Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council’ Category

Jindal’s veto of developmentally disabled funds is part of multi-state trend to slash benefits for Medicaid recipients

Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, Contract, Contracts, Governor's Office, Health Care, Layoffs, Privatization, RFP, Request for Proposals, State Agencies, Transparency on July 1, 2013| 29 Comments »

If you think Gov. Bobby Jindal’s veto of $4 million to provide in-home services to the developmentally disabled was merely an aberration, an inadvertent blip on the budgetary radar, you may wish to reassess your decision to give the governor a pass on this issue.

Jindal, of course, offered his own spin in his pushback against criticism he has received from proponents of the measure but he simply can’t get around the fact that cutbacks of services to the poor appear to be the norm in several states these days. Surely he has not forgotten his closure of Southeast Louisiana Hospital in Mandeville less than a year ago that put mental health treatment by state facilities out of reach for many in southeast Louisiana.

No one denies the current budgetary shortfalls—brought about in large part by Jindal’s stubborn refusal to seek new means of tax revenue except through the New Orleans hotel fee increase (which is not a “tax,” in the land of Jindal-speak, but an “enforceable obligation,”) and college tuition increases (“fees,” not taxes). But were it not for the more-than-generous tax incentives doled out in the form of corporate welfare, er, industrial incentives the state’s coffers would be $5 billion richer each year.

It’s not like he couldn’t have trimmed a couple of million or so from the $1.285 billion appropriation for his Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness. Of course, to suggest there might be the remote possibility of waste in a budget of nearly $1.3 billion for a pet agency would be blasphemy.

The Louisiana State Racing Commission got its full share of funding—$12.2 million. Surely, there’s no waste there. Likewise, the $82.7 million appropriation for the Louisiana Stadium and Exposition District administered by a commission made up 100 percent of generous Jindal campaign donors.

Then there’s the Department of Economic Development and the Office of Business Development which combine to receive the full complement of their $36.6 million appropriation in order to ensure the uninterrupted flow of those $5 billion in tax incentives, rebates and exemptions to attract all those new jobs that are supposed to retain current residents and bring in new ones—even though the state’s population has shrunk to the extent that we now have only six congressmen instead of the eight we had a few years ago.

And we’re not even going to go into detail about all those washed up ex-legislators hired by the various agencies at six-figure salaries—or the glut of administrative personnel with limited experience with which John White has loaded down his Department of Education, also at six-figure salaries. Or White’s slipshod management of the disastrous voucher program that allowed New Living Word School in Ruston to rip off DOE to the tune of nearly $400,000—money that will never be recovered, by the way.

Sorry, folks, the money’s not there for the developmentally disabled. You just should have had the good sense to be born developmentally abled or better yet, rich.

And as we said in the first paragraph, that veto was no accident. It was planned from the get-go as will future cuts of medical benefits to the poor.

Why do you think Carol Steckel was brought here in the first place?

Steckel was Alabama’s Medicaid Commissioner from 1988-1992 and again from December 2003 until her move to Louisiana in November of 2010.

While at Alabama she issued a ruling that poor amputees in that state didn’t really need artificial limbs. In January of 2008, she submitted the state’s Medicaid budget that cut programs that pay for prosthetics and orthotics (used to provide support and alignment to prevent or correct deformities) because, in her words, the programs were optional, not mandatory.

She also awarded a $3.7 million contract to Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) in 2007 even though that company’s bid was $500,000 more than the next bid. ACS had hired Alabama Gov. Bob Riley’s former chief of staff Toby Roth, which probably greased the skids somewhat.

Sound familiar? ACS, which is now part of Xerox, was awarded four state contracts totaling $45.55 million and ACS contributed $10,000 to Jindal political campaigns. Jan Cassidy, sister-in-law to Congressman (U.S. Senator wannabe) Bill Cassidy, previously worked for ACS and then for Xerox as Vice President, State of Louisiana Client Executive. Where is Ms. Cassidy today? She heads the State of Louisiana Division of Administration’s Procurement and Technology Section at a salary of $150,000. Toby Roth in reverse?

Steckel was imported from Alabama and given the title of Chief of the Department of Health and Hospital’s (DHH) Center for Health Care Innovation and Technology. She created quite a stir when she failed at first but eventually succeeded at terminating 69 information technology positions at DHH and giving the contract to the University of New Orleans to run. The 69 employees moved over to UNO’s payroll, saving the state zero, and UNO began collecting an administrative fee of 15 percent to run the IT operations for DHH. Thus, instead of a savings, the state is now paying an additional 15 percent for privatization.

Steckel has moved on again, this time to work her magic as Medicaid Director for North Carolina.

Now let’s move about 400 miles to the west—to Austin—and examine what occurred when similar legislation was passed in Texas a decade ago.

Dave Mann (not to be confused with the premier political analyst of our era, Bob Mann), then a reporter for the Texas Observer, covered the story in June of 2003 and predicted a train wreck would result from the legislation pushed through by Republican Rep. Arlene Wohlgemuth. Mann, it turns out, was dead-on in his predictions, which could explain in part why he is that publication’s editor today.

HB 2292 amounted to a “massive rewrite of the state’s social services safety net,” Mann wrote by squeezing 11 existing state agencies into four, all under the control of a powerful governor-appointed commissioner. It also cut many relatively inexpensive healthcare services for the poor, wiping out 1,000 state jobs in the process by privatizing several core state functions (again, sound familiar?)

The bill cut services under the Children’s Health Insurance Program and threw up bureaucratic barriers that purged an estimated 160,000 kids from its rolls. It abolished an entire section of Medicaid that offered temporary aid to families who were unable to pay high medical bills because of illness or accident—knocking an additional 10,000 people month out of medical coverage. It also put the squeeze on nursing home patients by reducing their “personal needs” allowances by 25 percent—from $60 per month to $45 (money nursing home residents spent on such things as toothpaste, shampoo, and shoes).

Proponents of the bill crowed that it would eliminate more than 3,000 state employees and hand over several core functions to large corporations, many of whom were major campaign contributors to key Texas politicians.

Among those outsourced functions were four privately run call centers with operators charged with making the determination of which families would be eligible for state programs like Medicaid, CHIP, Supplemental Security Income, welfare and food stamps.

Would anyone care to guess which company tried desperate to jockey itself into position of grabbing a call center contract? None other than our old friend, ACS, which was already running Medicaid programs in 13 states, including Texas.

ACS ended up not getting the call center contract, but if it had, it would have created the mother of conflicts of interest because by virtue of running the Texas Medicaid program, it was charged with keeping administrative costs down. Thus, the fewer Medicaid cases on the books, the lower the costs and the more money ACS would have stood to make. Thus, had it run the call center in the dual role as guardian of the program, it would have had a financial incentive to approve as few people as possible for Medicaid benefits.

Mann, contacted Monday, said though ACS did not get the call center contract, the operation nonetheless “fell apart within months.”

He said the error rates skyrocketed “because experienced state employees who knew the system were gone” and the contractors knew precious little about the system. “The enrollment process was messed up from the start,” he said, and the state was handed a substantial fine by the federal government.

He said Texas had to try and rehire all the former state employees who had been doing the job before. “They had to bring them back in and have them salvage the system,” he said.

Now, if you happen to wonder how four states—Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, and with Carol Steckel now on the scene, most probably North Carolina—could each stumble into the same scenario with Medicaid reforms and privatization of support staff, rest assured it was not a coincidence.

Efforts in Texas, Louisiana and Alabama (and presumably North Carolina) to slash health care benefits under the states’ Medicaid programs come to us courtesy of our old friend, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

Though we have not visited ALEC for some time, the organization of some 2000 state legislators and scores of corporate underwriter-sponsors has never been very far from the action.

Among the major targets of ALEC are state health, pharmaceutical and safety net programs, including:

• Opposing health insurance reforms with state constitutional amendments;

• Opposing of efforts to advance public health care;

• Eliminating mandated benefits intended to ensure minimal care for American workers;

• Supporting Medicare privatization;

• Creating barriers to requiring important health benefits;

• Privatizing child support enforcement services.

ALEC’s number-one priority has been to encourage its members (legislators) to introduce bills that would undercut health care reform by prohibiting the Affordable Health Care Act’s insurance mandate.

Led by PhRMA, Johnson & Johnson, Bayer and GlaxoSmithKlein, ALEC’s model bill, the “Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act,” has been introduced in 44 states. Utilizing ideas and information from such groups as the Heritage Foundation, the National Center for Policy Analysis, the Cato Institute, the Goldwater Institute, the James Madison Institute, and the National Federation of Independent Business, ALEC even released a “State Legislators Guild to Repealing ObamaCare” in which a variety of model legislation, including bills to partially privatize Medicaid and SCHIP, is discussed.

Pardon our skepticism, but after the disasters of the Office of Risk Management privatization and the Department of Education voucher fiasco, we can’t help being a bit leery of these quick-fix schemes. The sweetheart CNSI contract with DHH has already proved to be a major $200 million scandal—and that may well be only the beginning.

Up next is an ambitious program to privatize the IT operations of 20 agencies under the Executive Branch. That privatization could mean the loss of some 1100 more state jobs and their duties turned over to a private firm with no grasp of how things are done. That sad scenario has already played out in other states and invariably resulted in cost overruns and repeated failure. There is no reason to expect a better outcome this time.

It was Albert Einstein, after all, who defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

Read Full Post »

Hell in Louisiana, for Bobby Jindal, that is, is serving as governor for 8 years while waiting to run for President

Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, Ethics, Governor's Office, Transparency on June 29, 2013| 15 Comments »

Bobby Jindal, we’re told, in Baton Rouge was chained,
And for eight years he there remained;
He never complained, nor did he vent,
While he waited to run for president
So he could torment the soul of a nation
With moral bankruptcy and deprivation.

He asked of ALEC, wouldn’t it be grand
To become the leader of all the land?
ALEC said yes, it would be loads of fun
But there’re things you should know, son;
The media there ain’t lazy and they surely ain’t dumb
And they’ll chew on you like a big chicken drum.

A poll was taken for his groundwork to be a-layin’
Only to see him finish behind Sarah Palin;
Then appeared the devil with a contract he drew
For Jindal to run against Mary Landrieu;
But the deal was nixed and Satan to hell returned
Leaving Bobby with so much to be learned.

You don’t arrive with promises of transparency
And then deal from the bottom for all to see;
You don’t sell out our state, or from where we sit
The cloak of higher ambition will never fit;
You don’t enrich your friends on the backs of the poor
Or you’ll find your poll numbers down in the sewer.

You see, Bobby Jindal, the truth you’ve not discerned
Is that respect as a leader must first be earned.
You and your donors have surely had your fun
But you will never be elected to Washington;
Your honor is shot; all your political capital spent,
So don’t think for a minute you’ll ever be president.

—(With apologies to the anonymous composer of Hell in Texas)

Read Full Post »

Pylant bill would only guarantee constant revenue stream for shady Course Choice providers already circling like vultures

Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, BESE, Education, Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Politicians on May 22, 2013| 15 Comments »

There have been ridiculous bills filed in the Louisiana Legislature. In fact, you can just about count on at least two or three each year.

But HB 648 by freshman Rep. Steve Pylant (R-Winnsboro) is the most asinine monument to waste and corruption in decades of wasteful and corrupt legislatures.

Even as LouisianaVoice reveals case after case of more than 1100 bogus registrations for Course Choice courses in three north Louisiana parishes, HB 648 would actually require the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) to “adopt rules and regulations that require all public high school students, beginning with those entering ninth grade in the fall of 2014, to successfully complete at least one course offered by a BESE-authorized online or virtual course provider as a prerequisite to graduation.”

In the wake of what has been taking place in Caddo, Bossier and Webster parishes (and more recently in Calcasieu where it has been learned that one student not enrolled in the school listed by the student attempted to sign up for five courses and another signed up for two courses considered inappropriate for the grade level), Pylant ought to do the decent thing and withdraw his bill in the interest of saving himself further embarrassment.

His bill would accomplish precisely one thing: it would encourage even more fraud than has already taken place with course choice providers signing students to courses in those parishes without the knowledge or consent of the students or their parents.

In one case a severe and profound child was signed up for a class and in Bossier Parish, about 40 students did not attend a school in that parish as their applications indicated.

First grade students were signed up for high school Latin and high school English classes and many of the students ostensibly signed up in Bossier were registered for highly technical advanced mathematics classes.

Pylant, the retired sheriff of Franklin Parish, was elected in 2011 to the seat formerly held by Noble Ellington, who retired and was hired at a six-figure salary by the Louisiana Department of Insurance.

Ellington, the former national president of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in fact, contributed $500 of his campaign funds to Pylant in 2011.

Pylant also received more than $13,000 from the Republican Party of Louisiana, the Louisiana Committee for a Republican Majority, and the Republican Legislative Delegation Campaign.

He also received $2500 each from Gov. Bobby Jindal’s campaign fund and House Speaker Chuck Kleckley’s political action committee, so it’s fairly easy to see where his allegiance lies.

But that is little reason to pass legislation that will only encourage an already serious problem of fly-by-night companies signing up students only for the purpose of qualifying the course provider to receive one-half of its tuition up front—whether or not the student ever turns on his or her computer.

The State of Idaho has already been there, done that, and decided it was a bad idea. Voters in that state easily repealed Idaho’s version of Course Choice—they called it Online Learning—by a whopping 2-1 margin in a statewide referendum last November.

Course Choice easily falls under the heading of “What’s going on here?”

And what’s going on, simply put, is the continued raping of the state treasury—sanctioned by the Jindal administration.

But Pylant’s bill qualifies for “What the heck is he thinking?”

The answer to that question is anyone’s guess.

We only know one thing for certain: it’s a win-win for shady operators and a lose-lose for Louisiana taxpayers.

Read Full Post »

Guest column: Metairie attorney dissects the post-Katrina, ALEC-inspired politicalization of Louisiana public education

Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, BESE, Budget, Education on April 26, 2013| 33 Comments »

EDITOR’S NOTE: LouisianaVoice traditionally addresses state political events as they occur. Our posts generally run between 1,000 and 1,500 words in length. Recently, however, attorney Nancy Picard, a Metairie law firm partner, submitted the following 4,000-word essay that examines the complicated, confusing and controversial odyssey of Louisiana public education policy since Hurricane Katrina. We found her research to be so thorough and the topic so timely, that we felt it imperative that we run her essay, despite its length, with only minimal editing.

Following is her guest column:

Louisiana’s Great Education Giveaway
By NANCY PICARD

A writer recently hailed federal and state education reform as a new civil rights movement. But the word reform, which means “the improvement . . . of what is wrong, corrupt, unsatisfactory,” can hardly be applied to the recent changes in educational law. Most of these changes are not for the better. Instead, they create a separate and wholly unequal educational system masquerading as choice, which serves to destabilize and discredit public schools in the name of improvement and to make state funds accessible to a wide range of individuals and corporations with little or no oversight.

This article examines recent legislation that dramatically expanded state takeover of schools after Hurricane Katrina, shows how the changes are contrary to educational research on effective schools, and points to some examples of schools and programs gone awry under this new regime.

The First Steps: The State Changes the Educational Landscape

Before Hurricane Katrina, the Louisiana Legislature adopted the No Child Left Behind testing regimen and statutes allowing for the establishment of charter schools. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) requires states to develop and assess basic skills of all students at select grade levels in order for those school districts to receive federal funding.

Schools must make adequate yearly progress in test scores or face serious consequences, including being publicly labeled a school “in need of improvement,” being required to replace school staff, being turned into a charter school, or being run by a private company or the state office of education.

The Louisiana Legislature had also established the Recovery School District (RSD) to take over five schools run by the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) based on their poor test scores. Immediately following Hurricane Katrina, before the RSD takeover of these schools could be evaluated, state officials pushed for much more sweeping changes.

The Great Takeover: The New Orleans Public Schools in Post-Katrina Louisiana

The 2005-06 school year had begun and 59,000 students were attending OPSB schools; it had an operating budget of $418 million and employed more than 7,000 employees. Hurricane Katrina made landfall on August 29, 2005. On September 27, 2005, State School Superintendent Cecil Picard wrote to the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) requesting federal policy waivers and federal funding for charter schools. Governor Blanco signed an Executive Order suspending provisions of Title 17 that would have prevented the rapid expansion of charter schools.

After Katrina, the OPSB located available teachers and planned to re-open 52 schools, but state officials did not support this plan. Instead, the Louisiana Legislature enacted Act 35, which provided for automatic transfer of failing schools to the RSD where the school was in a district deemed academically in crisis.

Academically in crisis was defined as any local system in which more than 30 schools are academically unacceptable or more than 50% of its students attend schools that are academically unacceptable. Whereas in August 2005, a School Performance Score (SPS) of 60 was designated passing, after Hurricane Katrina, the passing score increased to 87.5. What had been considered a passing score was now deemed unacceptable. As a result of Act 35, and the changing SPS standard, the RSD took over 102 of the 126 OPSB schools, bringing the RSD total from five before Katrina to 107 schools after. The SPS reverted to 60 again in 2010.

Despite available certified OPSB teachers, the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) advertised nationally for teachers, and the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) approved a contract with Teach For America (TFA) to train and place 125 TFA members in under-resourced public schools in Greater New Orleans and Southern Louisiana.

Although the state had represented to the DOE that it needed funds to pay salaries and benefits of out-of-work school employees, and received more than $500 million to do so, none of the money was used to pay OPSB teachers. Instead, the funds were diverted to the RSD, while the state actively recruited out-of-state employees, offering signing bonuses and housing allowances as high as $17,500.

By the end of that year, OPSB was operating only five schools and nine charters, and because the money follows the child, OPSB was without funds to pay teachers. All OPSB employees were notified that they would be terminated, and would not be allowed to transfer to the charters.

A Taste for Money and Power

The post-Katrina takeover of New Orleans schools gave the state a taste of funds formerly controlled by the OPSB and whetted its appetite for more. Since 2005, the RSD has continued to expand into low economic areas throughout the state. As of the 2011-12 school year, the RSD directly oversees schools in Orleans, East Baton Rouge, Caddo, St. Helena, and Pointe Coupe Parishes.

Especially disturbing is the St. Helena case where the RSD took over the middle school and refused to return it to local control despite failing to achieve the gains of St. Helena‘s locally-controlled elementary and high schools.14 Twenty more schools throughout the state are currently at risk of being taken over by the RSD.

The RSD, which started in part to keep underperforming schools from falling through the cracks in an overburdened school system, has now grown to a statewide school district with all the same challenges but without local input.

Moreover, in the last two years, the legislature has imposed more draconian requirements on public schools and teachers, while making more funding available to individuals and non-public schools without the same mandates or accountability standards. Rather than help public schools improve, the changes have the effect of discrediting them. For example, legislation changed the procedures for evaluating public school teachers, effective for 2012-13, requiring that 50 percent of a teacher‘s evaluation be based on evidence of growth in student achievement using a value added (VA) assessment model.

Then, on March 23, 2012, at the end of a grueling session, the Louisiana Legislature rushed the passage of two more bills—Acts 1 and 2—with little time allotted for examination or debate. Act 1 only grants tenure to teachers who attain a highly effective evaluation rating for five out of six years, and removes tenure already granted for any year that the teacher is evaluated as ineffective.

Act 1 substitutes a hearing before the local school board with a hearing before a panel comprised of a teacher, a principal and a superintendent designee that must take place within seven days, and after the formerly tenured teacher is terminated. Now, although the new evaluation procedure has never even been fully implemented, teachers may be terminated based on either low student test scores or a disgruntled principal‘s evaluation despite previous years of stellar performance or extenuating circumstances.

Act 2 imposed sweeping changes to education funding, the state‘s charter school system, and the responsibilities of BESE. The Act provided for zero interest loans to charter schools and scholarships for students to attend non-public schools. These scholarships are provided in part from the MFP, previously used exclusively for public education.

Act 2 created independent charter authorizers empowered to authorize charter schools, further removing state and local oversight from the chartering process. Charter schools, not the parish school board, are responsible for directly administering their own budgets.

Finally, Act 2 increased BESE‘s responsibilities exponentially. BESE can now transfer any school in the state to the RSD under certain conditions and is now responsible for overseeing all school boards, charter boards, charter authorizers, online educators, and home-school educators, concentrating power in the hands of one state authority, removed from local control.

The Reckoning: Measuring Education Legislation against the Research

Educational research does not support the changes being implemented with such haste. Diane Ravitch, Assistant Secretary of Education under President George H.W. Bush, and author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System, initially supported NCLB, but now criticizes the draconian penalties imposed on schools for failing to reach unrealistic goals.

She also explains why the promise of charter schools has not been fulfilled. Most studies of charter schools show that they vary widely in quality and reflect no more gains than public schools. Further, as compared to neighboring public schools, charters enroll fewer disabled and disadvantaged students. Their higher graduation rates often reflect very high attrition due to “counseling out” the lowest performing students. The students who are hardest to educate are left to regular public schools, which makes comparisons between the two sectors unfair. This is not a model for public education, which must educate all children.

In their most recent book, Professional Capital: Transforming Teaching in Every School, Andy Hargreaves and Michael Fullan, experts on the subject of school reform, summarize the research on successful versus failed school reform efforts.25 Among the failed ―solutions they identify the following ―silver bullets:

• Closing down all the bad schools fails because the vast majority of students end up in other non-performing schools now farther from home.

• Importing ―smart and inexpensive teachers fails because most of these teachers move on after a few years, leaving instability in schools that need stability most.

• Replacing principals whose schools have poor testing results fails because it leaves poverty-stricken schools with more short-term leadership which, again, leads to more instability.

• Relentless timelines for continuous yearly improvement in test scores fails because such improvements are simply unsustainable.

• Focusing on charter schools fails because though exceptional charters change a few lives others rely on ―skim[ming] the best students and teachers from the top, and leav[ing] out students with the most challenging disabilities, or have no system to support students when they get into trouble.

• Performance-based evaluation of teachers fails because it uses measurements of students‘ growth purportedly to reward the best teachers and get rid of the ―worst based on the fallacies that we can solve our problems by substituting bad people with good ones and by over-relying on a narrow range of performance measures.

These ―silver bullets make for ―slick political promises but are based on incorrect assumptions about what directs sustainable school change; and yet they have all been enshrined in Louisiana. For example, the idea of rewarding and terminating teachers based only upon student test results is based on the false assumption that measuring students‘ gains on test scores reflects teachers‘ effectiveness.

But research shows that gains in student achievement are influenced by many factors besides the teacher. A teacher may have very high scores with one class and not another or in one year and not another, regardless of teaching techniques, or show higher scores but be less effective in attaining long-run achievement.

So a teacher, for example, could prepare students for a single year-end test, but neglect areas which would better prepare students for the next grade level. Veteran teachers have been dismissed based on scores who have also been voted teacher of the year and rated as exceeding expectations by supervisors. When teachers cannot identify the relationship between what they do in the classroom and their ratings, they become frustrated and demoralized.

The State Giveth: The Push to Privatize

If eliminating teachers based on faulty evaluations is not good for teachers or students, why would such a program be rushed through the legislature with lightning speed? One reason might be that testing is a growing industry, and testing companies exert an influence on legislation. Pearson, the world‘s largest for-profit education business, has a $32 million five-year contract to produce New York‘s standardized tests and a half billion dollar five-year testing contract with Texas.

Meanwhile, closer to home, a Minnesota company, Data Recognition Corp., has more than $93 million in LDOE contracts. Louisiana has a second contract for testing with the California company, Pacific Metrics, for $39.8 million.

This year more than 155,000 public school students in grades eight, nine, and 10 will take new tests—called EXPLORE and PLAN—designed to help students improve their performance on the ACT, a test of college readiness, which now almost all high school juniors will be required to take at state expense.

At least one-third of Louisiana’s entering high school students operate below the basic level in reading, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics, and funding for Louisiana‘s colleges and universities has been slashed, but the state is requiring and paying for large numbers of high school students to take college admission tests.

Why?

Testing companies are not the only ones enjoying Louisiana‘s largess. Louisiana currently has 70 contracts worth more than $1 million each and totaling $282 million; most of these contracts go to out-of-state contractors and are monitored by the LDOE.

The RSD entered a $10.5 million contract with an Illinois company, Durham School Services, to provide bus transportation and another $500,000 to a Missouri company, Transpar Group, to design bus routes and provide oversight. In July 2012, Durham sent lay-off notices to about 200 bus drivers and monitors because the RSD owed the company $7.2 million.

Educational service companies are promoted by ideologically driven lobbying organizations such as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) which gained notoriety for providing the model for Florida’s Stand Your Ground legislation. ALEC has as members some 2000 state legislators and corporate executives. From 2001 through 2010, ALEC companies spent more than $3 million in Louisiana political campaigns, including almost $132,000 to Governor Jindal.

ALEC drafts model bills on topics ranging from privatizing prisons, to toughening voter ID laws, encouraging privately-owned pensions, and opposing environmental regulation. In 2011, the Center for Media and Democracy, released an extensive archive of ALEC‘s model amendments. The model legislation often advances the economic interest of member corporations. For example, the chief executive officer of Data Recognition—a big Louisiana testing contractor—has been a member of ALEC‘s leadership network.

ALEC‘s model education legislation includes privatizing education through vouchers, scholarships, charters, and tax incentives to businesses and individuals that furnish scholarships to private school; increasing public school testing and reporting; increasing access to all facets of education by private entities and corporations; and reducing the influence of democratically-elected local school boards and school districts.

The ALEC model legislation should sound familiar, because it is now Louisiana law.

“Silver Bullets” Line Some Pockets with Gold

Louisiana now funds so many programs that one must question whether those with access are spending it appropriately. These entities include charter schools, private schools with public scholarships or vouchers, and recipients of course providers funding. Some 45 different charter school boards that manage their own budgets now govern what was once overseen by the Orleans Parish School Board.

The proliferation of charter schools and vouchers throughout the state exponentially increases the opportunity for waste, graft, and theft. In 2008-09, the financial manager of a New Orleans charter school embezzled $660,000 from the school.

Nor is it clear who is monitoring the curriculum and the teaching that is taking place in all of these separate entities. For example, a nonprofit organization, Pelican Education Foundation, ran a charter school, Abramson Science & Technology High School in New Orleans East and Kenilworth Service and Technology Charter School in Baton Rouge. The state revoked Pelican‘s charter for Abramson after a number of allegations surfaced about the school:

• that the school was not serving special education students;

• that a teacher provided a more winnable science project to a student in place of the project that the student himself had prepared;

• that the teacher for its Turkish language class, disappeared from the classroom for months; and the school tried to bribe—through an executive of a Turkish-run business associated with the school—an Education Department official who had investigated some of the complaints.

The charter was revoked only after the Times-Picayune pressed for public records.

Pelican appears to have ties with the Cosmos Foundation, the largest charter operator in Texas, and similarly founded by Turkish educators and businessmen, and with Gulen, a movement started by a Turkish religious scholar. Cosmos schools have come under scrutiny for importing teachers from Turkey and favoring Turkish business contractors for everything from large construction to small vendors selling school lunches, uniforms and web design.

In Georgia, publicly financed charter schools tied to the Turkish Gulen movement came under scrutiny when they defaulted on bonds and an audit found the schools had improperly granted hundreds of thousands of dollars in contracts to businesses connected to people committed to the Gulen movement.

Because charters are independent entities, students are left in the lurch when things go awry. Schools can be chartered for a five-year period. After year three, depending on student test scores, they may be told that their charters will terminate after year five. News that Sojourner Truth Academy in New Orleans was closing created an exodus of faculty and students. Students were left with the Hobson‘s choice of attending classes without teachers or transferring to other schools that would require them to repeat the year.

In its last year, Sojourner Truth lost over 20 faculty members. Student transfers lead to a budget crunch because schools receive per pupil funding. Locked into rental and service contracts, Sojourner Truth made drastic spending cuts. Paper towels in bathrooms became a luxury. Students reported a breakdown in discipline, and de facto free periods because qualified teachers could not be found to teach classes. A college-bound student reported not know[ing] any science or what fine arts is.

According to data published by the LDOE, in 2009-2010, almost 28 percent of the Recovery School District teachers were first year teachers as compared to less than 11 percent statewide. The RSD has been in a constant state of flux since its inception, taking over schools and then turning many into charters, each time with a change of faculty. This constant turnover means instability for students who can least afford it.

Now more public funds will flow not only to charters, but also to private schools. Act 2 expands the Student Scholarship for Educational Excellence Program allowing for 5,000 more students to move public school funding to private schools. This year taxpayers will spend approximately $12 million on vouchers. But while the accountability for public schools and teachers increased, there is little to none for the private schools receiving this public money.

The New Living Word School in Ruston topped of the state‘s voucher list, offering the most voucher seats in 2012-13—315—of any school. It was eventually awarded fewer vouchers after several news articles raised questions about the school. But in the prior school year, New Living Word enrolled only 122 students in a limited facility and taught mainly through DVDs.

Even if it ultimately receives fewer than requested, it will operate mostly with public funds, but still be considered private, with no obligation to hold public meetings to report how funds are spent and no consequences if its students fail to measure up.

Other small schools that were provisionally approved for vouchers have had their approval revoked but only after news reports raised questions about them. For example, the Alexandria Town Talk reported that a small school in Deridder, BeauVer Christian Academy, had experienced financial problems in prior incarnations, including liens and financial judgments. An agent and an officer of the limited liability company were convicted of issuing worthless checks.

In New Orleans, more than 24 private schools take part in the expanded voucher program. According to the Times-Picayune, the schools that enrolled voucher students last school year drew 37 percent of their students through vouchers, and voucher students made up more than 60 percent of the student body at some schools.

Like New Living Word, some will dramatically expand their student bodies through vouchers. For example, Life of Christ Christian Academy has 91 new seats available for vouchers which will more than double the enrollment, almost one-third of whom came from the voucher program last year.

Of the voucher students last year, only 13 percent were at grade level on standardized tests. At Upper Room Bible Church Academy, only 24percent of its voucher students met grade level last year; it could now receive almost $1 million in voucher funds. Yet these schools will not be publicly disparaged with labels of C, D, or failing like public schools based on their test results, so parents may move from one failing school to another, without knowing.

The greatest giveaway of all may be through the Louisiana Course Choice Program, which, according to the LDOE‘s website, will create Course Choice with per-course funding and multiple provider course delivery, creating access to unprecedented educational opportunities for tens of thousands of Louisiana students. It will also create an unprecedented bonanza for individuals to deplete funds that would otherwise go to public schools.

Course providers include business associations, educational entrepreneurs, and online courses. This program will not just serve impoverished students and students in schools rated ineffective, but also the full spectrum of students currently enrolled in Louisiana schools, including non-public and home schooled students.

The per-course tuition was to be taken from the Minimum Foundation Program, with the LDOE transferring funds from the city or parish school system in which the student resides to the authorized course provider. To be clear, these are not extra state funds, but funds allotted to public schools for educating public school students, but being diverted to a variety of course providers for the benefit of home schooled and private school students—until a Baton Rouge district court judge ruled such manipulation of MFP funds unconstitutional.

Conclusion

Highly ranked public schools in Louisiana are those that either have admissions standards limiting who can attend or are located in high income areas; while those ranked at the bottom are those in impoverished areas or areas in which the school population is impoverished because of high middle class attendance at private schools.

“A” and “B” schools did not start out as “failing” or “D” schools and work their way up; they started out with high rankings because of their school populations. There is no evidence that using simplistic measures to test and label schools and teachers helps them improve their delivery of education services to children. On the other hand, considerable evidence suggests that these labels only erode confidence in the schools among the public and the children who attend them and demoralize teachers.

Allowing a few students from impoverished public schools the “choice” to attend a different school does nothing for the vast majority of students remaining except to reduce their funding. Nor is there evidence that the “A” and “B” schools are doing a better job with the students they have, rather than enrolling students who are themselves doing a better job.

All students can learn and succeed and we should all commit to their doing so. But we must recognize that some students—those who live in areas of higher unemployment and crime, whose parents never finished high school, let alone college, and whose parents are working two jobs to pay the light bill—need the dedication and cooperation of all concerned toward educational problem-solving, not political rhetoric and blame.

There are no easy solutions. Unfortunately, political rhetoric has eliminated sound educational theory and testing has been substituted for teaching. Pointing the finger at individual teachers and principals is simplistic and self-defeating as is pointing the finger at one school or another. The teacher is the key but this does not mean that we should focus on getting and rewarding or punishing individual teachers.

We need to dedicate ourselves to extending what is working to the entire system and problem-solving what is not. But tossing around public school funds like so many Mardi Gras beads is irresponsible, short-sighted, and an evasion of our responsibility to educate all citizens.

Read Full Post »

BESE takes funding from disabled students with MFP passage as Chas Roemer tells Lottie Beebe to pipe down

Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, BESE, Education, Governor's Office, Legislature, Legislators, Revenue, Transparency on March 8, 2013| 7 Comments »

When the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) approved the Minimum Foundation Program (MFP) for 2013-14, it sent a message across Louisiana that the board and the Department of Education (DOE) have little or no concern for the education of some 82,000 children with disabilities.

It’s not enough that state aid to local school districts is frozen for the fifth consecutive year, but the MFP as approved by BESE will actually cost the local districts every time a student transfers from a public school to a private school.

The action, passed by an 8-3 vote on Friday, appears on the surface to save local school districts money, but the reality is—as Gov. Bobby Jindal and Commissioner of Administration Kristy Nichols are fond of saying—every time a student leaves a public school to accept the still as yet unconstitutional voucher funding to enter a private school, it costs the local district nearly $1,450.

Funding under the MFP is extremely complex because of a number of factors that are taken into account in the process. There are different levels of funding under several criteria, including graduation rate, performance, placement and disability.

Theoretically, the state pays districts an average of $8,537 per enrolled student, though students rarely, if ever bring that precise amount because of the variables in the formula, including the type of disability a student may have. But when a student leaves, those characteristics are not taken into account and the student takes $6,311 in funding with him or her.

On the face of it, that would mean the local districts would keep the difference of $2,226—except it doesn’t work that way. Instead, the state keeps 65 percent of that savings, or $1,447.

If 10 students leave, for example, that would mean the local school board would lose $14,470 in state funding over and above the $63,110 in funding that each of the 10 students takes out of the local system. So the local school system, which had a set amount of money coming in based on the MFP formula, is now losing money.

The Louisiana Developmental Disabilities Council (LDDC) said the use of a different funding formula for traditional public schools than for school choice programs would result in funding inequities for children with disabilities.

That’s putting it mildly.

It’s enough that Jindal and State Superintendent of Education John White would flaunt a court decision, to defy a judge’s ruling that using state money designated for local school systems to fund private vouchers. But to deliberately and with no show of compassion, jerk funding away from special education students is nothing short of unconscionable.

Students with disabilities make up 12.5 percent of traditional public schools but only 8 percent of charter schools and just 3 percent of private schools. Even more significant, in most cases students with disabilities who are enrolled in school choice programs are not those with the most severe, most costly disabilities.

Consequently, more funds leave the traditional public school systems than the MFP formula indicates the local systems should have based on student enrollment. Funds removed from public schools left serving students with disabilities are either provided to the school choice program or, in the case of the scholarship, the state claims an inflated savings.

The reality is (there’s that term again), when all transactions are complete, schools serving higher percentages of students with disabilities, particularly those with severe disabilities, tend to have less funding than expected, LDDC says.

Neither the Special Education Advisory Panel, nor the Louisiana Association of Special Education Administrators, nor the Superintendents’ Advisory Committee nor the Louisiana Together Educating All Children (LaTEACH) recommended or agreed with phasing in the proposed changes.

When member Lottie Beebe attempted to speak out against the proposal, BESE President Chas Roemer interrupted his daydream of running for the U.S. Senate against Mary Landrieu long enough to attempt to silence Beebe by saying, “I think you have made your point.”

“I’m not finished,” Beebe shot back, leveling a broadside at Roemer for his earlier claim that he wants to close the Department of Education.

But all that mattered little to White, eight of the 11 BESE members or to Jindal, who has closed mental hospitals in New Orleans and Mandeville, moved to privatize state hospitals in what he calls “partnerships” with private facilities, and attempted to terminate the state’s hospice program. Public backlash over the move to shut down funding for hospice caused Jindal to miraculously “find” a million dollars to continue the program.

And don’t forget his ongoing efforts to abolish the state income tax in favor of increasing sales taxes, a move that would help the wealthy while increasing the burden on the low- and middle-income residents of Louisiana.

Even though BESE approved the MFP, it must be accepted—or rejected—by the Louisiana Legislature which convenes on April 8.

Meanwhile, the administration is moving forward with its appeal of the ruling by District Judge Tim Kelley that the method of funding the state voucher program is unconstitutional. The Jindal administration has suffered four separate setbacks in the courts as it attempts to implement the far-ranging education “reform” package passed by the legislature last year.

Several legislators have expressed second thoughts at the speed with which those “reforms” were enacted, especially in light of the various court decisions.

Jindal, however, is following the game plan of the American Legislative Exchange Council to the letter and, through White, is attempting to funnel contracts to a company owned by Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox Television network and the Wall Street Journal—and probably to other political allies, though White thus far has not complied with LouisianaVoice’s request for a list of DOE contracts.

If anyone still wonders about Jindal’s motives, we would remind you of Murdoch’s brash observation: “When it comes to K-12 education, we see a $500 billion sector in the U.S. alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed by big breakthroughs that extend the reach of great teaching.”

The question, of course, is just who defines great teaching?

As we have repeatedly said in past stories and will continue to remind our readers, it’s all about the money. Never forget that. Louisiana’s school children are merely pawns in a very expensive chess game. They are quite simply a means to an end—a very lucrative end.

If anyone still thinks Jindal and White are truly interested in the education of our children, one need only check the record and the myriad of state contracts awarded by DOE—if you can obtain the list.

The biggest mystery of all, however, is just how long are the citizens of Louisiana going to sit on the sideline and let this evil little man continue to exploit the low- and middle-income citizens of this state?

Forget about his running for president in three years; the here and now are far too important for us to remain passive while he continues to rape our state. His DNA is already smeared all over the state’s poor from his repeated past abuses.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »