BESE, you got some ‘splaining to do!

Whenever comic icon Lucille Ball got into farcical trouble on the old I Love Lucy series, husband Desi Arnaz would exclaim, “Lucy, you got some ‘splaining to do!”

The Board of Elementary and Secondary Education is having a Lucy moment this week, being called to explain multiple follies, mostly committed in the name of “choice,” but some as what might be considered fraud.

First, the fraud-y stuff. 

NOLA.com reporter Lauren McGaughy writes that BESE member Walter Lee has apparently been double billing the DeSoto Parish School Board – where he was superintendent of schools – and BESE for travel expenses. He also allegedly got sweetheart deals on buy-backs of parish-owned vehicles. And he “determined his own pay raises, granting himself substantial salary increases that conflicted with recommendations by the system's business director.”

BESE President Chas Roemer says he will take “appropriate action” and ask for repayment and maybe censure of the 13-year veteran BESE member.

More travel news comes from Louisiana’s indispensible investigative journalist, Tom Aswell. His Louisiana Voice reports that seven Department of Education employees with a combined income topping $1 million are driving large, courtesy of the state.

In just over a year, those seven high rollers ran up $63,700 in car rental fees, not including fuel. Aswell reports that “they have been cruising around town in vehicles like Jeep Grand Cherokee, Jeep Liberty, Jeep Compass, GMC Terrain, Nissan Murano, Chevrolet Yukon, and Cadillac Escalade at monthly rentals as high as $1,450.”

“These Enterprise rentals,” Aswell writes, “ are not the occasional rentals for quick one- or two-day trips on departmental business; they are perks by every definition of the word—used year-round, nights and weekends, for personal use as well as the occasional business-related trip. And perks are taxable in-kind income.”

On to the “choice” parade of sleazy hits:

The biggest slam on BESE’s credibility as an agent of reform came from Legislative Auditor Daryl Purpera. This article by NOLA.com reporter Danielle Dreilinger quotes the state official as saying that Gov. Jindal’s voucher program “doesn't have enough safeguards to ensure participating private schools spend public money properly and educate the students they admit.”

Because LFT and others filed a successful lawsuit against the state, vouchers have to be funded outside the Minimum Foundation Program, with a line item in the general fund budget. This year, that amounts to nearly $45 million divided among 118 private and religious schools. More than 6,700 students participate.

While State Superintendent of Education John White contends that the state has sufficient safeguards to protect parents and taxpayers, Purpera disagreed.

"Without specific criteria, LDOE cannot ensure it is holding schools accountable for their academic performance and treating schools consistently," Purpera wrote.

The state could have been saved the trouble, as this report from KATC-TV in Lafayette notes. Over a year ago, the LFT urged BESE to adopt a more stringent accountability procedure for the voucher program. Our effort was rebuffed.

As LFT President Steve Monaghan said, “This sent a very clear signal. The mission of the department of education was to champion vouchers and privatization by any means necessary, and that’s why more than a year later we have audit report stating the obvious, and what we had attempted to fix in October 2012.”

While we’re on the subject of accountability, BESE recently adopted a blanket renewal for many charter schools around the state. Just six days later, the FBI raided Kenilworth Science and Technology Charter School for as-yet unknown reasons, according to this story by Advocate reporters Charles Lussiere and Will Sentell.

Kenilworth is under the auspices of The Pelican Educational Foundation, which is apparently linked to a shadowy Turkish outfit known as the Gulen movement. In 2011, the Pelican Foundation’s charter for Abramson Science and Technology Charter School in New Orleans was revoked for “allegations of inappropriate use of school space for religious processions, concealing student-on-student sexual harassment and intimidating teachers."

In this WBRZ-TV report by Rob Krieger, BESE President Chas Roemer wonders if Kenilworth violated the terms of its charter.

Maybe these scandalous episodes are the natural outcome of the veil of secrecy that shrouds BESE and the Department of Education. Countless public information requests have been ignored, leading Washington Post blogger Valerie Strauss to include Louisiana in her list of states in which education policy “is increasingly being made in secret or without public input — and with a lot of private philanthropic money.

“In Louisiana,” she wrote, “the 19th Judicial District Court recently ruled that the state Department of Education does not have to provide researchers with raw data that would help them determine if school reform efforts are working — and can pick and choose to whom it provides the information.  The court ruled that the data is not subject to the Public Records Act, according to Research on Reforms, Inc., which sued the department for the information. The suit was filed after the organization requested raw data and was denied it — even though the department had given it to other researchers already.

Finally, there is this week’s revelation that a voucher school in Baton Rouge subjects potential teachers to an inquisition before they can be hired, reported here by The Advocate’s Will Sentell.

Hosanna Christian Academy requires teachers to answer invasive, personal questions about their religious faith, living arrangements and private lives – questions that no other employer, public or private, would be allowed to ask.

The Statement of Faith on the application expresses a clear preference for dunking over sprinkling where baptism is concerned. That the applicant is expected to be of the Christian faith is not in doubt.

All of which might be okay, except that the school derives most of its income from public tax dollars in the form of vouchers. The state pays tuition for about 460 of the school’s 675 students. Last year, Hosanna collected $1.4 million in public funds.

That led LFT President Steve Monaghan to say, “We understand the church’s desire to hire whomever they wish. We do not believe that the taxpayer dollars should be used for such discriminatory employment practices, however.”

“Those kinds of issues consumed Europe in religious wars for centuries,” Monaghan said. “That is precisely why the U.S. Constitution’s first amendment erects a wall of separation between church and state. That is why no public funds should be provided to institutions with religious preconditions for employment.”

No official response from BESE was forthcoming. According to Sentell, “Chas Roemer, president of BESE, was unavailable for comment and his message mailbox was full.”

Can Louisiana's teacher evaluations be trusted?

In Louisiana’s topsy-turvy world of teacher evaluations, over half of the teachers in one of the state’s highest-rated schools are on a fast track to dismissal. In this article, teacher/researcher Herb Bassett raises interesting questions about the process.

by Herb Bassett

State Superintendent John White showed his true colors when he recently praised four FirstLine charter schools that "fell in the top 10 percent of Louisiana schools in terms of improving test scores, yet ranked fewer than 10 percent of their teachers highly effective.

'Amazing results,' he wrote."

He did not mention that one of the four schools, while ranked in the 99th percentile of improvement, declared 68 percent of its teachers Ineffective. Most of its teachers are now on a fast track to dismissal.

In each of the other three schools, at least 69 percent of their Value-added Assessment Model (VAM) teachers ranked Highly Effective, but none received an observation rating of Highly Effective. Not one.

If the VAM computer model ranked so many teachers Highly Effective, why could the principals not find at least one example of Highly Effective teaching in an observation?

These results clearly do not reflect student achievement or teacher quality. They deserve condemnation, not praise.

What does this bode for teachers and students on the coming Common Core assessments? White has predicted that due to the "rigor" of the new standards, achievement scores will go down.

As strange as it seems, teachers will not see lower ratings under VAM - even with the dramatic drop predicted for student scores. The VAM computer model simply ranks the teachers from highest to lowest. No matter whether the scores rise or drop dramatically, there will always be a bottom ten percent ranked Ineffective and a top twenty percent ranked Highly Effective. These quotas were set by the Louisiana Department of Education. Yes, the Department arbitrarily decided that ten percent of teachers are Ineffective and twenty percent should be Highly Effective.

Then why does the Compass Report show that only four percent of all teachers are Ineffective?

The computer model does not rank all teachers. The majority of teachers are not subject to the quotas. The purpose of the Compass Report was to show the discrepancy, and to coerce evaluators of the non-VAM teachers into matching the VAM system quotas.

White, however, seems to relish the thought of evaluations that cut short the quota for Highly Effective teachers.

Superintendent White now controls the cut-off scores for the achievement levels on the new assessments. Having seen him praise unjustifiably low teacher evaluations, should parents trust him to decide whether their children pass or fail the new assessments?

Scam and scandal in the Course Choice fraud

A motivational speaker without education credentials is paid $145,000 per year to coordinate a "Course Choice" program that will drain millions of dollars from public schools in Louisiana.

He only works four days a week at the State Department of Education because he commutes to Louisiana from his home in Los Angeles.

And the program he runs is already mired in scandal.

This is the state of public education in the age of Gov. Bobby Jindal and Superintendent of Education John White.

EdLog has already introduced readers to Dave "Lefty" Lefkowith, the erstwhile motivational speaker, associate of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and purveyor schemes to deregulate energy and manipulate water rights in Florida.

Lefty is the star of this article by Advocate reporter Will Sentell, who writes that Lefkowith leapfrogged from a $35,000 contract to the $145,000 position as Assistant Superintendent of Portfolio (whatever that means).

All without having to move from sunny California to muggy Louisiana.

Now we're starting to learn more about the course choices that seem to beg for a criminal investigation.
As Gannett journalists Mary Nash-Wood and Vickie Welborn report here, students in Northwest Louisiana are being registered for the courses without their knowledge.

The company that seems to be improperly registering students without permission is called FastPath, and it stands to make between $700 and $1,275 for each student enrolled in a course. Company officials declined to be interviewed for the article.

We know that FastPath recruiters cut a swath through low-income areas of Caddo and Webster Parishes, promising tablet devices to prospective students, including profoundly disabled children who may not have the ability to use the devices.

"Neither students nor their parents are responsible for the tablet devices if they are lost or stolen," according to the Gannett article. "And they can keep them even if they don’t pass the course."

And who are the education experts trolling for Course Choice students?

FastPath's want ad on Craig's List for "student enrollment specialists" says they have to be 18 years or older, have no criminal record, and have automobile insurance.

"By conducting community outreach through program marketing," the ad says, "this position will promote parental choice in education and the FastPath Learning program. The duties of this position are primarily focused on marketing the program and enrolling students in the program using a mobile device, such as a netbook, notepad, or internet enabled smart phone."

The pay is $16 per hour.

Thanks to indispensable journalist Tom Aswell, we know a lot more about FastPath.

The chairman of the FastPath board is former U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige, who served under President George W. Bush.

Paige was appointed secretary largely because of the"Houston Miracle," his vaunted success as superintendent of the Houston Independent School District. Which turned out to be a fraud, because HSID  falsified its dropout statistics during Paige's tenure.

Jindal. White. Lefkowith. Paige. These are just a few of the names that will go down in infamy for the scam they are perpetrating on the taxpayers and school children of Louisiana.

The State Supreme Court has ruled that Jindal,White et al cannot use Minimum Foundation Program funds to pay for the Course Choice scam. The legislature now has an opportunity to cancel Course Choice before even more damage can be done.

Question is, will lawmakers have the courage to do the right thing?

Testimony claims fraud in school performance scores

The debate in the Senate Education Committee Wednesday was supposed to be about amending the constitution in order to elect the state superintendent of education. That became a side issue as witnesses described allegations of fraud in the State Department of Education and laid bare Superintendent of Education John White’s sparse credentials to hold the office.

When the dust settled, the committee rejected SB 41 by Sen. Bob Kostelka (R-Monroe), but only time will tell how much damage was inflicted on Superintendent White and his department by supporters of the bill.

The first blood was drawn by Sen. Kostelka, who said the superintendent of education is in charge of the biggest single state budget item, totaling $5.35 billion per year. He said the state “should have a superintendent who is accountable to the people and not a rubber stamp for the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.”

Under White’s regime, Kostelka said, the public has been denied access to information about the department. Numerous lawsuits have been filed under the freedom of information act in order to view what should be public records.

Noting that most of the education overhauls pushed by White and the Jindal administration last year have been ruled unconstitutional by district courts, Sen. Kostelka said a new direction is needed, and “a clean break is the best way.”

Sen. Kostelka ticked off a laundry list of abuses by the department, including a plan to divulge personal student data to a company that would share it with for-profit organizations, the “utter failure” of the Recovery School District to turn around failing schools, and reports of overpayments and lack of supervision involving millions of dollars spent by the RSD.

The senator said that White’s credentials to head the department are sketchy at best: “We have a 30-something superintendent with a degree in English who spent six weekends at the Broad Academy,” a business-oriented organization that issued White the only certification that qualifies him for the job.

Devastating testimony was presented by Herb Bassett of Grayson, a highly qualified math teacher and band director. Bassett said that he has sent evidence to lawmakers revealing “deceit, distortion manipulation of scores and data suppression.”

Bassett documents what he called “the gross inflation of the high school performance scores. The Department covered up the inflation by intentionally mislabeling an important column of data in the initial public release of the scores.”

“The Transition Baselines,” he said, “showed that the GEE (Graduation Exit Exam)—which was being phased out—and the new EOC (End of Course) tests were mis-calibrated by 7.5 points. That’s half a letter grade. Had it been correctly labeled, the inflation would have been obvious.”

Bassett said that BESE was given a different set of scores than was shown to the public. Because the scores given to BESE were the correct ones, he said, “This shows intent to deceive.”

Bassett was interrupted by Sen. Jack Donohue (R-Mandeville), who said that these allegations are very serious, and that he would expect someone from the department or BESE to answer the charges.

Later, BESE President Chas Roemer (R-Baton Rouge) appeared in opposition to the bill. When asked about the allegations of fraud, he said that he had no knowledge about them, but that he would “look into it.”

Committee Chairman Conrad Appel (R-Metairie) asked Roemer to investigate the charges and report back to the committee.

Louisiana's indispensable investigative journalist, Tom Aswell, has much more on the story in this blog post.

Making it up as they go along

Superintendent of Education John White is all a-twitter about the “Classroom Support Toolbox” touted in this article by Advocate reporter Will Sentell, but there is actually less here than meets the eye.

About all that is really new – aside from the public relations campaign designed to put a smiley face on the widely despised COMPASS evaluation system – is a series of videos intended to show best practices to teachers.

There is also the announcement that the State Department will train some 2,000 teachers to be experts in the details of the tool box, and to help their colleagues understand the new common core standards.

All of which just reinforces the impression that this department is making it up as they go along.

But while the department’s details are all squishy, tentative and subject to tweaking, the effects on teachers are concrete. New Web sites and self-help videos do nothing to help teachers who have already been observed and are well n the way to having their evaluations set in stone.

So here’s a suggestion for lawmakers preparing for the session that begins on April 8: Set all of this year’s evaluations aside. Use the experience as an example of what happens when radical changes are imposed without adequate forethought, preparation or transparency.

Go back to the drawing board. Work with real teachers to develop an evaluation system that is accurate and fair, and that truly reflects the value that teachers bring to their classrooms.

Field test it well, and work out the problems before it becomes the rule by which teachers live. That would go a long way toward rebuilding faith and trust in the legislature and in the Department of Education.