Louisiana Voice

By Dayne Sherman

One of the greatest mysteries of Louisiana politics is a recent phenomenon: The Recovery School District.

The RSD, created under Governor Kathleen Blanco in 2003, began as a way for the state to wrest control of “failing” schools from local districts. Now it serves as the model for Governor Bobby Jindal’s unwise education “reform” agenda.

Let’s address some key facts about this failed agenda. According to the latest Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) District Rankings Based on 2011 District Performance Score, the RSD is the second worst district in the State of Louisiana. It is ranked number 61 out of 62 districts listed. Zachary School District is ranked first, and St. Helena Parish is last.

According to the LDOE’s own ranking, the Failed RSD is a district at the very bottom of Louisiana education achievement, and Louisiana as a whole is at the very bottom of the U.S., and this makes Superintendent John White’s model district one of the worst school districts in the developed world.

Please don’t forget, White was head of the RSD before he was promoted to State Superintendent. This alone is a scandal.

Sponsored by Louisiana Progress and the Daily Star, an Education Policy Forum was held in Hammond on January 29th. While at that forum, which was well-attended by concerned citizens, I had the misfortune of asking panelist John Ayers, Executive Director of Tulane’s University’s Cowen Institute, about the Failed RSD and the fraud of Bobby Jindal’s education “reform” scheme.

What proceeded from Ayers was a series of arrogant statements with no connection to the real facts. It was Jindal-White education “reform” spin faster than a new Maytag.

First, Ayers denied that the RSD was indeed a failed district or even one of the worst in the state. But he never countered the data as stated above using the LDOE’s own District Performance Score.

Second, his chief argument for showing the vitality of the RSD was that New Orleans has half of the number of failing schools now than they did prior to Hurricane Katrina.

Nice spin, Mr. Ayers. But New Orleans has about half the student population. It sure makes claiming victory easy.

Third, Ayers bloviated about the great parent satisfaction of the charter schools. However, that very night, parents from across the country and New Orleans appealed to the U.S. Department of Education about the civil rights violations of such education programs.

Fourth, later during the forum Ayers denied that the goal of the charter school movement was to make money for corporations. This, however, is a fairy tale. Just last week, an expose from In the Public Interest was released with thousands of e-mails showing that Jeb Bush’s pro-charter educational foundation was all about benefiting its corporate funders, not the children.

The Failed RSD is not a miracle. It is only magic, a sleight of hand shell game run by corporate profiteers and their well paid lackeys. The taxpayers, parents, and school children of Louisiana deserve better than the Cowen Institutes duplicitous spin.

The Failed RSD, the Cowen Institute, John White, and Governor Jindal’s unconstitutional education “reform” package are a disgrace.

Louisiana would do well to find a better approach to education “reform” and better people to lead our state.

(Dayne Sherman lives in Ponchatoula)

“…portions of your request seek information; not documents that may be public records. Such requests do not fall within the Public Records Act of Louisiana…” http://www.tulane.edu/~telc/html/prr.htm

—Louisiana Department of education legal counsel Troy Anthony Humphrey, in response to requests for information and public records by LouisianaVoice. (he copied his response to an individual in the department’s “Public Information Office,” whose existence, in retrospect, seems a bit superfluous.

Just how far will a state agency go to deny legitimate requests for access to public records or information?

Well, if it is the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) there apparently are no restrictions on the artful dodge—even if it comes down to a literal, as opposed to liberal, interpretation of the state’s Public Records Act (R.S. 44:1 et seq.).

Skewing statistics has become a perfected art of State Superintendent John White’s Education Department (that’s right, he does seem to consider it his department), so why should parsing the dictates of a pesky little state law addressing public records be a problem?

But first, a little background on developments that led up to the latest standoff between the public’s right to know and Herr White’s reluctance to share information that isn’t pre-cooked by his part-time, $12,000 per month PR hack, er, “communications manager,” who still resides somewhere in Florida.

A posting by Class Size Matters http://www.classsizematters.org/about-us/, a non-profit organization that advocates for class size reduction of New York City’s public schools, released information that Louisiana is one of four states planning to share confidential student and teacher data with the Shared Learning Collaborative (SLC), a project of the Gates Foundation.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funds a number of education initiatives and Gates’s company, Microsoft, has contributed $16,000 to several Louisiana political campaigns, including $2,500 to Gov. Bobby Jindal during his unsuccessful 2003 campaign for governor.

The Class Size Matters communiqué http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2013/01/parents-beware-ny-and-eight-other.html, was an alert for New York parents and said that New York “is one of five states that have agreed to share confidential NYC student and teacher data in Phase I with the Shared Learning Collaborative.”

The other states and districts in Phase I include districts in North Carolina, Colorado, Illinois and Massachusetts.

“Delaware, Georgia, Kentucky and Louisiana are in Phase II, according to the Gates Foundation, (and) intend to start piloting the system in 2013,” it said.

The claim by Class Size Matters was confirmed by the Gates Foundation’s SLC web page http://slcedu.org/states-districts/pilot-districts/about-pilot-districts.

“The data to be shared will include the names of students, their grades, test scores, disciplinary and attendance records—and likely race, ethnicity, free lunch and special education status as well,” the Class Size Matters document says.

“These records are to be stored in a massive electronic data bank, being built by Wireless Generation, a subsidiary of News Corp.,” it said. News Corp. is owned by Rupert Murdoch and was recently found to have illegally violated the privacy of individuals in Great Britain and in the U.S.”

Both Microsoft and News Corp. are members of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) which drafts model legislation to be introduced in states across the U.S. by member lawmakers. Both Microsoft and News Corp. serve on ALEC’s Communications and Technology Task Force and News Corp. is a member of ALEC’s Education Task Force http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=ALEC_Corporations.

“Over the next few months, the Gates Foundation plans to turn over all this personal data to another, as yet unnamed corporation, headed by Iwan Streichenberger, former marketing director of a(n) (Atlanta) company called Promethean that sells whiteboards,” Class Size Matters said.

A foundation established by Jindal’s wife, the Supriya Jindal Foundation, has accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from corporations, many of them ALEC members, for the purpose of providing whiteboards to Louisiana classrooms.

There are serious questions as to whether this plan complies with FERPA (Family education Rights and Privacy Act), the document says.

Class Size Matters also released a copy of the 68-page contract between SLC and the New York State Educational Department http://www.classsizematters.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/NYSED-SLC-Agreement-10-2012.pdf which said, in part, that there would be no guarantee that data would not be susceptible to intrusion or hacking, though “reasonable and appropriate measures” would be taken to protect information.

The contract also provides that the agreement may be reassigned to other service providers with prior written consent.

Similar language was included in the state’s contract with F.A. Richard and Associates (FARA) over the firm’s takeover of the Office of Risk Management ORM at an eventual cost of $75 million to the state. That contract, however, was reassigned not once, but twice within a year after FARA became the ORM third party administrator. Neither reassignment of the ORM contract received prior written approval from the state.

The Gates contract also allows for the unrestricted subcontracting of duties and obligations covered under the agreement.

All of which brings us to the ongoing standoff between LouisianaVoice and LDOE.

On Jan. 22, we submitted a request for public records and information pursuant to R.S. 44:1 et seq. specifically requesting the following information:

Any communications in any form or contracts relative to the Shared Learning Collaborative;

Information regarding Louisiana’s participation in Phase II of the SLC;

Any communication with or information relevant to Wireless Generation, a subsidiary of News Corp.;

• Any communication with or information relevant to Louisiana’s association or business conduct with any corporation or entity owned, led by or associated with Iwan Streichenberger;

• Any communication or discussion relevant to the sharing of confidential student information for the purpose of developing and marketing “learning products” or for any other purpose;

• All communication and/or contracts relevant to current or future association with Gates Foundation or its subsidiaries.

The request was addressed to White but of course, a departmental legal counsel was given the task of responding.

A Jan. 23 letter from attorney Troy Anthony Humphrey said:

“It is noted that portions of your request seek information; not documents that may be public records.”

Funny, that. Humphrey copied Willa LeBlanc with his response to us. Ms. LeBlanc was identified as being in the “LDOE Public Information Office.” Thusly, if portions of our request sought “information,” then why was Ms. LeBlanc not allowed to provide us with the “information” we requested?

“Such requests do not fall within the Public Records Act of Louisiana, which, except as otherwise provided by law, allows ‘any person of the age of majority’ only to ‘inspect, copy, or reproduce any public record,” Humphrey went on to explain in his best legalese.

“With regards to the above-mentioned request as written, and within the ambit of La. R.S. 44:1 et seq. the Department will identify and locate any public records in its possession that appear responsive to those requests which seek public records, by searching for the following items:

• “Written communications and contracts containing the phrase ‘shared Learning Collaborative’ or ‘SLC.’

• “Written communications containing the phrase ‘Wireless Generation.’

• “Written communications containing the phrase ‘Iwan Streichenberger.’

• “Written communications and contracts containing the phrase ‘Gates Foundation.’

“After any responsive items have been identified, the Department will segregate and set aside those public records that are available for your inspection. You will be contacted in order to make arrangements for this process.”

That, as we said, was on Jan. 23. The LDOE is now well beyond its three-day maximum for production of the documents as provided by law.

Last year, the agency attempted to withhold public records requested by the Monroe News-Star and only when the newspaper filed suit did LDOE surrender the requested documents.

So much for accountability and transparency.