would be implemented by Teach for America (six weeks of formal education training) "experts" placed at all levels of the State Department, BESE staff and BESE itself. With TFAer John White as State Superintendent, Louisiana would move rapidly with privatization and de-professionalization of teaching. The following would be some of the major goals of this education takeover:

Reduction of the authority of local school boards to make local education policy. Broad Foundation and TFA trained non-educators would be expected to run the larger local school systems as education Czars much like Michelle Rhee and Arne Duncan have done.
Out of state charter organizations would continue to expand into more local school systems, with the ability to select the highest potential students to bolster their school performance scores at the expense of local run schools that would be expected to service the leftovers and special needs students.
Expect the elimination of teacher tenure and all seniority rights. Expect Teach for America to enjoy free rein in placing as many new teachers here as they choose even if veteran teachers have to be laid off to make room.
Expect more student testing by the state to determine the ratings of all teachers and all schools. The testing companies and number crunchers will have a field day measuring every grade level expectation. Expect teachers to spend even more time on test prep activities at the expense of arts, foreign languages, social studies, music, performance, and other enrichment courses.
Expect the teacher retirement system to be phased out along with group benefits and replaced with minimum cost fringe benefits.
Don't expect improvements in teacher salaries beyond the merit pay, or pay for performance schemes that will spring up. Forget about creativity in teaching. Teachers had better get ready to learn how to teach the test and game the system if they expect to survive.
Expect many experienced teachers to retire earlier than they had planned because of frustration with the de-professionalization of their work. Expect the state to resort to hiring more alternative certified teachers to fill those slots. Teaching in Louisiana could become a temporary jobs program for college grads who cannot find work in their chosen field.

That's enough! I think you get the picture. Will these so called reforms actually improve student performance? I hope you can take the time to read a response to a new education reform book reviewed by Dianne Ravitch at this Reuters link. I believe she does a great job of pointing out that the reformers are fixing the wrong problem.

One of my favorite thought experiments on school reform is as follows:
Take the faculty of the highest performing school in the state (which would be a selective admissions or magnet school) and switch it with the faculty of the lowest performing school in the state (which would be a school serving low income students) and monitor the results for a few years to see how the SPS of each changes. I'll bet most experienced educators would know the answer without having to wait for the results. Educators if you value your profession and if you believe that professional educators have more to offer our students than misinformed non-educator reformers, you owe it to yourself and your students to get informed about the BESE and Legislative candidates education philosophy and do your civic duty in the upcoming elections.

This blog will attempt to inform you about the candidates and any recommendations coming from the Coalition For Louisiana Public Education.

Iberville Education Reform

2011-08-25T05:06:00.007-05:00

Iberville Parish Math, Science, & Arts Academy students start off the year with a free laptop computer for students in upper grades. This is just one example of how technology is integrated into the entire school environment.

New Laptops

Math and Science are emphasized, yet when you talk to individual students you find that they are most often even more excited about the art and performance offerings at the new Academies. Apparently the genius of this reform schooling concept is to offer a variety of great and exciting programs that make attending school fun and challenging.

Iberville Parish is split by the Mississippi River with the majority of the school population on the west side of the river. But Superintendent Edward Cancienne knew that if the new Math, Science, & Arts Academy was to get full public support, he would need to offer a great program for children on both sides of the river. Since there are no bridges in the area, that meant a smaller version of the Academy for the East side. According to newspaper reports, parents on the East side are ecstatic about the opportunities for their children offered at the brand new state-of-the-art, energy efficient facility in St Gabriel. Chuck Johnson directs operations at the East facility. A bond issue passed in 2008 has allowed construction of new buildings and lots of enrichment programs on both sides of the river.

In fact parents on both sides of the river are so impressed that in just 3 years a total of 780 students have transferred from private schools back into the public school system. For years the Iberville public school system had been plagued by the flight of serious top students (both black and white) to private schools. Now the kids are back, and the new concept Academies have a waiting list of over 400. Elvis Cavalier, Chief Academic Officer for the Parish, who runs this program says that more classes are being added as new facilities are built. The West campus will soon have a STEM wing addition that will also add more classrooms.

So what is the secret of this impressive success story? Cancienne and Cavalier are not what today are considered "education reformers". They are more like old line professional educators who work with traditional schools. But if great offerings, teacher and student engagement, and parental involvement are measures of true reform, then these guys are successful education reformers. I tried to dig below the surface to report to you what I think makes this concept work. None of the ideas are new. They are simply put together in a formula that works for Iberville Parish:

Excellence in all programs All students are exposed to accelerated classes in all areas of math, science and the arts.
Exclusivity All parents want their child enrolled in a special program that is open only to the best. Yet the Academy programs have no entrance requirements for most students. Once enrolled, all students are required to maintain a 2.5 GPA and must maintain an excellent discipline record to stay at the academy. The program accepts first students that are classified as gifted & talented and their siblings but that's only 15% of the student body. All others are just regular kids who are committed to excellence. Most students are selected by lottery. According to Cavalier even with the strict rules the program has only a 4% student turnover rate.
Total Commitment from teachers and administrators to the concepts of the Academies. Teachers don't mind making extra efforts when they feel appreciated by their administrators and parents.
Balanced enrollment. The Academies maintain a 50:50 black-white ratio to ensure diversity.

Spanish club in Costa Rica

No brain drain. The Academy program is not classified as a school. Therefore all student LEAP and iLEAP scores go back to the student's home school. Everybody benefits from the high performance of the Academy students. Cancienne believes that students in the home schools are motivated to perform better by opportunity to attend the Academy.
Rewards. A great motivation for students are the special trips and perks for students who score at the mastery level on state tests. The kids I talked to were most excited about performing in the Orchestra and in plays.
Dual Enrollment. High school students pursue dual enrollment college credit at every opportunity. Student body president Kristen Ellis expects to graduate with 30 hours of college credit courses.

For years, Iberville parish has struggled with a high dropout rate and a very low graduation rate. Starting this year, the Academies are expected to help greatly improve those numbers.

According to Superintendent Cancienne, "The Math, Science & Arts Academies in Iberville have created a special culture of excellence and high achievement."

To me this is real education reform that works.

Cavalier and Cancienne with plans

More RSD Cover-up and Effective Education Reform Where the Reformers Least Expect it!

2011-08-22T06:26:00.005-05:00

A couple of Times-Picayune reporters are using public records requests to finally bring to light major cover-ups of wrongdoing in the charter schools of the Recovery District. The first, were revelations by reporter Andrew Vancour that forced BESE to terminate the charter of the Abramson charter school based on child protection issues. The latest story came out Saturday and is by reporter Sarah Carr on cover-up of possible LEAP cheating at Miller-McCoy Academy in New Orleans.

The revelation of possible LEAP cheating in the Recovery District is not surprising. Many allegations have been leaking out about teachers having grades changed by administrators to pass failing students in the RSD, special education students being "helped" a little too much on LEAP, and different students having identical test papers. This latest story is based on complaints by up to 20% of the teachers at Miller-McCoy that students were prepped for LEAP with practice materials that could only have come from breaches of test security.

But the real shocker in the story is that State DOE policies for handling alleged breaches of test security almost encourage systematic cover-up of violations. That's because once the Department determines that violations of test policy may have occurred, they turn the investigation over to the local school system, for their recommendations and possible corrective actions including the voiding of test scores. As the testing experts quoted in the story point out, "there is a conflict of interest all the way up the line in investigating such allegations". Such conflict is even more pronounced in the case of charter schools that function as their own local school systems. Such schools often have hand picked boards of directors picked by the charter organizers who often serve as the administrators for the charter who are often the very people implicated in the cheating allegations!

The complaints of possible cheating were made by a group of teachers who said they were given the questionable practice materials by their administrators. The students had alerted the teachers to the claim that the practice questions were almost identical to the actual test. But when the school Directors conducted their investigation of the matter they did not bother to question a single teacher about the allegations. They only questioned the administrators. No wonder they concluded there was no wrongdoing!

One of the experts consulted by the reporter said that this process is like the IRS telling a taxpayer: "We have a problem with your tax return. Would you look it over?"

What's even more disconcerting about the DOE and RSD handling of this matter, is that the Department had the authority to void LEAP scores based on its own investigation. And in the case of a non-charter school accused of the same violation, in the RSD, scores were voided and administrators disciplined. (Yes this has happened before) One parent advocate said that the state wants the charters in New Orleans to succeed so badly that they look the other way!

All this makes us wonder; just how valid are the claims of "dramatic gains" in the Recovery District?

Did you know that effective education reform really is happening in Louisiana?

Later this week The Louisiana Educator will examine A new Education strategy that is attracting hundreds of students back from private schools.

Enrollment is open to all students
It's not a charter school
It's not a magnet school
It's not even a school!

But it is the most effective reform seen in recent years in the Iberville Parish school system. How do we know it's effective? Because students who had left the public schools in Iberville Parish and fled to private schools are returning to the public schools of Iberville in droves to participate in this truly innovative educational setting!

I'm still working on this post so please bookmark the Louisiana Educator and click on this site on Thursday, August 25 for a good description on how the Iberville education reform works. Maybe it could be tried in your school system!

Report on BESE Actions

2011-08-18T06:02:00.000-05:00

The following report was sent to me late last night by LA School Board Association Consultant Don Whittinghill. I thought I would reprint it so my readers could get the very latest information on critical BESE actions. I'm pleased that BESE realized that it did not make sense to hand out contracts for teacher recruiting when we have a surplus of teachers!

Arrogance Put on Hold
BESE Says Hold ON!
The Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE), meeting today in Baton Rouge repelled a move by the State Department of Education to alter the way that BESE advisory councils operate.

BESE member Walter Lee chided the department for initiating an action that would have changed the way that the BESE-appointed Superintendents’ Advisory Council operates. He reminded DOE spokespersons that the council is created by BESE policy and that only the board has the authority to change operation of the councils. BESE also has an 8(g) Advisory Council, Nonpublic school Commission, a Special Education Advisory Council, and a Textbook and Media Advisory Council.

BESE also put on hold a pair of contracts that proposed to pay Teach for America $2,023,197 for recruitment and orientation of teacher candidates; and also $1,275,479 to the Brooklyn, NY, New Teacher Project for the recruitment, selection, training and certification of alternative route teachers.

These large contracts were proposed by DOE in the face of a reported surplus of teachers made by the state education estimating conference just yesterday.

The Department was also taken to task for its calculation of Graduation Cohort Index and Rate, statewide, using a policy that has not been officially promulgated. The policy was adopted by BESE in June, and published in the official state journal. Law requires that the public be provided time to comment on the Notice of Intent proposing the new policy. The rule would become official in November. However, under BESE grilling Erin Bendily, assistant deputy superintendent of the Office of Departmental Support, admitted that the application of the new policy was done because it was deemed to be the latest expression of BESE intent.

BESE member Louella Harding-Givins of New Orleans, protested that the department acted illegally as a Notice of Intent is a warning to the public that something is about to happen, and its intent is to provide the public time to comment and, perhaps, alter the proposal.

Linda Johnson, another BESE member questioned the entire early School Performance Score released this spring by the department.

Testimony was provided by Tom Spenser of the Lafayette Public School District, that the impact on 2011 SPS was significant. A graduation rate of 85% would have produced 9 points under currently established policy, but only 2.3 using the pending policy that was used. An 80% graduation rate earned by a high school would have earned 6.8 points with the current policy, but zero points by applying the pending policy.

The impact of such losses likely would have a significant impact on the number of schools earning an SPS below 65 this year and thus gain the designation of Academically Unacceptable School. The 2010 listing on the DOE web site showed that Stewart Elementary School, in Webster Parish scored 65.1. A 6.5 point reduction if applying the proposed policy would have cast the school in AUS. Potentially 89 additional schools would have been reported as AUS had the proposed policy been used in 2010.

The multi-million Teach for America (TFA) contract would cover the cost of eight TFA employees working an average of 50 hours per week another 1.5 employees would cost $406,314 for an average of 50 hours work per week, and $1,000,000 was proposed to pay for three employees who are expected to work 50 hour weeks, and one part-time consultant working 20 hours per week.

In still another action, BESE approved a Pre-K assessment that the DOE recommended should be deferred until later. A motion to reconsider the approval so as to allow three non-governmental agencies to consider the assessment proposals was not adopted.

In a nine hour committee schedule, BESE once again heard a variety of protests from New Orleans education activists Karen Royal Harper. Her protests about RSD facilities decisions, and how nearly a billion dollars had been spent, with little regard for repopulation patterns in New Orleans, drew some support from BESE members.

Don Whittinghill
Consultant
8/18/2011

Lavish State Funding for Education Alternatives

2011-08-15T07:24:00.005-05:00

At a time when state funding for traditional public education has been reduced and frozen even as mandated costs have surged, some alternative education initiatives have received generous funding. In a guest editorial for the Monroe News Star Sunday, State Treasurer John Kennedy pointed out that the state has too many unnecessary consulting contracts. I agree with Mr Kennedy and want to point out just a few of the highly questionable Education Department consulting contracts. These include a no bid contract for the National Association of Charter School Authorizers and several appropriations for Teach for America recruitment activities. Here are the line items in the budget of the LA Department of Education.

$729,769 for professional services by the National Association of Charter School Authorizers to manage charter applications and to help review charter school contracts for BESE.
$630,000 with the Teach for America organization to help recruit TFA recruits for different school districts around the state
$468,468 for another contract with Teach for America to assist the State Department of Education in recruiting 600 TFA recruits.
$1,267,250 for another contract with Teach for America to specifically recruit TFA recruits for the Recovery District and for the Louisiana Teaching Fellows program in Northwest Louisiana.

I have strong objections as a taxpayer to each of these appropriations.

The first item of $729,769 to the National Association of Charter School Authorizers looks like a conflict of interest to me. This group is set up to promote charters, not to look after the interests of public school students. I believe the Department of Educaiton has attorneys and other highly paid staff who could better review these charter contracts. It is obvious from the recent action by BESE to terminate a charter after serious wrongdoing that this organization is not involved in monitoring alleged violations of state law or provisions of the charter contracts.

The three different appropriations for Teach for America, I believe are unnecessary to begin with and seemingly pay more than once for the same service. I have to ask why are these gifts to TFA necessary? Does the state pay our state colleges of education for all the work they do in helping school systems to place new teachers in local schools?

The Recovery District in New Orleans systematically lays off over 250 teachers each year by closing some schools and opening new ones. This helps to make room for the new TFA recruits. That's a slap in the face of laid off certified teachers who have achieved proper certification and have made teaching their real career instead of signing up for a two year stint in TFA before going on to their true profession. Many other school systems have cut back on teaching positions because of the budget crunch. Why is Louisiana not making efforts to find jobs for laid off certified teachers first, before bringing in more TFA recruits?

I believe that originally this idea to have a large pool of TFA recruits and the subcontract for the Louisiana Teaching Fellows came about because of a push by former Superintendent Pastorek to implement the new value added teacher evaluation model starting in some parishes this year. There was a proposal by some education reformers last year that if school systems could fire and replace the bottom 5% of their teachers according to student performance, that student test scores would improve dramatically. Pastorek had obviously bought into this hair brained scheme. (Most education researchers say there is no real basis for this theory) In one of the memos concerning the new evaluation system sent to local superintendents last year, Pastorek sought to alleviate fears about teacher shortages caused by the new evaluation system. He suggested that the State Department would attempt to provide a source of new teachers to fill the vacancies created by value added firings. I guess that's the reason for the 600 extra TFA recruits in addition to the recruits by the Louisiana Teaching Fellows (Does anyone know who owns or runs the Louisiana Teaching Fellows?) for the Recovery District.

I hope the state auditors carefully monitor these expenditures and that the legislature considers not renewing such "no bid"contracts in the future.

The Tip of The Iceberg

2011-08-08T07:56:00.002-05:00

This blogger applauds the decisive actions taken recently by Acting Superintendent Ollie Tyler and BESE President Penny Dastugue in revoking the charter of Pelican Foundation to operate Abramson Charter school. BESE was right also in approving their recommendations despite the threat of lawsuit by Pelican. Many education observers however, believe the Abramson Charter scandal is just the tip of the iceberg of abuse and cover-up in the charter school community. The linked Advocate article here describes concerns by the Dept. of Education about limited special education services and the high number of uncertified teachers employed in another Pelican school. Several other charter operators in Baton Rouge and New Orleans seem to have problems ranging from inadequate special education services, to unsafe campus environments, to questionable LEAP rehearsal materials, to grade inflation and to questionable dropout figures (See my guest research paper at Research on Reforms.

Now some education researchers are looking at statistically improbable results of some LEAP and ILEAP testing results in RSD schools. At the same time, word is leaking out about teachers who claim to have observed testing irregularities such as LEAP test papers with identical answer sheets for different students, written test responses in the handwriting of the supervising teacher, and test rehearsal using test items almost identical to the actual LEAP tests.

These are the kind of abuses warned about by Psychologist Donald Campbell when accountability stakes are raised to such critical levels. Dr Campbell formulated an adage in the 70's that has become known as Campbell's law. Campbell's law states that "the more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social process it is intended to monitor. Thus the pressure to cheat on or game the school performance indicators.

Unfortunately now that our education policy makers have created this test based accountability monster, it is incumbent upon state education officials to step up monitoring and investigations to prevent cheating from totally distorting school performance results. If state officials do not act decisively now to prevent and expose test cheating and unethical test prep activities, they should be held responsible for any new scandals that may be exposed.

Acting State Superintendent Ollie Tyler has announced her intent to propose improved oversight of accountability requirements as implemented in state charter schools. Ms Tyler has indicated that she welcomes recommendations from all stakeholders. OK, then as a taxpayer and educator, I have a few recommendations. The following are proposals that I believe would increase the confidence of taxpayers that gaming of the system of accountability would be discouraged and hopefully minimized.

BESE should adopt a policy that prohibits any form of retaliation (whistle blower protection) against any school employee who reports to the Department or BESE any alleged violation of state laws or policies related to school accountability.
The Department should adopt a policy of investigating and monitoring schools that demonstrate statistically improbable LEAP or ILEAP test results or dropout data.
The Department should investigate any alleged improper test preparation materials to determine if such materials should be disallowed.
Strong sanctions should be imposed on schools or school systems that are determined to have violated accountability policies.

Charter Terminated

2011-08-04T07:59:00.004-05:00

On Wednesday, after a long tense meeting, BESE terminated the charter of Pelican Foundation to operate the Abramson Charter School in New Orleans. The school will continue to operate as a direct run school under the Recovery District. The Board acted to approve the recommendation of Acting Superintendent Ollie Tyler who supplied the Board with a devastating packet of documentation for the numerous allegations of wrongdoing at the school over the last two years. (Click on this link to the BESE packet and scroll down to the documents presented to BESE)

Pelican Foundation leaders had packed the BESE meeting room with bussed-in parents and children in addition to Foundation attorneys. The Pelican Foundation attorneys are challenging the charter termination partly on the grounds that they were not provided adequate due process by the Dept. and the Board. Due process is apparently a right that was not afforded to the teachers and staff who were fired after they exposed the wrong doing at Abramson.

Several members of the Coalition for Louisiana Public Education including this blogger asked the Board to tighten its monitoring of charter schools and to adopt a policy to protect whistle blowers who report violations by charters. The Board was presented with a list of questions about Department delays and improper handling of allegations about Abramson and other charters.

In a memo to the Board, Superintendent Tyler outlined a preliminary plan to improve monitoring and oversight of charters. BESE approved a motion requiring such a plan be presented to the Board.

Ed Reform Agenda Dictated by Privatization Interests

2011-07-28T09:23:00.005-05:00

New revelations have surfaced this week about carefully orchestrated plans by privatization interests to drive "education reform" in Louisiana and most other states. The planning and organizing group for this reform legislation is called ALEC which is an acronym for American Legislative Exchange Council. The group provides an opportunity for business interests to offer template legislation to supportive governors and legislators. (Click on this link to view the ALEC Exposed website which contains descriptions of Template legislation designed to protect business interests and privatize various government functions.) National Chairman for the ALEC group is Louisiana State Senator, Noble Ellington.

ALEC is almost totally financed by big business interests. (The misleading name is intentional!) The ALEC education task force which writes the template education legislation includes a representative from the National Association of Charter School Authorizers represented in Louisiana by Caroline Roemer Shirley, the sister of Chas Roemer, current member of BESE. The education task force includes also a representative from Connections Academy, a "for profit" which sponsors a virtual charter school in Louisiana. This school is allowed to take students and their funding from any public school in the state. The annual ALEC national conference is an invitation-only meeting in New Orleans on August 3-4. Governor Jindal will be a keynote speaker leading up to a session on education reform focusing on "school choice". Breaking News! Louisiana Taxpayers are funding trips for our legislators to this special interest conference according to an article today in the Baton Rouge Advocate! (click on this underlined link for the story) Also click on this link to see the editorial by the Lafayette Advertizer.

Why are these influential business people so interested in public education? Are they involved because they want to support and improve public education and enhance opportunities for students? I believe many of these big business leaders genuinely believe that their support for privatization is contributing to the improvement of education. Their theory is that free enterprise and competition will apply business principles to improving education. If parents can choose the best schools for their children, the marketplace will allow only the best schools (public or private) to survive. Lazy and incompetent public educators will be replaced by effective teachers and administrators who will be rewarded for excellence by merit pay.
Unfortunately, it does not work that way! Many other sponsors of ALEC see privatization as a way to make an easy buck using public tax money!

The free enterprise system often works well in a system where competition and the profit motive produce better products and efficiencies in production. Unregulated free enterprise can also wreak havoc as we have seen in the banking collapse that recently caused the great recession. As it has been applied in Louisiana education, free enterprise and competition results in an extreme focus on test preparation, student selection to enroll the most motivated and cost efficient students in some charters, excessive salaries for administrators and neglect of special education students. Allegations about the Abramson Charter operation exposed in news reports last week include teachers who takeover science fair projects for students, lack of special education staffing, LEAP cheating, cover up of child abuse, bribery attempts and other unethical behavior.

The firing of Education Department staff who produced a critical report of the Abramson Charter is nothing new. An independent audit of Baton Rouge area charters reported numerous weaknesses and violations of accountability procedures. The Department chose to blame the messenger and fired the independent audit firm, and decided to conduct future audits with in-house staff. Since then one of the schools audited has continued to experience serious disruptions and the rape of a student on campus. How has the Department responded? The charter organization, Advance Baton Rouge was awarded a 13.3 million dollar federal grant to implement the TAP (Teacher Advancement Program). This amount was twice the per-student amount allocated to a few other public school systems in Louisiana.

The Louisiana School Boards Association web site, this week, includes an article by consultant Don Whittinghill which outlines how to Follow the Dollars for school privatization interests.

This report shows that the public was led to believe that privatization would spend a larger percentage of education dollars on students through a site-based management system, which would cut central office waste. The fact is, central office costs for the Recovery District which serves half as many students as the East Baton Rouge school system spends 13 million dollars on their central office compared to 10 million dollars for the EBR central office.

In another example, the Edison Charter Management organization, a "for profit" company, operating Capitol High school in Baton Rouge, saw its student enrollment fall to a fraction of the original enrollment while student achievement continued to be awful. The company was happy to give the school back to the Recovery District. Meanwhile, EBR-operated schools in the area have demonstrated much greater academic success than Capitol High School, yet the Recovery District refused to allow management to go back to the public school system. So much for competition rewarding the more successful management!

Takeover of schools in the New Orleans system by mostly Charter operators was supposed to do away with dropout factories. Yet it took a public records request to reveal that the cohort graduation rate for the Recovery District high schools was the second lowest in the state. The new grading system adopted by BESE will award 32 Fs to Recovery District schools. Most of the others will get D or D-. The latest rules by BESE make it almost impossible for failing charters in New Orleans to go back to the public school system which has one of the best performances in the state.

So when ALEC meets in New Orleans next week, the participants from across the country will probably be told that the Louisiana Recovery District with its major privatization effort should serve as a model for the rest of the nation. Organizers are not about to let the facts interfere with their agenda.

Charter School Scandal Expands to State Department

2011-07-22T06:27:00.001-05:00

Two more educators have fallen victim to the botched efforts by the LA Dept. of Education to deal with irregularities at a New Orleans charter school. The article linked here by reporter Andrew Vancour of the Times Picayune identifies Folwell Dunbar and Jacob Landry as the two Education Department staff members fired this week connected with the problems at Abramson Science and Technology Charter School.

But it looks like once again the wrong educators have been fired. The questionable firings started at the school when two young teachers were apparently fired for making legitimate complaints to the State Dept. about possible violations of education and child protection laws by charter school operators. Now the firings have extended to at least one of the Dept. staffers who tried to properly report and correct the problems at the school. According to the Picayune article, Dunbar after an attempt was made to bribe him last year, insisted on corrective actions by the Dept. including suspension of the school's charter. Now that the charter has been suspended and the charter operators removed, it's mystifying to observers why Mr Dunbar and his boss Landry, would be fired.

All this demonstrates why the practice of approving dozens of charter operators with minimal qualifications and with little state oversight has been a very bad policy. These rampant charter school adoptions proliferated under the administration of State Superintendent Pastorek who apparently never met a school privatization scheme he didn't like.

In a statement, Dunbar said, "I was terribly shocked and disappointed" when the department of education let him go, adding, "I am very proud of the department's post-Katrina reform efforts, and am honored to have been given an opportunity to contribute."

Last summer when Dunbar's recommendations were ignored and apparently hidden from BESE, he recommended the following: "Dunbar made six recommendations for improving oversight: more clearly defined roles for the state, the RSD and charter school boards; a "comprehensive" school quality review system; a more clearly spelled out procedure for handling complaints; whistle-blower protection policies; and more of an effort to live up to the idea of "complete transparency."

Maybe if BESE had seen his recommendations and adopted at least the whistle-blower protection, Dunbar would still have his job today. Possibly the two young teachers fired by the charter operator may have been allowed a hearing and had a chance to be reinstated by BESE which is supposed to have authority over all state approved charters. But because of a State Superintendent dominated-dictatorial culture at the State Department, BESE never got a chance to do its job.

In a statement announcing the firings, acting Superintendent Ollie Tyler said there was a need for the charter school oversight department to go "in a new direction".

That "new direction" should be as follows:
BESE should reclaim its constitutional authority over the State Department of Education, and the State Superintendent of Education should answer to BESE instead of the reverse. We also need to elect more members to BESE who are not just lackeys of privatization interests and our anti-public education governor!

BESE Takeover Planned This Fall!

2011-07-18T07:35:00.006-05:00

I'm not exaggerating! There is now a major plan shaping up to take over Louisiana's chief education policy making board and convert it into an anti-public education institution. Don't take my word for it. Just take a look at what these groups themselves are saying about their plans for Louisiana and the teaching profession.

The Louisiana Federation for Children (click on the highlighted section to view their web site) which is a branch of the American Federation for Children is sponsoring a training session for pro-privatization candidates to BESE and the Legislature this Saturday, July 23. This workshop will train candidates who want to help the group promote "school choice" which is a code term meaning privatization of schools. According to their web information, the group supports both charter schools and the expansion of the voucher program. School vouchers are a major goal of privatization. Such programs allow parents to use tax money to send their children to private schools, most of which do not participate in accountability. It's ironic that the school reform movement with its emphasis on testing and accountability may result in allowing students to attend private schools at public expense where no testing takes place and standards are minimal.

Closely allied with the above group is a group designed to attract minority parents to support vouchers. This groups is called the Louisiana Black Alliance for Educational Options. Click on the highlighted phrase to go to their web site. This group conducts community organizing to convince minority parents that the answer to their education concerns is the funding of vouchers for minority children.

New pro-business BESE candidates are being sought to push for repeal of teacher tenure and seniority benefits of teachers.
The following is a story from the Baton Rouge Business Report on May 24:

"Grigsby to target support of teacher tenure
Candidates for state offices who hope to gain the support of Cajun Industries’ chairman, deep-pocketed political activist Lane Grigsby, can expect to be asked their position on eliminating tenure for public school teachers. "During this next election cycle, every candidate that comes before every organization that I sit on is going to have to tell that organization how they feel about teachers’ tenure," and whether they would commit to eliminating tenure for new school teachers, Grigsby says. "Florida just did it," he says. "It can be done. Louisiana needs to be one of the leaders, not one of the followers." In March, Florida Gov. Rick Scott signed a law ending tenure for new hires and requiring districts to come up with an evaluation system to determine which teachers get merit pay raises and which might face dismissal; the system would be at least halfway based on how much students improve on standardized tests. Proponents say the law will help attract and retain the best teachers, while opponents say it imposes an unfunded mandate on districts and requires compensation and evaluation systems that haven’t improved student learning when tried elsewhere. Teachers unions are expected to challenge the law in court, according to Florida media reports."

The above report came out as a response to a call by BESE member Chas Roemer for a repeal of tenure.

Here's what John Maginnis of the blog LA Politics Weekly said recently:
"BESE to Be Targeted by 3rd Party Campaign

A politically active contractor known for putting his money where his mouth is has promised to raise a big war chest to target BESE incumbents who have opposed education initiatives backed by the Jindal administration.
Baton Rouge contractor Lane Grigsby says he will put up and raise $1.6 million to back challengers to three members: Dale Bayard of Sulphur, Walter Lee of Shreveport and Keith Guice of Monroe."

So that's the plan for takeover of BESE. Grigsby and other business interests will come up with major funding for BESE campaigns and the Louisiana Federation for Children will train hand picked candidates about how to run their campaigns and will also give them technical support.

Why do business interests and many media owners want so badly to attack job protections of teachers and turn over public schools to private operators? I sat down a few months ago with the editors of the Baton Rouge Advocate to try to convince them that school takeovers have not been successful and that the new letter grading system for schools was unfair and destructive. They listened politely, and they admitted that many charters and vouchers have not worked but they admitted that they no longer have confidence in the public schools. They basically said that they are willing to support anything but public schools!

That kind of attitude is unfortunate because our public schools are willing and able to educate those students that are willing and able to learn. The data nationwide shows that non-poverty students trained in our public schools score at the top of international rankings. Public schools have the expertize and can do much to help close the learning gap for at-risk students if we place maximum resources including experienced teachers and more instruction time where it is most needed. Dismantling public education and de-professionalizing the teaching profession will only set back our entire educational system and our ability to prepare our children to compete in the world job market!

Last Friday there was another news story about the chaos we encourage when we open our school system up to indiscriminate privatization. Our State Department of Education under pressure from a devastating news report of numerous unethical and possibly illegal actions by the Abramson Science and Technology Charter school in New Orleans took a belated action Friday to suspend the charter and close the school for the fall 2011 enrollment. The linked news story from the Times Picayune gives details of the alleged infractions and describes the fate of two teachers who blew the whistle on the charter school administration. Its ironic that the firing of the two whistle blowing teachers makes the best case possible for due process protections such as tenure in preventing unfair dismissals or reprisals.

Other recent examples of the failure of privatization include the collapse of the Edison schools management of Capitol High school in Baton Rouge, the Filipino teacher abuses, many of which were connected with Baton Rouge area charters, and the repeated academic failures of the Advance Baton Rouge takeover schools. ABR just replaced their Director and have experienced high turnover of principals and teachers in addition to very low student test scores. Enrolment in most of their schools is drastically down. Apparently choice is not working well in the Baton Rouge area.

The takeover of BESE in the Fall elections, however is far from being a done deal. BESE elections usually are not high profile elections. In such elections, public school employees and their friends and relatives can have a huge impact, if they are organized to support pro public education candidates. The Coalition For Louisiana Public Education has taken on the challenge of finding good candidates and of informing school employees about such candidates. This blog will support and help publicize the work of The Coalition for Louisiana Public Education. Please stay tuned for further information in the coming months.

I hope all professional educators will get involved in the BESE elections this fall to insure that our public education system continues to be truly public.

TFA Set to Displace Qualified Teachers

2011-07-12T16:53:00.006-05:00

Because of severe budget problems facing most states, thousands of certified and qualified teachers are expected to be laid off this fall. CNN reported last week that California is expected to lay off up to 36,000 teachers and New York state is expected to lay off approximately 20,000 teachers. All states combined are expected to lay off over 100,000 teachers. At the same time Teach for America plans to place between five and six thousand non-education major college graduates as teachers in public schools this coming year. In Louisiana, the Recovery District provides employment for a large number of TFA teachers each year.

So why would major charitable contributors continue to fund the Teach For America organization with up to 50 million dollars this year to recruit 5,000 new unqualified college graduates to teach in states that are laying off up to 100,000 certified teachers? These insane statistics tell us a lot about how cynical influential people in this country have become about the teaching profession. TFA recruits are given about six weeks summer training in teaching methods before being allowed to fill teaching positions in mostly urban schools. Schools that should be getting the most expert experienced teachers possible. No wonder the NEA passed a resolution recently opposing the hiring of TFA recruits for positions where qualified teachers are available.

I just finished reading the book Relentless Pursuit; A year in the trenches with Teach for America by Donna Foote. One of the 4 teachers followed for one year by Ms Foote is a new Psychology major with no training in education who is assigned to teach Biology to special education students at a large inner city school in Los Angeles.
It is obvious from the description of her teaching efforts that this well intentioned young person has no clue about what to do, much less how to teach handicapped students. Other TFA members profiled seemed at least to have a good grasp of the subject matter they were expected to teach. All seemed to be idealistic and dedicated to their students. But so are most of the many thousands of qualified, certified teachers out there who will soon be laid off. As Lance Hill of the Southern Institute for Education and Research at Tulane University asks: "Why not a 'learn as you go' program for prosecuting attorneys or legal aid attorneys? A bright person can learn the law as they go—what does it matter that their mistakes result in freeing guilty violent criminals or imprisoning innocent people? Why not a TFA program for fire fighters? Law enforcement officials? Tax assessors? Bridge engineers? EMTs?"

Yet influential leaders such as Senator Mary Landrieu, Bill Gates, and many others seem to have written off the education profession just at the time we should be working to improve the professional status of teachers. Finland, the country with the most successful public education system in the western world, has done just the opposite in building its education leadership position. Instead of putting new teachers in the classroom with only 6 weeks of training, Finland requires all new teachers to have a masters degree in education before entering the classroom.

Teach for America does attempt to attract top academic students to TFA. The organization claims that only one of 5 applicants is accepted into the program. But the problem is that these recruits are only expected to commit 2 years to teaching before moving on to their true profession where most will earn many times what average teachers do in public education. The main TFA drawing card for their recruits is that two years of TFA experience will look good on their resume in applying for their next real job. In Finland, the drawing card is that teachers there will be among the highest paid professional workers in the country and unlike American teachers, they will be given a high degree of autonomy in the classroom. In other words they train like professionals then they are treated like professionals in their employment. In Finland the educator unions are not bashed and blamed for every problem in education.

Are American teachers really that bad? Do they deserve the punishing indictment made last week by Senator Mary Landrieu? (see my post of last week below) If you look at the education attainment of non-poverty American students compared to similar students in other countries, the U.S. students score at the top of the rankings. U.S. teachers are doing an excellent job of educating students who come to school ready and willing to learn. Readiness to learn is a condition most other educational systems take for granted.

Our problem is in educating the large percentage of high poverty students we have in this country. Our teachers are being blamed because of the low performance of students who have the poorest school attendance rates, who routinely fight at school, who behave in a disrespectful manner to teachers and other students, who use profane language in school, who sleep in class, who never do homework, and who generally have little motivation to make good grades. Teachers are now expected to take the role that should have been assumed by parents in motivating students to do well in school and in teaching them to control their unacceptable behavior.

Yet the pressure on teachers and administrators from the LA State Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Education is to discourage both in-school and out-of-school suspension for even the most disruptive behavior. What do you think happens when teachers attempt to use counseling, peer mediation, positive behavior methods or the assignment of punish work instead of suspension? Many of these hardened cases, often as young as age 13 laugh at positive behavior measures. Punish work is a joke to them, and they not only refuse to do such assignments but usually insult the teacher who attempts to implement such lesser measures. Such students do not show up at detention and dare the school administration to do anything further about it. There is no question in my mind that much of the difficulty of teaching in some public schools occurs because of the lack of authority of teachers to enforce simple discipline in their classrooms. Constant disruptions and general lack of respect for teachers by relatively few students in some schools prevents all students (even the truly dedicated ones) from getting the education they need.

An Evolving Privatization Strategy
While state and national authorities systematically interfere in a way that prevents effective discipline in public schools, there are some schools that are allowed to enforce strict discipline. Charter schools in Louisiana and in most other states have generally been given the go-ahead to remove students who interfere with or who disrupt school operations. Such schools either expel or "counsel out" students who are disruptive, who do not have proper parental support, or who do not seem interested in meeting academic standards. State officials generally take a "hands off" attitude in enforcing state laws and policies governing suspensions and expulsions of students in charter schools. BESE member Chas Roemer recently incorrectly stated that charter schools are exempt from discipline laws and BESE discipline policy. Such quasi-private schools feel free to use the regular public schools as a dumping ground for incorrigible, disruptive and disinterested students. After using this culling process to remove the lowest performers, charter operators proudly announce success in improving performance of at-risk students and set themselves up as a model for reform of schools.

In the book, Relentless Pursuit, the TFA teachers profiled are assigned to a large, mostly dysfunctional urban school where discipline rules are not consistently enforced. Teachers seem to accept daily disruptive and disrespectful behavior as par for the course. Nearby however, the Green Dot charter schools have set up several small competing high schools that insist on strict discipline, intense parental involvement and a strong work ethic by students and teachers. These schools are seen as successful because they are providing a solid education to those students who are motivated to do well in school. The regular public schools, in attempting to educate all students are seen as failures no matter how hard the teachers work. It's no wonder that the Green Dot schools are able to pick and choose the teachers they want from the regular public schools. The Green Dot schools by the way, are supportive of and hire unionized teachers. While they work hard in attracting good teachers, I believe their success is primarily because of their policies that are selective in the enrollment and retention of students.

This cannibalization of public schools by both charter schools and private school voucher programs is certain to perpetuate the deterioration of public schools and further erode public support. Yet there are groups that are organizing right now to elect only pro-charter and pro-voucher candidates to BESE in the elections this fall (more on this next week). If they are successful, I believe they will greatly increase the number of charter schools statewide and continue the practice of letting such schools pick and choose the students with the most potential while dumping the rest back into regular public schools. The same strategy will be used with expanded voucher programs for private schools.
I hope my readers will consider participating in the Save Our Schools march in Washington DC on July 30. After that, educators will need to get involved in supporting pro-public education BESE candidates this fall and in the election of legislators who truly support public schools and a new governor who believes in public education.

Senator Landrieu Condemns Public Schools

2011-07-07T07:11:00.005-05:00

In a recent article about a speech given by Louisiana Senator Landrieu on school turnaround efforts in New Orleans, the Senator expressed her disdain for public school teachers and administrators. She made it clear that she condemns the many traditional public school teachers who have dedicated their lives and careers to the education of children as not being worthy of participating in school turnaround efforts.

Landrieu's exact quote is as follows: “If traditional teachers and principals can rally themselves and admit that they failed … they can be part of turnaround,” she added. “If not, they can leave.”

This verbal attack by Senator Landrieu is like a kick in the gut to teachers who have toiled in the trenches of public education, many of them for 20 or more years, and who have contributed much to the lives and futures of many thousands of disadvantaged children.

Such an attitude by a high government official demonstrates a basic distrust of public education and public educators, just at a time when educators need support to tackle some of the most difficult problems facing our public schools. It also perpetuates the myth that privatization schemes such as charter schools and vouchers offer a miracle solution to closing the achievement gap for at-risk students. Readers may want to visit a new web site that exposes major flaws in recently discovered "miracle" schools. Also, a New Orleans group that supports charter schools points out that the New Orleans voucher program that allows public school students to attend mostly Catholic schools at public expense is basically failing to improve student achievement.

The article quoting Senator Landrieu, points out that charter schools have not made a significant improvement in the education of at-risk students in New Orleans. Sure, a few charters that have perfected a system of selection of the students with most potential, are able to "game" the system and show higher test results than other schools in the area. But this is done by using direct run RSD schools as dumping grounds for special needs students and for disciplinary problems. Regular public schools do not have these options. Even so, public magnet schools and even some general admission schools all over the state have demonstrated very high performance with many different levels of student poverty.

For Senator Landrieu and others to point to a few selective charter schools as a miracle cure to the ills of education amounts to a con job for the privatization of schools. As has been demonstrated, such student selective schemes only serve to cover up the root of the problems and the need for good basic strategies to close the achievement gap. Many public schools in Louisiana are now demonstrating that all children can attend safe schools where each child has a great opportunity, but is not guaranteed to succeed. This is the realistic approach that works in the real world, not the miracle approach that is being sold by the Landrieu types.

Join the Save Our Schools March and related activities scheduled for July 29 through Aug. 1 in Washington DC. If you click here and go to the Save Our Schools web site you can find out about speakers such as Diane Ravitch and Jonathan Kozal and special events starting as early as this Thursday, July 7. These events should help prepare educators to defend their public schools and their profession from these unprecedented attacks.

Update on Value Added Teacher Evaluation

2011-06-25T16:26:00.000-05:00

I attended part of the most recent meeting of the ACEE (Advisory Committee on Educator Effectiveness) on June 21. This is the committee that is charged with proposing a plan for implementation of the value added component of teacher evaluation mandated by Act 54 of the 2010 Louisiana Legislature. According to the legislation 50% of a teacher's evaluation should be based upon growth in student achievement. It turns out that while the concept sounds simple, implementation is sure to be a b____. Or as my old boss used to say: "The big ideas come easy, its the details that kill you."

The major issue being tackled at the meeting last week was how to apply the evaluation system to the 65% of teachers and other certified personnel whose assignment does not include subjects or duties that have readily available student test results. LEAP, ILEAP and Graduation Exit Exam results are the main source of student testing data that could theoretically be used as the value added component of a teacher's evaluation. It could be very expensive for the state or local school systems to develop equally rigorous test materials and procedures to test courses in foreign languages, PE, music, art, various technical and vocational subjects, special education, guidance services, library services, higher level math and science as well as advanced placement and dual enrollment courses.

In addition, there are problems in applying the same value added system to elective and advanced subjects that may be applied to the basic skills subjects that are now tested by LEAP. Such a high stakes system when applied to the evaluation of teachers can cause all sorts of unintended consequences. Let me give you a personal example.

Many years ago in my first year of teaching, I had so much confidence in my teaching ability and such a strong belief in my favorite subject (Physics) that I actually recruited additional students to sign up for Physics in the coming year. It was easy to do. The small country school (Zachary High School) where I taught was only big enough to support one class of Physics. In my first year only 14 students had signed up for Physics, but I was convinced that this course was so valuable (Physics in my opinion is the purest of all sciences. It is the basis of all other sciences. The more Physics you know, the greater understanding you have of the laws and workings of the Universe) that as many kids as possible should be exposed to it. So before the end of my first year, I spoke to the students in my two 11th grade Chemistry classes about the importance and beauty of Physics and its value as a basic component of every student's education.

I was rewarded the following year with a total of 32 students enrolled in my Physics class. The result was a very tough year for a lot of my students and for me as a young teacher. But to this day I believe it was very rewarding for all of us. The problem is that about half of that big class had trouble with the advanced math that was a major component for the understanding of Physics. To be honest I had to assign numerous extra point projects and reports to help some of those struggling students pass the class. In succeeding years I may not have recruited as heavily as my first over-confident year, but I always had a significant percentage of my Physics class that struggled with the math and made up for low test scores with extra work projects.

Why is the above little story relevant today? Because if Louisiana were to implement a strict application of the principles of value added evaluation, to all elective subjects such as Physics, a teacher would be very wary of encouraging weaker students to enroll. Because then the teacher would be evaluated by the test measured success of the students. Extra point projects would not count. There would be absolutely no benefit to the teacher to recruit weaker students to such a course. Also, such a system may encourage teachers to fight over who will teach the AP classes where the best students are attracted. There are a thousand unintended consequences of value added teacher evaluation that are not good for students or for teachers.

Here's another one. The ACEE committee reported to BESE in a progress report last month that they were not able to reach consensus on using free/reduced lunch percentage of students as a factor to consider in teacher evaluation. This should have been a no-brainer. There are years and years and mounds of data that show the clear impact that poverty has on student performance. See my post of April 21, 2011. If the final evaluation plan ignores the influence of poverty, another unintended consequence will be a major migration of experienced and effective teachers away from high poverty schools. How will that improve the education of those students?

The unintended consequence mentioned above is the most dramatic reason why value added teacher evaluation cannot work and will actually be counterproductive. It undermines the most critical strategies that are needed to help close the learning gap for at risk students. Statistics show that nationwide and statewide we have no problem educating the non-poverty students. International rankings have our non-poverty students scoring near the top of the rankings of the developed nations. So why do we want to spend all this money and energy to fix a system that "ain't broke"? Instead of spending millions on developing more tests and counterproductive teacher evaluation schemes, we should be directing that money to attracting the most effective teachers (at addressing the needs of underprivileged students) to the schools serving those students. We should be extending the school day and the school year for students who need it, assigning the strongest principals to high poverty schools, and we may even want to use bonuses or pay enhancements as incentives to attract teachers and administrators who are willing to work the extra hours needed to bring these students up in basic skills.

Real education reform means doing the things that work in real classrooms, not untested, half-baked, wishful thinking schemes promoted by the Gates and Broad Foundations!

NCLB: A False Promise

2011-06-19T18:37:00.000-05:00

When Congress passed the No Child Left Behind law ten years ago it was just another example of a "Mission Accomplished" moment. That is; proclaiming that our government could create educational success for all children by edict just as they thought the U.S. could win a quick, clean victory in Afghanistan and Iraq. Neither goal has been accomplished because they were based on false assumptions and unrealistic expectations.

Education Secretary Duncan is now scrambling around trying to get Congress to revise the NCLB so that it will not continue to punish schools that are addressing the needs of our most at-risk students. More and more schools are failing to meet "Adequate Yearly Progress" as the states are required to accelerate school performance toward the elusive goal of proficiency for all by 2014. Such schools are then required to undergo radical restructuring in order to maintain their federal funds. Duncan testified recently before Congress that up to 82% of all public schools could fail to meet "Adequate Yearly Progress" this year and would begin to be punished by federal guidelines. It is not clear how Duncan plans to reverse this collision course with insanely unscientific and unrealistic standards, because he has not yet admitted that Congress was wrong.

The same is true at our State Department of Education here in Louisiana. The first Superintendent of the Louisiana Recovery District has left the state just in time to avoid taking the blame for numerous unacceptable schools in the RSD. The new Superintendent is continuing to resort to using distorted data to continue to claim success for the RSD. See the recent analysis by Charles Hatfield of Research on Reforms which shows that such claims are bogus.

BESE has chosen to abdicate its duty to be an independent governing body over education and instead has adopted policies dictated by Superintendent Pastorek to perpetuate the control of RSD over an increasing number of schools. BESE policy now allows charter schools that perform at an acceptable level to remain independent of their original school board as long as they choose to do so. For RSD schools that continue to perform below acceptable levels, the result is basically the same. School boards are now told they will have to apply to BESE to recapture schools that were taken from them but which continue to be classified as "failing".

When the Recovery District was created it was explained to the public that the purpose was to improve struggling schools and return them to the local school systems. Charter schools were supposed to be opportunities to try new approaches to improving schools and then sharing best practices with regular public schools. The RSD and the charter schools were not supposed to be the enemies of local school systems.

Accountability in Louisiana has come down to mindless requirements that force schools to focus most of their energies toward teaching the (LEAP) test. In the social sciences, there is an oft-repeated aphorism called Campbell’s Law, named after Donald Campbell, the psychologist who pioneered the study of human creativity: “The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.” In short, incentives corrupt. Daniel Koretz, the Harvard education professor recognized as the country’s leading expert on academic testing, writes in his book Measuring Up that Campbell’s Law is especially applicable to education; there is a preponderance of evidence showing that high-stakes tests lead to a narrowed curriculum, score inflation, and even outright cheating among those tasked with scoring exams.

Diane Ravitch points out in her recent column the following:
The National Research Council of the National Academies of Science just released a major report about the value of test-based accountability and incentives. It appeared right before the Memorial Day weekend. It says that the train is on the wrong track.

The report contains two major conclusions: First, "Test-based incentive programs, as designed and implemented in the programs that have been carefully studied, have not increased student achievement enough to bring the United States close to the levels of the highest-achieving countries. When evaluated using relevant low-stakes tests, which are less likely to be inflated by the incentives themselves, the overall effects on achievement tend to be small and are effectively zero for a number of programs."

Referring to No Child Left Behind, now in effect for nine years, the committee held that there were some school-level effects, "but the measured effects to date tend to be concentrated in elementary grade mathematics, and the effects are small compared to the improvements the nation hopes to achieve."

The second major conclusion of the report is that high school exit examinations, as currently implemented in the United States, "decrease the rate of high school graduation without increasing achievement."

Why do I say that No Child Left Behind is a false promise? Because as the Louisiana Education system moves to more privatization, more vouchers, letter grading of schools, and Value Added Models of teacher evaluation, the most at-risk students will have less of a chance than ever at closing the gap. The following are happening now:

Charter schools are becoming increasingly exclusive of problem students as is demonstrated by a recent report by Dr Barbara Ferguson of Research on Reforms. Such "undesirable" students are dumped into direct run or regular public schools. Private schools will soon learn to be selective of the best and most motivated students for voucher awards. The most experienced and effective teachers will be pushed out of the most challenging schools by the stigma caused by the new letter grade rating of schools and the VAM evaluation.

The most at risk students will increasingly be left behind in so called failing schools. This is the opposite of what No Child Left Behind was supposed to accomplish.

Coalition Member's letter to Senate Finance

2011-06-10T06:04:00.012-05:00

Special Update (June 17): House Bill 1, the state budget bill is now going to the full Senate and then back to the full House for final votes. The Coalition for Louisiana Public Education is requesting that all educators contact their Senators and then their Representatives and ask that the special appropriations for: (1) 8.5 million dollars for building insurance for the Recovery District in New Orleans be deleted and instead be used to help all public school systems and (2) that the 11 million dollars for voucher programs in New Orleans be removed and instead be used to help fund all public school systems. These special appropriations cannot be justified. They are a blatant move to grant extra support to favored schools at the expense of regular public schools that have suffered from 3 years of funding freezes as mandated costs have increased tremendously.

The following is a reprint of a letter to the Senate Finance Committee by Brett Bonnin, school board member for the Orleans Parish School Board. Mr Bonnin is expressing the position of the Coalition for Louisiana Public Education. Readers of this blog are urged to communicate similar concerns to their Senators.

To Senate Finance,

NO MONEY FOR K12, BUT EXTRA $18.6 MILLION FOR FAILED PRIVATE VOUCHERS AND INSURANCE EARMARKS?

While everyone proclaims K12 education to be a priority, the State has frozen what is supposed to be an automatic 2.75% MFP increase for K12 education for THREE YEARS IN A ROW saying there is no money. However, when it comes to funding private education vouchers and extra money for the Recovery school district, some believe that the State has an extra $18.6 million dollars to give away this year alone. These policies hurt public DIRECT RUN and CHARTER schools!

In the last three years of frozen MFP, probably close to $50 million dollars has gone to to vouchers and EXTRA insurance proceeds to just one school district, the New Orleans Recovery School District. The Orleans Parish School Board has lots of destroyed and land banked properties from Katrina, but the State is not giving it any extra money to help with their insurance costs. Instead, the MFP has been frozen for three years and they have had to lay off employees like many other districts across the State. Our public direct run and charters are hurting and it keeps getting worse with more and more unfunded mandates - State has shifted private school busing, national board certified teacher stipends, and increases in retirement costs to districts.

If funding is so tight that the all the school districts in the State must suffer three years of frozen MFP increases, then we should not be dolling out money for vouchers which even Leslie Jacobs says are not working - see her article below which you can find at http://educatenow.net/2010/06/25/school-voucher-program-rsd-schools-outperform-voucher-program/

Please tune in - Many Coalition leaders should be on WWL Channel 4 in New Orleans tonight at 5pm raising further concern!

Brett A. Bonin's (Member of Coalition for Louisiana Public Education)
Vice President
LOUISIANA SCHOOL BOARD ASSOCIATION

School Letter Grade Suspension Defeated

2011-06-04T05:59:00.001-05:00

The Senate Education Committee deferred action Thursday on SB 201 by Senator Perry that would have suspended the BESE approved school grading policy for two years. This action effectively kills the bill. The bill would also have required BESE to form a task force to come up with a new grading policy which proponents hoped would be fairer than the BESE policy scheduled to go into effeict this fall.

The Governor's office, BESE member Chas Roemer and business interests said that the public needed to get the "truth" about their public schools. Supposedly this letter grading system will tell parents the truth about the education opportunities their children are getting in a particular school. The two Senators supporting the measure, Senator Dorsey of Baton Rouge, and Senator Perry from Kaplan, pointed out that the new letter grade system may not correctly inform parents about the quality of the teachers, and may only reflect the disadvantages or level of poverty of the students.

The author of this blog and representatives of LAE, LFT, School Boards Association and school administrators supplied the Committee with data and charts showing that the level of poverty at a school was the overwhelmingly dominant factor in determining school performance scores. Several speakers for the bill pointed out that the new grading scale would drive effective and experienced teachers away from the most challenging schools. Also the new grading system will make it difficult to attract positive parental involvement in a school assigned a "D" or "F" grade by this over simplified system.

Proponents of the new grading system suggested that when a school gets a low grade, parents may finally demand improved education for their children. Many public school advocates believe this grading system will not produce the positive changes educators are seeking, such as students who attend school every day prepared to learn. Instead it will add fuel to the drive for more privatization and vouchers.

Correction: An earlier post on this blog incorrectly stated that the BESE policy would add a minus to the school grade for a school that did not succeed in meeting the state mandated SPS growth for a particular year. The policy states that the minus would only be assigned if the school had a decline in SPS from the previous year.

School Grade Revision Goes to Committee

2011-05-24T06:30:00.002-05:00

Important notice (5/27/2011): The committee hearing on SB 35 and SB 201 has been delayed and will be rescheduled for June 2. This gives you more time to contact the senators on the Senate Education committee.

Educators, we need to take steps now to prevent serious damage to public Education! Senate Bill 35 by Dorsey and Senate Bill 201 by Perry are scheduled for a hearing before the Louisiana Senate Education Committee this Thursday, May 26. This is the legislation that would require BESE to suspend and revamp the new letter grading system for public schools and school systems. These bills are strongly supported by the Coalition for Louisiana Public Education. My opinion however, is that it will take grass roots lobbying efforts from educators in the field who know that this new letter grading system is destructive to public schools, if this legislation is to be successful.

Click on this link to the information page for the Senate Education Committee and you can get the names of the committee members and their email addresses. Particularly if you live or teach in one the parishes represented by these Senators, you should send each of them an email before Thursday. The following is a sample email:

Dear Senator ___:
I am a public school educator (teacher, principal, superintendent, or school board member) at _____ school or _____ school system. I believe that the new school grading system recently adopted by BESE will be damaging to many public schools in our system. I am asking that you vote for either Senate Bill 35 or Senate Bill 201 this week in the Senate Education Committee. Either one of these bills would suspend the new grading system and require BESE to revise it. The present grading system does not consider critical poverty factors affecting many of our schools and will result in the loss of support of parents just at the time when progress needs to be made to increase positive parental involvement. Evidence will be provided at the committee hearing about why this system should be revised. We would appreciate your support.
Sincerely,
_________

Now let me tell you the educator more about why this legislation is necessary:

The school grading system adopted recently by BESE is either a cynical scheme to seriously damage public schools in the eyes of the public so that the forces of privatization can make further inroads into taking over education, or it is an incompetent bungling of a seemingly simple idea to inform parents about the effectiveness of a school. I lean toward the second possibility. Either way this policy is needlessly harmful to public schools in Louisiana.

The BESE grading system is harmful primarily because it does not take into account the overwhelming influence of poverty in many Louisiana public schools. You've seen the data in our post of April 21 showing the major correlation of School Performance Scores with student poverty percentages. But in addition, we now have data showing that it does not matter what school system your school happens to be in or how effective your principal, or how dedicated your teachers, poverty takes precedence.

For example, statistics show that if you teach in a school with anything over 80% free or reduced lunch students, you are almost certain to have a letter going to the parents of the children you teach this fall telling them that their child is attending a D- school. That's because the new system is rigged against you. This grading system applies a wreaking ball to the relationship between schools and parents.

Many schools serving high poverty communities have made dramatic improvements in student performance on LEAP in recent years only to "hit the wall" in the SPS range in the 80's. The new grading system is rigged to give all such schools a D and then add a minus to it if the school fails to increase its SPS by the state mandated growth amount. As we approach the year 2014, the year where all schools are supposed to reach an SPS of 120 (proficiency), the growth target is automatically ramped up to impossible levels. That's why so many schools will get a D-.

But the parents and the local Rotary Club and the business community, don't know anything about all these unfair technicalities. All they will believe when this news hits the papers next fall and the letters go home to parents is that the teachers and administration at our local school are doing a lousy job of educating our children!

That's why you as an educator have a responsibility to act now in supporting legislation that could prevent this serious damage to our schools!

State Superintendent and Legislative Issues

2011-05-19T07:11:00.002-05:00

It looks like powerful national forces and individuals want to keep Louisiana public schools as a laboratory for continued experiments in privatization and many other "so called" reforms. A couple of BESE members indicated yesterday that US Education Secretary Duncan was making telephone calls to them in an effort to convince them to appoint John White from New York as our new State Superintendent.

The latest blog by Diane Ravitch comments on the fallacies of using untested, unverified strategies in school reform. It seems that the new reformers are willing to try any experiment as reform of public schools. One of these reforms is the wholesale firing of teachers whose students don't meet expectations on state tests. That will be one of John White's first actions as Superintendent of the Louisiana Recovery District according to this article in NOLA.com.

That's the kind of leader Louisiana will be getting if our Governor and our the national education reformers "have their way" with BESE. This "business" approach to running schools may make sense to groups like LABI (Louisiana Assoc. of Business and Industry) and CABL (Council for a Better Louisiana) but it will instead be extremely counterproductive. When you target teachers for firing using student performance, you will invariably end up producing constant turmoil in schools serving high poverty communities. The unintended consequences of such job insecurity will make it nearly impossible to attract and retain the most experienced and dedicated teachers to struggling schools. I spoke to a teacher last week in such a school who had worked there for 16 years and who expressed real compassion and a true understanding of her students needs. As a result of the arbitrary pressures being aimed at her faculty, she did not know how much longer she could resist transferring to a less challenging school.

At the legislature, the Governor, LABI, and CABL succeeded in killing HB 499 in the House Education Committee yesterday. That is the bill that would have placed a moratorium on future school takeovers by the State Dept. of Education.

The testimony of the opponents to the bill repeated the distorted data about "dramatic gains" in the New Orleans Recovery District (The actual performance is still at the bottom of state rankings even though many of the schools taken over in New Orleans were not failing schools at the time of takeover). Department representatives implied that most of the problems (declines in student scores) with the takeover schools in the Baton Rouge area happened because of lack of cooperation of local school authorities with the takeover process.

But the primary argument against the bill stopping takeovers is that the Dept. needs this "tool" as a means of "encouraging" local school systems to improve their under- performing schools. In other words, you just can't trust local school systems to improve schools unless there is a constant threat of an embarrassing takeover. Soon teachers will be doing nothing but teaching the test. As I have pointed out before in this blog, there is no real provision for taking over the takeover schools when they fail to perform.

Pastorek Resigns

2011-05-11T06:42:00.001-05:00

State Superintendent Paul Pastorek announced his resignation Tuesday, May 10. According to the Baton Rouge Advocate story, his abrupt departure may have been related to deteriorating relations with the education community which includes practically all of the major stakeholders in Louisiana public education.

Here is the big concern of the new Coalition for Louisiana Public Schools: There seems to be an effort by the Governor and others to replace Pastorek with another non-educator who would be committed to further privatization of the Louisiana Public Education system.

There was talk yesterday that the Governor wanted to encourage BESE to appoint John White, who was just recently hired as Superintendent for the Louisiana Recovery District. According to this news story, this person has no training as a professional educator. His entry into education was as a two year Teach for America recruit. From there he quickly moved to coordination of the Teach for America program in the Chicago public schools and later was appointed as Deputy Chancellor of the New York City school system, the largest school system in the U.S.

His primary job with the New York City system was to close down low performing schools and to convert as many schools as possible into charter schools. He was also working on a system to evaluate teachers using student test scores. His most recent boss, the Chancellor of the New York system resigned after only three months on the job because she also was a non-educator and was overwhelmed by the complexity of the job. He was then snatched up by Pastorek to be the Superintendent of the LA Recovery District at what some consider to be a very generous salary for a person with no credentials.

No one knows how successful Pastorek and Jindal have been in lobbying BESE for the appointment of White. By now they may be moving on to some other outside person who wants to privatize schools and who has no knowledge of the Louisiana public education system. That's the key: The reformers don't want anyone who has a real background in running public schools. They want someone who believes as they do that public schools are inherently rotten to the core. They believe the only solution is for free enterprise, privatization, school competition and choice to transform schools. The only problem is, if you look at the Feb 19 post on this blog, none of that stuff is working.

If you believe that real reform of public education in Louisiana can only be accomplished by someone who is well grounded in Louisiana education, someone who has the credentials of at least a local superintendent, maybe even someone who has taught in a real classroom, then you need to contact your BESE member now and ask that a real Louisiana educator be appointed. Please insist that the person have extensive Louisiana experience and at least the credentials of a local superintendent. Credentials equal to a local superintendent is required by legislation passed only last year, partly because of Pastorek's lack of credentials. The only problem is the law allows a waiver of these requirements by a two thirds vote of BESE. So please send an email or call your BESE member (click here for a BESE directory) now to insist that they follow the intent of the law.

How to Participate in Your Representative Democracy

2011-05-09T05:31:00.000-05:00

I'm not an expert on this, but some of my Social Studies teacher friends tell me that we live in a representative democracy, not a true democracy. I believe the key difference is that we elect a few people to represent us in making government decisions instead of all of us attending huge meetings and voting on every issue. But a representative democracy only works well if we all communicate with our elected representatives on issues that are important to us. Also it helps that if a group of citizens such as a group of educators who are the experts in a particular area, band together to make our concerns known to our elected representatives. That's what I want to urge all of my readers to do today! It's also what the new Coalition for Louisiana Public Education is doing.

I believe most of my readers are educators, although some are parents and regular citizens who have been joining the blog recently. I also believe that the readers of my blog, while having many different opinions on teaching practices and school management, generally agree on a few key issues. One of those issues most of us agree on is that the recently adopted (by BESE) school grading system is inaccurate, unfair, and destructive of parental support for public schools. Not to rehash this issue which has been adequately discussed in earlier posts on this blog, I want to add that I have spoken recently to many school principals who are doing an excellent job and whose teachers are working extremely hard only to have their school probably rated as a D- this fall by this new system. This is wrong, inaccurate and unfair and must be stopped if we are to be successful in getting positive parental involvement, particularly in schools that serve high poverty communities!

Another important issue that I believe most of us agree on, is that the non-educators currently running our State Department of Education don't have a clue how to run a successful school, yet they are determined to tell you, the real educators how to do your job! I know they don't have a clue because all the takeover schools that have not been selective in choosing their student admission and retention are producing the poorest education results in the state. All of the direct takeover schools are doing more poorly now than before they were taken over by the state (see my post of Feb 19, 2011). That's why educators need to band together and demand the passage of a bill to stop any new school takeovers until it can be proven that these people at the State Department can run an effective school. (see list of bills supported by the Coalition below) Or better yet, they just need to stop trying to micro-manage our local schools!

So how do we function effectively in our representative democracy to insure that we have a strong public school system that allows educators to do their job and to be respected as professionals? Very simple: We must communicate our opinions and our expertize to our elected legislators early and often! It does not matter how right you are on the issue of public education, if you do not communicate effectively with your legislators, chances are your opinion won't matter very much in our representative democracy.

So PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE do the following right now! Click on the legislative links I am giving you here and look up the email address of your legislators (Senator and Representative) and write them down on a card and put it in your wallet. If you don't know who your Senator and Representative are (Shame on you), just click on this link and scroll down to the place were you can put in your home address to get their names. Also put the phone number for the LA House of Representatives 225-342-6945 and the number for the Senate: 225-342-2040 into your cell phone directory so you can call your representative any time when immediate contact is critical.

Next, I want you to send an email to your Representative and Senator introducing yourself if they do not already know you, tell them that you live in their district, and let them know that you would appreciate very much if they would allow you to advise them on education matters. Remember you are the expert on education! In your first email, you may want to advise them on just one or two issues that are important to your profession or to our public schools. But plan to communicate with them regularly. This web site and others that you follow from your School Boards Association, or teacher association (LAE or LFT) or others will keep you informed when critical issues are being voted on so you can call or email them right before they are scheduled to vote. (Often it's those constituents who are most persistent that get listened to) If you are a parent or regular citizen interested in public education, simply speak to them from your point of view.

Also, if you contact a legislator at his/her local office (you can look this up at the legislative web sites I gave you above), you will find him/her more receptive. They often go back to their district offices on Fridays or during breaks in the legislative session. You should also introduce yourself to the legislators' assistant who runs his/her local office. Often the assistant can get you in touch with or give a message to your legislator when it is critical to get to him/her before a vote.

Here are some of the bills that are supported by the Coalition for Louisiana Public Education that you should communicate with your legislator about. (Note: You can click on the bill number to see the full text of each bill.)

SB 35 by Dorsey and SB 201 by Perry would delay implementation of the letter grading system for all public schools and require BESE to revamp the system with input from citizens and educators. The Coalition supports either one of these bills.
HB 499 by Smith would stop new school takeovers by the Dept. of Education and instead provide for a memo of understanding for schools that are performing below the minimum required by the state. The Coalition supports this bill.
HB 84 by Smith would change the structure of BESE to reduce the 3 appointments by the Governor to only one and allow the House of Representatives and the Senate to appoint the other two. The Coalition supports this bill
HB 96 by Dixon would reduce the Governor's appointments to BESE from 3 to one. The Coalition supports this bill or HB 84
SB 248 by Willard-Lewis requires return to the original school board of schools taken over by the Recovery District that become academically acceptable. The Coalition supports.

This blog will give you more information each week on bills the Coalition supports and opposes.

One other tip: If you are able to build a working relationship with your legislator, ask him/her for his/her cell phone number. You will find that this is by far the most effective way to get the ear (literally) of your legislator. The constituents who have this cell phone number and who use it wisely are the ones who will get his/her vote.

Most effective legislators have a method of representing their constituents by mentally putting them into categories such as the following:

Who can help me get reelected and who can hurt me?
What are the gut issues that affect certain groups of constituents that could cause that group to either help or hurt me?
Do I personally like and trust a particular constituent?

If you and your colleagues in the education profession can position yourselves favorably on the above categories you will be successful in getting the right vote from your legislator.

My point is this: In this day and time when our public education system is under attack as never before, sometimes because of ignorance about the problems facing educators, it is not enough just to do your job faithfully in the trenches. It is critical that you function effectively in our representative democracy.

Education Policy Destroying Public Schools

2011-05-01T18:16:00.007-05:00

My analysis of School Performance scores posted last week (see the article below) points out that the majority of schools in Louisiana may soon be rated as “D” or “F” schools. Such schools that do not increase their SPS by the growth mandated by BESE will have a minus attached to their assigned grades. These ratings will surely demoralize teachers, students, and parents and stigmatize these schools as failures. But the failure is that of our government to provide real support for struggling schools rather than failure of the schools themselves. Both Federal and State policies today are harmful rather than helpful to public education.

U. S. Education Secretary Duncan stated recently that within the next two years as many as 80% of our schools nationwide may be classified as failures by the No Child Left Behind law. This is the result of the flawed assumption that our schools alone can overcome the effects of poverty. This just added: Click on this link to read an article in The Texas Tribune about new research on poverty and Charters in their public school system. (Thank you to one of my readers for finding this story) The mandate in Louisiana that each school must reach a School Performance Score of 120 by 2014 shows the ignorance rather than the wisdom of our policy makers. The setting of SPS growth goals are arbitrary and based more on wishful thinking than on tested and proven educational practice. Academic performance does not occur because of decrees from higher authorities. Yet many thousands of professional educators and their students are sure to be punished for failing to achieve the goals of these dubious decrees.

The data used to produce the analysis of poverty vs SPS shows that 282 schools in Louisiana have between 90 and 100% of their students classified as high poverty students. The Federal and State governments ten years ago decreed that such schools should produce the same student performance as schools with only 10 to 20% poverty. This would be like the government requiring that the Intensive Care ward of a hospital have the same rate of success as a section of the hospital that treats people with minor colds and sniffles. Any expert in tests and measurement could have told the government that this goal was completely irrational. Rather than consult experts who could have recommended more productive approaches, the government decided to double down on previous bad bets.

The next step was to allow new management to take over so called “failing” schools. Direct takeover of so called “failing schools” by charter schools has resulted in major declines in student performance in the Baton Rouge area and other parts of the state. (Click here to see our post of Feb. 19) The New Orleans system of takeover has resulted in higher scores for a very few select schools with overall sub par average performance in the New Orleans Recovery District. Legislation that provided vouchers to allow public school students in New Orleans to attend private/parochial schools has resulted in declines in student achievement. But the government was not yet tired of micro-management.

The new punitive grading scale to be implemented this fall is sure to make it even more difficult for schools to get the needed cooperation of parents who will be encouraged by this system to simply blame the principal and the teachers. This meddling with local schools by the state and federal governments is sure to drive the most competent and dedicated educators away from the schools most in need of their services.

The latest strategies of the public school haters are thinly disguised. Recently when parents were given the choice to transfer their students from so called “failing” schools to more successful public schools they have usually declined to do so. So recently Baton Rouge was visited by a group of pro-voucher advocates who are trying to drum up support among parents of high poverty students for additional vouchers for the Baton Rouge area. As schools are assigned “D-” and “F-” this fall, parents in high poverty communities are expected to demand vouchers to send their children to private/parochial schools. The governor who is now in the process of starving traditional public schools of state support has already announced that he will support additional vouchers. Even in a budget crisis there is apparently always new money for non-public schools.

The Coalition for Louisiana Public Education is meeting this week to determine legislative priorities for the defense of our public school system. Please check with this web site and with the Face book page of the Coalition to get up-to-the-minute reports on scheduled actions at the legislature. If you believe in public education, please contact your legislators about these critical issues.

Analysis of School Performance Scores

2011-04-21T10:39:00.026-05:00

As much as the authorities governing education would like to link school performance primarily to the effectiveness of educators, the statistics tell us otherwise. Just as educators have warned for years, the most important factor affecting school performance is poverty. Now you can see it in powerful numbers as calculated from Excel spreadsheets using data collected by the LA Dept. of Education. The data and accompanying chart includes data on every public school in the state that had an assigned SPS.

This analysis was created by using the student poverty data as measured by free and reduced lunches from each school compared to the school performance score of each school. A total of nine data points were created using the free and reduced lunch percentages for schools related to School Performance Scores. The average SPS using data for all schools with 10 to 19.9% students on free or reduced lunch was used to produce the first data point (There were no schools with less than 10% poverty students according to the data collected by the Dept. of Education).The next data point was produced using an average SPS for schools serving 20 to 29.9% poverty students and so on to 90 to 100% free or reduced lunch. The data below and the chart shows the relationship between poverty and average school performance score. The relationship is striking in its consistency. (Click on image to enlarge)

In addition, an analysis of individual schools within each poverty group, shows very few schools have SPS scores that differ greatly from the average SPS for their poverty group. For example: In the lowest poverty group, 10-19.9% free/reduced lunch, all schools scored above 120 SPS. In the 20-29.9% poverty group, only 6% scored below 100 SPS. At the other extreme, (90- 99.9 % free/reduced lunch) only 8% of the schools scored a 90 or above SPS.

The state and federal governments have mandated that all schools in Louisiana regardless of poverty factors are expected to reach an SPS of 120 by 2014. With only 3 years left and an average growth of 1.2 SPS points per year that has occurred since the beginning of this mandate, high poverty schools are placed at an impossible disadvantage. Louisiana has a huge majority of high poverty schools, placing the whole state at an extreme disadvantage.

The other unfair disadvantage is the newly adopted school grading scale. This fall the public and parents will be told by newspapers and by letters to parents that certain schools are performing very poorly, when all that is being determined is the level of poverty of the students attending. A school serving high poverty students may have an SPS score of 89 at the end of this school year, and have shown significant growth over the previous year, but if the school did not achieve its state mandated growth target, that school will be assigned a D-minus grade even though it is outperforming 90% of the schools in its poverty level.

One of my readers from another state sent me an email stating that "Blaming schools for the academic failure of poor children makes no more sense than blaming hospitals for the lung diseases of people who smoke cigarettes."

Another major factor affecting SPS scores is student selection by certain schools such as magnet schools or alternative schools. A magnet school may have truly top notch teachers but the most important factor affecting the SPS is the admittance of only students that have high aptitude and motivation. It is not fair for the grading system to compare them with general admittance schools. The opposite situation exists for alternative schools that primarily take students with academic or discipline problems. These schools will always be graded unfairly compared to regular or magnet schools.

The above analysis shows that there are certain dominant factors that far outweigh the influence of effective teachers in determining a school's SPS. My question then is: Why are professional educators in Louisiana allowing their schools and their own performance to be improperly reported to the public as poor or failing by this unfair school grading system?

I don't know of any way this new letter grading systems for schools could be made fair, but Senate Bill 35 in the upcoming legislative session by Senator Yvonne Dorsey would delay implementation of the letter grading system and require BESE to review and possibly revise the program. The results of the BESE reconsideration would have to be reported to the Education Committees of the Legislature before final adoption. I hope all persons interested in improving rather than damaging our public education system will contact their legislators and ask them to support this bill. Get the email address of your State Representative by clicking on the highlighted link, and your Senator at this link.

Limiting Opportunities For Graduation

2011-04-14T11:09:00.001-05:00

The governors and leaders in big business from the Achieve group have decided once again what is important for all students in our public schools to learn, and you the educator will soon receive your marching orders to implement it! According to a recent article by Peter Whoriskey in the Washington Post, the Achieve group, an influential education reform organization formed by business leaders and governors that focuses on high school graduation requirements is pushing for the requirement of Algebra II for high school graduation. According to the story, 20 states have already adopted this requirement.

Achieve is touting a study they commissioned that shows a strong correlation between Algebra II takers in high school and success in graduation from college. From this study they have concluded that if all high school students were required to take Algebra II they would have a much better chance of graduating from college and in getting a great jobs, and from that we can assume that our country would guarantee its position as the leader of the world in business and technology. Never mind what the teachers say about trying to force this medicine down the throats of every grumbling kid; the business leaders know best. These are the same business leaders by the way, who created sub-prime mortgages, mortgage backed securities, derivatives, credit default swaps etc. that ended in a meltdown of our financial system. Its ironic that the bankers and Wall Street firms were using the services of young math whizzes who were hired to create these complex scams for the enrichment of the few, who in turn were bailed out by the hard working people of this country who never use Algebra II in their daily lives!

If you read all of the Washington post article however, you find that the chief researcher, Anthony Carnevale, who produced this study for the Achieve group is highly skeptical that a causal relationship really exists between Algebra II and college success. He points out that it may simply be that smart, hard working students who are willing to tackle Algebra II are also smart and determined enough to succeed in college. . . . . Yet the so called business leaders who have never set foot in a classroom have decided that every student should be forced to take and pass this if they are to be granted a high school diploma. Soon I predict that Bill Gates and Arne Duncan then President Obama will insist that Algebra II be required in all states. You can be sure that our State Superintendent is already planning to add this requirement in Louisiana. Never mind that the graduates we are starting to produce have no clue how to build anything, how to hang a picture straight, how to use a square or a level, how to use power tools, or how to do basic math (because we are moving them on to Algebra) or how their bank plans to rip them off with excessive overdraft fees and traps in the credit card fine print.

These so called education reform leaders are still using the old discredited theory that requiring difficult subjects in school “trains the mind” to think better and solve many other problems in unrelated fields. It used to be that Latin and French was required of all educated people, but more recently it's difficult math courses that are never used again by the average person. Cognitive learning studies over the last 100 years have demonstrated that such “train the mind” theories are invalid. Training the mind to do Algebra II or Chess, or puzzles only trains the mind to do those very things. It does not transfer to other useful skills in life. That's why there are bums in Central Park in New York who are experts at Chess but who have never held a productive job. I have a grandson who is a genius at playing video games on the internet but who dropped out of LSU because college was too boring and stressful. He had made an “A” in Algebra II and a 32 on his ACT, but never learned to work.

Arkansas was one of the first states to adopt the Algebra II “for all” requirement. Recently their students were tested after taking the Algebra II course and it was found that only 13 percent of the students had achieved any sort of proficiency in the subject. But instead of reassessing the wisdom of forcing all students to take this course, the state education officials said the teachers are just going to have to work harder to make the course work. What do the teachers think? According to the Washington Post article, some of them are worried about students dropping out without a high school diploma because of this requirement.

The personnel director at Northrup Grummond shipbuilding in New Orleans complained to the High School Redesign Commission that local kids were not prepared in high school to go to work at his facility because they did not know enough math. Yet when you check Northrup Grummond's employment of entry level workers, you would find that the company has a preference for hiring Hispanic/Mexican origin workers with no high school education at all and limited English skills. Why the discrepancy in their talk and their hiring practices? It turns out that Mexican origin workers have a habit of showing up for work on time every day and are willing to learn and do anything the foreman requires while many of the of the local origin kids are just plain unreliable no matter what their education. Its a sad fact that our young people failed on work ethics more than on math background. Do you think this could be fixed by requiring Algebra II?

Look, I was a Physics and Chemistry teacher. I love math and science. But I also know that every kid is different in his/her aptitudes and interests. Our country needs good plumbers, electricians, medical technicians, truck drivers, office workers, musicians and teachers just as much as it needs mathematicians. (Do you think our Superintendent or BESE members would pass an Algebra II test?) If we followed the example of Finland and tried to identify a student's aptitudes and interests and focused on developing the skills related to those interests instead of demanding the same of every student, our educational system may be more successful. It would also help if we did more to connect what we do in school to potential careers in many varied fields. Will it help our students and our state instead to flunk kids out of high school just because they have trouble with logarithms and quadratic equations?

Coalition For Louisiana Public Education

2011-04-11T06:36:00.004-05:00

Click here to see the full press release announcing the formation and priorities of the Coalition For Louisiana Public Education. This coalition now includes many of the major organizations involved with public education in Louisiana. The coalition intends to advocate for positive changes in education that will preserve and enhance traditional public education in Louisiana. The group has adopted seven priorities including proper education funding by the Legislature, the ending of unfunded mandates, and a halt to the takeover and privatization of public schools. This group is encouraging all educators to speak with a unified voice to legislators and BESE members. This blog will inform educators each week on actions by the Coalition, and encourage contacts with legislators on specific issues.

Appointment of Recovery District Superintendent Ignores the need for Professional Qualifications
State Superintendent Pastorek's appointment of John White, a charter school and Teach For America advocate with minimal education qualifications as Superintendent of the Recovery District continues the trend of lowering professional standards in the hiring of administrators by our Department of Eduction. Mr White had just left the collapsing administration of New York Chancellor Cathleen Black, another non-educator. Ms Black served as chief administrator for the nation's largest school system for only three months before finding she could not cope with the job. See the article about this fiasco at this link. Dianne Ravitch has pointed out the serious flaws in the so called education reforms recently inflicted on New York and Chicago. These are the two systems where White got his administrative experience. White has a BA degree in English, three years as a Teach For America teacher, and a couple of years practice as a vice Chancellor in charge of dismantling and converting public schools to charters in New York. The salary has not yet been determined for this new appointee, but apparently BESE has given Pastorek carte blanche on the salary issue. This appointment continues the attack on the teaching profession in Louisiana.

Reform based on myths
Ben Wildavsky writes in Foreign Policy Magazine that much of the criticism of U. S. public schools is unfounded. He points out as I did in an earlier blog that our schools are working just fine for Asian origin and Caucasian kids. The problem we have is in closing the achievement gap for high poverty Hispanic and Black students. I emphasize high poverty here because there are plenty of more advantaged minority kids who are doing just fine in our public schools. This article shows that it makes no sense to label a school as “failing” just because it happens to be serving the most difficult population to educate. I believe you will find Wildavsky's article very much on target.

My concern is that some of the reforms being implemented in Louisiana to deal with so called “failing schools” that somehow just happen to be serving high poverty minority students, is exactly the opposite of what we should be doing. Grading the schools using primarily student scores will automatically stigmatize and demoralize the educators serving high needs students while ignoring real progress made by these educators in reaching the most challenging students. The introduction of value-added teacher and administrator evaluations will also do the opposite of what is desired by driving the strongest teachers away from the most challenging schools. We should be providing real incentives (financial and otherwise) for solid experienced teachers to do the extra work needed for moving these students up instead of running the teachers out! Finally, the continued threat of school takeover or the new waiver options that may require the principal and at least half the faculty to be fired from a school sends the message that members of the teaching profession are expendable as experimental schemes are tested on children.

Education in Louisiana: A High Stakes Game For Adults

2011-04-03T09:22:00.008-05:00

It's not about the children anymore. It's about the adults who want to gain fame and high salaries by gaining control of public education. What we have done in Louisiana by introducing high stakes testing, school takeovers, privatization, and competition between schools is a game for adults that victimizes the very children it was supposed to save.

Much of the education reform in Louisiana was designed by people with no experience in education (with the exception of the late Cecil Picard) who gained control of state education policy making. They designed education reform based on the assumption that low student performance was mainly caused by lazy or incompetent teachers and administrators. As announced by reformer and charter advocate Leslie Jacobs, "We can no longer blame abysmal performance on issues external to the schoolhouse such as poverty and demographics.”

Round one of the game of education reform included the testing of students every year on basic skills such as English language arts and math, publishing the scores by school and producing a rating system for schools based primarily on student scores, student attendance and dropouts. The State Department of Education would classify some low-performing schools (based on student scores) as failing schools and threaten those schools with state takeover if the scores did not improve according to state demands. This should improve the schools by embarrassing educators into doing their job.

That was Round One of the reform plan. How did it work? Soon local school administrators realized that the game was to raise student test scores at all costs, and state test scores (LEAP) started going up. State education leaders hailed the score increases as a sign that Louisiana education was improving. Maybe this would be a win-win in the game of education reform. Some schools, however, serving underprivileged students turned in shockingly low scores and ended up being classified as failing schools. Then it was found that on national tests such as the NAEP, which measured the same things as the state LEAP test, overall student performance had barely improved over a period of 8 years and sat near the bottom of state rankings. Many students were losing in the game of Education Reform!

Round two of the game began as some schools still failed to produce better test scores and the state actually had to make good on its takeover threat. Also, other school test scores did not continue to improve dramatically as had been expected. Apparently the education establishment was so rotten it could not be reformed. The theory now changed to: “Lets let private business do the job. Free enterprise and competition should be able to solve any problem in education!” The new State Superintendent seized the opportunity in New Orleans presented by the devastation of Katrina to convert many of the takeover schools to privately operated charter schools. Most were non-profit, but operated by high salaried administrators paid with taxpayer dollars. The game now got really serious with reputations and high income on the line.

Some claim that the conversions to charter schools have resulted in dramatic improvement. The truth is, a few of the charter schools in New Orleans have produced good student performance and other schools have shown some gains in student test scores. But in recent years most public schools have started teaching to the test, so all scores across the state have improved. Also it was found that if you taught basic test taking skills to children, even the lowest performers could improve their scores. Some charter schools found they could use tax money to hire a test prep company that would pretest all students and then instruct teachers about how to teach each student to improve his/her scores. That might have been OK if it would have resulted in real learning as measured by the NAEP. It did not. The emphasis on only two basic subjects also resulted in the neglect of other subjects such as science and social studies. School became a game and a competition for adults rather than an education for children.

Observers recently pointed out that the special law for takeover of schools in New Orleans had allowed the takeover of many schools that were not failing at the time of takeover. So the new charter schools that were able to attract the most motivated students from those schools had an advantage in getting good scores. Also the latest census shows that fewer of the most at-risk families returned to New Orleans after Katrina. Those charter schools that showed impressive gains, got much of it by carefully screening applicants and pushing out students who did not perform according to expectations. (One of the most successful nationwide charter school organizations also operating in New Orleans has a black male dropout rate of over 40% in grades 6-8). In addition, many under-performing students are counseled into transferring to other public schools that become dumping grounds. (Just part of the strategy in the adult game of school competition) Supporters of charters did a great national public relations job of highlighting only the winning schools in New Orleans and hiding the losers.

Then State education leaders got a little over confident and assumed that any low-performing school could be taken over by any charter organization and produce great results. This euphoria led to aggressive state takeover and conversion to charters in other parts of the state by various groups who wanted to play the game of education reform. In the Baton Rouge area, nine schools were taken over by the state and all converted to charters. But a strategic mistake was made. These schools were taken over with the same student body that was under-performing without seeking out only the best and most motivated students. They tried to play fair! The result has been a serious setback for the charter players. All of the takeover schools in the Baton Rouge area have had major declines in student performance. (see our post on Feb 19). Some of these new charter operators had never run a school before and didn't have a clue! So again the children lost out in the game of education reform.

Round 3: Now we are moving to round 3 of the game. The legislature and BESE have passed three major rule changes in the game that are designed to favor the reformers and school takeover advocates. The first is to increase the minimum scores the state uses to determine failing schools. This will tighten the screws on schools where lazy or incompetent educators have not shown enough progress. If necessary, those schools can also be turned over to charter operators. Or maybe there could be an expansion of the voucher program started in New Orleans that let students in failing schools escape to private schools. That voucher program has been severely criticized by the charter advocates in New Orleans because of a study that showed the voucher recipients' performance had not improved by transferring to private schools. The second rule change was to rate all public schools using letter grades “A" through “F”. The new rating system adopted by overriding the recommendations of educators and citizens, will assign a grade of “D” or “F” to approximately 46% of all public schools this fall. The following year the number of “F” grades will increase when the minimum score for a passing school goes up in 2012. According to the law, parents will receive a report on their child's school's grade each school year. The third change in rules of the game will rate all teachers using a value added model of student achievement. Those teachers and administrators who do not raise student scores by the mandated amounts will be subject to dismissal.

So how will Round 3 of the education reform game turn out? The following are my best guesses based on what I know about Louisiana schools: Parents will get their new school report cards probably in the fall of this year. What do you think will be the level of support and cooperation from parents who see that their child's school has been rated as a “D” or an “F” by state authorities. Poor student performance may become a self-fulfilling prophesy based on deteriorating parental support for public schools. What do you think will happen to property values near the schools with “D” and “F” grades. This new grading system is extremely destructive! It practically guarantees that all inner city non-magnet schools will receive an "F" while magnet schools and other selective schools will get an "A". This has nothing to do with the actual performance of the teachers and administrators. It is simply a direct result of sorting students by motivation and potential for success.

Also, in anticipation of the damaging effects of the new value added evaluation, experienced teachers who are now teaching in low performing schools will start insisting on transfers to the more successful schools. This will result in a talent and experience drain from the very schools that most need solid teachers. The addition of more charters will continue to produce poor results with fragmentation of support for public schools. Vouchers will be tried to send kids to private schools with public money, but the private schools will try to take only the best and most motivated students, leaving the public schools an even more difficult problem. This time everybody loses - - students, parents, teachers and the taxpayers of Louisiana.

If you care about stopping this damaging game being played with public education in Louisiana, please talk to your legislators and ask that we instead give educators the support they need to really improve our schools. Join with the new coalition that has been formed to support our public schools. A program of legislative priorities is now in the process of being developed (More about this next week). The struggling schools and struggling students need help, not criticism! The school reform insanity, if not stopped will drive away our best and most experienced teachers and administrators who cannot easily be replaced. Those who think that private takeover of schools is the answer will be sadly disappointed. But by then it will be too late to fix our schools. Those who say we should not waste more resources on the uderprivileged should also know one thing: It is much more expensive per pupil to house young people in the state prisons than to give them a good education ($80,000 compared to $10,000 per year).

A Novel Approach to Education Reform

2011-03-24T09:35:00.010-05:00

This week Newsweek Magazine includes an article by Dianne Ravitch titled Obama's War on Education. Dr Ravitch, the acclaimed education historian and author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System, explains how the Obama administration has continued mindless attacks on our public school system. She points out that the present administration seems just as oblivious to the real problems in public education as the Bush administration, and continues to promote many reform programs that have no validity and are often more destructive than helpful to our educational system.

Louisiana's governor Jindal seems to be doing his part in supporting efforts to privatize our public school system. On Tuesday, Jindal and Superintendent Pastorek presided over the showing of the anti-public education film, Waiting For Superman, (click here for a report on how this film distorts the record relative to charter schools) to a group of education officials and opinion makers in the Baton Rouge area. The idea seems to be to recommend almost any substitute for public education. It seems to make no difference that the evidence is of mainly poor performance and major setbacks in many Louisiana charter schools and voucher options. Maybe because the public today is looking for simple solutions to complex problems, it seems that propaganda is preferable to real performance.

Public schools in the U. S. are certainly not doing as well as we would like. (It really turns out that the under-performance centers primarily on certain groups of students, yet critics are condemning the entire system. . . . More about this later.) So what would be the best approach to reforming and improving our public schools? What about learning from the reform approach of a country that has been extremely successful in improving its schools? That would be a novel approach compared to vicious attacks on our schools and knee jerk reactions that have sprung up throughout the country in recent years.

Sam Abrams, a visiting scholar from Teachers College of Columbia University who has spent several years studying the public education system of Finland was recently interviewed by Dr. Raynard Sanders for the radio program The New Orleans Imperative. Mr Abrams believes that education reformers in this country have mostly ignored the lessons about what really works in education from the country that is considered to have the most successful public education system in the world! While our politicians have turned to trashing schools and efforts to privatize public education, Finland has really transformed its educational system into a highly successful experience for both teachers and students. The rebirth of public schools in Finland began after a special study report in 1971 recommended that considering its few natural resources, Finland should improve the public educational system if it was to become more competitive in the world. Changes instituted over the past 40 years transformed the education system in Finland into a model for the world. Students there now excel in all subjects including science and math, in addition to arts and vocational courses, and they graduate from high school at an extremely high rate. The schools in Finland are producing exactly the type of educated students our reformers claim to want, all without the standardized testing, test rehearsing, grade retention, dropouts, school privatization, and teacher bashing.

Here are the main points made by Mr Abrams in the interview:

Finland makes very little use of standardized testing in the measurement of student and teacher success.
Teacher candidates are carefully selected from upper 1/4th of college scholars. To get a teaching certificate, candidates must attain a Masters degree in their teaching field.
In return, teachers are well paid compared to other comparable careers.
In Finland teachers are given much autonomy and latitude for teaching methods.
In summary, teachers in Finland are respected and treated like professionals.

The U. S. on the other hand has made standardized testing the primary measure of school success. State testing has been used in Louisiana and other states to determine promotion and retention of students and will soon be used as a measure of teacher effectiveness. Finland fails no students, and continues students with their age group throughout their elementary/secondary enrollment regardless of their academic performance. Mr Abrams points out that students who fall behind in basic skills are simply pulled out for extra help in those skills. Louisiana and many other states have implemented high stakes testing based on state tests and have systematically held back thousands of students because they have not met arbitrary lock step expectations. In Louisiana, our state leaders proudly claim that students are not allowed to receive high school diplomas without passing the state graduation exit exam. Our State
Superintendent repeatedly announces that "failure is not an option" for our students, while thousands of students are pushed out of school with no credentials and little chance of a good job!

Recently however, BESE (at the urging of the State Department of Education) allowed students to be promoted after two years at the 4th grade level even without passing the high stakes test. The Department finally admitted that retention of students was not producing results.

New national subject matter standards are in the process of being developed and adopted that are intended to prepare all students for college and careers. This curriculum, most experts tell us ends up being almost exclusively college preparatory, with almost no emphasis on development of vocational skills. The theory is that if we just prepare everyone for college, those students that prefer to train for vocational careers will still have a good foundation. Finland on the other hand, allows approximately 45% of its students to begin vocational training at the high school level and prepares them for high skills careers within 3 years after high school. Mr Abrams stresses that in Finland there is no stigmatizing of students who choose the vocational or career route. The skills trades are highly valued and well paid in Finland. In Louisiana, students are led to believe that college is the only worthwhile goal of education. State education leaders constantly drive home the message of the need for students to be college and career ready rather than college or career ready. Meanwhile, there has developed a shortage of local skilled workers, craftsmen, and health care workers while Louisiana college graduates often move to other states in search of jobs where they can utilize their credentials.

Mr Abrams pointed out in the interview that skilled, construction and maintenance jobs are the very jobs that cannot be exported to other countries with cheap labor because these jobs must be done on site. Some highly trained software engineers on the other hand have had seen their jobs exported to India.

Are Our Public Schools Really That Bad?
As explained in one of my previous posts, our public schools work just fine for the middle class and for Asian origin students. American students of Asian origin do just as well as their counterparts in the top performing education systems that have Asian population students. Middle class or white students perform very close to the highest performing students in the world (5th in the world as measured by the PISA assessment). The problem is with the relatively large population of high poverty minority students and with English language learners who have a large negative impact on our national average scores on standardized tests. This is where the demographics of the American education system differs significantly from other industrialized countries. Our high poverty population is approximately 20% while Finland has an underprivileged student population of only 5%.

I believe the most serious and unfair misconception about our schools is that somehow most bad schools are serving underprivileged students. Those schools are often labeled as “failing” schools when it would be more accurate to conclude that they are really just schools that happen to be serving low-performing students. In our society it is more popular to blame the schools and the teachers for poor student performance, when often its the negative influence of the out-of-school environment that adversely affects school performance. Many inner city and even some rural schools serve students who are caught in a vicious cycle of poverty, neglect, crime, drugs and lack of positive role models for children.

It may be a novel approach to simply focus extra efforts and resources on the students who need more help. The Federal governement and states could provide financial incentives for strong teachers who are willing to put in more time in schools serving high poverty communities. There should be solid programs promoting positive parental involvement, along with extended school days or years without sacrificing PE, arts and vocational programs.

Unfortunately some of the popular education reform efforts today in the U.S. make scapegoats out of many dedicated teachers and school administrators who happen to work in schools serving impoverished communities. The people in Singapore and Finland would be appalled at the finger pointing at professional educators that has characterized much of recent American reform efforts. Most experts estimate that there are very few bad teachers in our schools, so it makes no sense to assume that mass firings or replacement of teachers will somehow produce dramatic improvements. Wouldn't it be sad if we fired and replaced half of our American teachers based on student performance and we found that it made no real difference? Not only is such a scheme impractical (Not many qualified persons want to teach in inner city schools), but it would surely be demoralizing to many teachers. Finland, in contrast chose to support teachers and enhance the profession. It paid off for their children!

The Need to Educate Our Legislators

2011-03-17T06:28:00.002-05:00

It is absolutely urgent that school board members, superintendents and education leaders meet with their legislators now to discuss the needs of public education. Do not underestimate the potential influence that a unified education community can have on the legislature. Remember also that the Louisiana Constitution gives the Legislature overriding authority for the operation of our public school system. That's why educators, voters and parents should seek the Legislature's help to mitigate the effects of current budget cuts and unworkable edicts coming from the State Department of Education and BESE. This link to a Baton Rouge Advocate article explains how school board members and education leaders in south Louisiana recently met with their legislators in an effort to restore sanity to state governance of public education. The big issue discussed was the need for a moratorium on unfunded mandates. Educators pointed out that the three year freeze on state MFP funding, loss of federal stimulus dollars, diversion of Edu/Jobs funding by the Governor, and increased mandated costs, could have a major impact on vital services to children. Cost mandates include increased contributions to school employee retirement systems, and new programs such as the so called "value added" teacher evaluation program. Some state mandated programs such as student remediation are expensive but may not be cost effective. A local school system may spend big bucks on summer remediation which many students do not bother to attend. Yet the new school evaluation system may label a school as a “D” or an “F” for the poor performance of students who have not taken advantage of remediation opportunities. Since school systems are no longer provided specific funding for remediation, local school systems should be allowed maximum flexibility in providing remediation and curtailing programs that are not producing results. Local school leaders know best what works and what does not work and will design better programs without State Department interference.

Superintendents' Association president, John Sartin attended the Lafayette meeting with the 10 area legislators discussed in the Advocate article, and has other meetings planned for other parts of the state. From all accounts, the power point presentation and accompanying discussion were effective in gaining support of area legislators.

Recently A coalition has been formed that includes the School Boards Association, LAE, LFT, LASE, and others to pursue a unified program for the support of public education. The group is developing a list of legislative priorities.

In addition to the proposed moratorium on unfunded mandates, I believe educators should request a moratorium on new school takeovers by the State Department of Education. Student performance data presented in this blog demonstrates that students do better under the direction of local school boards than under the direction of the Recovery District. Just review the data presented in my Feb. 19th post. Such takeovers and the loss of per pupil revenue from local systems will eventually limit the ability of local school systems to provide top quality services. In addition, every state approved (type 2) charter fragments the support for local schools and creates a growing special interest group for privatization of public education without accountability to taxpayers. It is time the public hear the truth about school takeover and charter conversions.

I have written to both my legislators asking them to approve legislation that would at least temporarily halt the takeover of schools from local school systems until it can be shown that such takeovers are in the best interests of the children. I am attending a community meeting with my senator today, (March 17) to continue making this case and to present her with data as to why the present plan is not working. I believe if all educators and parents who are informed about this issue would make a similar case to their legislators, much could be accomplished. Now is the time for all of us who care about public education to speak to our elected representatives!

Fact Checking School Reform

2011-03-10T07:05:00.000-06:00

The March-April issue of NEA Today magazine has an excellent article on current school reform issues. I urge my readers to click on this link to access the article. It examines the actual results of 5 major components of today's education reform: (1) High Stakes Testing, (2) Value Added Measures, (3) Pay for Test Scores, (4) Charter Schools, (5) Teacher Tenure (removing or modifying it). This analysis is the most concise and enlightening discussion I've seen of these current fads in education. It makes you wonder why the president of the United States and many other influential people would throw their support behind such half-baked schemes and subject our children and so many dedicated educators to the unintended consequences of such policies.

More Half-baked Policies
Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, according to an Education Week article is warning the Congress that the Elementary Secondary Education Act should be revised and reauthorized to prevent up to 80% of US schools from being labeled as “failing schools”. This is the probable result according to Duncan of continuing the present federal policy that all American students must achieve proficiency in Reading and Math by the year 2014. My question about this is the following: “How could the Congress and the Bush administration have passed such a stupid, impractical law in the first place?” Every reputable expert in the field of tests and measurements could have informed president Bush and the Congress that such a mandate violated everything we know about student testing and performance. It was like the government decreeing that all children would somehow become average or above within a few years, (The Lake Wobegon effect), even though the schools are dealing with a constantly changing student body. The sad thing is that the Obama/Duncan plan for improving our schools is almost equally impractical as the one they want to replace. (see the above article in NEA Today)

The Louisiana 'Turnaround Zone'

2011-02-19T05:45:00.017-06:00

State Superintendent of Education Pastorek, New Orleans Recovery District Superintendent Vallas, and others made a presentation recently to a joint meeting of the House and Senate Education Committees on the progress of Louisiana's Recovery Districts. As if to emphasize the dramatic improvements of student performance in the schools taken over by the State Department, the report was titled “Louisiana's Turnaround Zone”. It seems that the State Department of Education is attempting to introduce a new catch phrase that may reenforce the impression that dramatic progress has been made by the schools taken over by the Recovery District.

The report selectively presented data and charts that seemed to show major improvements. For example there was a chart for the New Orleans Recovery District that showed dramatic improvements in the graduation of “eligible” students in that school system. The problem is that this is not the accepted way of presenting graduation rates. The appropriate measure, called the cohort graduation rate was not reported to the joint legislative committee for the Recovery District. The cohort graduation rate tells us what percentage of 9th graders graduate with a standard diploma in 4 years. That's the graduation rate that is used to rate all other public school systems in the state. The following are the Cohort Graduation rates for the two Recovery Districts compared to the state average for the 2009-2010 school year:

Recovery District (Louisiana) 41.50%
Recovery District (New Orleans) 47.7%
Louisiana average 67.4%

The State Department of Education also produced a chart showing gains in percentage of students in the New Orleans Recovery district scoring basic or above on LEAP English/Language Arts and Math tests, but there was no comparison of how the students in that district are doing compared to all other Louisiana students. The following is such a comparison with state average performance and also with the performance of all other students statewide with demographics similar to the students in the New Orleans Recovery District. (Click on image to enlarge it)

Notice that even the 4th grade students in the New Orleans Recovery District scored lower than minority students classified as high poverty students in all other public schools in the State. These are students that have had the benefit of Recovery District services for their entire school experience.

Finally, no comparison was made between schools recently taken over by the state Recovery District in other parts of the state and the performance of the schools before takeover. The following is such a comparison: (Click on image to enlarge)

It seems premature to classify either of the Recovery Districts as 'Turnaround Zones'.

Dispite the data to the contrary, the State Department continues to encourage the myth that the Dept. of Education and its favored charter schools can take over and correct poor student perfomance. A recent Baton Rouge Advocate story describes a report made to the City of Baker School Board by representives of the State Department of Education. In this report the school board was warned that its schools were performing so poorly that all of them would be in danger of state takeover next year when the minimum acceptable school performance score goes to 75. The Dept. representatives informed the school board that student scores in two of the schools were so poor that the Department had determined that "potentialy half of the teachers in those schools were doing more harm than good." The Dept. representatives suggested that the school board should consider "personnel changes" in those schools. In addition to being insulting to the teachers and administrators of the two schools this assumption is obviously inaccurate and unfair. When we compared the student scores at the two Baker schools with Recovery District schools in the Baton Rouge area, the Baker schools far outperformed the takeover schools. Are the teachers in the takeover schools going to be informed by the State Department that they are doing "more harm than good" to their students?

Baker schools Superintendent, Ulysses Joseph, has expressed concern that the State Dept. report itself is damaging to the Baker school system. He said: "How can we expect parents to send their children to school and encourage them to participate in school when the State Department has announced that some of our teachers are doing more harm than good?"

This Baker schools incident is just a taste of what is to come as the State Department begins to apply the new value added model of teacher evaluation throughout the state. Somehow, without observing the Baker classrooms, the State Dept. representatives were able to determine that half the teachers were doing more harm than good and that the school board needed to make "personnel changes".

Guidance Counselors Have A Tough Job

2011-02-14T06:51:00.002-06:00

According to an article this week in the Baton Rouge Advocate, a BESE task force is attempting to insure that school guidance counselors have the opportunity to devote the time necessary to do their job of guiding and counseling students and thereby improving the graduation rate. The point was made that many of our guidance counselors spend so much of their time doing “menial” jobs at the school such as sponsoring the prom, that they don't have time to help kids with career guidance and personal problems etc. What many people don't realize is that many teachers are expected to do “menial” jobs such as sponsoring dances and selling tickets at ball games after school hours. More emphasis is needed on the really important function of our schools which is to prepare students for the demanding job market facing today's young adults.

The point was made by professor Jennifer Curry from LSU that guidance counselors need to have time to help students make the connection between school and careers. Unfortunately, many counselors told us in response to a survey recently that many students have a big problem seeing the connection between the curriculum in our schools today and their potential careers. That's because most of what we offer students in high school today is not suited to their career needs. By spending so much of the schools' resources attempting to prepare all students for 4 year colleges we shortchange both the true college bound and non-college bound students. This one size fits all curriculum also causes many students to drop out of school.

Our guidance counselors could do a much better job of motivating students to work hard and succeed in school if they had something better in the curriculum to sell. For example, New Orleans and other urban areas have a serious shortage of skilled workers for everything from health care to auto mechanics, plumbers and electricians, yet the school system is still trying to prepare everyone for college. How has the public school system succeeded in this mission? The recent statistics tell us that only half of the students graduating from the Recovery District in New Orleans took the ACT test prior to graduating. Of those taking the test in that system, the average score was 15. That tells us that those students are not qualified for anything, much less college. Who can blame them for feeling let down by the school system when they go out looking for a job?

As I keep repeating in this blog, we seem to be obsessed with preparing students for the wrong future! We can keep patting ourselves on the back and pretending that our Core 4 curriculum is just what we need to restore value to the high school diploma, or we can face the fact that our students need other choices . Potential employers and industries thinking of locating in Louisiana want workers with job skills not just book knowledge.

Harvard Report Questions Value of 'College for All'

2011-02-03T06:18:00.003-06:00

Leaders of the “Pathways to Prosperity” project at Harvard University's Graduate School of Education are proposing a reorganization of middle school through high school education that would allow many students to prepare better for careers that do not require a 4 year college degree. (click here for the Education Week article on this) The authors of this paper believe that by attempting to prepare all students for 4 year colleges, our educational systems have failed vast numbers of students, who instead need preparation for careers requiring less than a bachelor's degree. What a surprise that top educators from one of the most prestigious Universities in our country would actually agree with many guidance counselors and experienced teachers who have pointed out that the present system is causing many of our students to drop out before they are prepared for a career of any kind!

Those who would condemn the Harvard proposal as an attempt at reviving the dreaded “tracking” of disadvantaged students should first review the credentials of the primary authors of this proposal. Robert B. Schwartz is a prominent champion of higher academic expectations for all students who said he began to doubt the wisdom of a 'college for all' approach to education. Ronald Ferguson, the director of Harvard's Achievement Gap initiative, is a national expert on improving learning opportunities for disadvantaged children.

According to the Harvard study, half of the new jobs created in the next ten years will require Associate degree training or less. Many of these jobs are expected to be solid, well paid jobs, but they won't be available to the students who have dropped out of school before obtaining a diploma.

Other “experts” on education reform such as Arne Duncan and Paul Pastorek have unfortunately decreed that all students need basically the same curriculum through high school in order to prepare all for college and careers. That curriculum turns out to be basically a fairly dry college prep program that contains little practical skills training but much of the pure academic math, English, science and foreign languages. These “experts” believe we should ignore pleas by many students who complain that such pure academic courses are boring, frustrating, and irrelevant to their career aspirations.
Maybe its OK to ignore student complaints about the alleged irrelevance of the curriculum since these kids are too young to know their own educational needs.

“Just complete the curriculum the experts have prescribed for you, then you can decide about going into technical, Associate degree or 4 year degree programs,” they knowingly advise.

Sounds great, but for thousands of students in Louisiana and many other states, this elitist plan results in disengagement, high stakes test failure and dropout. The problem in Louisiana is that we tend to flunk our or run off students who are turned off by pure academic requirements. Our message to them is "if you don't succeed in the college prep plan, we don't believe you deserve a high school degree." How do we explain to the thousands of dropouts that this was for their own good? The Harvard proposal points out that the design of most European schools provides numerous practical pathways to careers that appeal effectively to more students.

The Purpose of State School Takeover

2011-01-27T06:33:00.003-06:00

Several newspaper stories have been written in recent days about the Red Tape Reduction Act for public schools. Click here to see the latest one. All of the news stories miss the real point of the legislation. The full title of this legislation was The Red Tape Reduction and Local Empowerment Waiver Program. This title was intentionally misleading. The law does not reduce red tape for local school systems. Instead it requires local schools that apply for the waiver to follow a complex set of directives and rules issued by the State Department of Education. A review of the details of the new law reveals that it only empowers the State Department of Education, not local school systems!

This law was intended primarily as a way of allowing local school systems to avoid state takeover of low performing schools. It turns out that the highly paid staff of the State Department of Education have no clue about what to do with low performing schools. Of the nine schools taken over and converted into charter schools in the Baton Rouge area in recent years, all now have lower average LEAP high stakes test scores than before takeover. Some have seen drastic declines in test scores. (Click here to see the Advocate story on this issue) I believe the State Superintendent does not want to take over more schools but he still wants to be able to dictate all sorts of “reforms” to local school systems. His reputation as a reform superintendent depends on constantly shifting the blame for low performance to local school officials.

It is obvious that the only purpose of the threat of state takeover of schools is to embarrass local school superintendents and school boards that happen to have schools serving high poverty communities. The theory is that the fear of public exposure of low performance will embarrass local school officials and light a fire under lazy teachers and administrators who have allowed this low performance.

How has this system worked for Louisiana? Overall there has been some improvement of test scores in many takeover schools. But since almost all public schools started implementing intense test preparation programs, scores on the LEAP have gone up in most schools, traditional and takeover. Does the improvement in LEAP scores mean that our students are better educated? Not according to Education Week Magazine which recently awarded Louisiana an “F” for student achievement as measured by the NAEP test. Some might say, "that's not fair, our students are being prepared for the LEAP not the NAEP!" Others would say that the NAEP measures the same learning. The point is the NAEP is the only way we have of comparing our students' achievement with that of other states. It also shows the pitfalls of teaching to the test.

Personally, I don't think that the editors of Education Week Magazine are such experts at grading the educational systems of the different states. A couple of years ago one of their statements on the issue of state ratings proposed that the optimum state graduation standards would require that all students be prepared for college as a requirement for graduation. That's what Louisiana has done. As a result Louisiana got high marks from Education Week for accountability and standards. Unfortunately there seemed to be no plan for the students who fail the college prep standards and usually end up dropping out.

The main thrust of accountability in Louisiana has been to increase the pressure on the teachers and administrators of low performing schools. At the end of this school year the State Superintendent and BESE will ratchet up the pressure on educators by implementation of the letter grade system for all schools. Any school with a school performance score of less than 65 will get an "F". BESE member and charter school advocate Chas Roemer who proposed this plan may not have realized that his grading system would result in most state takeover charter schools receiving a "D" or an "F".

The only important question is: Are our students better off after all this emphasis on LEAP testing? A quick look at the NAEP scores from 2003 to 2009 reveal almost no progress on the same subject matter tested by the LEAP. ACT scores are also stagnant. The dropout rate at our colleges is one of the worst in the nation. It does not look like college prep for all is doing the trick.

Its ironic that just as China is revamping its elementary-secondary school system to emulate the creativity and problem solving approach once used by U.S. schools, we are now changing schools to emulate their outdated system of testing and rote learning. That's the conclusion by Jonathan Plucker, an educational psychologist who recently returned from studying the educational system in Shanghai. Dr. Plucker is concerned that the current reforms of U.S. education are stifling the very creativity in teaching and learning that has made our educational system great.

CNN Charter School Advocate Blames Schools

2011-01-20T06:10:00.002-06:00

CNN's Education contributor, Steve Perry was interviewed recently by a CNN reporter about the achievement gap between minority and non-minority students. Perry was asked to comment on a recent study by the Council of Great City Schools which shows a continuation of this achievement gap for the years since No Child Left Behind was implemented. (Click on the above highlighted link to access the full study) His conclusions about student achievement and the causes of low student achievement are outrageous at best and slanderous of public schools at worst. Here are the two incredible conclusions made by Perry in the interview:

When asked by the reporter about the affect of environment on the low achievement of some students, Perry stated flatly that the students' poor performance had nothing to do with the students' backgrounds. The main problem he said is that many underprivledged students are usually assigned to “some of the worst schools”. The Great City Schools study which was conducted by highly qualified researchers in no way supports Perry's charge. The study instead cites several socioeconomic factors affecting minority students' readiness for learning. Perry went on to say that we need to consider vouchers or regional zoning of schools as a way of getting these kids into better schools. Apparently Perry is not aware that such an approach was tried by Arne Duncan when he served as Superintendent of Chicago schools. Duncan closed many schools with low student test scores and sent the students to schools that were considered better. Studies of the performance of those students after their transfers showed that they continued to perform exactly as they had at their previous school. To state that the student's environment or poverty level has nothing to do with performance is to contradict all recent credible studies of this issue including the most recent Council of Great City Schools study.
Perry then went on to conclude that the performance of 38% proficient or above for the non-minority students was also unacceptable. He proceeded to give an interpretation of the NEAP test results which is in total contradiction to the design and meaning of NEAP scores. He said 38% proficient shows that our schools are failing all students. He seems to assume that proficient or above is the only acceptable performance. Diane Ravitch who served for 7 years on the governing board for NEAP has described the proficient rating as an above average score or approximately the same as a “B” rating. There is a lower rating of “basic” that translates into a “C” grade according to Ravitch. This would mean that many more of these students would be considered as having achieved at least a satisfactory or grade level score. This interpretation is also backed up by the achievement ranking of these students as measured by the PISA international assessment. Ravitch has pointed out that the same misinterpretation of grade level or acceptable performance was made in the film Waiting For Superman.

Unfortunatly Perry, who is a charter school advocate, contributes a weekly segment on education for CNN called Perry's Principles. His contribution usually consists of criticisims of public schools and a recommendation of charter schools as the most viable alternative to traditional schools.
By allowing Perry to make these false interpretations of critical educational data, CNN is doing a severe disservice to the cause of improving our educational system.

School Takeover Efforts Continue
The latest scheme to take over public schools and convert them to privately managed charters was announced by Governor Jindal to a meeting of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry (LABI). Jindal said his administration plans to introduce legislation that would allow the formation of new charter schools sponsored by individual businesses. These private companies would hold major positions on the board of directors of the charter and their employees would have preferential treatment in enrolling their children to attend these new charters. There is no indication yet whether these new schools would be state authorized charters or locally authorized. Jindal claims the legislation will be patterned after similar plans already in operation in several other states.

This new charter scheme could be more destructive of our public education system because unlike some of the Recovery District charters, such schools may be in a better position to “cream” the best and most motivated students from local school systems. As we have seen in New Orleans and other places, the most effective way to create a better performing school is to recruit better performing students. Once such higher performing students are attracted away from a local school system, it becomes that much harder for the local public school system to thrive. The remaining public schools will have difficulty raising their performance scores and will have trouble retaining voter support for the school system's tax base. This is just one more step in the destruction of our public school system which has traditionally been run by democratically elected representatives of the people. I believe we are headed toward a much less democratic system where opportunities for the poor to receive a good education will be severely limited. This will be very bad for the entire nation, because it will result in less opportunity, more poverty, more crime, more welfare, and more class warfare.

Red Tape Reduction Act is A Red Herring!
The Jindal and Pastorek controlled BESE is agonizing over why no school systems have grabbed at the opportunity to utilize the Red Tape Reduction Act as a way to retain and improve local schools. If you want to know what is really in the law and why it is objectionable to those who believe in local elected control of local schools, just click on this link to our May 18 post to review our analysis of the law.

Lessons From A Chinese Mother

2011-01-12T17:36:00.002-06:00

A Chinese-American author and Yale law professor, Amy Chua has written a thought provoking article about parenting in this week's Wall Street Journal. This article has received a huge number of hits as the word has spread that maybe, just maybe, American parents have something important to learn from the Chinese about rearing children to be responsible students and successful adults. I strongly recommend this article to all education leaders and to all parents of school age children.

My impression upon reflecting on the article was that we in the U.S. have lost our way about the essential components of parenting in a competitive world and maybe we should take a few lessons from a people who have a very old and successful culture. I am not talking about Communism which is a relatively new phenomenon, but about the art of raising healthy well motivated kids which philosophers would say is the most important job of our lives. I am convinced that some American parents have no clue about how to prepare children for a successful life because they themselves have had little training in proper work ethics and the value of education. In fact it seems that rearing children is the one important job in life for which we have no instruction manual, no degree, and no operator's license. I believe it is an absolute shame what often passes for parenting in this country.

I just completed a great interview with Illinois educational psychologist, Johnathan Plucker who had spent quite a bit of time visiting and studying the educational system in Shanghai China. When I asked him about the parent's attitudes and values relative to education, he pretty much expressed the same ideas as Amy Chua in her Wall Street Journal article. Plucker told me that he does not see much difference in the quality of teachers in the U.S. Compared to Shanghai. He said the big differences are in the supportive attitudes of parents, in the actual length of the school year and the length of the school day and the extra time spent on studying outside the classroom. All of these efforts are much greater in Shanghai than they are in the U.S. According to Dr. Plucker.

Also while poverty is a major problem affecting student achievement in this country, it can be overcome by more positive attitudes toward education in the home and in the community. I refer readers to our blog post of Dec 29 which includes an account of education performance of the Vietnamese immigrants who settled in Baton Rouge after the end of the Vietnam war.

A careful reading of Amy Chua's Wall Street Journal article should be the first in a series of lessons about parenting that should be recommended to all parents of school age children.

Virtual Schools Should be Considered

2011-01-06T05:52:00.000-06:00

Virtual schools and computer assisted distance learning are here and growing and should be considered for adoption by local public Louisiana school systems. BESE has now approved the first virtual charter school that will be allowed to draw students and per pupil funding starting in the 2011-2012 school year from any Louisiana public school system. With recent advances in computer technology and assets such as video conferencing and other interactive applications this education option is sure to attract some students away from traditional schools. But these developments may not necessarily be bad news for our public school systems. The question is are public school leaders willing to utilize this new technology and the service companies that are offering virtual educational programs to enhance local public education?

It should be more efficient to provide public schooling using virtual schools. Virtual schools do not require student busing, there is no need for classrooms along with janitorial services and utilities and no need to provide food services.

BESE has set the per pupil funding for the first virtual charter schools at 90% of the state and local per pupil funding. Those parents who enroll their child in a virtual school are only too happy to forgo traditional classroom services in exchange for a free public education for their child in their own home. There is every reason to believe that with recent advances in technology, such schools can provide all state required content in a manner that is appropriate for many students. The delivery of education through this system can only improve in the coming years.

Follow-up report on Connections Academy
The type 2 charter school recently approved by BESE is a non-profit, however the Connections Academy company which will provide all services to the charter is a “for profit" company. (See our post dated 12/16/2010 ). My major concern here is that students receive good services for the public money spent and that the profit motive not take precedence over the welfare of children. I emailed several questions to the LA Dept. of Ed. to explore what I believe to be important factors in delivering quality education. According to Erin Bendily, State Dept. administrator for charter schools, the application for Connections Academy indicates that they plan an approximate pupil-teacher ratio of 50:1 for elementary students and 35:1 for middle and high school students. Charter schools are exempted from state maximum pupil-teacher ratios. Student contact time with certified teachers may vary greatly depending on need. The theory here is that non-traditional charter schools are exempted from state requirements such as pupil-teacher ratios with the understanding that such students will still get a good education as measured by the accountability program. On the question of students to be recruited, Ms Bendily responded that the Connections Academy is expected to enroll a similar proportion of at risk students as the parishes from which its students are drawn as required by state law.

An additional issue is the requirement that every student attracted to this state authorized charter takes with him/her 90% of all state and local per pupil funding. This is a major hit to the budget of any local school system from which the student is transferred. Also that 90% per pupil funding is much more than the $5779 charged by Connections Academy to its students that enroll in the private school version of the Connections Academy. A remaining question is why is the cost so much more for the publicly funded students at Connections?

While taking into account the above concerns, I suggest that local school leaders investigate to see if virtual schools may be utilized to strengthen their local system and to build critical public support. I believe that local school board authorized charters for virtual schools are greatly preferable to state authorized charters because the ultimate oversight of such schools remains with locally elected representatives. As we have seen, the rules approved by BESE for state approved charters (type 2 charters) and Recovery District schools make it very difficult for local school systems to reclaim these schools or their students. The key for local school leaders is to take the initiative to offer such schools in a way that enhances their public school system. A local school system may effectively use a virtual school to attract students who may now be in home schooling or enrolled in private or parochial schools. Every student attracted back or prevented from leaving the public schools ensures greater voter support for our public schools.

Virtual schools will certainly not be appropriate for all students. Chances are that only a relatively small but significant percentage of students will have the self discipline, the motivation and the parental support necessary to be successful in a virtual school. Virtual schools require a major time commitment on the part of the parent or home coach. I seriously doubt that students who are now struggling with high stakes testing and who are in danger of dropping out of the traditional school will be able to succeed any better in a virtual school. There will always be a need for a traditional classroom for the majority of our public school students. But some parents will want the virtual school option. Such parents may want better control over the peers their children associate with, and they may feel rightly or wrongly that the public school where their child has been assigned will not have the safe, positive environment they want for their child. Just consider the erosion of middle class enrollment, both white and minority (now called class flight) from our inner city schools. The virtual school could counteract this trend. This may finally be an opportunity for public school advocates to go on the offensive in strengthening our public schools.

I strongly urge all superintendents, school board members and other education leaders to do some research on the virtual school services available. Two of them can be found at http://www.k12.com/ and http://www.nationalconnectionsacademy.com/. I am in no way connected with these companies and am not endorsing their programs. I am simply suggesting that since they are two of the largest players providing various options to school boards for virtual education, they should be carefully investigated and considered.

What International Student Assessments Really Tell Us.

2010-12-29T17:42:00.003-06:00

The recent interview with Bill Gates and Randi Wiengarten in Newsweek seemed to assume that public schools in the U.S. are greatly inferior to other industrialized nations and that the main problem in our schools is under-performing teachers. It was also assumed in this interview that the curriculum in our schools is somehow weaker than that in other countries. The Newsweek story would lead us to believe that if we would just beef up and standardize the elementary/high school curriculum in all states and then find ways to retrain or replace teachers with better ones that all of our student performance problems would be solved. Nothing could be further from the truth. Here's why:
Various studies demonstrate that teacher quality is far from being the most important factor in student success. A much more important factor turns out to be the level of academic motivation of the student as influenced by his/her parents, his/her peers, and the community environment. Now there is a recent analysis of international rankings of our students that point to factors other than poor teacher quality and a weak curriculum as the major challenges.

A more intensive look at statistics from the recent PISA assessment comparing student achievement of 65 industrialized countries gives us a good indication of where the problem is. This analysis of the PISA assessment was done for the combined reading skills portion of the test by the National Center for Education statistics (NCES). NCES found that while the U.S. Students as a whole rank about 17th compared to students from the 65 other countries tested, there are big differences in the performance of different ethnic groups within the U.S.. For example, Shanghai China whose students are obviously all Asian, scored 1st among all nations. When you break out the Asian origin students in the sample of American students tested, NCES found that their average score ranked 2nd in the world, right behind Shanghai. That's pretty good. Also when you break out the Caucasian students in the U.S. sample, their results were 6th in the world. That's not tops but its still pretty good. Its ahead of all other predominately Caucasian nations except Finland. So apparently the quality of U.S. teachers and the school curriculum are working just fine for ethnic Asian and Caucasian students in this country.

In addition, it was found by analyzing the results on the PISA assessment for free and reduced lunch students in the U.S. that the level of poverty in a school has the strongest correlation with that school's average scores on overall Language arts achievement. For example, a school with a free or reduced price lunch student population (an accepted measure of poverty) of between 50 and 75% ranks 39th compared to average scores of other industrialized nations. In contrast, a school with less than 10% free or reduced price lunch students would rank second among all tested nations.

After reviewing this data, if we still believe that the quality of teachers is the main cause of student performance we would arrive at the ridiculous conclusion that our teachers are good at teaching Asian and Caucasian students but terrible at teaching high poverty minority students!

Consider a specific example of student performance observed within the East Baton Rouge school system. Following the end of the Vietnam war, a large number of Vietnamese refuges were admitted into this country. Some settled in the Baton Rouge area. They were known as the Boat people and were escaping repression by the Communist government. Most of these immigrants were impoverished and they spoke little English. The Vietnamese who settled in Baton Rouge sent their children to public schools. There was no second language program at that time in Baton Rouge for Vietnamese, so the children had to learn English from scratch. These immigrants though poor had a strong work ethic and tight knit family units which insisted on high academic achievement. Within a few years the Vietnamese children in the public school system were excelling in all subjects. When awards were given for the very top students in the school system among 60,000 students, a disproportionate number of Vietnamese students were recognized as winners in English, Math and Science. These students excelled using the same teachers and curriculum that was available to all other students.

The differences in the performance of different ethnic groups and poverty levels in the U.S. has been well known for some time. One of the major failures of the No Child Left Behind federal law was the failure to close the achievement gap between high poverty and more privileged students.

So why does the Newsweek article dwell almost completely on teacher quality and curriculum enhancement as the favored approachs to improving our schools? This is the second major story Newsweek has produced in the past few months which assumes that most of the problems of American education are caused by incompetent teachers. It is clear that Newsweek is pursuing an agenda on education that is not based on fact. What do we gain by making teachers the scapegoats for some of the deep seated problems in our society over which they have no control? Apparently some non-educators would rather pretend that the problems in American education have simple solutions. Unfortunately, both Bill Gates and AFT president Randi Weingarten seemed to buy into this bogus premise.

As I have pointed out in earlier posts on this blog, I believe you could switch the teachers from our highest performing schools with those in our lowest performing schools and you would notice little effect on the performance of the students in either school. The same is true of the expectation that introduction of a tougher curriculum would produce better achievement.

Some of our philanthropist reformers who have never once worked as teachers in high poverty schools have proposed that teachers of high poverty students simply have low expectations of these students. They suggest that if teachers would instead hold these students to higher expectations and higher standards, the students would perform up to the increased expectations. This assumption has no basis in fact. Instead many of our young teachers in high poverty schools have repeatedly had their hopes and expectations for their students crushed by continuing poor performance. Approximately 50% of new teachers leave the profession by the end of their 5th year teaching. The fact that many students fail to meet reasonable expectations of achievement and classroom behavior is a major reason for the high attrition rate of new teachers.

I believe that this obsession today's education reformers have with toughening the curriculum for all students and purging the teaching profession of thousands of imaginary bad teachers will divert attention, and funding from the real problems of public education in the U.S. Rather than spend millions on new punitive evaluation systems for teachers, we should be using that money to make sure that all students are in school every day ready to learn. Extra effort must be made to involve parents in the educational process. In addition we need to provide struggling students with more intensive learning activities focused on their specific needs. That may mean a longer school day and a longer school year with special concentration on Reading and Math skills. And finally, we in Louisiana especially need to change from a system that fails and pushes out students who do not meet our system of college prep standards for all. Instead we should provide education suitable to the needs and career aspirations of each student.

In Finland, one of the top performing countries in elementary/secondary education, students are not considered failures if they do not pass a college prep curriculum. The school system instead is flexible and provides a good education to all students whether college bound or bound for skilled and technical careers. Our present system in Louisiana stigmatizes and flunks out many non-college bound students while unnecessarily watering down classroom instruction in academic courses to accommodate non-academic students. Why not instead have a first rate college prep program in every school system with strong emphasis on modern STEM courses while at the same time provide a first rate Career Prep program in cooperation with our Community and Technical college systems?

The true experts in education who are working hard every day in our public schools must take it upon themselves to speak out against education reforms based on faulty assumptions. Otherwise the silence of educators will be seen as support for these misguided schemes. As we have learned in the years of No Child Left Behind, only educators will be blamed for the failure of poorly designed education reforms forced upon them by ill informed reformers and politicians.
Happy New Year!

Shanghai China Schools Number One, U.S. Falls

2010-12-17T06:44:00.006-06:00

The public schools of Shanghai, China have scored first place among the industrialized nations of the world in all categories of academic achievement as measured by the 2009 PISA assessment, a test administered every 3 years by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The test is given to a sampling of 15 year old students in the subjects of Reading, Math and Science. The United States has shown declines in all areas and now ranks 30th out of the 64 nations tested in Math.

Yes, we should be very much concerned about these results because academic achievement of our students could be indicators of where our country is headed in the worldwide competition for economic progress. Click on this link to view a short video on the educational system in Shanghai as well as other leading countries on this important assessment.

A book I read recently on the tremendous educational potential of all students (discussed in my post dated Dec. 3) convinces me that our country could do much better in educating its future citizens and leaders. We would do well to carefully study the educational systems in China, Finland and neighboring Canada to gain insight as to what educational strategies may improve our system of education. But some of our problems in U.S. education are unique to our society and will require reforms that reach beyond the schools. Amazingly, as you can see in the recent post by Diane Ravitch (see the Dec. 14 post), our education reformers in the U.S. seem to be totally ignoring the main features of truly successful school systems as we rush headlong into a Stalinist-like purge of our educational institutions and practitioners. While other successful countries seem to revere their teachers and value experienced professional educators, our reformers want to install non-educators in administrative positions and remove any consideration of experience and even higher levels of training in determining teacher salaries and layoff procedures.

Yes, there is something seriously wrong with education in the U.S. and in Louisiana, but its not caused by lazy, incompetent teachers. Some of our teachers certainly are burning out because of the overwhelming challenges they face, but that's a symptom not a cause. Our teachers need support from education leaders and especially from parents to engage and motivate our students to achieve their potential in school, not mindless reprisals against teachers and principals.

Lets face it, many of our students don't know and don't seem to care why they are in school. These kids don't have a single book of any kind in their homes, they spend countless hours watching TV and playing video games, or hanging out with friends til all hours of the night. Teachers in some schools are reluctant to assign homework that requires the use of the student's textbook because so many students lose their book when they take it off campus. These kids don't have a quiet place to study, they are often kept awake till late at night by loud music, and no one sees to it that they get to school on time. Often when the school secretary calls home to check on an absent student, no one knows where he/she is. Compare that to the video you can watch on the educational climate in Shanghai or Finland. Now tell me honestly, are we going to fix this problem by firing the bottom 5% of teachers based on student test scores? There seems to be no relation between the fixes that are proposed by reformers like Bill Gates and Arne Duncan and the reality on the ground.

Note: My interview with Jonathan Plucker, an educational psychologist from the University of Indiana who recently visited the schools in Shanghai has been delayed because of a minor illness. I hope to conduct the interview early next week. Please check back for some enlightening insights on how the educational climate differs in the U.S. compared to China.

Happy Holidays!

Virtual Charter Could Have Major Impact

2010-12-16T06:30:00.003-06:00

A new virtual charter school approved this month by BESE has the potential to have a huge impact on public education in Louisiana! (click here to view the Advocate article) The Connections Academy virtual charter school will be based in Baton Rouge and will provide on-line instruction to students who are accepted from throughout the state. This new charter school will not have physical classrooms and will have little direct contact with students but will receive 90% of state and local per pupil funding according to the plan approved by BESE. Proponents claim that most of the per pupil funding is needed to pay for the high cost of technology instead of providing physical classrooms. Students will be expected to communicate with the school mostly by computer and by telephone. Its not clear from the packet provided to BESE what the pupil-teacher ratio will be, but the Connections Academy web site claims that teachers are required to conference with each student at least once every two weeks. This could be very minimal contact indeed! The material provided to BESE states that the Connections Academy will target a population of “high needs” students and has a plan for providing services to such students as well as for students with disabilities and to gifted students.

The service provider for this new charter is a national group that claims to service schools in 22 states. Click on this link to access the information on their web site. A similar virtual charter was also approved for the New Orleans area and is expected to serve 1100 students.

The Baton Rouge Connections Academy plans to start with 500 K-12 students beginning with the 2011-2012 school year and increase to 1750 students by the fifth year. Even though the president of the board for the type 2 charter school stated that such a school could be especially helpful to students who may be in danger of dropping out from a traditional school, there is no way to tell at this early date what type of students will be attracted and actually enrolled.

My best guess is that the school may attract a significant number of students away from private and parochial schools. Parents who had fled what they considered to be undesirable public schools may jump at the chance to save thousands of dollars in tuition by transferring their child back to a publicly funded virtual school. Also, many parents who have attempted home schooling may wish to utilize the services of this virtual school because they may feel that it takes some of the financial and time commitment burdens off of the parent to provide instruction to their child. According to the Connections website however, parents are still expected to serve as “learning coaches” directing the daily activities of their child in the virtual school. Finally, some public school parents whose children have been assigned to low performing public schools may find the virtual school to be a way to escape what they may believe to be an undesirable school environment. The virtual school may even attract students from low performing charter schools. This type of school could be a real competitor for all schools, public and private, where parents want to save money and keep their child in a controlled home environment.

It is not clear from the information provided in the BESE packet whether the Baton Rouge based virtual charter school will be a “for profit” or “non-profit” or if the school itself will be non-profit while the national service provider will be allowed to pocket a profit from the operation. This is a very critical question since once you add the profit motive, it can compete with the best interests of the customers (children). I hope to get an answer to this from the State Dept. Charter School office and post it to the blog in the near future.

As the new BESE approved school rating system goes into effect and parents begin receiving letter grades of “D” and “F” for their child's school, the virtual charter school may become even more attractive, especially if the student selection process for the virtual charter results in a more highly motivated student body. As we have explained in other posts of this blog, the most important factor in producing a high performing school is the practice of enrolling high performing students! If this first school succeeds, we can look for many imitators and for a major expansion of the Connections Academy.

Bullying Educators and Students

2010-12-08T08:52:00.010-06:00

State Superintendent Paul Pastorek, a person who has no experience administering a real school system and who has no actual teaching experience continues his arrogant bullying of experienced and dedicated educators. The proposal before BESE for implementing legislation to convert the school rating system to a letter grade system is the occasion for this latest snub of the recommendations of knowledgeable educators. (click on this link to the Advocate article)

UPDATE ON BESE ACTION !
This update is added to give you the result of the BESE action on the new school grading system voted on 12/9/10. Click here to see the Advocate article. Ignoring the wishes of the Accountability Commission, BESE adopted a motion by Chas Roemer that is even more punitive to struggling schools than that proposed by Superintendent Pastorek. The Roemer plan will penalize schools that have any decline in their SPS by assigning a minus to their letter grade. In addition, schools will get a plus added to their grade only if they meet the State Dept. growth target. The problem with this as I pointed out to Mr Roemer in an email, is that as we approach the year 2014 the growth goal for the low performing schools will become prohibitively high because the scoring system attempts to raise the SPS of all schools to 120 by 2014. The Roemer plan will be very discouraging to the hard working staffs of many schools serving high poverty communities.
Roemer has also been a major advocate of charter schools. I wonder what Roemer will propose to do about the Charter schools in his district that continue to perform at the bottom of the scale. At the same meeting BESE approved the Pastorek plan that will allow “successful” charter schools to indefinitely remain independent of their local school boards, contrary to the stated intent of the original Recovery School District legislation.

Many local Superintendents and other educators on the state Accountability Commission had recommended a system that would allow credit on the grading scale to be given to schools that had exceeded the average performance of schools in their general performance category. The idea was to allow a one letter grade bonus for schools that were showing the most improvement. This system would have allowed schools serving low income communities a chance to get recognition on the grading scale for showing good relative progress.

Superintendent Pastorek has asked BESE to overrule the Accountability Commission which is composed of educators and representatives of the general public, and instead adopt a grading scale that would make it more and more difficult for schools serving poor communities to get a bonus for improvement. His plan would only allow a letter grade increase if the school met the state accountability growth target. Such an improved grade would be listed as a minus grade to show that it was not on the same par as others. Such growth targets are very rapidly becoming more difficult for schools to achieve because they are calculated based on all schools reaching the same arbitrary SPS target of 120 by the year 2014. This means that as we get closer to 2014 the schools serving poorer communities will have very little chance of earning a bonus for improvement because the target SPS will be getting much higher. No matter that the arbitrary goal of 120 is inherently unfair to high poverty schools, Pastorek the politician (not educator) feels he can make more points with the uninformed public by bashing public education. The result of such a policy would be to continue to perpetrate the unfair criticism of teachers and administrators who are dedicated to working in our most challenging schools. How can the parents in these struggling communities who may be working with administrators and teachers to boost the performance of area students feel pride in their school if the goal is unrealistic?

BESE is scheduled to make a decision on which plan to approve at their meeing on Thursday, December 9. Please make your concerns known to your BESE member on this issue.

We cannot improve education in Louisiana by continuing to trash dedicated educators and the students they serve. Our students should not be used as political footballs to help politicians score points with those who would destroy public education.

The Most Important Factor In School Success

2010-12-03T09:47:00.000-06:00

A new book by Matthew Syed, a columnist for the Times of London and former 3-time table tennis British Commonwealth National champion titled Bounce: Mozart, Federer, Picasso, Beckham and the Science of Success, has reminded me once again of the importance of motivation in the education of young people. (Click on this link to read its Amazon book reviews) This book is intended to show the importance of purposeful, intensive practice in the training of world class athletes and leaders in all fields of human endeavor. But to me, it demonstrates the overwhelming importance of motivation in the education of children in our public school systems. The author explains, with reference to recent scientific studies and specific case histories, the power of the brain to learn and direct the human body to master difficult concepts or skills and to constantly improve performance. He explains how dedication and training has transformed ordinary people into stars in every field of human endeavor.

Every educator could benefit from a better understanding of the almost unlimited potential possessed by all students as described in this interesting book. The many successful case studies provided by Bounce should give us real hope that students, if properly motivated could achieve much more academically. The capacity of the human brain to be trained to learn and hone skills critical to success in life has great implications for education. If educators could harness the tremendous power of motivation that goes into the training of star athletes, or chess-masters, or superb musicians, there are almost no limits to improvements that could be made in the academic achievements of our students!

This book demonstrates that the missing ingredient preventing many students from excelling in educational achievement is proper motivation. Many of our students today are greatly handicapped because their life experiences lack positive role models and adults who can serve as mentors to provide the motivation to excel in school and to prepare for rewarding careers. Many of our students never get to experience the spark that ignites their motivation to excel either in sports, art, or in successful careers.

So who is responsible for the proper motivation of students? When I started teaching over 40 years ago teachers thought their primary responsibility was to present the curriculum material in an appropriate manner. After the concepts or grade level expectations (GLEs) were presented and students given an opportunity to practice and absorb the material, the teacher would test the class and assign grades to each student. It was the student's responsibility to master the required concepts in a particular course to the satisfaction of the teacher. The grade achieved in a particular course and even passing or failing was the student's responsibility, not the teacher's.

Today the responsibility for student achievement is shifting more to the teacher. The state no longer trusts the teacher to set the standards for passing a class or for promotion to the next grade. Also, politicians and some new leaders in education are taking the position that if teachers are paid to teach, then they should be also responsible for the achievement of students. No matter that in the educational process “it takes two to tango”. That is, if a student is not motivated to learn the required curriculum content, no amount of teaching pedagogy or work by the teacher will result in the intended learning by the student! Nevertheless, in today's political environment, it seems that teachers alone are being held responsible for educational results.

Fortunately, there is scientific evidence, also recently documented by learning research, that curiosity about our surroundings is one of our basic human drives. Some scientists believe that all children are born with an internal motivation to learn about the world around them. Unfortunately this does not automatically mean that students are motivated to learn that which the curriculum guide dictates must be learned by all students. If educators cannot make school work relevant in the minds of students, the motivation necessary for success in school will not happen. The students' drive to learn may focus instead on computer games or social media, on cell phone texting, or on other ways of achieving status in the peer group. Often just at the time when engagement of students in school is most critical, (around the middle school level) parents and teachers seem to lose any meaningful influence on the aspirations of many of our students. All students may be ready and able to learn, but not always what educators wish to teach!

The author of Bounce also cites studies by Dweck conducted in 1978 that demonstrate how parents and some educators have unknowingly used counterproductive motivational techniques. The most glaring example of bad motivation is the improper use of praise. These studies show how well meaning parents and teachers in an effort to boost self esteem in children have sometimes resorted to using every opportunity for complimenting children on their superior abilities. The idea is that students confident in their abilities will accomplish more in school. Instead, Dweck's studies show that children who regularly received this kind of unearned praise often became fearful of failure, and as a result applied themselves less and avoided challenging subject matter that could have helped them excel! On the other hand, students who were praised for actual effort and hard work developed a healthy work ethic and performed better over the long run in school and in life.

Experienced educators know that a school's educational climate or culture can have a huge impact on student motivation and performance. I once taught at a high school that was in the process of being converted from a pure magnet school to a combination community school and magnet school. The new plan adopted by the school board allowed any area student to enroll in the school while the school continued to maintain its magnet component. The school had never had to contend with motivation problems and with discipline issues because most students meeting the magnet entrance requirements were properly motivated to succeed and were not interested in disruptive behavior. Unfortunately the school administration and teachers were not prepared to deal with the flood of poorly motivated and often disruptive students that now poured in from the inner city local community. Very quickly the entire atmosphere at the school changed from one with a positive learning environment to one dominated by classroom disruptions, fights and disrespectful behavior toward teachers followed by deteriorating academic performance. It has now been 12 years since the change and the school has lost most of its magnet students and academic performance is now consistently mediocre. In this case, the school board and the administration of the school system have never taken the firm steps necessary to reclaim a positive learning environment at the school, and cannot blame the parents for pulling their students out.

Examples like this all over the state show that if a school is to improve its effectiveness, a large emphasis must be placed on positive discipline and proper student motivation. Educators must connect with parents and students to insure that excellence in academics is the prevailing attitude in the school. We must make certain that all students see school work as extremely relevant in their lives and future success. All schools must build in a program of constant reinforcement of academic goals and of connection of school to life and careers. The school must use goal setting to encourage attainment of important steps toward success in school and in life, and excitement about the achievement of educational goals. Most schools can do a pretty good job of staging pep rallies around sporting events, but how many can create an enthusiastic pep rally promoting academic achievement?

It can be done. But educators need the help of the entire community. Responsibility for student achievement must be shared by everyone in the community including the parents and students themselves. Judges and law enforcement officials must assist in enforcing the mandatory attendance laws. We must provide our students with proper role models, mentors, tutoring and job shadowing. Some schools in Louisiana have created successful school campaigns to accomplish higher scores on the LEAP test, or to improve the ranking of their school on the state school performance scores. One idea that can be borrowed from some of the more successful charter schools is a daily or weekly motivational assembly to emphasize good attendance, good behavior and the attainment of academic goals. There is no reason why the natural enthusiasm and energy of young people cannot be channeled to focus on success in school.

I believe that school motivational efforts are so critical that many of our under-performing schools can never become successful without a major push to change the climate of the school to one that is truly motivating for success. I call on the readers of this blog to send me examples of successful school transformations and motivational campaigns in their local schools so these can be publicized and shared with others. Just send your email comments and suggestions to louisianaeducator@gmail.com

Education Funding Battles

2010-11-19T09:16:00.001-06:00

It is absolutely critical that educators in large numbers make contact with the Governor, state legislators and members of Congress in an effort to maintain adequate funding for public education. Funding for education is an investment in the future of our state and its citizens, especially its young people. If we allow education funding such as the recent edu-Jobs fund to be transferred to other purposes in the state budget, our children and grandchildren will suffer.
The article in The Advocate points out that Senator Landreu has sent a letter to Governor Jindal requesting that the Edu-Jobs fund be used only for the education purposes described in the legislation. The idea is that present funds going to the MFP should not be removed and supplanted by this new money. That defeats the purpose of the legislation. We applaud Senator Landreu for making this effort. Also, if necessary, local school systems should consider legal action to stop this misappropriation of federal money.

Unfortunately there will be many more battles in the months and years to come to defend the funding of public education, and it is up to those of us who have dedicated our careers to the education of children to fight this battle at every opportunity. Because of the budget and political climate we face, these battles will be especially difficult.

A large part of the problem we face was caused by the partial repeal of the Stelly Plan a couple of years ago by legislators who acted for political reasons rather than for the good of the state. The Stelly Plan passed in the first part of this decade was designed to restructure Louisiana's taxes removing some of the sales tax burden on citizens for purchase of food and medicine and replacing these revenues with a slightly higher income tax. The plan was originally revenue neutral but by its nature was designed to be more of a growth tax to allow Louisiana tax revenues to keep up with inflation pressure on the cost of state services. One example is the increased cost of school employee and teacher retirement, which has been an increasing burden on local school systems. By repealing the growth part of the Stelly Plan, the legislature guaranteed that the state will not be able to properly fund local school systems in the coming years. Thank you to Senator Nevers for suggesting that the Stelly plan tax revenues should be restored to their original level for at least the next few years.

In addition to normal growth of costs, the legislature every year adds unfunded mandates such as the recent law requiring formal evaluations of all teachers each year with the inclusion of student testing results as 50% of the evaluation. Mark my word, this will end up being a totally unnecessary financial burden on all local school systems in Louisiana. This plan will do nothing at all to improve education, and can actually be counterproductive, because it is not based on solid principles of good teaching. With the renewed emphasis by voters to get big government out of our lives, it does not make sense for the State to dictate how teachers should be evaluated by local school boards.

Please for the sake of the children we teach, all educators must maintain constant contact with our governor, legislators, and members of congress to insure adequate funding of education and to prevent the addition of unfunded mandates that do not advance education.

Stealing Education Jobs Money

2010-11-15T09:29:00.002-06:00

Educators! Wake up!

This link to the Advocate article describing how the Jindal administration plans to take the Federal Education Jobs money (Called the EduJobs Fund) and use it to patch up other holes in the state budget is a wake up call! This action is WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! And must be protested vigorously by all educators and their organizations. If we do not take strong action on this, local school systems had better be prepared to be r**** repeatedly by the governor as the the state budget crises worsens.

This appropriation was clearly designated by the Congress to prevent educator job losses by local school systems and should not be used for other purposes or supplanted in such a way that local school systems do not end up getting the federal money. Those so called education leaders who talk about creating a “world class” education system in Louisiana but who do not so much as raise the slightest objection to this theft of school money are just cheap politicians and are not by any stretch of the imagination “education leaders”.

Myths Driving Education Reform

2010-11-11T07:30:00.009-06:00

There are so many myths and misconceptions driving education reform in the US today, it makes my head spin. My training in science with emphasis on use of the scientific method for solving problems leaves me perplexed and frustrated by education reform based on false assumptions. Our state and nation seem to be on a wild goose chase of education reform schemes that are not supported by legitimate education research. This is happening at the same time that a newly elected, fiscally conservative Congress wants to cut spending. It looks like public schools will be asked to produce higher student achievement in narrow tested areas with less money at the same time that privatization of schools is being pushed by powerful business interests. Here are some of the crazy reform mandates educators in Louisiana will be dealing with in the near future:

Under the latest wave of education reform, the perceived under performance of our public schools is to be solved by closing schools, firing principals and a certain percentage of teachers, and allowing untested, mostly unsupervised private groups to take over public schools. The idea that public schools funded by tax dollars should be managed by democratically elected school boards seems no longer important to the reformers.

Recent studies have revealed that when under-performing schools in Chicago were closed by Arne Duncan, the students continued to perform just as poorly in their newly assigned schools. But never mind that fact, he now intends to apply the same false solution to many other schools throughout the nation. The proposed re-authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act by the Obama administration calls for a complete restructuring of the lowest performing public schools using either charter schools, school closings, or mass administrator and teacher firings.

In another reform effort, big chunks of federal grants are going to school systems that will implement teacher merit pay systems. This comes just after a major study was released by Vanderbilt University which shows that a teacher merit pay system made little or no difference in student achievement. According to the article in Education Week, this was the most rigorous study of performance based teacher compensation in the US. How can our government continue to defy logic and science and expect education to improve?

Lets look at the predicament educators face here in Louisiana. Several years ago, BESE and the Board of Regents decided that public elementary and secondary schools should prepare students better for college. It was determined (without consultation with the educators in the field) that the best approach would be to require a strong college prep curriculum of all students as a requirement for high school graduation. The business community loved the idea. It would mean that all students would leave high school proficient in English, math and science and could therefore be prepared for the high tech jobs of the future whether they attended college or not.

Its a little early to tell for sure, but my assessment is that this scheme will be a total failure. Here's why: Public schools in Louisiana regularly lose most of the top 20% of its academically inclined students to one of the strongest private school system in the nation. Statistics tell us that only the top 30% of academic performers will succeed in four year colleges. So even if we wanted to be ambitious in preparing more of our public school students for 4 year colleges, we can expect no more than 30 to 40 percent of our public school students to make it to a 4 year degree. These students need the best college prep curriculum we can provide them in middle through high school. But the system we have in place in most public schools provides our true college prep students with much less of a rigorous education than they need. Why? Because in attempting to provide a college prep curriculum to all students we force our teachers to water down the critical courses in math, English and science to accommodate the large number of students who are not college material. In designing our education system as one size fits all, we end up shortchanging most of our students. We have weakened our college prep curriculum and at the same time, set up many of our other students for failure and denial of a high school diploma. This plan while well intentioned was stupid, and ignored the facts on the ground in our pubic school system. It guarantees that a huge percentage of our students will not get the education they really need in preparing for critically needed skills and service jobs which are the only ones growing in Louisiana's economy. It guarantees that a large percentage of our unemployable young people will be added to the welfare roles or to our huge prison population. It also guarantees that many of our schools will continue to look like failures because they are not producing larger numbers of college prepared students.

What are the college performance results of the new policy? ACT scores which are the best predictor of college performance are the same as they were 4 years ago, and I read recently that Louisiana now has the second lowest college graduation rate in the nation. The present structure of our public high schools as mandated by BESE and the Board of Regents insures that we will stay at that level.

Late addition: Click on this link to read the story in The Advocate about the low ranking of Louisiana in offering advanced placement courses. Why don't we use more of our scarce resourses to offer more advanced placement courses to the students who really need them? The Zachary school system is somehow getting this done. Thanks on behalf of my grandchildren!

2010 Election, Push for Jobs, Education

2010-11-04T09:07:00.002-05:00

Recent federal election results could have a major impact on education policies in the near future. For example the re-authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and other education policies could be affected by the shift of power in the US House to Republicans. The following is an excerpt from an Education Week article written on the eve of the recent mid term elections:

“If the GOP does take the House, Rep. John Kline of Minnesota, the top Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee, would likely become chairman of the panel.

Rep. Kline has expressed skepticism about core elements of President Barack Obama’s education agenda. For instance, he said in an interview this fall that he wouldn’t favor extending for an additional year the $4 billion Race to the Top competition, which rewards states for making progress on education redesign goals.

And he said that he wants to make sure that a portion of the stimulus-funded Race to the Top program that provided $350 million to 44 states to create more uniform, richer academic assessments doesn’t lead to a “national test.”

But Mr. Kline also said he and the administration see eye to eye on important issues, including the need to encourage the proliferation of high-quality charter schools and identify ways to reward effective teachers, and remove those that are ineffective.”

We now know that Republicans have won a majority in the House of Representatives and that they will have a major impact on federal education policy. Its ironic that current education fads such as adding more charter schools and firing a certain percentage of teachers are the few areas where there is agreement between liberals and conservatives. Educators should brace for more disruptive reforms that have little or no basis in education research but are knee jerk reactions to our poor ratings on international measures of educational attainment and the recent so called “education documentaries”.

The other development that really should have a major affect on education is the increased emphasis by voters, news commentators, and elected officials on the need to restructure our economy and education system to provide more jobs for unemployed adults and for young people entering the labor force.

Fareed Zakaria, a highly regarded news commentator, hosted a one hour program recently on CNN titled “Restoring the American Dream” where successful CEOs of Coca-Cola Google, Alcoa, and IBM gave their advice on revitalizing the US economy.

Their strongest recommendation was that our young people and our displaced workers need a continuing reeducation program that prepares and retrains them for the changing job needs of the new economy. This continuing education program should focus on career training and essential skills. More emphasis is needed on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) training as well as training for the growing service industries.

It was pointed out that the recent recession has had minimal unemployment impact on Germany for example, because that country has a sophisticated education and retraining program that continually prepares its workers for new jobs. It was clear to me that the growth in education these leaders were recommending is in the area of Community and Technical Colleges, not in the traditional 4 year institutions. Most workers they said, need at most 18 month training programs. Governor Jindal and the director of the Louisiana Workforce authority made the same point recently when recommending more efficient use of our higher education system. A good example are the courses recently offered in the Louisiana Community College system for installing home solar electrical systems and for converting autos and trucks to compressed natural gas systems. These are some of the jobs in demand in the next few years that do not require 4 year college training. And they have the added advantage that they cannot be farmed out to other cheap labor countries. The same cannot be said of some software engineering and other high status jobs that may require a college degree.

I believe that Louisiana would do well to break with the current elitist system pushed by the State Department of Education and higher education officials and concentrate on high tech and practical skills that will make our young people more employable and at the same time revive our Louisiana economy.

Ravitch Forum in New Orleans

2010-10-28T07:47:00.000-05:00

I attended a forum last night (Oct. 27) at Dillard University in New Orleans that featured Diane Ravitch speaking and answering questions on education reform. Dr Ravitch is one of the few voices today who speaks the truth about public education and the current reform movement in this country. Here are some of the most critical issues I believe that were addressed in this forum.

The charter school movement in this country was originally started by educators who wanted to use them as a laboratory for positive changes in education. Unfortunately the movement has been hijacked by tycoons of wall street and the business world who are creating private schools with public money. By creating the illusion that charter schools will finally provide poor children with a superior education that will result in a college education for all who attend, charter organizers have succeeded in getting support from both liberal and conservative lawmakers.
Huge salaries are being paid to the “entrepreneurs” who manage these charters while cheap short term teachers are used to do the work.
Recent studies show that only a small percentage of charter schools outperform regular public schools while a larger percentage under-perform compared to traditional schools. We see many examples of this in Louisiana schools. It is interesting that some of the most successful charter schools were set up by local school boards, very much like the successful magnet schools that are run by local boards.
Unfortunately many charter schools (just like magnet schools) perform better by attracting the better, more motivated students leaving the remaining students in under-performing schools.
Once charter schools are formed and thereby create a special interest group of parents and school operators, most politicians are reluctant to convert their schools back to publicly operated schools. This point was made by a New Orleans school board member who attended the forum. He said that even though the New Orleans school board now has the third highest performing school system in the state and excellent audit reports, the political forces in the state are working to keep Recovery District charters independent of the elected school board. The law setting up the Recovery District envisioned a possible return of schools to the local board after 5 years.

Another alarming trend discussed in the New Orleans forum is the current movement in the U.S. to reduce rather than to improve the professional status of educators. This is exemplified by the efforts of big foundations (such as the Broad Foundation) to transplant people from private business or other backgrounds into positions as school superintendents and principals. These new education leaders are expected to improve schools by firing anyone who does not improve test scores. Apparently they don't have to know anything about education, just how to demand results. The question posed is: “How can experienced teachers be expected to have respect for principals and superintendents who have never worked in the classroom?” Dr Ravitch pointed out the folly of these national trends. “As we run off and fire current teachers there are not nearly enough “teach for America” kids to take their places.” As baby boomer teachers retire, our country should be preparing many thousands of young professionals in the field of education.

One of the most interesting points made by Ravitch and participants of the New Orleans forum is that a person cannot perform effectively as an education leader by bashing and attacking the very people he/she is attempting to lead. This point is being demonstrated today at the very top of Louisiana's education establishment.

School Performance Scores in Proper Perspective

2010-10-21T08:11:00.002-05:00

School performance scores (SPS) are now available for review at the LA Dept. Of Education web site. The state average SPS has grown to 92.5 which is an increase of 1.5 from the 2009 average. Even though most public school systems in the state have implemented major campaigns aimed at raising test scores at each school, it is becoming increasingly difficult to show dramatic gains. Most of the obvious strategies for increasing LEAP scores which make up the greatest part of the SPS have already been implemented in most schools. The one remaining strategy is one that few local education leaders are willing or should be willing to employ. That would be essentially converting the entire school year to test rehearsal.

The state goal of an SPS of 120 for all schools by 2014 is looking more and more unattainable for all but a few select schools. A total of 75 out of 1282 public schools have already reached this goal to date, but if the tests retain their present rigor, it will be difficult for a significant percentage of the remaining schools to reach 120 by any deadline.

I believe that the accountability program in Louisiana has basically succeeded in focusing the attention of local school officials on academic achievement. There is no question in my mind that we have long needed a major push for improved academic performance. Thanks to good local leadership, most of this improvement in emphasis has been accomplished without abandoning solid principles of good education. Even so, the continued pressure by state and federal officials to simply improve test scores threatens to convert most public schools into creativity killing "test prep factories". Some schools are already using public funds to hire test prep companies who begin the testing and diagnosis process early each school year. Such schools focus most of the rest of the year on boosting test performance. Many highly respected master teachers believe that such strategies result in less emphasis on critical learning and thinking skills in favor of rote learning. (Not to mention the fact that it is sure to drive the best teachers out of the profession)

In addition, most of the emphasis of the “no child left behind” mandate has placed the full responsibility of school performance on the school administration and teachers without adequate consideration of negative or positive community factors. That incorrect assumption is made evident by the setting of an identical goal of school performance for all schools by 2014. As 2014 approaches it will become increasingly evident that such a goal was impractical and unfair to many schools and their students and staffs.

Another Critical Analysis of “Waiting For Superman”

Click on the following link to Diane Ravitch's analysis of the documentary movie “Waiting for Superman” which was published in the New York Review of Books. Educators may also be interested in reading her latest post in her blog titled “Bridging Differences”, in which she examines a recent “Manifesto” on education by 16 large city Superintendents. She points out the apparent hypocrisy of superintendents calling for reforms to systems which they now have the authority to implement themselves. Where will these superintendents point the finger of blame when it becomes clear that just firing a certain percentage of teachers makes no significant change in student performance? My comment on this issue, is simple: Take the top performing teachers in one of our high performing magnet schools and place them in one of our low performing poverty schools and you will see a dramatic change in their student's test score results. Or do the converse by sending teachers from low performing schools to high performing schools and see the dramatic improvement in their performance.

Special late addition:
I just got an interesting email from Lance Hill at Tulane, who sent me a chart on the SEED school in Washington DC that claims in "Superman" that they now have a 100% graduation rate. The only problem is (and the chart shows) that in 7th grade they had approximately 145 students enrolled while in 12th grade there were only 13 students left. The school apparently has a practice of weeding out low performing students before they get counted in the graduation rate. That's also why I believe it is more accurate and honest to calculate our graduation rate by following a cohort starting at 7th grade even if we give them a couple of extra years to graduate. It has also been brought to my attention that some of the charter schools that claim to have 100% of their students attending college have not been in business long enough to see the results of those college enrollments! Here in Louisiana, many folks are proud to send their children to LSU but what really counts is graduation from that special 4 year institution. LSU has less than a 20% graduation rate.

Continuing to blame teachers for all the ills of education is preventing us from attacking the real causes of under-performance in our schools. I've discussed this before so I will just summarize the critical issues with just a few words: Firm school discipline, parental responsibility, and strong principals who work with teachers to create a positive learning environment. We don't need charter schools to implement these principles. Finally, our school curriculum must be made more relevant to the world of work. Students must see the connection between success in school and future rewarding careers. It is absolute folly (and destructive to many students) to call for college prep as the only worthwhile goal for all children.

Big Bucks for Under-performing Charters

2010-09-30T12:43:00.000-05:00

Some Louisiana charter schools seem to be enjoying favored treatment by both state and federal education authorities even if their performance using accountability measures is very poor. A recent federal grant to some charter schools in the Baton Rouge area is especially notable. The State Department of Education announced this week that the five charter schools managed by the Advance Baton Rouge organization have been approved for a 13.3 million dollar federal grant to be distributed over a 5 year period. The announced purpose of the grant is to implement the Teacher Advancement Program (TAP). This program rewards some teachers with higher status positions and salary increases based on student gains in basic skills. The press release from the Department of Education announced that several school systems in Louisiana are to be awarded a total of 73 million dollars in federal grants for implementation of the TAP program. The money is to come from a 1.2 billion dollar federal grant designed to attract teachers to hard-to-staff schools. Apparently all of the federal money for this project in Louisiana will be funneled through the Milken Foundation's National Institute for Excellence in Teaching which is a private non-profit organization that sponsors the TAP program in many school systems across the nation. This program seems to fit neatly into the U.S. Education Department's push for teacher merit pay based on student achievement.

I have two major concerns about the part of the grant that was approved for the Advance Baton Rouge organization:

By all accountability measures Advance Baton Rouge's performance in managing these five schools has been a complete disaster. The performance of these schools has regressed significantly since the takeover by the charter school group. Only one of the 5 schools has shown a slight improvement in student high stakes scores. The composite scores of the 5 schools has changed as follows since the takeover: English/Language Arts performance has dropped from 33% basic or above before the takeover to only 23% basic or above in Spring 2010. Math has dropped from 29% basic or above to only 24% in 2010 and Science has dropped from 17% basic or above to only 12%. In comparison the state average for each of these three subject areas are ELA: 66% basic or above, Math: 65% basic or above and Science: 59% basic or above. How can such a huge commitment of our tax dollars be made to an organization that has shown no competence in running the schools entrusted to it?
The size of the grant to this group is totally out of proportion to other school systems receiving similar grants. For example, one school system serving over 4,000 students will be getting a grant of 7.2 million to implement the same TAP program while the Advance Baton Rouge group will receive 13.3 million dollars to serve only 1,600 students. This amounts to over $8,000 per student. It is over 4 times as much per student as the regular school system will receive.

When the charter school program was approved in Louisiana, citizens and taxpayers were assured that all charter schools would be held to strict accountability for performance. Superintendent Pastorek has repeatedly pledged that failing charter schools would be either closed down or taken over by new management. It seems to me that some charters in Louisiana are favored and provided with massive funding whether they perform or not.