Great News From the Legislature & the Supreme Court

Supreme Court Strikes Down Use of MFP for Vouchers & Course Choice

This is great news, but look down to my post from yesterday about the efforts by White and his Course Choice providers to rapidly sign up participants for this giveaway program which is scheduled to start this coming school year "Come hell or high water" as far as Jindal and White are concerned. White will have to convince both BESE and the legislature to find another source of funding if he wants to use this scam on parents and students. Please start talking to your legislators now. Louisiana cannot afford this giveaway program that benefits no one but the greedy privatizers. Course choice and vouchers are destructive cancers, and now is the time to cut them out! 

A couple of weeks ago I got a comment to my blog from a teacher who in effect said that she appreciated the support the education profession was getting from this blog, but she said it was a bit depressing to always see so much bad news about education in Louisiana. I responded that when there was good news I would be happy to report it. Well here it is. Good news for a change!

Yesterday afternoon, the House of Representatives voted 102 to 0 to approve HB 160 by Rep. Reynolds.  (See the Advocate story here) This bill will put off the punitive measures required in the Act 54 evaluation system for at least a year. The vote on this bill demonstrates a major turnaround in attitude of the legislature from last year when it seemed that teachers were just not being heard even when they showed up by the thousands at the capitol. I believe that teachers have finally done a good job of "educating" their legislators that evaluation reform must be based on solid and tested programs before it is allowed to affect the lives of dedicated professionals. There is so much wrong with the new evaluation system which I have discussed extensively in this blog! But for now, I hope that teachers and administrators will be able to breathe a sigh of relief that even this stop gap measure is a sign that we can work with our legislature. I am not so sure about John White and Governor Jindal! Remember the bill must still pass a previously Jindal controlled Senate Education Committee and the full Senate.

In addition to HB 160 the House of Representatives approved HB 466 by Representative Havard (I like to brag that he is my Representative) that will stop the change proposed by Superintendent White to a new school grading system that includes the ACT and other unwise measurements. As I have said before, the present school grading system is not much more than a measure of student poverty in our various schools and tells us very little about the quality of teaching in those schools, but this new system would have been much worse and would have resulted in many excellent schools having their school grades lowered for no good reason. As soon as I can get it together, I will include the actual vote tally on this bill so you can thank your legislators who voted for it. Did I ever mention that an important part of the legislative process is to thank the legislators when they do something right, just as you do when you complement your students for good work? Legislators love to be thanked, and sometimes such praise goes a long way toward improving performance. (Just like it does with your students)

Finally, HB 115, The Reverse Parent Trigger also passed the House overwhelmingly. This bill demonstrates that the legislature is not willing to let the RSD keep a school forever if their big claims of improvement don't pan out. It gives the parents the option, by signing a petition to return a school to the local school board in the event it is not improved sufficiently by the RSD. What a great idea!

Potential Problem With School Discipline Law

In the last several months I have been getting numerous emails from teachers and even parents about deteriorating student discipline in some of our public schools. I think it has many causes, but it certainly does not help that our schools are now getting tremendous pressure from the DOE to keep all students in the classroom no matter how disruptive. This is wrong, if it is preventing the students who want to learn from getting the best instruction possible from their teachers.

Now there is a bill awaiting a House floor vote that could potentially make the discipline situation in many classrooms much worse (If you can imagine that). HB 646 is by a good friend of public education, Rep. Pat Smith of Baton Rouge. The Smith bill began I believe as a good, positive attempt to improve the anti-bullying law, but it has unintentionally picked up language that could have a disastrous effect on school discipline law.

I am meeting today along with representatives of the LAE and LFT with Representative Smith and a small coalition of individuals that drafted this legislation in an effort to suggest amendments that would restore the important safeguards for the classroom in the discipline law. Please stay tuned for a report on the outcome of these negotiations. In the meantime I am encouraging teachers and school principals to read the engrossed version of the bill, HB 646, which you can read by just clicking on the bill number. I want you to judge for yourself what it does to the authority of the principal and the teacher in maintaining discipline in our classrooms. I just do not believe in substituting minimal behavior training in the place of real disciplinary measures when students are preventing others from getting an education. And I certainly do not believe that students should be allowed to be extremely disrespectful to their teacher without suffering major consequences!

 

 

The Course Choice Cancer

The campaign is already starting up. There will be millions devoted to marketing alone. Despite the court decision finding Course Choice unconstitutional, Jindal and White have given the green light to for-profit companies to go right ahead with marketing.

These are millions that will be taken from Louisiana taxpayers and possibly from the scarce MFP dollars that were once dedicated by the voters and going to our legitimate public schools systems. Jindal and White's strategy is obviously to sign up as many students as possible, so that they will have a pressure group built up when it comes time to get legislative approval for continuing the program no matter what the Supreme Court decides. One of my readers found some ads that are now being run all over Lousiana to hire salesmen to hawk these courses to parents in high poverty neighborhoods:

Free ipad; cost to parents zero; costs to Louisiana, only $1,200 per course..

Here are some of the ads being run accross the state on Craigs list for a program that as of today has no funding:

http://lafayette.craigslist.org/edu/3660951526.html - - central Louisiana

http://batonrouge.craigslist.org/mar/3725383369.html – Lafayette Louisiana

http://cenla.craigslist.org/edu/3660890521.html - Baton Rouge, Houma, New Orleans

Dr Frankenstein created a grotesque monster, Bobby Jindal and John White created Course Choice. Here's the gist of one of the Craigs list ads:

"Help change the landscape of public education in Louisiana!
On your own time!
With the potential to make $75k+ in 6 months or less!
Company Description: SmartStart Virtual Academy ("SVA") (a division of SmartStart Education) is a state-approved Course Choice provider. This means that SVA has been authorized to offer FREE courses to high-school students in the state of Louisiana for graduation credit. SVA is offering 22 approved courses -- both core-classes (such as reading, math and science) and career-ready courses (such as web-design and publishing)."

Another ad states:
"Pay rate: $16/hour
Position Responsibilities:
Conduct door-to-door marketing of program."

There are over 50 Course Choice Providers approved by our State DOE though the office of "Lefty" Lefkowith, one of the non-educator privatizers hired recently by Superintendent John White at a handsome salary. (See The Louisiana Voice story.) Many of these are out-of-state outfits with minimal resources. (Remember the religious voucher schools with no teachers or classrooms)

I met personally with Superintendent White in his office months ago and warned him that the Course Choice guidelines approved by his DOE are an open invitation for fraud and abuse. There are no attendance requirements for these Choice Courses often offered by out-of-state, fly-by-night outfits. In most cases the Provider is allowed to make the sole judgment about whether or not a student has completed a course. The provider gets half the tuition when the student registers for the course and the other half when the provider states the student has completed the course.

In an email to BESE last September, I asked:
Question: Suppose a student takes and passes a credit recovery course from a choice provider, and the student is tested on the course by his home school following the completion of the course and fails to make a score that is acceptable to his local school system for receiving credit for this course. Is the student's local school system still required to give the student credit for such a course? Will the choice course provider be allowed to keep the tuition?
Answer: Under state law, school districts must award credit for courses completed by students through Course Choice and those credits must count toward the requirements of a diploma.
(Later White told BESE that course choice students must pass courses that have end of course tests for the provider to get full pay, but that's only a fraction of the courses being offered by the providers)

So this is how taxpayers, school systems and students are sure get ripped off by some of these Course Choice Providers:

The provider hires a salesman to go door-to-door in a mostly high poverty neighborhood to sell parents on a huge basket of Course Choice courses. The sales pitch is "Your child gets a free Ipad, free Internet service, and if he is behind in his credits toward graduation, this is a great way for him to catch up. Our company offers all the courses he needs, and he can take them in half the normal time using our accelerated course for each Carnegie unit, and every course is free." (as long as his home school is rated C or less by the state)

The way it really works out, is that out of a hundred students, maybe 50 drop out after the first 3 or 4 weeks. That's no problem because the Provider gets paid half the tuition for kids who just sign up and go through the motions for a short time. Virtual course providers nationwide have huge attrition rates. Some kids get lost in the shuffle and some find their way back to their real public school where real teachers have to try to educate them. Since the provider does not have to take roll, students can just sign in occasionally to mostly complete automated worksheets that are machine graded. So it takes very little staff time spent on each student. The Course Provider has a zero cost for classrooms, janitorial, busing, meals, counseling services, utilities etc. It is completely up to the provider to confirm that a student has completed a course, so there is every incentive to allow students to successfully complete a course with very little actual work or accomplishment. According to the answer given above, the local school system is required to give the student credit, even if there no real evidence of true learning. One could point out that public school systems get paid even if students fail courses. The difference is, our public schools are expected to give instruction to students every day of the school year even if we have to track them down at home or at the hospital to do it. Students who miss more than 10 days without a valid excuse get no credit. For now, there is no such requirement for Course Choice Providers.

The so called teachers working for the Choice Course provider are never evaluated by COMPASS or VAM. They have great job security as long as they saythe students have completed the course in the required time.

But to add insult to injury, all the state test scores will be assigned to the student's home public school no matter how many courses he/she takes from the course choice providers. If the course choice students do poorly, it just results in a lower letter grade for the home school and a greater possibility that it will be taken over by the RSD (another cancer).

Jindal, ALEC, and LABI ought to be happy because as the cancer that is Course Choice grows, more public schools will have to shut down or be taken over by the RSD. And LABI can continue to criticize public schools for sending the work force graduates that have little knowledge and no skills.

If all this just makes your blood boil, whether you are a parent or an educator, please take the time to send me a short email at louisianaeducator@gmail.com and tell me you want to sign up for my Defenders of Public Education data base. (If you have not already done so) Tell me your preferred email and your zip code so I can assign you to your correct legislators. Then when an opportunity comes up, I will send you an email about a critical legislative vote so you can email your legislators on how you want them to vote. Believe me this works. Just see the post just below this one. I know you are tired of me begging you to sign up, so just do it now! You won't be sorry. Public education is worth it!

Democracy Works!

We live in a representative democracy. This means that while we do not get to vote on each individual law or regulation, we elect persons to represent us in making important laws and policies. Part of the process is the need for citizens to communicate with those elected representatives and tell them how we want them to vote. Finally this communication part of the system seems to be working much better this year than it did last year for educators.

HB 57 would have forced current educators to pay an additional 2% of their salary to help reduce the unfunded liability of the retirement system that was caused by underfunding by the legislature. It would have been an unfair tax on only some citizens (school employees) but not all others. That bill was voluntarily deferred by the author of the bill after he and the retirement committee members received hundreds upon hundreds of emails from school employees asking them to vote no on the bill. You did it! Once again you stopped a bad piece of legislation because you were willing to express your concerns to your representatives.
Congratulations! Keep it up.

Your next major democratic task, should you choose to continue to do your part in our democracy is to send more emails encouraging passage of several very important bills that will be voted on by your members of the House of Representatives as early as Monday next week. These are the good education bills approved by the House Education committee last week. They are:

HB 115 by Ted James: (Reverse Trigger) Allows parents to petition to require that under performing schools in the RSD go back to management by local school boards.

HB 466 by Havard: Stops the implementation of the new school grading system devised by Supt. White and stays with the present system.

HB 160 by Reynolds: Delays the punitive effects of the new COMPASS evaluation system for at least one year.

Please send an email to your State Representative (Not your Senator yet) and ask that he/she votes "yes" on each of these bills. The more emails they get the better. If you are not sure who your State Representative is, just click here and you will be taken to the legislative web site where you can enter your address to pull up the names and info. on your Representative. Click on the name to get his/her email address and then send an email with your recommendation. Be sure you point out that you live in her/his district. That's all there is to it. And you will feel good that you did your part for your profession. Send the emails now!
You may click on each bill number above to read the latest version of the bill or you can look at my blog post of April 19 to get additional clarification.

Keep it up. You are doing great!