With all the focus on budget cuts in this year’s legislative session, we must remain diligent to defend the progress made in the area of education, school choice and accountability.
There is an assault going on against high standards for academic achievement. It is an assault being led by status quo apologists. They are arguing our standards are too high, so high they are causing kids to drop out. [Drop-outs have been a problem for decades.] Their remedy is to lower standards by doing away with the accountability ensured by LEAP and to lower standards by creating a career track that lowers requirements in math, English and science.
I would ask them this question, “In a time when virtually every other state around us is increasing standards, in a time when good jobs will require more skills, not less, in a time when our state already ranks among the lowest in the country in literacy and math proficiency, how can reverting to a system of virtually no standards and no accountability help the kids be prepared?”
Board of Elementary and Secondary Education member Chas Roemer is willing to answer that question.
“I’ll tell you very simply: It cannot,” he says. “They are peddling fool’s gold and they are doing so because it helps them, not the kids. Talk to the business and industry in our state that employs people now and will in the future, and they will tell you that the skills that are needed, even today, to maintain a job that can provide for a family in any meaningful way are the same skill set that is required of incoming college freshmen.”
Now, there is a meaningful discussion that is possible regarding a “career track” for those in high school who want to be job ready when they graduate, and we should listen to Louisiana Workforce Commission Executive Director Tim Barfield and LED Secretary Stephen Moret, who are working with business and industry on this issue. There have been dual tracks in German schools for years. But Roemer warns, “While it is true we should work to develop a high school path that provides more practical business and industry preparedness, it does not mean we can or should create a system that does nothing more than prepare kids for unskilled dead-end jobs. I’m afraid there is a combination of bills now that will do just that.”
Those bills must be amended and strengthened to make sure we continue to take bold steps forward, not back.
Why change what works?
Another historic reform, passed last year, was providing scholarships for low-income children in failing schools in New Orleans. In the first year, 632 students received scholarships. First-year highlights:
• In a recent survey of scholarship parents, 92.3% of respondents said they were satisfied or very satisfied with their child’s new school.
• Although many scholarship recipients were two or three grade levels behind when they entered the participating private schools, in the survey 85.5% of parents said their child was performing better.
• Parental involvement in the participating private schools is high. Scholarship parents are grateful for the opportunity and are involved in their children’s education.
• According to the Department of Education, 88% of scholarship students from the ’08-’09 school year reapplied and qualified to participate in the program for the ’09-’10 school year. This is an extremely high retention rate among urban schools.
Despite this encouraging news, Rep. Karen Carter Peterson is trying to sabotage the program by stealing the funds that, ironically, are helping poor black children who have been trapped in failing schools and finally have a chance to get a good education. How does she sleep at night?
Carter leads charge
Rep. Steve Carter has a package of bills intended to reform our state’s school boards. The measures include:
• ending board “micromanagement” of day-to-day school issues;
• term limits of 12 years in office;
• trimming board pay to a maximum of $200 per month, down from $800 now;
• strengthening anti-nepotism laws.
One member of the Calcasieu Parish School Board told BESE that local school board members often “coerce” principals when it comes to hiring and firing. Surprise, surprise.
The package was endorsed by BESE and supported by State Superintendent Paul Pastorek, the Council for a Better Louisiana, LABI and the Baton Rouge Area Chamber. The opposition included the School Board Association and the two largest teachers unions [LFT and LAE].
But already last week, in a House committee, the term limits bill was killed and the nepotism bill was tabled with a legal issue. When the governor and Legislature—and in EBR, the council and mayor—are all under term limits, how can anyone argue the school board should be exempt?
I support Carter’s entire package and ask you to contact your legislators.
The pendulum swings
The travels of Gov. Bobby Jindal have been in the news lately. It’s odd and a bit amusing how opinions swing on some issues—such as a governor’s travels. Too little or too much?
Here are excerpts from two columnists who appeared in the Times-Picayune. First, John Maginnis in 2004; then, Stephanie Grace in 2009.
Maginnis wrote:
… along the way, the public’s perception of the governor’s job description changed to put economic development at the forefront.
Besides competing with other states on offering tax breaks and infrastructure improvements, governors were expected to travel the globe and personally woo corporate chieftains as though they were voters or campaign contributors.
That’s not what Mike Foster signed on for. He had a point in saying that the value of the governor as a cold-calling traveling salesman is overrated. But what he could have done, but wouldn’t, was to make a more public effort—yes, even travel—to tell the story that Louisiana government had dramatically changed to a new order in which businesses could thrive and not be shaken down. …
Yet the real changes Foster achieved were not lost on all those who mattered. In the election campaign to succeed him, nearly all the candidates endorsed his policies and pledged to build upon them. Yet they also clearly rejected his governing style, promising more travel, less hunting, no law school.
Fast-forward to 2009 and a governor who is traveling the country, speaking frequently about a “new Louisiana,” networking with top executives, changing our image and becoming a national figure. So now what are the columnists saying?
Grace, a critic of Jindal’s travels, wrote recently:
Remember when we used to beg Louisiana’s governor to leave the state?
Get out there like other chief executives, we used to urge Mike Foster, and pay your respects to those foreign car companies and other manufacturing giants looking for a place to open new industrial plants. Stop hunting ducks, and start stalking investors …
Foster’s aversion to travel was so central to his gubernatorial image that it became one of the major topics of conversation in the campaign to replace him. Everyone in the large 2003 field vowed that, if elected, they’d start building up their frequent flier balances.
What do the pundits really want? Maybe Jindal should spend the next month hunting and fishing. Would that make them happy?
