Jindal Reform Effort Misguided; Destructive

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

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?

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.