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Archive for May, 2014

LDOE under Pastorek and White manipulated data for grant eligibility for RSD charter schools, former employee claims

Posted in BESE, Charters, Contract, Contracts, Education, Grant, Grants, Recovery School District, RSD on May 19, 2014| 16 Comments »

The Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) for at least three years manipulated qualification requirements for several New Orleans charter schools so that they would qualify for millions of dollars in federal grants, according to a former LDOE employee who now works for a parish school district and who asked that his name not be revealed.

The employee told LouisianaVoice that the practice started under former Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek and continued at least in John White’s first year as superintendent.

He said the recipients were “four or five” schools in the Recovery School District in New Orleans and all were charter schools. “LDOE employees were told to manipulate the data to allow the schools to qualify for the federal grants and each of the schools was subsequently approved.”

He said the data were also skewed in some instances to block grant eligibility for other schools.

One criterion was that the school be a failing school, he said. “These were new charter schools, so they were not actually ‘failing’ schools, but we were directed to doctor the data to allow the schools to become eligible.” He did not name the charter schools that received the grants.

He said the other criterion was for “conditional” schools. He added that the federal Department of Education is moving toward making “conditional” the single criterion for grant eligibility.

The former LDOE employee said he did not recall the exact amounts awarded the schools but that the total for all four was “several millions of dollars.”

He also touched briefly on the current accusations that the refusal by LDOE employees of requests to adjust the LEAP and iLEAP scores for the RSD was at least partly to blame for the delay in releasing school test scores until Tuesday of this week (May 20).

“The department (LDOE) did that for schools all over the state last year,” he said.

He said there was no logical reason for the delay in releasing the test scores, a delay that has thrown some school districts into a state of chaos—particularly those that have already completed their school year. Schools in those districts still don’t know which students will be required to take courses during the summer to bring their grades up.

Students in other school districts who may have been told they were exempt from finals because of outstanding grades are now finding that they have to take finals after all.

An LDOE official, speaking for White, said despite the prevailing belief, there was no set schedule for the release of the test scores—even though educators and administrators across the state were in accord in the belief that the scores were to have been released last Friday.

“There was no reason for the delay,” the former LDOE employee said. “DRC (Data Recognition Corp., of Maple Grove, Minnesota) had everything done well in advance of last Friday. The test scores should have been released on time.”

DRC is the vendor under contract to LDOE for testing and test grading of the LEAP and iLEAP tests.

The firm presently has two contracts with the department totaling $111.7 million.

The first, Contract No. 603573, is for $66.5 million and runs from Sept. 1, 2003 through June 30, 2015. It calls for DRC to test grades three through nine in English, language arts, mathematic science and social studies, and to administer criterion referenced testing in grades three through seven and grade nine from Sept. 1, 2003 through June 30, 2008.

Contract 704708 is for $48.2 million and runs from July 1, 2011 through June 30, 2015. That contract calls for DRC to provide support services related to LDOE’s current assessment program which includes the developing of test forms, printing, distributing and collecting materials, coring and reporting for LEAP, iLEAP and other standardized tests.

 

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Guest columnist Dayne Sherman joins John Kennedy, Richard in support of HB 142 to slash state contracts

Posted in Budget, Governor's Office, Guest Columnist, Higher Education, Legislature, Legislators, Politicians on May 18, 2014| 5 Comments »

By Dayne Sherman, guest columnist

Students are graduating from universities across Louisiana this May, and high school students are heading to college campuses this summer and fall. It’s an exciting time of year for students, parents, extended families, professors, and teachers. Nothing could be better.

But we need to be frank. Louisiana colleges and universities have been cut $700 million, 80 % of state funding since 2008. The tuition is increasing at an unsustainable and crippling rate, and many students will be strapped with student loan debt for decades to come.

This was done because Gov. Bobby Jindal doesn’t care about higher education for Louisiana residents and because his minions in the Legislature allowed him to steal from higher education in order to fund patronage from Shreveport to Port Sulphur. In fact, much of this patronage was devised as a way to pay off his cronies—often out of state—and garner future political favors. It doesn’t take an Albert Einstein to figure this out. Just read the newspapers.

The primary avenue to pay off the campaign favors and buy votes is through bloated consulting contracts. They keep Jindal’s as well as legislators’ supporters and campaign contributors happy, happy, happy.

But it’s time to stop the stupidity and fund higher education. We have students to educate and no funding to do so. Higher education has been starved while consulting contracts have been fed like meat hogs headed to market.

The only hope I see on the horizon is HB 142, a bill filed by Jerome “Dee” Richard (No Party-Thibodaux) and championed by Treasurer John Neely Kennedy (R-Madisonville). It calls for state agencies to cut 10 % from their contracting budgets and the $500 million saved to go to fund higher education. It’s a fair and fiscally conservative plan. The bill has sailed through the House, and now faces the big challenge: Gov. Jindal’s handpicked salons on the Senate Finance Committee. The committee meets on Monday, May 19 at 9:30 AM.

I believe passage of this bill is utterly essential to save public higher education in Louisiana.

There have been ongoing foes fighting Louisiana higher education. Sen. Jack Donahue (R-Mandeville), Chair of the Senate Finance Committee, is one example of someone who has done nothing for higher education. How he can pretend that he’s a supporter of the educational institutions in and around his district is a real mystery. It’s time for him to put up or shut up, and HB 142 is the test.

We have a chance to save higher education. Will Donahue and White stand with the people of his district or with Jindal and his cronies? We will know soon enough.

Dayne Sherman resides in Ponchatoula. He is the author of Welcome to the Fallen Paradise and expects the publication of Zion: A Novel in October. His website is daynesherman.com.

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Learning is more than a test score…but John White still tries to cook RSD test score books even as LDOE staffers refuse

Posted in BESE, Education, Ethics, Governor's Office, RSD on May 17, 2014| 31 Comments »

You would think that after widespread cheating scandals swirling around student testing, Louisiana Superintendent of Education John White would be extra cautious to ensure the same embarrassment was not repeated here. People, after all, have been indicted in other places for the practice.

The Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) has been sitting on the results of the LEAP, iLEAP and the LEAP Alternative Assessment Level 2 (LAA 2) tests for several weeks now and no matter what the official line to the contrary coming out of LDOE, the fact is those results were scheduled to be released Friday morning (May 16).

Now comes word from within the department that LDOE employees have balked at White’s demands to tweak the results for the Recovery School District (RSD) and this little development has thrown a wrinkle into the scheduled release of the test scores.

We have no way of knowing at this point whether or not the reports are true but when the test scores were not forthcoming as promised at 9 a.m. Friday, that certainly did not help White’s credibility. He already has been caught lying about departmental pay raises, hiring freezes and attempting to “take some air out of the room” in his testimony to a legislative committee over the awarding of more than 300 vouchers to a Ruston school with no desks, teachers, or facilities. So when release of the scores was delayed without any explanation except to say he would have a statement at 3 p.m., why should we be surprised?

The age-old tactic of releasing adverse statements and news stories late on Fridays, when many Capitol reporters have left for the weekend, has become a preferred and perfected practice for this administration and White apparently has learned well.

The 3 p.m. Friday announcement said that the test results would be released on Tuesday of this week. An LDOE official said that while the Friday “tentative release date” for the scores was on the calendar, there was never an official date for their release. Bull feathers, horse hockey and meadow muffins. John White is from the government and he’s here to help, the check is in the mail, and he’ll still respect us in the morning. Sorry, John, we’ve heard ‘em all before and we ain’t buying it.

While there are claims that last minute Legislature-mandated changes to the Minimum Foundation Program (MFP), the formula employed to allocate funding to the various school districts in the state, coupled with staff shortages at LDOE caused the delay, there’s no escaping the fact that LDOE has been sitting on these test results for weeks now. Moreover, do the same personnel perform work on extrapolating test data and the MFP? That would appear to be a stretch—even with staff shortages.

Those “staff shortages,” by the way, are no one’s fault but White’s. He has gutted the staff by drastically reducing the number of employees, the “in the trenches” workers who do the actual work, while bloating the department with unclassified, highly-paid administrative political appointees who appear to do little other than occupying reserved parking spaces in the Claiborne Building’s parking garage.

When your subordinates refuse to place their reputations on the line for your political agenda, the reasons for your delay in releasing the scores suddenly become much clearer.

Louisiana tests its students annually in English language arts, mathematics, science and social studies in third through eighth grades in order to measure whether students have gained the knowledge and skills in the subject for their respective grades.

The Louisiana Educational Assessment Program (LEAP) is the series of annual assessments in English language arts, mathematics, science and social studies for fourth and eighth grades. A criterion-based test, these tests are aligned to state academic standards.

The series of annual assessments administered in grades three, five, six and seven is known as the “integrated” Louisiana Educational Assessment Programs (iLEAP). It is referred to as an integrated LEAP because it originally combined a criterion-based component, which measured whether a student had mastered the academic standards, with a norm-referenced component (the Iowa Test of Basic Skills), which provided a percentile ranking of students. The iLEAP tests of 2013-14 no longer contain the Iowa portion and are criterion-based only.

It would be to the advantage of White, the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and Gov. Bobby Jindal if the test scores reflected significant gains by students but word received by LouisianaVoice indicates that all is not well in the RSD and that White would prefer a rosier picture in the trouble-plagued district—if only those stubborn civil servants would cooperate.

But the obvious question here is: why would we expect good scores from the RSD anyway? RSD has been a stink hole of inefficiency, poor performance, overpaid administrators, missing equipment and waste since day one. Mediocrity is a goal to which the RSD can only aspire.

Word coming out of the department is that LDOE employees were asked to cook the RSD books but LDOE staff members have refused to become a part of yet another cheating scandal. And given what has already transpired in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Nevada, and other states, who could blame them:

  • Former Washington, D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, the poster child for school reform fraud, was fully aware of widespread cheating and even handed out bonuses totaling $1.5 million to teachers whose students showed significant gains before the cheating on standardized test answers by nearly 200 teachers in 70 schools became public knowledge and forced her out. She, however, landed on her feet and formed StudentsFirst, raking in millions of dollars from the likes of the Walton family, Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg.
  • Close on the heels of the D.C. cheating travesty was the early 2013 indictment of the former superintendent of Atlanta Public Schools and three dozen other administrators, teachers, principals and other educators for cheating—even after a similar state investigation two years earlier found similar cheating by nearly 180 educators in 44 Atlanta schools.
  • In mid-April of this year, three Clark County (Nevada) School District employees were placed on leave after a state investigation found that adults altered answer sheets on standardized tests at a Las Vegas elementary school which in turn led to skyrocketing scores from one year to the next.
  • Last week, less than a month after the Las Vegas revelations, an elementary school principal and four teachers were arraigned in connection with test cheating in the Philadelphia School District. The arraignments were the result of a grand jury investigation.

One child whose test results were changed, showed huge gains in reading comprehension and was promoted to the ninth grade even though her reading level was found to be still at a fifth grade level.

Cheating robs children of a good education and hurts kids and their families, the Pennsylvania attorney general said.

The reaction of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers was even more severe with the federation president issuing a statement that the union would not provide legal assistance for those charged.

Such, though, is the nature of school reforms implemented with so much emphasis on all the wrong things—standardized test scores at the expense of actual learning.

In the frenzy to improve national standings to enhance the résumés of politicians, bureaucrats and demagogues, they have fallen all over each other in attempts to put up stronger numbers while overlooking the most important element in education—the kids. It’s almost as if the frenetic efforts to improve test scores are being made for the benefit of the adults at considerable expense to the real education of children.

Perhaps a quote attributed to Albert Einstein, provided by Diane Ravitch, said it best: “I believe in standardizing automobiles. I do not believe in standardizing human beings. Standardization is a great peril which threatens American culture.”

Einstein said that people like Henry Ford, who advocated the standardization of both automobiles and people, “do not realize that the adulation they receive is due to the power of their pocketbooks on the force of their personalities.”

We have to wonder if Bill Gates, Michelle Rhee, the Walton family Michael Bloomberg, Bobby Jindal, John White or Chas Roemer ever read those words—or if they can even comprehend their importance or their implications.

And are our legislators paying attention at all?

Perhaps we should bring back the dunce cap—just for them.

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Jindal administration spiraling out of control with absurd Alvarez & Marsal recommendations for saving state money

Posted in Budget, Contract, Contracts, Finances, Governor's Office, Legislature, Legislators, State Agencies, Waste on May 13, 2014| 25 Comments »

Just when you thought the news coming from this administration couldn’t possibly get any more dysfunctional…it does.

In fact, whatever semblance of logic this administration had remaining is fast circling the drain even as our governor attempts to push his agenda onto a national stage while leaving it to high-priced consultants and amateurs like Kristy Nichols to find solutions to mounting problems at home.

This is the same governor, Bobby Jindal, who recently told the graduating class at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University that the entertainment industry’s intolerance is eroding the very foundation of America’s freedom—even as his Department of Economic Development continues to give away the store in the form of hefty tax incentives to….that very same entertainment industry.

As the Church Lady from Saturday Night Live would say, “Well now, isn’t that special?”

Earl Long might say it another way. He well may have been describing Jindal’s flexibility in spewing his political rhetoric to play to the views of his audience when he told Ruston Daily Leader fledgling reporter Wiley Hilburn in July of 1959 (only a couple of months before Long’s death) that Hilburn’s uncle, former Lt. Gov. C.E. “Cap” Barham, could “talk out of both sides of his mouth and whistle out of the middle at the same time.”

But bizarre as Jindal’s performance has been over the past six-plus years, he would be hard-pressed to surpass the downright preposterous laundry list of proposed cuts in spending rolled out on Monday by Nichols, serving as his proxy while he campaigns to be the Second Coming of Alfred E. Neuman.

All that was missing from Nichols’ theater of the absurd were the orange wig, red nose, big shoes and a seltzer bottle.

To say this administration is delusional is to be overly kind.

To refresh, you will remember that back in January, the administration signed a $4.2 million contract (quickly amended to $5 million in violation of state law requiring legislative concurrence on initial amendments greater than 10 percent) with the consulting firm of Alvarez & Marsal, charging the firm with finding $500 million in savings by April. Well, April has come and gone and now Nichols says the firm’s report will be a month late, now expected at the end of May.

Alvarez & Marsal (A&M), to further refresh the old memory banks, is the same firm that offered up the sage advice to the Orleans Parish School Board in December of 2005, only months after Hurricane Katrina, to fire 7,500 teachers, effective Jan. 31, 2006.

That little bit of economic wisdom may wind up costing the state $1.5 billion following a court decision in favor of the teachers who filed suit after being summarily fired.

A&M also is the same firm that recommended the privatizing of the LSU Medical Center in New Orleans (formerly Big Charity Hospital) in the voluminous Streamlining Commission report initiated during Jindal’s second year in office, thus sowing the seeds of Jindal’s ambitious privatization plan for LSU’s statewide system of hospitals.

And we all know how well that fared, don’t we?

According to friend and fellow blogger C.B. Forgotston, the preliminary report submitted by A&M last Thursday (May 8) was a whopping two and one-half pages in length ($2 million per page—by comparison, this post alone should be worth $10 million) and contained recommendations for only $74 million of the $500 million goal.

And now Nichols has come before the Senate Finance Committee to inform senators that “Every (cabinet) secretary signed off on the savings.”

Well, DUH! Of course they signed off on the proposals. They may be sycophants but they ain’t stupid. We know what happens to anyone in the state employ who might dare adopt a viewpoint at odds with Jindal. Obviously, these people who could never command comparable salaries in the private sector want to cling to their jobs like so many ticks in a hound dog’s ear.

But enough of the ancient history; let’s allow Jindal and A&M to demonstrate in their own words just how inane the future leader of the free world can be. Among the innovative ideas for saving the taxpayers $74 million are these jewels of pure brilliance:

  • Cutting back the hours of operation of the Cameron Parish ferry;
  • Circling employment ads for prison inmates;
  • Decreasing the thickness of asphalt on roadways;
  • Requiring pregnant women on Medicaid to use midwives or doulas for delivery;
  • Treating the partners of pregnant women in government health care programs for STDs.

Oh, we get it. Very funny. Kristy, you’re quite the card.

What? You’re serious?!!!?? No way! C’mon, guys; a joke’s a joke but now you’re starting to scare us. We’d rather hear something a little less scary—like finding the hook from the one-armed killer in the car’s door handle or about the water skier falling into a nest of water moccasins.

Okay, now sit back, Kristy, and take a reality check here. Where’s the proposal to prohibit offering six-figure salaries to washed-up politicians so they can occupy a desk for a few year to fatten their state pensions? We mean, even with motion sensor lighting, these guys are so useless that they inhabit darkened offices.

You want to cut the hours of operation of the Cameron Ferry from 24 to 16 or 18 hours and you want to cut the thickness of asphalt overlay in half—from two inches to one-inch? You say the two would save the Department of Transportation and Development (DOTD) $10.9 million?

Have you ignored the fact that the only detour along Highway 82 in Cameron Parish would require a drive of 120 miles?

You say Texas has already adopted a new material that allows that state to overlay roadways with one-inch-thick asphalt? Wonderful. Have you taken into account that the soil composition and consistency in Louisiana, particularly South Louisiana, is vastly different than that of Texas? To implement this foolish proposal would place an added onus on already over-burdened DOTD maintenance units when the thinner asphalt produces thousands of potholes that are certain to occur as the base beneath the asphalt deteriorates. If DOTD Secretary Sherri LeBas did agree to this idiocy as Nichols claims, she is grossly unqualified to head up the agency responsible for the construction and maintenance of the state’s roads and bridges.

Circling employment ads for prisoners? Gawd. For this, we’re paying A&M $5 million. We could have suggested that for a buck-fifty.

Nichols explained that the state intends to implement the program whereby low-risk prisoners in Orleans and Jefferson parishes would earn their keep by working by serving the latter portions of their sentences in minimum-security facilities such as parish prisons run by sheriffs and giving part of their paychecks to the prison operators to help pay for their room and board. She said that would save the state $9.4 million. How do you propose to keep the sheriffs honest in reporting actual salaries against what they report to the state? Just a thought.

Midwives and doulas for deliveries for pregnant women on Medicaid? Interesting concept. Has anyone thought of bringing back leeches? How about electric shock for mental illness? And willow bark for treating fever? And now, simply because they are on Medicaid, we propose to deny these expectant mothers the same childbirth facilities to which people like Kristy Nichols or Sherri LeBas or Kathy Kliebert might be privy?

And you propose to treat the sexual partners of pregnant women for STDs after the fact?

Beautiful, just bleeping beautiful.

This aberration of an administration, as we (borrowing a line from Three-and-a-Half Men) have said before, has all the emotional stability of a sack full of rats in a burning meth lab.

Even sadder is the fact that the legislature, in allowing this spoiled brat of a child Jindal to get away with his shenanigans, for failing so miserably to hold him accountable, isn’t far behind.

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Guest columnist wants to know: who is Quin Hillyer and why is he on the editorial Staff of the Advocate newspapers?

Posted in Guest Columnist on May 12, 2014| 14 Comments »

©May 12, 2014

Stephen Winham

 

When The Advocate first started running Quin Hillyer’s columns, I assumed they were syndicated. I figured it was okay to run his pieces occasionally so we could be exposed to the far right agenda without having to actually access far right sources. I was dismayed when I realized he is billed as a member of the Advocate editorial staff and writes these columns specifically for its readers in Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

I thought the Advocate’s editorial staff and syndicated columnists already presented a fairly good philosophical balance including conservatives, liberals and moderates. I viewed it as slightly skewed toward conservatism, but that was okay. With the addition of Hillyer, the paper’s editorial posture took a hard right turn.

Among other things, I wondered if his inclusion was intended as a direct counterpoint to James Gill. In that regard, it is interesting that The Advocate has recently published 2 readers’ letters criticizing the presence of James Gill on the editorial staff.   NONE critical of Quin Hillyer have seen the letters page. Surely, at least two people have submitted printable letters critical of Hillyer. Heck, I sent in two. And I know more than a few other people who find Mr. Hillyer’s columns offensive.

Hillyer’s May 11, 2014, column is emblematic of why I object to his presence as a regular columnist. It fans the flames of hostility toward our President while unabashedly cheerleading for the policies of our Governor. Expressions of opinion are one thing. Hate-mongering, coupled with views so distorted as to bridge on prevarication, are something else. Columns like his are better suited to blogs like The Hayride and other venues that make no effort to be balanced in any way.

James Gill was born in the United Kingdom, is a graduate of Liverpool University and wrote for the Times-Picayune in New Orleans before joining The Advocate editorial staff in May 2013. He is currently one of 10 finalists for the Molly National Journalism Prize, established by The Texas Observer to recognize works that focus on civil liberties and social justice. The winner will be announced June 3. The prize is named after the late Molly Ivins whose columns once graced The Advocate’s editorial pages. Gill’s columns are noted for lampooning politicians and often take a humorous turn, as was the case with Molly Ivins’ syndicated columns.   Few would consider Gill’s columns mean-spirited or his views extremist, no matter how liberal they are.

Quin Hillyer is a graduate of Georgetown University (A.B. in government and theology, 1987) and a recipient of the Carmage Walls Commentary Award from the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association and the Green Eyeshade Award for commentary from the Society of Professional Journalists (formerly Sigma Delta Chi). He was born and raised in New Orleans, but now lives in Mobile, Alabama.

He worked for the Times-Picayune before joining Bob Livingston’s gubernatorial campaign staff in 1987. As Chair of the Louisiana Young Republicans in the late 80s and early 90s, he was a member of the bipartisan Louisiana Coalition Against Racism and Nazism, a ten member group actively involved in bringing forth facts to repudiate the legitimacy of David Duke’s claims to have abandoned his white supremacy agenda. He was briefly managing editor of New Orleans Gambit magazine before joining Congressman Livingston’s staff in 1991 and becoming his press secretary in 1995.

Hillyer returned to private sector journalism in 1997, working for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, theMobile Register, The American Spectator(with whom he is still affiliated), The Washington Examiner, The Washington Times and the National Review (with whom is still affiliated) and writing for others. He ran for and finished 4th in the November 2013 Republican primary election for the United States House of Representatives from Alabama’s 1st congressional district.

While his background has significant depth and is consistent with conservative views, extremism would not seem its logical product. One would expect commentary more along the lines of William F. Buckley, Jr. than Rush Limbaugh, but reading his columns is often like listening to Limbaugh. Fiery political evangelism is as good a description as any.

As far as the columns he has written for publication in the Advocate newspapers so far, most share a singular theme. Ten of his columns are archived at The Advocate website. Review them and you will find that seven seem to have little purpose other than promotion of Governor Jindal’s policies and future aspirations, including one completely unambiguous in its intent titled, “Jindal shows clear national appeal” (March 29, 2014).

In his very first Advocate column (March 21, 2014), he managed to attack the rest of the Advocate editorial staff and the President while promoting Governor Jindal. That one is titled, “Gov. Jindal was justified in jamming President Obama”. His most recent column, mentioned above, and his April 26 columns are refrains of this theme. His April 8 column supports the governor’s use of coastal wetlands funding to “bridge the gap” in the budget. His April 19 and May 3 columns support the governor’s position that the lawsuit by the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority is illegitimate.

A cynic might believe Mr. Hillyer was brought on board to promote Governor Jindal’s campaign for President rather than to just provide a strong conservative voice for The Advocate. If that is true, shouldn’t the publisher clearly state his support for the Governor and his political aspirations? Rolfe McCollister (Greater Baton Rouge Business Report publisher) is certainly not unbiased, but he is also not coy about his support for the governor’s political future. If the Advocate is to become the voice of Bobby Jindal, let’s at least be honest about it.

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