Providing School Choice

Allowing parents to choose the school to be attended for their child's education is gaining popularity among parents and voters. Each year we see efforts to allow vouchers aimed at providing public funding for children who attend private schools. The biggest push today is for establishing privately run Charter schools that receive per pupil allotments from the state MFP and local school system funds.

An important question is: Does the current movement for “Choice” in Louisiana really provide students and their parents with appropriate choices for the education of all students?

An analysis of recent trends in education policy decisions in Louisiana reveals that instead of allowing parents more choice, the State Government is increasingly mandating what all children should learn in minute detail. Parents can expect less choice and fewer varied opportunities for their child’s education in the foreseeable future. The fact is that the school curriculum and even specific teaching approaches are becoming more standardized whether the student attends a traditional public school or a public Charter school. The Louisiana Comprehensive Curriculum now mandates almost every single concept (GLE) to be taught at each grade. But if that’s not enough Government control, Louisiana is set to participate in a Common Core Standards effort led by the National Governor’s Association to implement a standard curriculum in all public schools in participating states within the next few years. The stated goal is to insure that all students completing an elementary/secondary education graduate “College and Career” ready. As we have seen from the January 29 posting on this blog, this amounts to an attempt to provide College prep training for all.

The assumption has been made, even though contradicted by many years of education experience, that every student can and should master all the same concepts of language arts, math and science at the same rate and with the same proficiency. Basically the State and National Governments are in the business of deciding exactly what each child needs to know. And it’s the same for every child at every step of the education ladder. Also, in Louisiana every public school is mandated by the state to produce its quota of “proficient” students as measured by the School Performance Scores (SPS). Every public school in Louisiana was mandated by BESE to reach an SPS of 100 by the end of the 2009 school year (it didn’t happen) and all schools are expected to reach an SPS of 120 by the end of the 2014 school year (it won’t happen).

Government mandates and quotas are not new. When Communism in the Soviet Union was in its heyday, every factory had quotas of standardized products to produce. The Government set all the rules and quotas for industrial production and for education. It turned out that Government was not successful in dictating a productive economy, and the poorly organized Russian economy helped bring down the Communist system along with the breakup of the Soviet Union. Socialism could not match the free markets in industrial production or in education.

Yet today Louisiana and many other states seem intent on applying the concepts of Socialism to our public education system. Louisiana’s state-set goals and quotas are producing the same disappointing results as did the Socialist quotas. As we discussed in last week’s blog, Louisiana is trying to churn out more 4 year college grads at a time when we should be concentrating on skilled trades, technical and service careers. Instead of letting market forces and individual students and parents decide what careers are appropriate, Louisiana has instituted a quota system for public education. 72% of our students are expected to master the Core IV curriculum. Every student is expected to master Algebra even if he/she will never again work an Algebra problem after leaving High School. (If he can’t do Algebra, he can’t get a high school diploma even if he has marketable talents in other areas). Even after the overwhelming “yes” vote in the legislature for the Career Diploma law, our state Dept. of Education refuses to allow students a real opportunity to begin learning a skill or trade before leaving high school. As a result, over 20,000 students each year leave our public education system with no high school diploma and with no useful job training. Yet our education bureaucracy seems to never tire of setting new quotas (72% Core 4, 120 SPS for all schools) even while rolling back some of the biggest failures such as the mandate requiring retention of 4th graders who did not measure up on LEAP.

By contrast, the nation of Finland is recognized as a world leader in the education of all its students.. (Click on the highlighted link to see a description of the Finland education system in Wikipedia). Finland has close to the top world ranking in math, language and science, yet a large proportion of students are allowed to begin vocational training at age 15. Most Finnish students who enter vocational education in high school are career ready within 3 or 4 years. Louisiana students by contrast, if they are not academically inclined, are required to continue struggling with the state mandated college prep curriculum until they flunk out or drop out of high school. (click on the link for a more detailed critique of Louisiana’s Accountability System) As a result Louisiana consistently has 42% of its students getting almost no marketable skills. I’ve come to the conclusion that Louisiana does have a two track system. I call it College Prep and Jail Prep! Unfortunately, we’re doing too good job with the Jail Prep. Just look at the educational attainment of young offenders in our correctional institutions. By contrast almost all students in Finland are either fully prepared for a career or college upon leaving high school.

I believe the proper role of state government in education should be to facilitate (not mandate) a system where all local schools provide a solid college prep program and an equally effective vocational or career program starting at the 9th grade level. That’s because once students pass the age of 14 or 15 without a career or college goal in mind, they lose interest in school. Different students should be allowed to meet standards and goals appropriate to their aptitudes and interests. School systems should seek to identify each student’s strengths and develop these rather than insist on a single government mandated curriculum. After many years of struggle with false standards and quotas Louisiana has proven that one size does not fit all!

The Wrong Future

Are Louisiana Schools Training Students for the Wrong Future?

We hear much today from the State Superintendent and particularly the High School Redesign Commission about making certain that our Louisiana graduates are “college and career ready”. The state plan for College and Career Readiness adopted by BESE in January, sets a goal of an 80% graduation rate by the end of the 2013-2014 school year. At the same time the plan also aims to increase the percent of students graduating by completing the LA Core 4 curriculum in high school from 58% to 72.5%. The Core 4 curriculum is aligned with entrance requirements for most 4 year colleges. So when the State Department says they want students to be college and career ready upon graduation they mean mostly ready for 4 year colleges. (See the paper on “Restoring Value to the High school Diploma by Dr’s Grubb and Oakes that points out that the phrase “College and Career Ready” really means primarily College prep). In Louisiana, we have seen the gradual erosion of technical and skills courses from the high school curriculum as graduation requirements have increased in the academic area. College prep courses in Math, English and foreign languages have pushed out courses in business skills, auto mechanics, electronics, healthcare professions, welding and construction skills.

Is this the curriculum most Louisiana students need? Is it practical and feasible for 72% of our public school students to graduate with a Core 4 curriculum? Does this new push really prepare more students for college? If they do graduate from college, will Louisiana have appropriate jobs available?

What are the job prospects for grads? The Louisiana Workforce Commission recently pointed out that more than half of Louisiana’s recent college graduates are forced to leave the state to find jobs appropriate to their education. At the same time it was found that Louisiana has a serious shortage of skilled labor. Dan Juneau of the La Assoc. of Business and Industry (LABI) announced recently that Louisiana must shift emphasis in education toward the two year Associate degrees and Industry Based Certification in order to supply the labor needs of La Industry. Nationally, approximately 27% of students attain a 4 year degree, yet since the recession, many 4 year graduates have been enrolling in Community Colleges for reeducation in skills oriented training.

The effect of La’s Education system on dropouts: Governor Jindal pointed out recently that instead of directing high school graduates to 4 year colleges where the majority of such students never complete a 4 year degree, most students should attend Community and Technical Colleges. When school guidance counselors were asked about the result of requiring all high school students to remain for two years in the Core 4 curriculum, they overwhelmingly believed that this requirement would increase dropouts. The adopted goal of graduating 72% of public education students in the Core 4 curriculum may have two unintended consequences; (1) The dropout problem will continue or worsen (2) The true college prep students will find their prep courses are somewhat watered down to accommodate the majority of students who are not academically inclined.

The Study the Dept. of Education hopes no one will see: During the legislative battle over the Career Diploma, legislators asked the State Dept. of Education to produce a study on LA’s graduation rate, by following a cohort of students starting with the 7th grade. The results were shocking to say the least. (Click on The LA 7th grade Cohort Rate to see the full study). You won’t find this study anywhere on the Dept. web site, but it is available here! It showed that even if given 2 extra years to graduate, approximately 42% of Louisiana students fail to receive any type of diploma. Not even a GED! In addition, there has been no improvement in the true graduation rate in the past few years. Take a look at what is happening to African American males in our education system.

Is the LA education system selling a product 42% of students refuse to buy? Much of the success of America’s free enterprise system is built on the idea of offering customers a wide variety of choices of products. The people in Russia used to hate their system that churned out dull standardized products. The attraction of the great variety of products from America did as much as anything else to destroy socialism. Yet what we offer our customers in LA schools today is much like the standard dull products of socialism. Our student dropouts today complain that school is boring and irrelevant to their interests and ambitions. Is Core 4 really what 72% of our students want and need?

The Career Diploma may not realize its full potential. The authors of the Career Diploma law (Senator Kostelka and Representative Fannin) envisioned that this legislation would encourage public schools to offer alternative career pathways for the majority of Louisiana students who will not attend 4 year colleges. The idea was to entice more students to stay and complete high school with courses that prepared students for a rewarding career soon after high school. Unfortunately the course requirements and graduation testing adopted by BESE at the urging of the State Dept. and the HS Redesign Commission, may not be different enough and practical enough to convince the thousands of at risk students to complete high school. A student today without a high school degree is hardly eligible for any real future.

What’s your opinion on this critical issue? Would you please complete the poll at the bottom of the page and let me know if you think LA is on the right track? As an educator in the trenches your advice to the decision makers is vital. Thanks in advance for your participation.

Teacher Evaluation Models

Louisiana's Race to the Top proposal includes as its core, a new teacher evalution system (See theadvocate article Race bid brings big changes). This system will be based 50% on student progress as measured by objective testing. The school principal evaluation will be based primarily on student progress. Superintendent Pastorek explained recently that Louisiana teacher and principal evaluation systems will be modeled after projects now being implemented in Hillsborro County Schools, Florida, (see their website titled Empowering Effective Teachers ) in the Memphis, Tennessee City school system, (see their website titled Memphis Teacher Effectiveness Initiative ) and in the Pittsburgh Pennsylvania school system; (see thier website titled Pittsburgh Empowering Effective Teachers ).  If your school system has signed on as a partner in Louisiana's Race to the Top proposal, you may want to review the project descriptions by simply clicking on the highlighted links. A quick review of the project descriptions reveals that all three of the performance evalution systems are still not at the full implementation stage.
Comments and Opinion: Louisiana is poised to launch yet another experiment in education reform. Unlike most experiments that are first piloted, we intend to apply it to approximately half the state's teachers even before it is tested. The models for this performance based evaluation and performance pay have not yet been shown to be effective, yet Louisiana is ready to start a major implemention effort. Just a few years ago, National Board certification of teachers was seen as the answer. Proper funding of that program has never been adequately worked out. Now we are moving on to another experiment, with no plans for how to keep funding it after the 4 years of R2T have ended. Merit pay just like any other pay increase has to be continued. If the majority of our teachers are able to meet the criteria (and they will, because our teachers are smarter than the State Dept. believes) how will the local school systems maintain funding of the program?

The problem is, the "reformers" who are pushing this latest effort have once again focused on an over-simplified approach to the problem of low student achievement. It's more politically correct to blame the teachers and school administrators than to admit that we have a community problem. Accountability has not been implemented in a manner that includes the entire community. Until we change parent and community attitudes toward education, we will continue trying to reform educators.