Education Legislation

I have asked my readers to consider participating in my Defenders of Public Education email system. This system is designed to provide up to the minute information about important education legislation. The “Defenders” can then contact their legislators and advise them before they vote. The Defenders include a cross section of parents, school board members, and educators whose primary interest is to see our public schools constantly improve and provide a great education to our students. Over 1100 persons have signed up so far. All you have to do if you want to receive emails about important actions on education legislation, is just send me an email at louisianaeducator@gmail.com and include your zip code so I can figure out who your legislators are.  This post will give you a first look at the important education legislation of this upcoming session that starts Monday, March 10^th. But before I go into legislation, I need to tell you about a very important national group.

The Best National Group Supporting Our Public Schools

This blog has often identified the enemies of public education. Now I want to tell you briefly about a great National group that is a true champion of public education. This is the group called the Network for Public Education (NPE). It was formed by a group of public education leaders including Diane Ravitch and Education Week blogger Anthony Cody. Diane writes the Diane Ravitch blog which each day gives us very important information about attacks on public schools. She has written  two books that are very important to our defense of public education: The Life and Death of the Great American Public Education System and more recently, Reign of Error; The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools. Diane Ravitch is the strongest and most respected voice at the national level defending our public schools. Anthony Cody and many other leaders in the Network for Public Education help to blog the truth about what is now referred to as the “corporate takeover” of public education.

The NPE held its first annual conference this last weekend in Austin, Texas. I was privileged to attend this historic and extremely informative and powerful conference. Other participants from Louisiana were Noel Hammatt, former president of the Louisiana School Boards Association, Jason France, writer of the sensational pro education blog the Crazy Crawfish, Mercedes Schnieder, a true rising star of Louisiana education who writes the blog Deutsch29. (Go to the Mercedes blog here for a good recap of the NPE conference) Lee Barios who writes the blog, Geaux Teacher!, and last but not least, Jack Loup, the chairman of the Coalition for Louisiana Public Education. Please consider visiting the NPE website and read the regular posts on this blog. It demonstrates in an alarming way that what is happening in Louisiana is just part of a national plan by some of the richest and most powerful billionaires in this country to totally destroy public education and replace it with a for profit free-for-all system of mostly non-educators who want to use our children and our tax dollars for their personal benefit. Please consider also making a financial contribution to the NPE so that it can continue and expand its important mission of informing the nation about the danger of these attacks on public education.

My First Report on Education Legislation for 2014

This article in The Advocate by Will Sentell gives you an introduction to some of the major pieces of education legislation for this session. In addition, I urge my readers to simply use the bill numbers of the legislation in which you are most interested and use the bill look-up system at Louisiana Legislature web site to read the full text and a summary of each bill. I know my readers are all very busy people so I try with this blog to give you the gist of important legislation and my opinion about how it affects public education and the practitioners of public education. So here are my brief descriptions of some of the most important bills at this point. You can click on the bill number to see the full text of the original bill. More will be discussed in future posts.

SB 365 by Senator Appel who is chairman of the Senate education committee would immediately nullify the tenure of a teacher as soon as she/he gets an ineffective rating on the Act 54 evaluation system. So basically, if administrators want to avoid any due process for a teacher such as a tenure hearing, all they have to do is give the teacher one bad evaluation and the teacher would have no recourse at all if the administrators recommend termination. This is a horrible piece of legislation by one of the leaders of the Jindal “reforms” which produced Act 1 and Act 2 of the 2012 legislative session. Since much of those laws have been declared unconstitutional by the courts, this bill by Appel is continuing the attacks on the teaching profession in Louisiana.

SB 449 by Senator Appel would set up a system to manage and protect the privacy of student information. This is apparently is an attempt by Appel to appease the parents who in recent months have strenuously objected to have their children's private educational information made available to numerous private groups, corporations and even employers. I have not yet had time to analyze this bill but we will visit it again in the near future.

SB 171 by Senator Appel rewords the Louisiana Educational Assessment program to make the statewide testing system comply better with goals of the Common Core State Standards to test the student skills necessary for college and careers. The bill does not mention Common Core standards. It just defines our Louisiana standards in the same way the CCSS are defined. This is an example of rebranding the Common Core.

House education committee member and announced candidate for governor, John Bel Edwards has introduced several bills that are designed to remove some of legislation passed recently that attacks our public schools and the education profession in Louisiana.

HB 101 would restore the requirement that teachers in charter schools meet the same eligibility requirements for their job as teachers in regular public schools . Jindal had removed the need for teachers in charter schools to be certified teachers. They only needed a bachelor's degree, and not necessarily in their teaching assignment. Unfortunately this bill still allows TFA teachers to teach with no more than 5 weeks training for any teaching job.

HB 701 removes voucher eligibility of students attending “C” schools. Jindal's legislation had allowed students attending C, D, and F schools to be eligible to attend voucher schools.

HB 702 removes the loophole that allowed any student starting kindergarten to enroll in a voucher school if their parents met the income guidelines.

HB 703 prevents BESE from approving new charter schools in a school system that is designated as a C, B, or A school system. The local school board would have sole authority to approve such charters. In the recent past, BESE has approved charters over the objection of school systems even if they were rated above a D.

Representative Brett Guymann and Cameron Henry have strongly objected to the Common Core State Standards, particularly since they were adopted without public input and without approval of the legislature. They have introduced several bills dealing with school standards.

HB 376 and 377 by Guymann would first require that BESE adopt standards using the Administrative Procedures Act and then receive legislative approval. This would give the legislature the final say on our state education standards. It would also require that Louisiana continue to use the standards we had prior to the CCSS until the legislature has a chance to review any new standards that are being proposed by the DOE. My readers may remember that the standards we had before this year were referred to as the Grade Level Expectations and had been rated number 2 in the nation by Education Week in 2012. At that time our DOE expressed pride in our standards. Guymann's HB 379 would allow local school boards to adopt their own curriculum standards instead of state standards if they are as rigorous as the state standards.  Other legislators have proposed much more on standards:
HB 556 and 557 by Cameron Henry would prohibit the use of CCSS and revert to old standards until new standards can be developed.
HB 558 by Henry prohibits the use of the PARCC test.
HB 554 by Henry would prohibit the CCSS, and allow the legislature to adopt alternative standards and would allow local school boards to adopt their own standards if they are at least as rigorous as the state standards.
HB 559 by Ivy prohibits the use of CCSS and requires that Louisiana develop its own standards.
HB 163 by Burns would prohibit the use of the PARCC tests.
HB 481 by Shadoin requires a gradual phase in of the Common Core standards with a curriculum guide to be distributed by the DOE before the standards are taught.
HB 845 by Reynolds requires the state to provide curriculum guides.

HB 273 and 274  by Guymann would abolish BESE and make the Superintendent of Education an elected position.

HB 375 by Guymann would change the VAM portion or the SLT portion of a teacher's evaluation to count for 25% of the teacher's overall rating. The bill does not deal with regulations implemented by White that allows the VAM to overrule the principal's evaluation in cases where a teacher got an ineffective VAM. I believe that this rule by White was never legal to begin with. I believe it still needs to be clarified in this bill.

Those are all the bills I have looked at so far. There are many others that are also very important to public education. I intend to summarize more education bills in my next post.

Real Reform That Provides Career Opportunities for Our Students

I hope all my readers will go to the following link to read about The School Standards Rebellion.

According to the article in Politico, this is what is now happening in Texas:

"Parents furious about the state’s heavy focus on standardized testing teamed up with educators irate at the one-size-fits-all curriculum. Then an even more powerful ally stepped aboard: The Jobs for Texas Coalition, representing trade groups and businesses that collectively employ 6 million Texans, a third of the state’s workforce.

The coalition argued that the college prep curriculum eats up so many hours — especially when kids fail a required class and must retake it — that students have no time for vocational courses that introduce them to skilled trades. That’s led to fewer students seeking out jobs in construction and manufacturing. Those who do apply lack the technical training and the soft skills — such as on-the-fly problem solving — such classes nurture.

“For 20 years, we’ve been ratcheting up the rigor required to get out of high school, and we started to see unintended consequences,” said Mike Meroney, a spokesman for the coalition.

"Letting kids opt out of college prep doesn’t mean they’ll spend a lifetime flipping burgers, Meroney said. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics lists two dozen fast-growing occupations that don’t require higher education and pay $35,000 to $55,000 a year, including heavy equipment operator and car mechanic. “What is the real purpose of education if not to prepare your students for jobs?” Meroney said. “Seriously. That’s what we keep asking.”

We tried to do the same thing they are talking about in this story in Louisiana four years ago with the adoption of a law providing for a career diploma. The problem is that the powers that were in charge of Louisiana education at the time, namely State Superintendent Paul Pastorek did not like the career diploma. He wanted instead to push college prep for all and later the move to the Common Core. So Pastorek used the regulations of the DOE and BESE to suppress the career diploma in every way possible. His main weapon was the use of school performance scores and the letter grading system for high schools that rewarded mostly college prep efforts. The result is that only about 2% of our students currently graduate with a career diploma. At the same time, only about 20% of our students are successful in our 4 year colleges.

So now we find that one of the biggest industrial expansions in history in Louisiana is catching us flat footed. I happen to agree with this position paper from the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry. This is a direct quote from the LABI position paper:
"LABI will support efforts to enhance the Career Diploma, increase the use of TOPS Tech, bring more relevant course offerings into middle and high schools, and partner with community colleges and industry to get the credentials and training right."
I think its really ironic that LABI has been supporting the LDOE sabotage of the career diploma for the last 4 years. Now they are shocked that our students are not being prepared to do the skilled jobs coming to Louisiana. Our high school graduates are coming out of school with almost no skills to compete for the thousands of high paying jobs that are being created in everything from construction projects, to plant operations and even to a boom in health care services. This means that if we do not move quickly, our expanding industries will be importing thousands of skilled workers from other states and even other countries. Many of our high school graduates who graduated in the vaunted Core 4 curriculum but who are still not equipped to succeed in 4 year colleges may be relegated to serving fast food to the imported workers.

I am asking my readers and our legislators to please consider supporting the necessary revisions of the career diploma and changes in DOE regulations to reward schools that make these important opportunities available to their students. The job of boosting the career diploma to provide meaningful skills training to thousands of students will be especially difficult because Louisiana's "college prep for all" policies have decimated the ranks of CTE teachers at the high school level.

Watch for more information that will appear on this blog soon about efforts to revive the career diploma. It's time we give our students true career choices for the great jobs coming to Louisiana.

Jindal Loses Again

Please Help Make Sure He Continues to Lose

When Governor Jindal rammed through his brutal attack on teachers and public schools in the 2012 legislative session he was warned that his new laws violated the constitution, violated basic due process rights of teachers, and improperly usurped the authority of our elected school boards. But he decided to use the immense power of the governor's office to bully the legislature into taking away the tenure and seniority rights of teachers and much of the authority of our school boards to oversee the employment and dismissal of teachers.

This recent article  in the Monroe News Star explains how a district judge once again returned a verdict striking down one of Jindal's attacks on teachers. The Louisiana Association of Educators (LAE) initiated this lawsuit challenging the weakening of due process rights of teachers in Act 1 of 2012 for one of its members in Monroe. LAE president Debbie Meaux has pledged to continue the defense of LAE members who are being deprived of their rights by Jindals “deforms”. Judge Jones' ruling now prohibits the use of this method for dismissing teachers in the Monroe City system.  The Louisiana Federation of Teachers also won another lawsuit finding Act 1 unconstitutional because it violated the requirement that legislative bills contain only one basic object. Jindal is using our tax dollars to appeal.

In just two years the Jindal laws have done almost irreparable damage to the teaching profession in Louisiana. The morale of teachers is at an all time low and many excellent teachers have resigned or retired early in protest of Jindal's attacks on teachers and public schools.

One of Jindal's biggest allies in the attacks on teacher due process rights is the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry (LABI). This organization which represents primarily big businesses including those who have participated in the ALEC “deforms” nationwide, has fully supported Jindal in all his attacks on our public schools. LABI continues to support efforts to privatize public education with charters and vouchers even though there is now overwhelming evidence that such programs are mismanaged and allow con artists and “entrepreneurs” to siphon off public tax dollars while providing a substandard education to our children. LABI cheered Jindal on when he passed laws designed to destroy tenure, teacher seniority and the requirements that educators possess real education credentials to teach in and administer schools. LABI has even given support to a fake teacher “professional organization” called A+Pel in an effort to siphon off teacher membership in true advocacy organizations such as LAE and LFT.

As part of its continuing efforts to weaken teacher organizations, LABI announced over a year ago that it will be supporting efforts to ban the use of payroll deduction for teacher union dues. The big business group works hard for any law that will help cut into teacher union membership. This could make it easier to change the teaching profession into an easily manipulated group. To put it simply, LABI basically wants to reduce the status of teachers to that equivalent to teenage grocery store clerks. Teaching would then require minimal professional training and individual teachers could be fired at will for any reason. You see LABI leaders believe that almost anyone can be trained to teach standardized testing skills to our students because they think that's all there is to education.

In addition, LABI thinks that Louisiana could save a lot of education money by doing away with the teacher retirement system, group insurance, and extra pay for experience and added degrees. (Many of the charter and voucher schools do not provide such teacher benefits) They think that merit pay based on student scores (VAM) could be the salvation of K-12 education. If LABI has its way, results of teaching every subject in every classroom will be measured with a standardized test and the teacher will be paid, promoted, or fired based on the results. That's the brave new world of teaching they are promoting by doing everything possible to discourage teachers from banding together within their unions for the good of the profession. That's why they want to do away with payroll deduction for Association or union dues.

Many teachers in Louisiana are not members of a strong union or professional organization. Some have chosen to be members of the fake professional organization I mentioned above. I just have this to say to such educators: You guys are sitting ducks! Be prepared to reap the rewards of your apathy and your faith that our new non-educator bosses will take care of you if you will just work hard and be “professional”. If you just shut up and fall into line, Jindal, LABI, and John White will be sure to complement your professionalism and will remind you once again how much VAM and the new Common Core are designed to “empower” you as teachers as they replace you with TFA and worse.

My advice to teachers is that it is not too late to assert your professionalism and insist on being truly empowered. Please consider joining either the LAE or the LFT and become active in the upcoming lobbying effort at the legislature. In addition, I am encouraging all teachers and administrators to participate in my Defenders of Public Education email system. There are many supportive parents and school board members who also are part of our “defenders” group who are joining us in this effort. If you send me your email address and your zip code (so I can determine what legislative districts to place you in) to louisianaeducator@gmail.com I will keep you informed of the important bills affecting your profession and public schools. You can then in turn email your legislator with your recommendations.

It makes a huge difference when legislators hear from a significant number of educators on a particular issue. I and many other participants in the legislative process have seen a definite change in the attitudes of many of our legislators in the last two years because so many of our teachers have taken the time to contact them and give them the facts about Jindal's so called “education reform”. Let's make sure Jindal continues to lose his war against public education.