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Notable Quotables (in their own words)

Posted in Education, Notable Quotables, Privatization on June 21, 2012| 2 Comments »

“The course provider shall receive a course amount for each eligible funded student.”

“…The per course amount means an amount equal to the market rate as determined by the course provider and reported to the State Department of Education.”

“No local public school system shall actively discourage, intimidate, or threaten an eligible funded student or an eligible participating student during the course enrollment process or at any time for that local school system.”

–Examples of language contained in House Bill 976, aka Act 2, aka the Student Scholarships for Educational Excellence Act, passed by the legislature and signed into law by Gov. Piyush Jindal, which is anticipated to cost the state $44.5 million over five years.

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Missed out on vouchers? No problem, just become a course provider; there’re big bucks to be had and no accountability

Posted in BESE, Education, Uncategorized, Vouchers on June 20, 2012| 6 Comments »

The controversy over Monday’s meeting of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) School Innovation and Turnaround “Committee,” while important, could be a mere smokescreen for a far murkier and more complicated issue.

To be sure, legitimate questions about teacher certification and accountability standards for charter schools and some 124 private schools accepting voucher money were raised at the meeting formally described as a committee meeting, but attended by the full board.

But lying beneath the surface is House Bill 976 authored by Rep. Stephen Carter (R-Baton Rouge) and signed into law as Act 2, or the “Student Scholarships for Educational Excellence Act,” by Gov. Piyush Jindal.

The bill, which passed in the House by a 60-43 vote and 24-15 in the Senate in the legislature’s rush to placate the governor, will allow course providers to “offer a quality, individual education to students.”

So, what exactly, is a course provider?

That’s the same thing that Reps. Sam Jones (D-Franklin) and John Bel Edwards (D-Amite) wanted to know during debate on the bill. No one else seemed interested, including the media whose job it is to explore the issues, but who seem more interested, as one observer put it, to play sycophant to Jindal.

Under terms of the act, postsecondary education institutions may serve as quality course providers for students who seek advanced level course work or technical or vocational instruction. Because “technical” and “vocational” were included in the bill’s language, could that mean that “postsecondary education institutions” would include not only traditional universities and colleges, but vocational and technical schools and proprietary schools like University of Phoenix and IT Technical College, as well?

But the bill goes on to specify that business and industry may also serve as “quality course providers that offer course work in their particular field or expertise.”

“‘Course provider’ means an entity that offers individual courses in person or online, including but not limited to online or virtual education providers,” the act says.

BESE member Chas Roemer of Baton Rouge, meanwhile thumbed his nose at state ethics laws by openly discussing certification of charter school teachers. BESE member Walter Lee, who is superintendent of the DeSoto Parish school system, asked why there is no requirement that charter school teachers be certified when public schools require certification.

Roemer, whose sister is executive director of the Louisiana Public Charter School Association, which would thereby create an apparent conflict any time he addresses issues concerning charter schools, said the policy was in line with the administration’s goal of allowing charter schools to try new approaches. “There are going to be differences and there should be differences,” he said.

State Superintendent of Education John White, who deleted without responding two emails from LouisianaVoice formally requesting public records, said accountability rules for private schools accepting voucher money would be completed by Aug. 1.

That would appear to putting the horse ahead of the cart when one considers vouchers that have already been approved for schools in Ruston, Westlake and DeRidder that are woefully understaffed and which have inadequate facilities to accommodate students they already have, much less up to 300 new voucher students.

But back to HB 976, aka Act 2, aka Student Scholarships for Educational Excellence Act, projected to cost the state $44.5 million over a five-year period. The initial authorization of the course provider shall be for three years, with BESE charged with carrying out a “thorough review” after the second year.

Courses would be available to students attending a public school that receive a letter grade of “C,” “D,” or “F,” or who is attending a public school that does not offer the course in which a student desires to enroll, the act says.

BESE is directed by the bill to create a reciprocal teacher certification process for teachers who reside in other states by next January. The teachers must be employed by authorized course providers to teach virtual education courses.

Moreover, prior to the 2013-2014 school year BESE must create a course catalogue for all courses offered by each parish.

The act even contains a veiled threat to would-be recalcitrant local school systems: “No local public school system shall actively discourage, intimidate or threaten an eligible funded student or an eligible participating student during his course enrollment process or at any time for that local school system.”

Of course, no proposal by the Jindal administration would be complete without the obligatory provision for payoffs. “The course provider shall receive a course amount for each eligible funded student,” the act says. The per-course amount means an amount equal to the market rate “as determined by the course provider” and reported to the state Department of Education (DOE).

One Louisiana native, now a retired school principal in Arizona, examined the 47-page bill (something that most legislators probably did not bother to do) and offered several observations about costs, administration and unethical course providers.

“I am struck by how complicated and expensive the oversight of these programs will be and how time consuming it will be for local districts,” she said.

“Districts want to make sure that these providers are sound and ethical and really providing an education. You would be amazed at the number of unethical providers that will pop up when there’s money to be had,” she said. “This is just another burden on your local district which is not staffed well enough to take on one more onerous responsibility.

“This is the shotgun approach to education—a scattering of this and that in terms of learning—instead of a coherent, articulated approach over several years.”

She said that oversight is always expensive and questioned the manner in which it would be done. If a student receives an “A” rather than an “F” that he might deserve, “will the school be judged to be superior or will the students be re-tested to see if they learned anything?” she asked. “Grading is a complex issue and unethical operators are happy to give the A’s if they get the money.

“Unless I missed something, I don’t know who is approving these course providers for the first year. Is there a list of them—perhaps providers who’ve been operating in other states? I can’t see that the bill addresses that and that is important.

“This is just one more step in totally dismantling public education and finding ways for businesses to take money from the public coffers—just more privatization using taxpayer dollars. Capitalism is about risk that capitalists take to establish their businesses. Where is the risk in this if the funding is capitalized by taxpayers’ dollars?” she asked.

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The vultures are circling the carcass, aka school vouchers, as Gov. Piyush Jindal’s education reform gets off to rocky start

Posted in Education, Vouchers, tagged , , , on June 14, 2012| 6 Comments »

Gov. Piyush Jindal may have appeared to come away from this year’s legislative session with sweeping wins in his public education reform but in reality, things appear to be off to a somewhat rocky start.

It may be too early to say Jindal’s grand scheme for the revamping (read: dismantling) of public education is falling apart but it would certainly be correct to say the waste of precious state voucher dollars has begun in earnest and detractors are only too happy to cite the inexcusable lack of oversight by John White’s Department of Education (DOE).

Another possible indication that all is not well is the recent exodus of a number of DOE personnel, including a key employee responsible for putting a positive spin on department policy for the media.

Friday, June 8, was the last day on the job for DOE Public Affairs Director René Greer.

“Your questions have challenged us to do better, your reports have given our citizens the information they need to hold us accountable and your narratives have inspired individuals and groups to engage in this important work,” she said in an email to reporters.

Greer, who said she has no immediate career plans, also thanked reporters for their “patience, understanding and support on those occasions when the requests coming into Public Affairs exceeded our capacity to respond.”

Greer, who served at the pleasure of the education superintendent, may have fallen on her sword. “She worked very hard and put up with a lot of internal and external flak,” said one former co-worker. “If I had to guess, I suspect the department’s slow response to (a public records) request from The Independent (a Lafayette weekly publication) may have had something to do with her departure,” the co-worker said.

On May 2, The Independent wrote, “State Superintendent of Education John White and DOE spokeswoman René Greer have yet to respond to numerous phone calls and email inquiries from The Independent over the past 24 hours regarding the department’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) waiver application, despite public record statutes requiring them to do so.

“They also have failed to respond to Louisiana Press Association attorney Joshua Zelden, who told both White and Greer in an email that ‘all documents created, and correspondence entered into, by government agencies in the course of their official business must be made available to all requestors immediately, unless a specific exception to the public records law is cited…”

Louisiana is one of 26 states and the District of Columbia which have requested waivers from NCLB provisions. Louisiana’s application is not immune to the federal scrutiny granted to other states. The U.S. Department of Education sent critique letters to the states in mid-April but the contents of Louisiana’s letter which lay out the deficiencies in Louisiana’s alternative plan for achieving higher academic performance are still being withheld from public scrutiny.

Greer has not responded to an email sent to her on Sunday by LouisianaVoice which asked if her departure was related to the dispute with The Independent.

The department’s problems with The Independent notwithstanding, the biggest newsmaker has been the unbelievably sorry job of vetting voucher applicants:

• The New Living Word School in Ruston has received vouchers for 315 students, the most in the state thus far, despite having woefully inadequate facilities for those 315 additional students. The school has only 122 students and no desks, no books, no chairs and no classrooms to accommodate additional students.

• A small private school in DeRidder has been approved for 119 vouchers worth more than $400,000. Besides misspelling scholarships as “sholarships” on a sign advertising the availability of vouchers on a sign outside the school, it has been revealed that BeauVer Christian Academy has experienced past financial problems. In 2009, Maysia Coker, registered agent and an officer of BeauVer, was sentenced in 36th Judicial District Court in Beauregard Parish to a three-year suspended sentence for issuing worthless checks. She was fined $2,000 plus court costs and ordered not to have a checking account in her name or to be a signatory on any business or personal checking accounts or to hold a position of financial authority during her four-year probation. Coker registered BeauVer Christian Academy as a limited liability corporation on May 5, 2010, state records show. BeauVer had 78 students and 12 teachers last year. The school, formerly known as Beauregard Christian Academy, had seven liens and financial judgments filed against it ranging from $2,778 to $14,000 between 2007 and 2009.

• Upper Room Bible School in New Orleans also received 214 vouchers despite a 78 percent failure rate on students’ LEAP tests. Upper Room was third from the bottom in rankings of all Recovery School District and voucher schools combined.

• Eternity Christian Academy in Calcasieu Parish, which currently has 14 students, has been approved for 135 vouchers which will generate about $1 million in taxpayer funds for the school.

As if all that were not bad enough, now it seems the media, including the Washington Post, New Orleans’ Gambit and Gannett’s Louisiana newspapers are beginning to wake up and ask hard questions, albeit a little late:

• The Baton Rouge Advocate, which has largely been silent on the issue of education reform, had an editorial on Tuesday in which it questioned the legality of Jindal’s intent to raid Minimum Foundation Program funding for public schools to fund vouchers for private schools. “It is a question that the judiciary can and should weigh in on, because on its face, the MFP money is dedicated in the Louisiana Constitution to public schools,” the Baton Rouge paper said. “…the governor and his allies are whipping up the rhetoric on the unions—despite the obvious relevance of the constitutional question,” it added.

• The Washington Post, on May 31, quoted White as saying federal waivers would allow districts and schools to exercise flexibility from federal regulations in exchange for instituting rigorous accountability systems. Citing the vouchers granted to the aforementioned schools, the Post said, “All of this makes you wonder what Louisiana and the U.S. Education Department define as ‘rigorous accountability systems.’”

• Gambit, in its analysis of the voucher program, said “‘Reform’ always means ‘change’ but it does not always mean ‘improvement.’”

Finally, if proof is needed that Jindal’s voucher and charter school crusade is not profit driven, there is the Louisiana Federation for Children and its accomplice, the Alliance for School Choice.

The Alliance for School Choice is clamoring for students like a flock of vultures circling a dying carcass.

In a mail-out received by a north Louisiana family (with no children in school, it should be added), the alliance proclaims, “There is still time to apply to enroll your child in a better school for free.”

For free? Is the Alliance for School Choice for real? Just where does it think the voucher money for tuition comes from, the tooth fairy?

This is tax money paid by Louisiana citizens that will go to line the pockets of profiteers and political opportunists.

For free indeed.

The flip side of the mail-out says, “Time is running out to give your child a better education. Apply for a scholarship before June 29.”

It goes on to say, “Recently, Louisiana lawmakers expanded the Student Scholarships for Educational Excellence program statewide, which allows children trapped in low-performing schools to receive a scholarship to attend a participating private or public school in the 2012-2013 school year for free.”

There’s that word free again.

The state version of the American Federation for Children/Alliance for School Choice, the Louisiana Federation for Children, contributed more than $100,000 to Louisiana legislative and Board of Elementary and Secondary Education candidates in 2010 and 2011, state records show.

Many of those candidates also received contributions last year from Gov. Jindal’s campaign, further evidence of the philosophical and financial bonds that exist between the alliance, Jindal and the voucher program—all at the expense of Louisiana taxpayers.

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Sen. Elbert Guillory: Arrogant and blatantly self-serving but delightfully tacky in promoting his ‘hard work’ sans ALEC

Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, Education, Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Retirement on May 22, 2012| 2 Comments »

For sheer audacity, it’s hard to top the performance of State Sen. Elbert Guillory (D-Opelousas) last week.

Guillory, the poster boy for ALEC and Piyush Jindal lapdogs, was the lead author of the gaggle of state retirement bills, including Senate Bill 740 which assures state retirees they will not be getting a cost of living adjustment for 10-15 years.

Despite Guillory’s efforts to put the best spin on the retirements which wound up being a general hodgepodge, he was trumped by Jindal Deputy Chief of Staff Kristy Nichols who insisted the administration “got what we wanted.” It was a classic example of mutual one-upsmanship in an effort by both to save face.

The only part of the retirement package to be approved in its original form was a provision to base retirement incomes on employees’ best five years income instead of three years as is presently done.

Jindal’s effort—through Guillory—to force state civil service employees to work to age 67 before qualifying for retirement—was amended drastically. Only employees with zero to five years experience would be required to work to 67 while those with six to ten years will be required to work to age 62. All others will remain the same.

Guillory in a particularly self-serving email to Capitol News Service, said, “Now that you have had an opportunity to review the Senate Retirement Committee’s work, I’m sure you appreciate the hard work and responsible outcomes produced by those seven men. No “fix,” no “buyout” by ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council). No underhanded tactics. Just hard work addressing a serious fiscal problem in careful responsible manner.”

Perhaps. But it would have been nice if the legislator had been working that hard the past 25 years to live up to its self-imposed requirement to pay down the unfunded accrued liability (UAL) of the state’s four retirement systems. Because of typically bad political policy, the legislature, in its infinite stupidity, decided to use those funds for other things, in the process allowing the UAL to grow unabated.

Now, though, state employees are being called on to make good on the legislature’s promise a quarter-century later. What’s more, the onus of the entire amount has been placed on the Louisiana State Employees’ Retirement System (LASERS) and higher education members of TRSL even though the LASERS share of the UAL is only about $6.3 billion. The balance of the UAL belongs to the Teachers Retirement System of Louisiana (TRSL), the Louisiana School Employees Retirement System (LSERS) and the Louisiana State Police Retirement System (LSPRS).

Guillory was asked why the pension reform changes are only being applied to LASERS and higher education employees in TRSL, he said state police and hazardous duty workers, who are exempted (fo far), “put their lives on the line. They face bullets every day. They have special disability issues. They have special survivorship issues, so they are in a special category. Their situation is more special. The same is true with K through 12 teachers. I’m not sure I want to see a teacher at age 67 still trying to handle the young students of today. There are just some special circumstances for teachers.

Two things are somewhat revealing in those comments. First of all, what he said about “young students of today” would seem to refute Jindal’s blanket condemnation of teachers while ignoring discipline problems and uninvolved parents as the root of most of public education’s current problems.

Second, as a reader recently wrote, if we are to believe Sen. Guillory, rank and file employees are not “special” or any particular value or importance. “We are also to believe that rank and file jobs do not involve any hazardous duties.

“Try telling that to employees of state psychiatric hospitals who are injured in the line of duty on a regular basis. Or tell that to Department of Transportation and Development (DOTD) employees who are struck by vehicles while repairing our highways. Or worse yet, try telling that to the families of the two Department of Insurance employees who were murdered recently while doing nothing more than gather routine regulatory information from an insurance broker.

“The simple lesson here is that Gov. Jindal has employed a very old and frequently successful ploy of divide and conquer with his so-called pension reform,” the reader said.

But Guillory’s most unabashed display of arrogance came during Senate debate over House Bill 61, which would create a new “cash balance” retirement plan for new hires, beginning July 1, 2013. Guillory said the plan would reduce state costs while containing the growth in long-term liabilities of the pension systems involved.

Sen. Sherri Smith Buffington (R-Keithville) said she was concerned over the provision for retirees to take a lump-sum pension benefit. She asked what would happen if a retiree spends the pension income to which Guillory incredulously replied, “We cannot protect people from making bad decisions in their lives.”

Guillory went on to say that a retiree might then have to apply for food stamps, welfare and other government programs.

Right. That’s going to save the state a boatload of money, right Senator?

That prompted one person to refer to Guillory’s plan as the “Cat Food Retirement Plan.”

National pension law expert Robert Klausner, representing LASERS and TRSL attempted to warn legislators against the bill’s passage, saying the proposed bill breaks employee contracts. “There’s no reason to pass an unconstitutional law,” he said. “All it does is create a field day for lawyers.”

Several weeks ago, with the Legislative Auditor hired a Dallas law firm to analyze the proposed retirement bills, the law firm came up with much the same response as Klausner.

To counter the auditor’s expert, the Division of Administration hired Buck Consultants of Boston at a cost of $400,000.

A LouisianaVoice public records request for a copy of the Buck report resulted in the release of a six-page document—about $66,667 per page. That report had just a three-paragraph narrative at the end. The rest consisted only of actuarial notes which projected a reduction of annual state contributions (the portion the state contributes to employee retirement funds) to LASERS and TRSL if enacted.

Jindal’s proposal—through Guillory’s bills—to move from a defined benefit to a defined contribution pension plan was a virtual clone of the “Defined-Contribution Retirement Act” model bill as drafted by ALEC at its New Orleans national convention last August, Guillory’s claims in his email to LouisianaVoice notwithstanding.

But that was just one of the bills proposed by ALEC.

A copy of ALEC’s complete proposed retirement reform legislation was obtained by Common Cause of Washington, D.C., which filed Freedom of Information Act requests for ALEC records.

The ALEC proposals and those of Guillory in the Senate and Rep. Kevin Pearson (R-Slidell) in the House are nearly identical in most aspects.

So, all things considered, it’s a little difficult to buy into Guillory’s braggadocio about his committee’s “hard work, no buyout by ALEC.” Nor do we agree that a “serious fiscal problem” was addressed in a “careful, responsible manner.”

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It’s summer vacation time for students but the work must go on despite Piyush’s contempt for public school teachers

Posted in Education on May 15, 2012| 9 Comments »

At long last, it is time for summer vacation. No more books, no more homework, no more worrying about grades, no more concern about failing or passing.

Summer will be a welcome time of bliss to lie back and reflect on the good times—study hall, recess, lunch in the gymacafetorium—times when you can take a respite from the rigors of learning, the stress of test after test in math, science, reading comprehension and social studies.

Dead ahead are two-plus months of not having to hear someone preaching about your not living up to your potential, not giving your all, being inadequate in the classroom, a failure. For a while, at least, you won’t have to listen to all that snorting about how dumb you are and how you just aren’t trying. You won’t have to live in fear of being called to the principal’s office for a few weeks now.

And that’s the teachers.

And if you really think teachers get two-plus months off, you live in more of a fantasy world than Ricardo Montalban did back in the 70s and 80s.

The teachers I know remain behind long after the last bell has rung and the last child has disappeared out the door, off with his or her family for that vacation at Disney World or Gatlinburg or Gulf Shores.

They must pick up notebooks, pencils, gather and store books, move furniture so that school maintenance may come in to strip and wax the floors. After that, perhaps a week or two of rest before returning with new lesson plans. Desks must be re-arranged, books sorted out for distribution. In short, detractors notwithstanding, teachers are overworked and underpaid. No argument to the contrary need be advanced here; we aren’t buying any nickel-and-dime philosophy about three-month vacations.

Think about that rotten kid down the street. We know your kids are perfect, so let’s use the neighborhood hell-raiser. Now lie back in your recliner and just imagine yourself as a teacher having to corral 25-30 kids just like that for seven hours a day, five days a week, 36 weeks a year. Then, throw in the constant face-offs with irate parents who can’t understand why little Johnny isn’t doing better. Never mind that the teacher has sent home notes and sent emails to those same parents calling attention to Johnny’s failure to do homework and classroom assignments. You see, it’s never the parents’ fault.

It’s for dead certain that Piyush Jindal has never thought of teaching as a calling. Ditto for Paul Pastorek and John White. Neither of those three leaders has ever taught a class but they can certainly tell teachers how to do it.

There was a year-end program at a Baton Rouge-area elementary school recently. There were two children who had to be helped onto the stage because of their physical conditions. One was wheelchair-bound and the other was on crutches. It was heart-rending to see these children so young and with such debilitating disabilities that will last a lifetime – robbed of the ability to run and play like other children. But they were included in the program just like the other kids and the care and love shown those two by the teachers and staff was enough to bring a lump to the throat of the most hardened observer.

Those teachers are professionals who go about their jobs with no fanfare, no drama and in the case of our governor – no indication of gratitude for the herculean job they do – each and every day. Piyush Jindal could take a lesson in professionalism and compassion – and humility – from these wonderful, beautiful, heoric people.

Watch a scene unfold like the one we witnessed at that program just one time and we can promise you’ll never be the same again.

The point is, despite all the negativity emitted from the fourth floor of the State Capitol about bad teachers and failing schools—rhetoric designed for no other purpose than to open the door to corporate takeovers to benefit campaign contributors—these teachers were undaunted and they let nothing get in the way of doing their jobs.

The music director of this school does exemplary work with these children year in and year out—as do all of the teachers there. It’s something called dedication – something about which the politicians know next to nothing. But you’d never know it to listen to our governor rant about failing schools and bad, bad teachers. This governor would never acknowledge the good work being done by public school teachers. He is far too stubborn, too hard-headed, too cold-hearted to bring himself to praise the work of anyone other than Piyush Jindal.

If this is the kind of political hack job that makes you proud of your governor, so be it.

As for us, we will stand with teachers.

If you wish to support the practice of handing out jobs that pay six-figure salaries to worn-out legislators who in some cases couldn’t even get re-elected in their home districts and who have nothing to contribute other than padding their own retirement benefits, that’s your choice.

As for us, we will stand with the rank and file civil service employees, the ones who get the job done, the ones who earn their salaries—and their retirement benefits.

We make no pretense of being objective in matters that involve the denigration of public employees: that’s for the “legitimate reporters,” as one administration official recently was so quick to say we are not. So if you choose to degrade and belittle these people, then be prepared for a very rude rebuttal from this side of the street.

We don’t suffer fools and idiots lightly—especially elected ones.

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