Potential Abuse of Choice Course Program

My readers are certainly aware by now that I believe there is much potential for abuse of taxpayer funding of the Choice Course Program included in ACT 2 of the 2012 legislative session. I am so concerned about this that on September 4, I sent the email below to all BESE members. I have received a response from BESE president Penny Dastuge promising that answers to my questions will be forthcoming. I am encouraging all my readers to study these issues carefully and share your concerns not only with BESE but with your legislators.

Questions about new choice courses:
Dear BESE member:
The State Department of Education is now receiving proposals for quality choice courses for the 2013-14 school year as stipulated in Act 2 of 2012. It is my understanding that BESE must approve all ChoiceCourse Providers by January 1, 2013. I have reviewed the information on the LDOE web site for Choice Courses
and Choice Course Providers and I have several questions and concerns about the implementation of this program. I would suggest that BESE adopt proper guidelines for this program to insure that our students get good solid instruction and that tax money is used wisely. My questions are as follows:

1. Will choice course providers be required to deliver a certain number of clock hours of instruction in order for a student to receive one Carnegie unit of credit and for the provider to receive the agreed upon tuition for one Carnegie unit? Could choice course providers offer courses that require different amounts of instruction time for different courses that earn one Carnegie unit of credit?
2. Could a choice course provider be approved for accelerated choice courses where students who can demonstrate mastery of a course by taking a test would be allowed to complete the course in a shorter period of time than what is normally required for a Carnegie unit of instruction? If the answer to this question is “yes”, would the Choice course provider still receive the same tuition as if the course required a standard number of hours of instruction.

Act 2 stipulates that choice course providers will receive 50% of the agreed upon tuition for each course immediately following the enrollment of students in such courses. The remainder of the tuition is to be paid to the provider at the end of the course. I have the following questions about funding issues:

1. Suppose a student taking a choice course drops out soon after starting the course and no longer participates in a choice course. Will the choice course provider be required to reimburse the state for any of the initial funding?
2. Suppose a choice provider expels or otherwise terminates a student enrolled in a choice course soon after the course begins, will there be provision for return of any portion of the tuition?
3. Suppose a student takes and completes the required number of hours of participation in a choice course and receives a failing grade from the choice provider, will there be any provision for refund of any of the tuition?
4. Suppose a student takes and receives a passing grade for a choice course for which the state requires end of course testing and the student fails to receive a passing score on the state test. Will there be any provision for any refund of tuition?
5. 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?
6. Will choice course providers be required to take attendance roll for students attending choice courses, particularly when the student is attending a course provided at a site provided by the course provider? If roll is taken and the student is found to be absent without excuse for more than the minimum number of days required by BESE for public school attendance, will the student still be allowed to receive a passing grade on the choice course?
7. In the case where a choice course provider is providing a virtual or Internet delivered course so that the student participates in a choice course from his/her home, will the choice provider be required to take a participation roll each day the student is supposed to be receiving instruction? Will there be a certain number of hours the student in a virtual class must participate in order to receive credit for the course?
8. What action would the DOE take in a case where there is no evidence provided by the virtual provider that the student actually participated in a minimum number of hours of instruction in a virtual course?
9. Could a virtual choice course provider substitute an end of course test as validation that a student has completed a virtual choice course instead of requiring the student to “attend” or participate in a certain number of hours of instruction?
10. Are choice course providers allowed to refuse admission of any students to a choice course when the enrollment limit has not been reached and who have been classified by their local school system as eligible to take the choice course in question?
11. Would a choice course provider be allowed to test a student wanting to enroll in a choice course and by that means find that the student is not qualified for or prepared to take the choice course in question and thereby deny the student admission even if the student has met all other prerequisites for admission to a course?

I offer the above questions as a taxpayer who is concerned that my tax dollars for education are not wasted or otherwise used by unscrupulous individuals for personal profit without providing proper services to our students. I would very much appreciate a response from BESE on all of the questions above as soon as
possible.

Sincerely,
Michael Deshotels

More and More Testing; Diminising Returns

Most of our non-educator education reformers believe that the primary purpose of K-12 education is to get all students ready for college. The high school Redesign Commission under the direction of previous Superintendent Pastorek several years ago adopted a goal that most students would graduate by completing the college prep Core 4 curriculum. (See my post of 1/29/2010) That's also why State Superintendent John White has decreed that starting this year all 8^th through 11^th graders in public schools will be required to take the ACT (See the Louisiana ESEA Flexibility Request page 54).

 

A few educators have warned that college prep for all is a serious mistake. We believe that not all of our student population can and should be prepared for college. We believe that scheduling all or most students in college prep courses results in a watering down of instruction. When more than half the class is not ready for Algebra, Geometry or Advanced English, the teacher ends up teaching only the minimum needed to get students to pass the end of course tests. As a result the true college prep students do not get the rigorous course content they need and most are bored to death.

 

The non-college bound students are hurt even more by this system. They struggle to get through the Core 4, and some have to take credit recovery courses to try to graduate on time. They have no time to take vocational courses that could allow them to pursue a valuable career. These students barely graduate from high school with no salable skills and very little chance of succeeding in college. Some that attempt college end up dropping out with a huge load of college loans and still no career. The reformers then simply blame teachers and administrators for not pounding square pegs into round holes.

 

The push for college for all has been the policy in Louisiana for several years.

How successful has Louisiana been in preparing all students for college? ACT test averages for all states were released last week for test takers in the 2012 school year. Louisiana students scored an average of 20.3. The Louisiana Department of Education put out a press release claiming improvement for our public school students over last year and a narrowing of the achievement gap. One important item that was not mentioned in the LDOE press release is an analysis by the ACT experts concluding that only 17% of Louisiana students met the benchmarks that would predict success in all major categories of college course work.

 

ACT testing administrators also published a 5 year listing of average scores for each state. The 2012 score for Louisiana students is exactly the same as the average score of 20.3 in 2008. So if one looks at the most recent 5 year period, Louisiana shows no overall increase in the average ACT score. The 5 year period covers the last part of the administration of Paul Pastorek, the non-educator guy who set us on this course.

A complicating factor in using ACT scores to estimate improvement in public education in Louisiana is the fact that scores are averaged for all students taking the test including both public and private school students. It is impossible to know whether a gain in the average is due to public school students or to the fairly large number of private school students taking the test. The State Department of Education however, is claiming that the flimsy one tenth point improvement this year in the overall average means that public schools are improving. I hope that is true, but I would first like to see a breakdown showing separate averages for public and private schools.

I participated in a meeting of the High School Redesign Commission a few months ago, where the group was informed that the State Department of Education will start requiring all high school students to take the ACT and that 25% of the all important School Performance Score will be based on the ACT average score. Some of the Commission members grumbled that this would not give the high schools time to set up special ACT prep courses. But not wanting to seem to be against this latest reform, they dutifully voted to endorse the new testing scheme. So it looks like many more of our teachers will be singing the Test Teacher Song. (Click on the link and you'll see what I mean.) 

It used to be that high schools in addition to producing literate and well rounded citizens would prepare students for either vocational/career work or for entry into 4 year colleges. Now the goal has been carefully reshaped by our non-educator reformers so that schools are supposed to produce adults who are College and Career ready.  The reformers are telling us that if we achieve the goal of college prep, we will also automatically be preparing students for careers that require less than a 4 year college degree. The problem is there are only so many hours in the school day. That's why many school systems have been forced to sacrifice many of their vocational-technical programs to allow more time for the Core 4 curriculum.

No other industrialized country attempts to prepare all its students for college. They know that the modern work force needs skilled and vocational workers just as much as it needs college educated workers. Why do our school reformers insist on doing exactly the opposite of what the most successful countries are doing?

It is ironic that business leaders have been telling the Louisiana Workforce Commission that what they need are skilled workers in many jobs that do not require a college degree. That's why one element of the Jindal reform legislation will now allow high school students to leave their home campus and attend vocational courses by private providers. The problem is most of these kids are not able to go in two directions at one time.

I believe that forcing students who are not suited to, or have no interest in college prep to take such courses is very bad policy. It is discouraging and damaging to the students and guarantees that our public schools will continue to look like failures. For educators it's more and more testing with diminishing returns.

Choice Providers: Private Schools Authorized to Raid MFP

Note to my readers: This is an expansion of my post of July 2, 2012 that alerted you to the new Choice Course Provider system. More information has come to light as a result of the LDOE web page giving detailed information on how the Department plans to proceed with this program.

A new type of private school serving public school students at taxpayer expense was created by Act 2 of 2012. These new private schools will offer “Choice Courses”, a major component of Jindal's attack on our public schools. Choice course providers will be able to recruit students and a portion of their MFP allocation starting with the 2013-14 school year. All students attending public schools rated “C” or below (more than half of public schools) will be targets of these new choice providers. There is also a provision in the law that allows students from B or A schools to take choice courses and raid the MFP funding if such courses are not offered by their home schools. Proposals are now being received by the State Department of Education for choice courses for the 2013-14 school year. BESE will have the authority to approve any courses by private providers that meet state requirements by January 1, 2013. The state will then publish a list of approved choice course providers and the courses they will offer so that students can sign up for the 2013-14 school year.

What type of organizations are expected to be choice course providers? Colleges may offer college credit courses, business organizations may offer technical and vocational courses, large national based for-profit virtual course providers such as Connections Academy and K12 may offer any subject at any grade level in the state approved curriculum, and individual entrepreneurs or teachers may also offer either virtual or on-site courses.

These course providers will operate in direct competition with local school systems but the playing field in this competition will not be a level field. The tuition charged by these choice course providers comes directly from the MFP funding normally allocated to the school district where the student lives. But since choice providers are private, they are not required to use any particular portion of the MFP for actual instruction. Choice course providers can use media advertising to lure students away from public schools and charge the cost to us, the taxpayers. They can capture public school students for all but one hour of instruction each day and there is absolutely nothing local school boards can do about it. In fact school officials are prohibited by law from discouraging students from taking choice courses.

The tuition charged can be up to 90% of the pro-rated MFP allocation for a course even though a choice provider may have a fraction of the state mandated overhead costs of public schools. In the question and answer section of the State Department web page for choice courses, the Department predicts that somehow competition will create a “market price” for choice courses. We don't know if that means that BESE will approve only the lowest cost providers for particular categories of courses or if many different fee proposals will be approved for the same courses. As far as the students and their parents are concerned, there is no incentive for choosing the lower cost courses because all such courses are free (if the student comes from a “C” or below rated school or if the course is not offered in his/her “B” or “A” school). This course approval process by BESE is sure to be controversial and may result in court challenges.

According to the law these course providers, once approved by BESE, may offer choice courses for up to 3 years. The law provides for an evaluation of Choice Course Providers after 2 years, and allows a course provider to be put on probation for their third year based on performance of students taking their courses. After 3 years each provider may be terminated or renewed for at least 3 more years. This process means that many students may be allowed to participate in these unregulated schools possibly providing sub-standard services for at least 3 years before anything is done.

Choice course providers can pay their administrators any salary they choose using our tax money, allocate any amount they choose to their owners or stockholders and use any pupil teacher ratio they choose. Their teachers will not be evaluated as is required by state law because they are private schools. At this point, there are no plans for the state to monitor whether or not students attend regularly as required in public schools. As far as I know there are no plans by the state to check to see if students are spending the number of required minutes each day on each course, and no one will know if the required GLE's or common core standards are being covered. Choice schools will receive 50% of their fees at the time of student enrollment. At this point there is no regulation to cover what happens if a student is expelled from a choice provider course or what happens to the initial 50% payment made by the state to the choice provider if the student drops out or is expelled by the choice provider. It looks like most of the “choice” will be in the hands of the choice course providers.

But here's the most disturbing part of the rules for choice courses. All students participating in the course choice program will be tested by LEAP or its successor tests at their original home public schools. Their scores made on LEAP and other high stakes tests will be assigned to their home schools even if the majority of their courses are taken off campus. So the profit for choice courses goes to the providers, but for the first three years at least, the penalties for any under performance will go to their assigned public schools. You could have a “C” rated school that may have its grade reduced to a “D” or worse by the scores of choice students. Or you could have a school that may lose its higher performing students to choice course providers while the lower performing students remain. Some choice course providers may look good because they have carefully skimmed the best performing students from the public schools! We have already seen that some of the voucher schools have ways of discouraging qualified students from enrolling if the school administrators want to cull out certain students.

Another unintended consequence of having courses offered by unregulated providers is grade inflation. There is nothing to keep some of the choice providers from watering down standards and using grade inflation to attract more students to their profit making enterprise. Particularly in cases where the courses offered are not tested by the state, the state may not be in a position to challenge the rigor of such courses. This is very similar to what we see now with many of the virtual schools offering “college level” courses over the Internet. Many graduates of such schools are finding their degrees to be worthless even after they have accumulated huge college loan debts. (see my post of August 5)

Louisiana does have a great need for expansion of career training as opposed to our present policy of attempting to prepare all students for college. This could have easily been done by providing for partnerships between our high schools and our vocational/technical and community colleges. In addition there should be more business and industry related apprenticeship programs. There was no need for a law that could drain the lifeblood out of our public schools.

What Jindal and the Legislature have done is to allow private companies and individual profiteers to experiment with the education of children and collect much of the MFP money with very little oversight. The difference is that even if a student may be under-performing in a public school, at least the public system assures taxpayers that the student is in attendance, that the teacher is being monitored and evaluated, and that the required elements of the curriculum are being taught. With a choice course nothing is guaranteed. The same lack of accountability applies to the new voucher schools. How can we trust that the Department will properly evaluate choice providers based on some of the atrocious voucher schools approved so far? For the voucher and choice schools, over 75 years of legislation designed to protect the education of Louisiana public school students has been thrown away. At the same time, the State Department of education will continue to micromanage our public schools as never before. This is school reform?

Based on my many years in education, I know that this and the other parts of the Jindal plan will not work. In all probability many students will be hurt by this multitude of poorly monitored privatization schemes. Our students should not be the guinea pigs for these untested programs. Please talk to your legislator. There is still time to stop this train before it runs off the tracks and wrecks our education system.