Posted in BESE, Book Review, Education, Media, Notable Quotables, Privatization on June 6, 2014| 1 Comment »
“…My purpose is to dismantle the dismantlers. As such, my words are not kind. My words expose, and that exposure is harsh. The individuals and organizations profiled in this book have declared war on my profession, and I take that personally.”
—Mercedes Schneider, writing in the introduction to her book A Chronicle of Echoes: Who’s Who in the Implosion of American Public Education.
Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, BESE, Book Review, Charters, Education, Governor's Office, Privatization, Recovery School District, Vouchers on June 6, 2014| 7 Comments »
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A Chronicle of Echoes: Who’s Who in the Implosion of America’s Public Education (Information Age Publishing, 404 pages) is a new book by St. Tammany Parish high school English teacher Mercedes Schneider that should be required reading by both proponents and opponents of the current drift in education from public to private, from non-profit availability to all students to for-profit institutions available to the select few.
Before we get too far into our review of this book, there are two things you should know about Mercedes Schneider:
And when she does call you out, that caustic and at the same time, delightful St. Bernard Parish accent comes shining through like a lighthouse beacon slicing through a foggy night.
The publisher of an education online blog called At the Chalk Fence, She has moved her debate from her ongoing fight with Gov. Bobby Jindal and Superintendent of Education John White to a national forum and is now calling out such self-proclaimed education experts as former New York City School Chancellor Joel Klein, whom she calls “the viral host of the corporate reform agenda,” Teach for America (TFA) founder Wendy Kopp, disgraced Washington, D.C. school chancellor and later founder of StudentsFirst Michelle Rhee, vagabond school reformer and former Superintendent of Louisiana’s Recovery School District (RSD) Paul Vallas, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the “Big Three Foundations: Gates, Walton and Broad.”
A thorn in the side of Jindal, White, and Roemer of long-standing, she turns her attention to the national educational debate in Chronicle. With an appropriate nod to Ravitch as her mentor and the one who was always available when needed for advice, Schneider peppers her targets with a barrage of statistics that refute the unrealistic theories advanced by the Waltons, Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and TFA who insist meaningful education reform can be accomplished with inexperienced teachers and administrators, for-profit charters, vouchers, and the idea that throwing money at a problem is not the answer (despite their propensity to pour billions of dollars into their own idealistic agendas—at best, a philosophical oxymoron).
A product of the St. Bernard Parish public schools (P.G.T. Beauregard High School), Schneider’s attempt to drop out of school at age 15 somehow morphed into a B.S. in secondary education (English and German), a master’s degree in guidance and counseling from the State University of West Georgia, and a Ph.D. from the University of Northern Colorado.
She taught graduate-level statistics and research courses at Ball State University. It was at Ball State that she first took on the task of challenging the issues related to No Child Left Behind, teaching students “how bad an idea it was to attempt to measure teacher performance using student standardized test scores.”
In July 2007, only months before the election of Jindal as governor, she returned home and began a new job teaching high school English in St. Tammany parish.
Her introduction contains a brilliant metaphor for the corporate destruction of public education: she describes what she calls a “detailed image” of an abandoned building being imploded and collapsing upon itself. She envisions the building (public education), “not ornate, not without need for repairs, but sturdy,” as men in yellow hard hats (corporate reformers, we are told) watch, knowing what is about to transpire “because they have orchestrated it from the inside.” She describes the men as “responsible for the impending structural failure” and “who have planned the failure but are removed from its consequences.”
In her blog, she recently launched a withering attack on White’s embargo of the LEAP summary public report, saying the state superintendent had “apparently found himself in an unfamiliar fix regarding his characteristic ‘water muddying.’” She accused White of “collapsing” categories within the LEAP grading system in order to conceal variation through report “groupings” that she said concealed the precision of the standard five levels of LEAP achievement (unsatisfactory, approaching basic, basic, mastery, and advanced).
“Collapsing ‘basic,’ ‘mastery,’ and ‘advanced’ into a single, generic ‘passed’ serves to conceal achievement nuances that might make Louisiana Miracle RSD appear to be ‘less than’ locally-run districts—the ones operated by those pesky, traditional local school boards,” she said.
“After all, a test-score-deficient ‘miracle’ is harder to sell,” she said. “If the data reflect poorly on privatization, then the troubled corporate reformer could alter the data, or alter the reporting, or alter access to the reporting, or employ some combination of the three. Gotta love corporate reform ‘transparency.’”
Jindal, White and Roemer may heave a collective sigh of relief that they have been spared the glare of the spotlight in Chronicle as she concentrates her argument on the glaring weaknesses of the major education reform movers and shakers at the national level.
But perhaps they should not be too comfortable at being spared just yet.
After all, certain matter, they say, flows downhill.
A Chronicle of Echoes is a must read for anyone who is or ever claimed to be concerned about the perpetual political tampering with public education in America—by those least qualified to do so.
Posted in Contract, Contracts, DHH, DOA, Finances, Governor's Office, Legislature, Legislators, OGB, Office of Group Benefits, ORM, Office of Risk Management, State Police on June 3, 2014| 18 Comments »
The $500 million savings report by Alvarez & Marsal (A&M) was finally released on Monday only minutes before adjournment of the 2014 legislative session—and, conveniently for the administration, too late for critical feedback from lawmakers.
http://doa.louisiana.gov/doa/PressReleases/LA_GEMS_FINAL_REPORT.pdf
So, what makes this one any different than the others, given the fact that the A&M report acknowledges that Louisiana “has a long history of performance reviews, dating back to one performed by the Treen administration in the early 1980s?” Well, for one, the punctuation, spelling and grammatical errors contained in the report indicate that it was thrown together rather hastily to satisfy a state-imposed deadline for completion.
Of course the report was cranked out by “experts,” and as an old friend so accurately reminded us, an expert is someone with a briefcase from out of town.
The 425-page report, produced under a $5 million contract, while projecting a savings of $2.7 billion over five years (an average of $540 million a year), the substance of the report was sufficiently ambiguous to render the document as just so much:
(a) Useless trendy jargon and snappy catch phrases like synergy, stakeholders, and core analytics to give the report the appearance of a pseudo-academic tome;
(b) Eyewash;
(c) Window dressing;
(d) Regurgitation of previous studies by previous administrations that are now gathering dust on a shelf somewhere;
(e) All of the above.
Three things were immediately evident with only a cursory review of the report:
Most of the projected cost savings were based on assumptions for which A&M offered little or no supporting data other than arbitrary estimates and suppositions that could have been produced at a fraction of the report’s $11,760 per-page cost.
The report acknowledged that Louisiana already has the highest Medicaid recovery rate in the nation with $124 million in improper payments recovered but nevertheless listed as one of its recommendations that the Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) “reduce improper payment in the Medicaid program.”
Seriously? Who would’ve thought that might be a way to save money?
Other suggestions included in the study by agency and projected savings (in parentheses):
DHH ($234.1 million)
Department of Transportation and Development (DOTD) ($99 million)
Department of Corrections: ($105.3 million)
Department of Revenue and Taxation ($333.4 million)
Department of Public Safety ($45.4 million)
Office of Juvenile Justice ($44.2 million)
Department of Children and Family Services ($2 million)
Louisiana Economic Development ($142.9 million);
Human Capital Management ($65.9 million)
Office of General Counsel ($3.825 million)
A&M noted that the Office of the General Counsel (that would be the in-house legal counsel—they hate being called that—for the Division of Administration) “is responsible for ensuring that the commissioner’s statutory duty to respond to public record requests in a timely and legal manner is carried out.”
This was a favorite part of the entire report for us. The DOA Office of the General Counsel has historically delayed responding to public record requests of LouisianaVoice far beyond any reasonable—or legal—time limits. Louisiana’s public records statutes require an immediate access to public records unless they are unavailable in which case the custodian of the record must, according to law, respond in writing as to when they will be available within three working days. It is not at all unusual for the Office of the General Counsel to drag his feet for weeks on end before producing requested records.
But A&M has solved that knotty little problem by pointing out that as the custodian of the DOA’s public records, “it is the commissioner’s (Kristy Nichols) responsibility to receive and process public records.”
A&M’s recommendation that the Office of the General Counsel can generate its five-year cost savings simply by:
Increasing the organization efficiency of the office, ($1.975 million) and
Increasing the efficiency of document review process and reducing internal and external attorney costs ($1.85 million).
That, of course, raises the burning question of what will happen to Jimmy Faircloth?
Other suggested savings came under:
“I am so proud of this report,” gushed Nichols. “These are real, common sense solutions that will not only save money for the people of Louisiana, but will improve the way we operate.”
Question, Kristy: If they are such “real, common sense solutions,” why has this administration in six-plus years experienced this epiphany before now?
Another question: If these suggestions, which you say were “thoroughly vetted,” are going to save money for us and make our lives better through better operations, where has Jindal, his cabinet secretaries, undersecretaries, deputy secretaries department heads, managers and great legal minds been all this time? Wasn’t it their job to give us the biggest bang for the buck? (Oops, that’s three questions.)
Oh, well, let’s go for broke here. Fourth question: Who “vetted” these wonderful ideas? If the vetting was done by those already on the state payroll, why didn’t those employees perform the task in the first place instead of blowing $5 million on this report that a second year economic major at LSU could have written?
Fifth question: Does the administration—and by extension, A&M—hold employee morale in such low regard that it was not considered as a factor in facilitating more efficient job performance across the board? Improved employee morale would seem to be conducive to cost savings, yet it was never addressed even once in the entire 425-page document. That omission speaks volumes.
And finally, if you are “so proud of this report,” why was it that you reportedly tossed an A&M representative out of your office with the admonishment that he’d better find something after he initially reported to you that his consulting firm was having trouble coming up the $500 million savings?
Could this explain why some of the “savings” appear to have been plucked out of thin air?
Posted in Uncategorized on June 2, 2014| 6 Comments »
Abandoned gas well equipment on private property near Ruston.
If there was still any lingering doubt after the passage of SB 469 that Gov. Bobby Jindal and the Louisiana Legislature are in an unholy alliance to give big oil carte blanche to rape the landscape while pillaging the state’s resources, that doubt should be erased with the release Monday of a state audit of the Office of Conservation, Louisiana Department of Natural Resources.
The audit report, released by Legislative Auditor Daryl Purpera, reveals that:
Orphan wells are abandoned oil and gas wells for which no responsible operator can be located or such operator has failed to maintain the well site in accordance with state regulations, the audit report said.
The laissez-faire attitude of enforcement on the part of the state has given rise to ever-growing numbers of abandoned wells throughout Louisiana and the Office of Conservation has neglected to conduct required inspections of orphaned wells. Of 270 wells orphaned from September 2010 to April 2013, the office failed to inspect 124 (46 percent) of those within the required 90 days and 87 of those 124 (70 percent) were not inspected at all as of July 2013. “Conducting inspections is important to ensure that wells are appropriately prioritized for plugging and that conditions at the sell site do not pose a risk to the environment,” the audit report said.
The Office of Conservation has recovered only $3.6 million from 13 previous operators who abandoned wells since 1993, the audit said. Lax enforcement of standards for which penalties for violations can run as high as $5,000 per day resulted in the collection of only about $900,000 for the six-year period of 2008 through 2013.
This lack of enforcement has had two results: millions of dollars are left uncollected for violations and operators are reluctant to take corrective measures even when cited. Accordingly, Office of Conservation enforcement does not deter operators from experiencing subsequent violations, the report said.
In fact, the audit report said, the Office of Conservation cannot even identify the actual number or type of violations cited on inspections.
Meanwhile, as of July 2013, there are 2,846 unplugged orphaned wills scattered across the state with the heaviest concentration in northwest Louisiana and along the Louisiana coast.
In management’s response to the audit, Commissioner of Conservation James Welsh said his office “takes the job of regulating the oil and gas industry seriously” and that his office is already in the process of addressing several of the concerns listed in the report.
“Conservation staff and management have been diligent in working to resolve these issues and will continue seeking a means to do so that does not create unintended consequences such as sharply increasing the rate of wells having to be declared orphaned,” he said.
Welsh, in his eight-page management response, agreed with all 21 recommendations of the audit report.
But with the honeymoon between the administration and big oil rolling blissfully along, it is doubtful that things will really change. Why should they?
On the one hand, operators have no incentive to clean up after themselves because of the practice by the Office of Conservation of winking and looking the other way when operators walk away from wells. There are few inspections and even fewer violations, and compliance orders are practically non-existent, so why bother?
On the other hand, just in case some rogue state agency like the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East (SLFPA-E) decides to take it upon itself to seek redress from 97 oil, gas and pipeline companies for the carnage they have wreaked on our coastal waters, all they have to do is throw money at the legislators and Gov. Bobby Jindal to be sure that such efforts are thwarted before they get out of the starting gate.
Altogether, the 144 current legislators and Jindal have raked in about $6 million in campaign contributions from big oil.
Yes, that’s a chunk of change but for the oil companies—ExxonMobil’s 2013 fourth quarter earnings (net profit) were $8.35 billion (That’s just three months)—it’s chump change.
Had that lawsuit by SLFPA-E been allowed to go forward, God forbid, even if the oil companies prevailed, they would have spent in legal fees alone far in more than the $6 million that they invested in those campaign contributions as a hedge against such an inconvenience.
Had they lost the lawsuit, however, the cost would have been in the billions of dollars, so what’s $6 million among friends? A mere pittance.
So now the legislators and Jindal can continue to accept big oil’s money, take smug satisfaction in their illegitimate marriage for the welfare of their benefactors and slap each other on the back for their brilliant legislative maneuvers. The oil companies now have a free pass to continue to destroy the Louisiana marshes and landscape and everyone, as my grandfather used to say, is happy as a dead pig in the sunshine. Everyone, that is, except the losers.
The losers?
Oh, that’s the citizens of Louisiana but who gives a crap about them?
The next election is more than a year away and their memories are so short.
$2.50 each or three for $6.00
Louisiana Voice 