Charter/Voucher Legislation Passes House

The following are the votes of your representatives on HB 976 that will allow public school students to attend private schools at taxpayer expense. To add insult to injury, these voucher schools do not have to meet accountability standards, do not get graded the way public schools do, and students can be promoted beyond the 4th and 8th grade levels even if they do not pass the LEAP! The bill will also add new charter organizations that can cherry pick students from any public schools and a "parent trigger" that can allow a charter organization to run petitions to fast track the takeover of schools. (See the data at the end of this post on the success of takeovers)

Voting FOR HB 976. (61): , Mr. Speaker, and Reps. Abramson, Adams, Arnold, Badon, Barras, Berthelot, Billiot, Bishop, S., Broadwater, Burford, H. Burns, T. Burns, Carmody, Carter, Champagne, Connick, Cromer, Dove, Fannin, Foil, Garofalo, Greene, Guinn, Harris, Havard, Hazel, Henry, Hensgens, Hodges, Hoffmann, Hollis, Honore, Howard, Huval, G. Jackson, Jefferson, N. Landry, Leger, Leopold, Ligi, Lorusso, Moreno, Morris, Jay, Pearson, Ponti, Pugh, Pylant, Richardson, Robideaux, Schexnayder, Schroder, Seabaugh, Shadoin, Simon, Talbot, Thierry, Thompson, Whitney, P. Williams, and Willmott.

Voting AGAINST House Bill 976 (42): Reps. Anders, Armes, Barrow, W. Bishop, Brossett, Brown, Burrell, Chaney, Cox, Danahay, Dixon, Edwards, Franklin, Gaines, Geymann, Gisclair, Guillory, Harrison, Hill, Hunter, K. Jackson, James, Johnson, Jones, Lambert, T. Landry, LeBas, Mack, Miller, Montoucet, Morris, Jim, Norton, Ortego, Pierre, Pope, Price, Reynolds, Richard, Ritchie, Smith, St. Germain, and Thibaut.

NOT Voting (2): Reps. Lopinto, and A. Williams.

Click on this link to read the Advocate story on valiant efforts by many legislators to amend the most damaging portions of this legislation.

Important Note: HB 974 which destroys tenure, seniority, teacher salary schedules, and makes most teachers "at will" employees based on the value-added evaluations also passed. More on this later.
Please start talking to your Senators now and through the weekend while they are in their home districts. Ask for an appointment with a committee of educators to meet with each Senator. We must make this effort for the sake of our schools and students. Please review the chart below which shows how students have performed after their schools have been taken over by charter organizations.
The schools listed, are all the schools taken over outside of New Orleans. They are schools in  Caddo, EBR, Pointe Coupee, and St. Helena.
(The School for the Deaf and Visually Impaired are not charters but are run by the state)

School Performance Scores Before and After State Takeover
Schools	SPS Before	SPS After	grade after
Linwood Mid	52.2	49.9	F
Linear Mid	53.9	49.9	F
Crestworth Mid	49.9	50.9	F
Glen Oaks Mid	101.9	43.8	F
Prescott Mid	37.6	42.1	F
Kennelworth Mid.	71.5	66.5	D
Pointe Coupee Sr	51.4	49.5	F
Dalton Elem	61.3	50.4	F
Lanier Elem	65.1	45.4	F
St. Helena Mid	57.9	47.6	F
Captol Sr Boys	46.8	41.2	F
Capitol Sr. Girls	57.2	47.2	F
School for Deaf		29.9	F
School for Vis. Imp.		48.2	F

Jindal Bills on House Floor Thursday

Breaking News: All of the action on the Governor's Reform bills will be concentrated on the House floor and will not get to the Senate until late next week or later. Please focus your major efforts on the members of the House of Representatives! Click here to read Representative Edwards' letter to the editor.

LAE lobbyist Shane Riddle informed me this morning that HB 974 and HB 976 are scheduled for consideration on the House Floor starting at 9:00 a. m. Thursday, March 22. The debate could be extensive.

LAE has created a wonderful contact system for the House members called the "White Slip Protest". It is modeled after Sharyn Hebert's Red Card Initiative. But this is kicked up a notch! Just click on this link to the LAE website and you will be guided into sending a message directly to your Representative that he cannot ignore! Why not get a group of teachers together at your school and make sure everyone gets their White Slip in to the Legislature today?
In addition please make phone calls as described below:

The following are my suggestions for reaching your Representative in the next 2 days. You may telephone your Representative at the capitol at 225-342-6945. They are expected to be in committee meetings during most of the day Tuesday and Wednesday, so try leaving a message asking your Rep. to return your call. Both of those days, the House floor will be in session starting at 4:00 p. m. Your best chance of reaching them would be from 4:00 p. m. on. If you have your Rep's cell number this is the best way to reach him/her. On Thursday, while they are debating, you can call them at the above number any time during the day. If you can't get through, ask the clerk to take your message to the Representative.

Let me tell you what to expect in a conversation with your Rep. if he/she is looking for an excuse to vote with the Governor. Many legislators will tell teachers that they have studied the bills carefully and they are convinced that no "good teachers" will be harmed. Also they will say that the voucher and charter impact will be minimal and will probably not  affect the schools in your area. In any case, the legislator will tell you he intends to monitor the law carefully to make sure none of "his people" are hurt. All of the preceding is just a smokescreen to allow him/her to vote with the Governor.

This is my suggested argument for any educator calling his/her legislator. "Yes, we believe every teacher will be hurt because teachers will be forced to teach even more than ever to the state tests to make sure that their job is not jeopardized. This hurts teachers because teaching this way is unprofessional and demoralizing. It hurts the students because they will not get the education they deserve. Filling out multiple choice tests is not education for life."

As far as not hurting your school, any new charters or voucher schools will attempt to skim the best students away from any and all schools in their area, not just the D or F schools. By the way, it is not always true that low letter grade schools have poor teachers. Some of the most dedicated teachers teach in low letter grade schools. Those schools almost always have low letter grades because they have a high proportion of at-risk, high poverty students, not because they have bad teachers.

One more thing. Even in public schools serving more privileged students, with Act 54, a teacher can get a low performance score if his/her students do not "gain value" according to some obscure formula coming out of Baton Rouge. So there are plenty of reasons why "good" teachers and "good" schools will be unfairly hurt by this legislation. Do not buy their bull!

The following vote to refer HB 976 to the Appropriations Committee is seen by some observers as an indication of how legislators are leaning on the bill. That is, if a legislator voted Nay on the move to refer it to the Appropriations committee, he/she may be joining the effort to push the bill through without adequate consideration. The votes were as follows:

2012 Regular Session

Sequence: 7 HBS REPORTED BY COMMITTEE
HB 976 BY CARTER
PASS TO THIRD READING
SUBSTITUTE MOTION
RECOMMIT TO THE COMMITTEE ON APPRO
Date: 3/19/2012
Time: 4:49:43 PM
ROLL CALL
The roll was called with the following result:

YEAS

Armes Barrow Bishop, W. Burrell Chaney Cox Dixon Edwards Franklin Gaines Total -- 34

Gisclair Guinn Honore Hunter Jackson, G. Jackson, K. James Johnson Jones Landry, T.

LeBas Montoucet Norton Ortego Pierre Price Reynolds Richard Ritchie Smith

St. Germain Thierry Williams, A. Williams, P.

NAYS

Mr. Speaker Abramson Adams Anders Arnold Badon Barras Berthelot Billiot Bishop, S. Broadwater Brossett Brown Burford Burns, H. Burns, T. Total -- 64

Carmody Carter Champagne Cromer Danahay Fannin Foil Garofalo Geymann Greene Harris Harrison Havard Hazel Henry Hensgens

Hodges Hoffmann Hollis Howard Huval Jefferson Lambert Landry, N. Leger Leopold Ligi Lorusso Mack Miller Moreno Morris, Jay

Morris, Jim Pearson Ponti Pope Pugh Pylant Richardson Robideaux Schexnayder Schroder Seabaugh Shadoin Talbot Thompson Whitney Willmott

ABSENT

Connick Dove

Guillory Hill

Lopinto Simon

Thibaut Total --

You Can Make a Difference!

Many legislators will probably be in their home districts until Monday afternoon. Both the House and Senate are scheduled to go back into session at 4:00 p. m. Monday.

I am suggesting that you go to the LAE website for critical information on how to contact your legislators. Contact them early and often. Always be courteous. Be bold.  Ask for your legislator's cell number so you can text or call him/her while the Governor's bills are being debated. Take the time to inform yourself. Read the bills because legislators will try to tell you that this is not so bad, and that it will not affect "good" teachers or good schools.

Look, I'm not going to lie to you. The odds are stacked in the Governor's favor. Right now he is the most powerful governor I have seen in my 40 years of observing the legislature! We have all seen him willing to punish any legislator who has the nerve to buck him in any way. But that can change! Those legislators are elected by the people, not the Governor! Teachers work miracles with their students every day because of their creativity and dedication. For once, please use that creativity and dedication to save your profession.

If you click on the bill numbers listed here you can view the bills going to the House and Senate floor this week. The Senate will be debating SB 597 and SB 603. The House will be debating HB 974 and 976.

You need to read this blog at Teacher in A Strange Land,  (this article was recommended by one of my readers) so you can see how easily things can go wrong with value-added evaluation. The more accounts I read about this nutty scheme, the more I realize that it is a travesty that legislators would blindly mandate this as a way of destroying teacher tenure and for firing a certain percentage of teachers each year. What's shocking is that in certain instances it can result in firing some really good teachers! There is a case of a highly acclaimed teacher in Washington DC who was fired because the school administrator had allowed or encouraged cheating on the test the year before, and therefore her students' beginning scores were inflated and her value-added score was unsatisfactory! This was only learned after she was fired and fortunately was able to get a job in another system. By the way, this scenario was set in motion during the administration of Michelle Rhee as Superintendent of Washington DC schools.

For your information: A new group was formed in Louisiana a few weeks ago, for the purpose of trying to get teachers to support and testify in favor Governor Jindal's reform package. Governor Jindal highly recommended Rayne Martin, a non-educator administrator from the LDOE who left her post there to become the director of Stand For Children Louisiana. A principal told me that Rayne Martin had trained a group of principals in using the new COMPASS evaluation system for the Act 54 evaluation. Imagine that! A non-educator with absolutely no education credentials and no teaching experience training highly experienced principals about how to evaluate teachers. That would be like sending in a history teacher to train doctors on how to use a new surgical method! This is who has been developing the new evaluation plan for you this coming year. What an insult to professional educators. Why didn't our local superintendents object to this? Are we so used to being treating like cattle that we have no pride?

The CEO of the national office of Stand For Children is Emma Bloomberg, the daughter of billionaire Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg. I think Bloomberg should give Rayne Martin an "ineffective" evaluation because she was only able to get two Louisiana teachers to testify in favor of the reforms during the debate in both committees last week. (One of the teachers said she was in favor of HB 974 because it did away with seniority in RIF and she was only a second year teacher in danger of being laid off using the present system) Maybe Martin should be placed on an "intensive assistance" program because she did not produce the "value-added goals" in her new job.