How to Participate in Your Representative Democracy

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

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

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.