The Louisiana Common Core Standards Compromise

Both houses of the Legislature have now approved a combination of three bills that require BESE to review and revise the Louisiana state standards for English Language Arts and mathematics and submit them to the legislature for its review by March 4th 2016. Governor Jindal has indicated that he will sign the compromise bills into law.  If you click on each bill number, you may view the full text of each bill along with a summary interpretation of the changes to the law produced by each. The bills are: HB 373, HB 542 and SB 43.

The three bills taken together require BESE to hold open public meetings in each congressional district starting after July 1, 2015 that would theoretically allow public input into the revision of the ELA and math standards. During approximately the same time period, BESE and the LDOE must approve new contracts for the development and implementation of new state tests in ELA and math for the Spring of 2016. One of the new laws prohibits LDOE and BESE from contracting with the PARCC consortium for the development of the Spring 2016 tests. Also, these tests for grades 3 through 10 cannot include more than 49.9% of the PARCC consortium questions. There is no stipulation in the new law about where or how the rest of the questions on state tests for ELA and Math will be derived or formulated.

The revised standards for ELA and math must be submitted to the House and Senate Education Committees by March 4th 2016 and may be adopted or rejected in globo by the legislature. Also, the new governor may veto or approve the new standards but cannot make changes to them.

There is no mention in the legislation about how BESE will actually write the new standards or how members of the teaching profession or members of the public may participate in this writing process except by providing input into the public meetings that must be conducted in accordance with the open meetings law and the administrative procedures act.

It should be noted however, that BESE and the LDOE have already set into motion a process for the review and revision of state standards and testing to be completed during the 2015-16 school year. In that process there will be several committees involved in the review and writing process that include both professional educators and members of the public. It is my understanding that this process will continue even though the timelines may be shortened because of the deadlines in the new laws above. The June meeting of BESE will probably make adjustments in the revision procedure to comply with the new laws.

Now I will attempt to describe how this will all work out in practice. I believe that BESE and the LDOE will continue with their process of allowing input into the standards revisions by the committees that are scheduled to be approved by BESE at its June meeting. Certain subcommittees will probably be assigned the job of actually writing the proposed standards.  Even though the new legislation specifies that BESE, not the Department of Ed, will write the standards, based on my observations of past BESE committees, chances are these committees will be tightly controlled and guided by LDOE staff. Since there is so much work to do in such a short time, chances are the actual work will be done by just a few professionals with much guidance from the LDOE staff and then the full committees will be asked to approve or modify the result. The writing committees will probably look to some combination of the old Louisiana Grade Level Expectations (GLEs) and the new CCSS standards for actual wording of the new standards. BESE will probably end up with some hybrid comprised of those two systems.

One of the most significant complaints about the CCSS, is that much of the material is not age appropriate for our younger students. I hope the writing committees will tackle this issue and make the adjustments that our early childhood practitioners recommend. There are some serious objections by parents and educators about some of the unorthodox and confusing methods of working math problems and similar objections about the close reading methods and materials that were used in Common Core ELA standards. It remains to be seen if these problems will be corrected.

But unfortunately the elephant in the room for these education decision makers that has been ignored is the extreme over-emphasis on annual standardized testing and test prepping of our students. This test mania mandated by our legislature and BESE and the grading of schools based on test results is forcing our teachers to spend an inordinate amount of time and effort just preparing kids for tests. It is killing the joy of teaching and learning for teachers and students; it is pedagogically unsound; it violates many of the more natural and effective methods of passing on culture and knowledge to our young; and it does not prepare young people for the real world! The most educationally advanced countries in the world are not using this insane approach to education.  Not only is this test mania bad for children, but how can we attract the best and brightest young people to the teaching profession if most of their working day will be relegated to test teaching? How can we justify sacrificing the arts, social studies, geography, foreign languages, inquiry learning in science, technical education and even physical education (when we have the most obese and nutrition deprived student population in history)? What kind of a job market is there for a morbidly obese young adult whose only skill is taking standardized tests?

As an educator, I appreciate greatly the effort of the legislature to totally revise or even dispose of the Common Core Standards. These standards were poorly designed and are creating chaos all over the country.  But I am also very concerned about the lack of deliberative planning in this process and the continued mandate of standardized testing for next Spring when teachers have no idea what will be on the test! 

Senate Education Committee: "No" to New MFP!

The Senate Education Committee deferred action on approving the new Minimum Foundation Program, (MFP, House Concurrent Resolution 18)  at its meeting on Thursday, June 4. This could be a serious problem for all public schools this fall because mandated cost increases may cause many school systems serious budget shortfalls.

This blog has repeatedly pointed out that local school systems have been required to take on most of the burden of the Unfunded Accrued Liability (UAL) of the teacher and school employees retirement systems in recent years. This is a problem that has been caused by the legislature, not by school boards. The legislature in past years has often approved benefits to groups and individuals that were not properly funded by the legislature. This practice has caused the growth of the unfunded accrued liability. That is the future cost that must be paid out to retirees that was not fully funded by the contributions that have been made to the retirement systems. To resolve the problem, the legislature has mandated that local school boards must each year pay a portion of the cost to erase this unfunded liability by the year 2029. To make matters worse, the legislature has exempted charter schools (which are also supposed to be public schools) from participating in the retirement systems and making their share of the payments to retire the UAL. This puts a greater and greater burden on our elected school boards, but gives the charters a free ride. Last year, the payments to the unfunded accrued liability amounted to more than 25% of payroll. Since payroll is more than 80% of each school board budget, you can see what a big chunk is being taken out the real public school budgets.

In addition to the UAL, school boards have been hit with increased costs of group insurance, and more mandated costs in special education services. As part of preparation for the PARCC testing school boards have been forced to add computers and upgraded internet access. The new tests were supposed to eventually be administered totally online. Special education is another service often not fully provided by charter schools. Often parents of students with disabilities have been counseled by charter school administrators to send their children to the real public schools that cannot refuse to serve such students. This again has placed a bigger burden on the real public schools. A lawsuit was recently decided in favor of parents in the 100% charter operated RSD that claimed that the children of that system were not being provided adequate special education services.

The new MFP approved by BESE would have added 36 million dollars to help pay the extra costs that have been mandated to local school boards over recent years. Another portion of the growth of the MFP was dedicated to projected increases in student enrollments.

At some point, within the next week, the entire Senate will be voting on the state budget which should include the MFP. If the new MFP is not approved, the funding will remain the same as last year. This will unfairly place all these increases in mandated costs on our local school boards.

PLEASE SEND EMAILS OR MAKE PHONE CALLS TO YOUR SENATOR AND URGE HIM/HER TO VOTE FOR FULL FUNDING OF THE NEW MFP. THIS IS VITAL TO THE PROPER FUNDING OF OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS. THERE IS NO BETTER INVESTMENT WE CAN MAKE FOR THE FUTURE OF LOUISIANA THAN TO PROPERLY FUND OUR SCHOOLS.

Great Facebook Page on how to "flip BESE"

OK readers, it's time to stop complaining about the harmful actions of BESE and start doing something about it!

I am asking all my readers who live in Louisiana to please go to the Flip BESE Facebook page and "like" this page so that you can be kept informed about important challenges to the present majority on BESE as we get closer to the BESE elections. The BESE elections of all 8 elected members occur on the same date as the elections for governor and members of the legislature. This effort is absolutely critical to the future of our public education system, to democratic control of our public education dollars, and to the future of a strong and productive teaching profession in Louisiana!

A terrific graphic for the Flip BESE site was developed by highly talented Amy Lemoine, a public school parent in the Lafayette area. Here is what motivated Amy to launch the web site:

"After watching the behavior of the current BESE members over the last few years, it became apparent that BESE would have to be turned upside down (flipped) in order to shake free from the current voting trends that have been very negative to our public education system. Louisiana needs BESE members who represent all parents, teachers, and students. We feel that the majority represent special interests and the reform movement, rather than the majority of their constituents."

Ms Lemoine envisions the following efforts: "Come October, the members who occupy the eight elected BESE seats will be decided on in voting booths across the state. The candidates that we should avoid like the plague will likely have the high dollar supporters who will see to it that an abundance of commercials and signs are bought. The good guys need any help they can get to help get their name out there. My hope is that Flip BESE can be some of that needed help. We will share facts about current BESE members and the candidates that will be, in our opinion, the best hope to turn things around."

There are now three new announced candidates for BESE that would help to "Flip BESE" to give the parents, voters and educators excellent representation in making decisions that strengthen our public schools and support teaching as a profession. They are Lee Barrios for District 1, Jason France for District 6, and Michael Kreamer for District 7. If you are not sure about your voting BESE district, the Flip BESE web site gives you a map that would allow you to find your district. As a very accurate alternative just go to the legilative web site here and fill in your address to get a precise ID of your BESE district as well as your Representative and Senatorial districts.

The candidates that have announced so far in the effort to flip BESE are:

Jason France, of Baton Rouge was the first to announce that he is running in District 6 against Chas Roemer. Jason is a former Department of Education employee who is extremely well informed about the management of education in Louisiana. Jason launched the Crazy Crawfish blog a couple of years ago which he has used effectively to expose some of the unethical actions of Superintendent John White in dealing with the often corrupt voucher schools and in showing favoritism in enforcing the VAM teacher evaluation system. Jason has also blogged in his role as a parent, demonstrating the serious flaws in the new Common Core standards. Jason was the first to announce his candidacy in an effort to change the emphasis of BESE from representing only the rich and powerful who want to privatize our education system for the benefit of corrupt "entrepreneurs" to representing the real stakeholders in public education: students, parents and taxpayers.

Lee Barrios, of St. Tammany Parish is a retired board certified teacher with experience in teaching gifted and talented is running in BESE District 1 against incumbent James Garvey . Ms Barrios is an activist who regularly attends BESE meeting and speaks in opposition to predatory charters and against the serious flaws in the Common Core standards. Lee is extremely well informed about the major issues facing BESE.

Michael Kreamer, of Lafayette is the principal at St. Martinville High School. He is challenging Holly Boffy who has been a complete disappointment to the educators and parents of the 7th BESE district. Kreamer who is a top notch professional educator submitted this excellent guest post on predatory charters for this blog a few months ago. Michael would also be great addition to BESE.
(Note: I originally incorrectely stated that Mr. Kreamer had recently retired. I am happy to report that he plans to remain an active educator even if he is elected to BESE)

There are three currently elected members of BESE that have an excellent record of supporting public education and our professional educators. They are Mary Harris of District 1, Lottie Beebe of District 3, and Carolyn Hill of District 8.  I am asking our readers to consider supporting these highly dedicated members of BESE who have remained steadfast in their support of public schools and professional educators. 

There are three other members of BESE that will be appointed by the new governor. You can only influence the selection of those members by choosing wisely in the election of Governor. (Note: I do want to make special mention of Jane Smith of Bossier, an appointee of Governor Jindal, who has been a refreshing voice of reason on BESE. Ms Smith has worked effectively with all factions for the good of public education) 

Please visit the Flip BESE website often to keep yourself and other voters informed about the efforts to restore BESE to the citizens and students of Louisiana!