Posted in BESE, Budget, Charters, Education, Legislature, Legislators, Notable Quotables on March 3, 2013| 1 Comment »
“Currently our 500 corps members work with nearly 45,000 students in the state of Louisiana. Our 1,000 alumni run schools, continue teaching in classrooms, are setting policy and otherwise influencing the debate for educational change in a positive direction.”
—Teach for America, describing its public purpose in its application for a $5 million appropriation in NGO funding from the Louisiana Legislature.
Posted in BESE, Charters, Education, Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Recovery School District, Revenue, RSD on March 3, 2013| 17 Comments »
Budgetary constraints coupled with Gov. Bobby Jindal’s general reluctance to approve non-government organization (NGO) funding requests have resulted in a declining number of requests in each of the past four years—from almost 450 in 2010 to just 90 last year and 80 this year (not counting the obvious $12 trillion joke request from the prankster in Georgia).
But Teach for America (TFA) apparently is not discouraged by the realities of fiscal austerity.
Among those 80 requests for funding by NGOs this year was one from TFA for a $5 million appropriation.
So, why would TFA need a $5 million appropriation from the state?
According to the project summary submitted with its application, the money would apparently be used to provide 550 to 700 teachers and 1,000 alumni who would serve as teachers, leaders and “positive change agents (whatever that is) in the lowest income schools throughout the greater New Orleans and greater Baton Rouge areas, central Louisiana, Acadiana and the Louisiana Delta.”
But wait. LouisianaVoice has come across three state contracts with TFA totaling almost $1.6 million to recruit, train and place 570 TFA teachers in the Delta region of Louisiana and the Recovery School District.
First, such an appropriation would seem to raise the obvious question of potential violations of federal Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) laws by awarding contracts for the hiring of specific applicants to the exclusion of other equally or better qualified applicants.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), http://www.eeoc.gov/ for example, recently:
• Settled a disability discrimination lawsuit against Dillard’s, Inc., which had forced employees to disclose personal and confidential medical information in order to be approved for health;
• Sued a discount tire store, claiming that the store does not hire women in management positions and other positions because of their gender;
• Sued Texas Roadhouse restaurants for age discrimination because the restaurant did not hire applicants age 40 and older;
• Sued Bass Pro for racial discrimination because the store does not hire African-Americans or Hispanic applicants and for retaliation against employees who complained about discrimination.
Louisiana’s colleges and universities each year turn out about 600 graduates in elementary education alone. These are students who pay increasingly higher tuition to complete a minimum of four years of education and student teaching (longer, if advanced degrees are pursued) in order to become certified teachers to educate our children.
But the Louisiana Department of Education (DOE) apparently is willing to dole out $1.6 million to TFA in order to give preferential treatment to 570 individuals whose only qualification is a five-week crash course with no certification.
So who are these 570 TFA teachers (or if you go by the NGO funding application, 500 teachers and 1,000 alumni) “who serve as teachers, leaders and positive change agents” and where are they employed?
A public records request to DOE by LouisianaVoice produced a list of 529 TFA teachers scattered across Louisiana over a three-year period—and not all of those in the “lowest income schools.” Nor was there any way of know how many names on the list provided by DOE are still employed, given the relative short tenure that has become indicative of TFA.
The largest number of TFA teachers (208) was found in various charter schools, followed by East Baton Rouge Parish (83). Some, however, were found in more affluent areas such as Jefferson Parish (19) Zachary (1), West Feliciana Parish (2).
Other school systems and the number of TFA teachers employed included:
• Acadia (1);
• Ascension (22);
• Avoyelles (16);
• City of Baker (9);
• East Feliciana (29);
• Pointe Coupee (20);
• St. Helena (14);
• St. Landry (3);
• Vermilion (1);
• Madison (10);
• Plaquemines (7);
• St. Bernard (32);
• St. James (5);
• St. John the Baptist (13).
TFA’s NGO application summary said that its historical size of operation was 200 teachers and 100 alumni.
But just as described by Naomi Klein in her book The Shock Doctrine, http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine natural disasters or emergencies have opened the doors for takeovers of local governmental entities by for-profit investors.
“…After Hurricane Katrina and with the incredible opportunities for educational change in Louisiana, Teach for America was asked by the state and private philanthropists to grow larger to provide the necessary human pipeline for schools and districts,” TFA’s application summary says.
Incredible opportunities? Human pipeline? Interesting how education has come to be seen in such terms.
“Using millions in national philanthropic dollars, Teach for America grew from 200 teachers and 100 alumni to our current scale.
“This $5 million matches the giving levels of our neighboring state of Mississippi and is in line with the needed funds to continue operating in Louisiana,” it said.
“Teach for America is currently leveraging state funds more than 10 to 1 by raising more than $11 million in private funds for our operations in Louisiana. An increase in state funding allows us to continue this work and allows us to attract even more private donations in the years to come.”
And just how would this $5 million be used?
The proposed budget provided on the application gives the following breakdown of expenditures:
• Contracts: $0;
• Acquisitions: $0;
• Major Repairs: $0;
• Operating Services: $0;
• Other Charges: $0;
• Salaries: $0;
• Professional Services: $5 million.
In describing its public purpose, TFA said it “recruits, selects, trains and supports teachers and leaders for the lowest income schools and school districts in the state of Louisiana and around the country.
“Teach for America is tapping a previously untapped base of talent and attracting America’s top recent graduates to teach in schools that need their support the most,” TFA said in its application. “We are ensuring that these teachers achieve excellent results immediately and are working to channel their energies towards long-term impact within education and within the state of Louisiana.
“Currently our 500 corps members work with nearly 45,000 students in the state of Louisiana. Our 1,000 alumni run schools, continue teaching in classrooms, are setting policy and otherwise influencing the debate for educational change in a positive direction.”
Running schools? Setting policy?
And all this time, we thought the Louisiana Department of Education was doing that
Posted in Broadband, Internet, Charters, Education, Exemptions, Incentives, Governor's Office, Health Care, Higher Education, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, OGB, Office of Group Benefits, Prison, Privatization, Retirement, Revenue, State Agencies, Taxes, Vouchers on February 15, 2013| 14 Comments »
Whenever Gov. Bobby Jindal speaks, be it on Fox News, CNN, to fellow Republican governors or at a rare press conference such as the one held on Thursday, his threefold purpose always seems to be to inflate weak ideology, obscure poor reasoning and inhibit clarity.
His less-than-masterful tax plan for the state, which he admitted to reporters is like so many of his ill-conceived programs in that it actually remains a non-plan, might well be entitled “The Dynamics of Irrational and Mythical Imperatives of Tax Reform: A Study in Psychic Trans-Relational Fiscal Recovery Modes” (with apologies to Calvin and Hobbes, our all-time favorite comic strip).
It’s not certain what drives him to wade off into these issues (see: hospital and prison closures, higher education cutbacks, charter schools, online courses and vouchers, state employee retirement “reform,” and privatization of efficiently-operating state agencies like the Office of Group Benefits) but his actions are probably precipitated by deeply ingrained biological, psychological and sociological imperatives that have triggered a reduced functionality in the cerebral cortex (Pickles).
Or it could be some depraved attempt to inflict vengeance on society because his two imaginary childhood friends teased him and wouldn’t let him play with them.
And though he insists he has the job he wants, we can’t help but wonder if he isn’t even now casting a covetous sidelong look at the advantages of plundering (Frazz) in case his presidential aspirations fail to materialize.
The reason for all this speculation is brought on by his admission in that ever-so-brief (less than 12 minutes or six question, whichever came first) press conference Thursday that the administration does not have a proposal as yet to eliminate personal and corporate income taxes despite his well-publicized announcement that he wants to scrap state income taxes for individuals and corporations (especially corporations) in a “revenue neutral” way that would most likely involve increased sales taxes.
But he doesn’t have a proposal yet.
Are you listening, legislators? He doesn’t have a proposal yet. That means the onus is going to be on you and if he doesn’t have his way with you (as he has for the past five years—and you can take that any way you please), he’s going public with the blame game.
If everything goes south, you don’t really think he’s going to take the blame, do you?
He doesn’t have a proposal yet. Now we see where State Superintendent John White gets his prompts on running the Department of Education. White has not submitted a completed plan for any project begun at DOE since he took over; everything—vouchers, charters, course choice—is in a constant state of flux. He announces rules, retracts, readjusts, re-evaluates only to lose a lawsuit over the way his boss proposed to fund state vouchers.
Jindal doesn’t have a proposal—for anything. His retirement “reform” package for state employees was a disaster from the get go. Even before he lost yet another court decision on that issue in January, the matter of whether or not the proposed plan for new hires was an IRS-qualified plan—meaning a plan the IRS would accept in lieu of social security—remained unresolved.
He didn’t have a proposal: let’s just do it and see later if the IRS will accept it. Throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks.
Remember when he vetoed a bill two years ago to renew a five-cent tax on cigarettes because, he said, he was opposed to new taxes (it was a renewal!)? Well, now he’s considering a $1 tax increase on a pack of cigarettes.
“Everything is on the table,” he said. “That’s the way it should be.”
But isn’t he the same governor who closed hospitals and prisons without so much as a heads-up to legislators in the areas affected.
Isn’t he the same governor who rejected a federal grant to make boardband internet available to rural areas of the state but had no alternative plan for broadband?
Isn’t he the same governor who continues to resist ObamaCare at the cost of millions of dollars in Medicaid funding to provide medical care for the state’s poor?
He said he is looking at different ways to protect low- and middle-income citizens.
By increasing the state sales tax by nearly two cents on the dollar? By rejecting another $50 million federal grant for early childhood development? By shuttering battered women’s shelters and attempting to terminate state funding for hospice? By pushing for more and more tax breaks for corporations and wealthy Louisiana citizens? By appointing former legislators to six-figure state jobs for which they’re wholly unqualified while denying raises to the state’s working stiffs? Yeah, that’ll really protect the low income people of the state.
“It’s way too early to make decisions on what’s in and out of the plan,” he said of the soon-to-be proposed (we assume) income tax re-haul.
Well, Governor, it’s your job to make decisions, to come up with a proposal to present to the legislature so House and Senate members may have sufficient time to debate the issues—unlike your sweeping education package of a year ago.
In your response to President Obama’s State of the Union address this week (not your disastrous response in 2009 in which the Republican Party subjected you to national ridicule), you said, “With four more years in office, he (Obama) needs to step up to the plate and do the job he was elected to do.”
That’s right, folks. You can’t make up stuff this good. The response is so easy that it’s embarrassing but here goes:
Pot, meet Kettle.
In retrospect, drawing on comic strip for inspiration when writing about Jindal somehow seems entirely appropriate.
Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, BESE, Charters, Education, Lobbyist, Notable Quotables, Privatization, Public Records, Transparency, Vouchers on January 30, 2013| 8 Comments »
“When it comes to K through 12 education, we see a $500 billion sector in the U.S.”
—Fox Network magnate Rupert Murdoch, commenting in 2010 on the enormous business opportunity in public education awaiting corporate America. http://www.inthepublicinterest.org/blog/jeb-bushs-education-nonprofit-really-about-corporate-profits?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+itpi-blog+%28ITPI+Commentary+Feed%29
“Testing companies and for-profit online schools see education as big business.” said “For-profit companies are hiding behind FEE and other business lobby organizations they fund to write laws and promote policies that enrich the companies.”
—Donald Cohen, chairperson for In the Public Interest, commenting on coordinated efforts by corporations, the Foundation for Excellence in Education (FEE) and ALEC to pass legislation favorable to corporate investors in public education. http://www.inthepublicinterest.org/node/2747
Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, BESE, Charters, Education, Ethics, Governor's Office, Lobbyist, Privatization, Public Records, Vouchers on January 30, 2013| 14 Comments »
Any lingering doubts about the connection between public education, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and for-profit education providers may have been erased once and for all with the release of thousands of emails that demonstrate that an educational foundation begun by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is “distorting democracy” by molding state education policies to benefit the foundation’s private corporate donors.
Stories about the emails were published in Wednesday’s Orlando Sentinel http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/education/os-bush-foundation-criticism-20130130,0,7386113.story but no Louisiana newspapers had picked up the story.
Donald Cohen, chairperson of the nonprofit In the Public Interest, http://www.inthepublicinterest.org/blog/jeb-bushs-education-nonprofit-really-about-corporate-profits?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+itpi-blog+%28ITPI+Commentary+Feed%29 released the emails, which included correspondence between Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education (FEE) and a second group Bush founded called Chiefs for Change, whose members are current and former state education leaders who support Bush’s education reform agenda.
He said the emails “conclusively reveal that FEE staff acted to promote their corporate funders’ priorities, and demonstrate the dangerous role that corporate money plays in shaping our education policy. Correspondence in Florida, New Mexico, Maine, Oklahoma, Rhode Island and Louisiana paint a graphic picture of corporate money distorting democracy.”
That agenda includes school choice, online education, school accountability systems based on standardized tests, evaluating teachers on the basis of student test scores and giving schools grades of A-F on the basis of those test scores.
Louisiana Education Superintendent John White is a member of Chiefs for Change.
Some of the emails released by Cohen included correspondence between FEE and White and White’s predecessor, Paul Pastorek.
The emails provide conclusive evidence that FEE staff promoted their corporate funders’ interests in Florida, New Mexico, Maine, Oklahoma, Rhode Island and Louisiana. Those interests coincide with the agenda promoted by ALEC’s pay-for-play operation. Corporate donors work closely with state legislators and state education policy makers at ALEC conferences, seminars and annual meetings, according to the nonprofit Center for Media and Democracy.
The emails between FEE and state education officials show that FEE, at times working through its Chiefs for Change affiliate, wrote and edited laws, regulations and executive orders in such a way as to enhance profit opportunities for FEE’s corporate funders.
Bush’s organization is supported by many of the same for-profit school corporations that also provide funding for ALEC. Those corporations vote as equals with ALEC legislators on templates to change laws governing America’s public schools.
FEE also receives financial backing from many of the same conservative foundations striving to privatize public schools that also bankroll ALEC. FEE and ALEC lobby for many of the same changes to state laws, changes which benefit their corporate benefactors.
FEE and ALEC also have many of the same “experts” who serve as members or staff employees and the two organizations also collaborate on the annual ALEC education “report card” which grades states’ allegiance to their policies.
FEE acted as a conduit for ALEC model legislation for Maine Gov. Paul LePage which removed barriers to creating online K-12 schools and in some cases, required online classes.
LePage’s agenda was eerily familiar in its call for eliminating class size caps, student-teacher ratios, eliminating the ability of local school districts to limit access to virtual schools and allowing public dollars to flow to online schools and classes.
The emerging importance of education as a corporate cash cow was underscored in 2010 when Rupert Murdoch, who has his own education division called Amplify, said, “When it comes to K through 12 education, we see a $500 billion sector in the U.S.”
Amplify is one of FEE’s corporate donors, as are K12, the Pearson Foundation and McGraw-Hill.
Last February, FEE CEO Patricia Levesque urged state education officials to introduce StubHub, a communications tool, into their states’ schools. Jeb Bush is an investor in StubHub.
An April 26, 2011, email indicated that FEE, through Chiefs for Change project, had engaged John Bailey, a director of Dutko Grayling. Levesque wrote to Pastorek only two weeks before his resignation as state superintendent:
“John Bailey, whom you met over the phone, will be on the call to provide an update on reauthorization discussions on the Hill. He is going to be on contract with the Foundation to assist with the Chiefs’ DC activities in light of Angie’s departure.
Dutko has been accused of working with industry front groups in the past,” Levesque wrote. “For example, Dutko worked with AIDS Responsibility Project (ARP), an industry-supported effort described by an HIV/AIDS policy activist as a ‘drug industry-funded front group.’”
Cohen’s organization also uncovered FEE documents indicating the foundation reimbursed Pastorek and White, the two men who have led the state’s education department under Gov. Bobby Jindal, for their travel to Orlando and Washington, D.C., for events sponsored by FEE and the Chiefs for Change.
Dutko Grayling a K Street lobbying firm in Washington which has been struggling to maintain its position as one of the top firms in the nation’s capital.
“These emails show a troubling link between Jeb Bush’s effort to lobby for ‘reforms’ through his statewide Foundation for Florida’s Future, his national Foundation for Excellence in Education, and the powerful corporations who want access to billions of our tax dollars by re-shaping public education policies just to create markets for themselves—none of which are in the best interest of our children,” Public Interest quoted a Florida parent as saying.
“Testing companies and for-profit online schools see education as big business, said Cohen. “For-profit companies are hiding behind FEE and other business lobby organizations they fund to write laws and (to) promote policies that enrich the companies.”
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