Berserk Accountability. That's the only way I can describe what happened in the Senate Education committee on May 11th. The committee meeting began with the defeat of two bills by Senator Morrish (SB 13 and SB 87) that would have removed favored treatment of voucher schools and profit-making non-profit charter schools. I want to thank Senator Morrish for attempting to reduce the abuses of vouchers and charter funding. The big business lobbyists representing LABI and CABL want the favored treatment to continue. But then the committee turned to blaming public schools for students who fail to prepare for college!
New legislation would allow school boards to be
assessed the cost of college level remediation courses. The school accountability movement is being driven to
absurd levels as some senators seek to assess damages to public schools when
some of their students need remedial courses to attend college. Those senators
are apparently forgetting that education requires the cooperation of parents
and students in the education process. They are attempting to hold teachers and
schools totally responsible for preparing students for college, even when
parents and students refuse to do their part. Society does not hold doctors
responsible if patients refuse to take their prescribed medicine or if diabetes
and cardiac patients refuse to correct unhealthy lifestyles, but some policy
makers want the public school systems to be responsible for forcing knowledge upon uncooperative
students or pay for remediation at the college level.
Most Louisiana colleges have abandoned funding remediation courses because they don't work for most students. Students who failed to be responsible in high school usually fail to be responsible in college. But that's not stopping some legislators finding an innovative way of funding these remedial courses.
SB 82 by Appel: Senate Bill 82 began as a seemingly routine bill to specify testing requirements, but then amendments were made by the author to do something totally different. As amended in the Senate Education committee,
this bill would require public school boards to pay some college remediation
costs for certain students who scored below college readiness levels on the ACT
for English and mathematics. LAE representatives and school board representatives testified in committee that
such a requirement sets up an unbalanced application of accountability to hold
the schools totally responsible for the negligence of some parents who don’t
send their children regularly to school and some students who don’t apply
themselves to their studies.
Important Update: SB 82 was killed in the Senate Finance Committee! This time reason has prevailed.
Important Update: SB 82 was killed in the Senate Finance Committee! This time reason has prevailed.
The bill ignores the fact that any student
regardless of ability can enroll in college prep programs and then fail to
study, or find that he/she is not able to master the material. The school should not be held responsible for students' lack of ability or motivation. I will be asking my readers to help in defeating this bill when it comes to a
vote on the Senate floor. We cannot allow fanatic and unfair application of
skewed accountability to be put into Louisiana law.
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