Post-holiday catch up edition

Important things happened while teachers and school employees were on holiday for Christmas and New Year's. Here are a few items that you may have missed during the celebrations.

Education reform defined: Gannett reporter Mike Hasten wrote this column, in which he asked an important question about the meaning of "education reform."

Here's the takeaway from the column:

But one man's view of reform is another's view of harming public schools and another's view of harming
teachers.
If reform is just creating more charter schools and getting rid of
teacher tenure, it's not going to have the backing of those that have to
implement it — public school systems across the state.
It's got to be much
more than that.

Governor meets with teachers (but offers no clues): Governor Bobby Jindal finally had his first meeting with teacher unions during the holidays. The governor listened politely, but did not say what will be in his education agenda, which he plans to announce later in January.

Also in the room were an assortment of politicians and, most notably, a handful of parents whose children attend religious schools in New Orleans, with tuition paid by state vouchers.

That led LFT President Steve Monaghan to wonder if the governor plans to include expanded vouchers in his plan.

“The major concern is that, in a tight financial construct, which we know we are going to be in, the dollars that will be siphoned away from those schools left behind will be significant,” Monaghan told Advocate reporter Will Sentell for this article.

Voucher concerns confirmed: Worries that vouchers for private and religious schools will play a major part in the governor's agenda were confirmed by Times-Picayune reporter Andrew Vanacore in this article.

Citing unnamed administration sources, Vanacore wrote, "Gov. Bobby Jindal and his allies on education reform are considering an unprecedented, statewide expansion of private school vouchers..."

Tenure also on the line: Also high on the governor's agenda for "education reform" is the protection offered to public school teachers by the state's tenure law.

Board of Elementary and Secondary Education President Penny Dastuge told Advocate reporter Will Sentell that tenure "is the subject that comes up in every conversation" for this story.

As Sentell put it, "Dastugue, a Jindal appointee, said legislation could address anything from how long teachers with unsatisfactory ratings should have before they face formal job reviews, to new tenure policies for future teachers.

Coalition leader hits "reforms": With a consensus growing that the Jindal administration plans to make vouchers and expanded charters big pieces of his education agenda, St. Tammany Parish school Board President Jack Loup is pushing back.

Loup, who recently accepted LFT's Friend of Education Award, told WWL-TV in New Orleans that the governor's emphasis on charter schools is misplaced.

Noting that charter schools can be much more choosy about their students than traditional public schools, Loup said, "Our Constitution says, we take all, we teach all. OK, well we're doing that in the public school system. We're not doing that in the charter schools."

Supremes to hear school waiver case: The case of Gov. Jindal's signature legislation from 2010, the phony-baloney Red Tape Reducation and Local Empowerment Act - will be heard by the Louisiana Supreme Court on January 23.

Advocate reporter Joe Gyan, Jr. writes here that the state will ask the high court to reverse a ruling by District Court Judge Mike Caldwell that the Red Tape Act violates the constitution.

The act gave Board of Elementary and Secondary Education the authority to waive state education laws if requested by local school districts. LFT successfully argued in district court that the act is unconstitutional because the legislature does not have the right to hand off its legislative responsibilities to other bodies.

Coalition: Search for the best superintendent

The Coalition for Louisiana Public Education is calling for a nationwide search to find the most qualified candidate to be the next State Superintendent of Education, as reported here by Debbie Glover of The St. Tammany News.

But as Will Sentell of The Advocate reports here, Governor Bobby Jindal and Board of Elementary and Secondry Education President Penny Dastuge have made up their minds. There will be no search for a candidate more qualified than current recovery School District Superintendentent John White.

The hurrier we go, the behinder we get

The State Department of Education has announced that the number of "Academically Unacceptable Schools" in Louisiana has risen dramatically, but assures the public that it does not mean our schools are getting worse.

In fact, according to a press release from the department, "more students than ever are grade-level proficient."

How to resolve that seeming paradox? The culprit is statistics. This year, the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education raised the minimum School Performance Score from 60 to 65. And next year, it will rise 10 more points.

The Associated Press is reporting that the number of AUS schools skyrocketed from 48 last year to 135 this year.

Under a new state letter grade policy, any school rated AUS will be slapped with an "F" in October. The threat of a state takeover will loom over schools that just a couple of years earlier would have been academically acceptable.

To some observers, it may seem that there is a deliberate effort to create the appearance that public schools are failures.

Acting Superintendent Ollie Taylor is sanguine about the increase in AUS schools, saying "I have no doubt that we will see schools quickly overcome this status, given the history of our districts and schools in responding to tougher standards."

BESE President Penny Dastugue also oozes confidence, saying, "Our commitment and challenge now at the state level is to work with schools and districts to get every school in the state over the bar."

"Raising the bar" is a popular metaphor with education reformers. They like the sports analogy, with its implication that every challenge can be met with just a little more effort.

But an athlete who is popped in the kneecap with a stick can't very well jump over a higher bar, and that is what's happening to public education in Louisiana.

The legislature, Gov. Jindal and BESE just agreed to freeze public education’s Minimum Foundation Program for the third straight year, even as the costs of providing education keep rising.

On top of that, some $83 million was cut from the education budget. That included money for nationally certified teachers, classroom technology, student remediation, and reading and math initiatives. Those are the very programs that are crucial to meeting the higher standards.

Increases in student achievement are a testimony to the hard work by teachers in the classroom. But they cannot be expected to keep improving with fewer resources. And it certainly doesn't help to have a system that seems set up to ensure the perception of failure.

Popped in the kneecap, indeed.

Testy exchanges over seized schools' performance

Schools that have been seized by the state are not performing up to expectations, and lawmakers want to know why.

That's the gist of the action at Wednesday's meeting of the joint House and Senate Education Committees, reported here by The Advocate's Will Sentell.

They got few answers from Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek and Board of Elementary and Secondary Education President Penny Dastugue.

Both said that the schools taken by the state had been failing their obligations to students for years, but that wasn't what the senators and representatives were asking. They wanted to know why many schools, some operated by independent charters and some by the state Recovery School District, aren't faring any better under the new management.

In testy exchanges, Pastorek said that "dozens" of the 180-plus schools seized by the state have shown major improvements.

But with some 200 schools under consideration for seizure, lawmakers were seeking assurance that the department of education can guarantee improvement. They got no guarantees.

Good cop, bad cop in the Jindal house

You have to admire the public relations machine behind the Jindal administration. Remember how the governor polished his conservative creds by knocking the federal stimulus program while at the same time building local support with staged photo ops featuring huge cardboard checks backed by stimulus dollars?

The same strategy is now at work on the education front. First Lady Supriya Jindal is featured in The Advocate for her initiative stressing technology in public schools. As reported by Michelle Millhollon in this story, Mrs. Jindal's admirable objective is the installation of computerized white boards to replace chalk boards in elementary schools.

Thus far, the article says, the First Lady's educational foundation has placed the $6,000 technology in about 160 classrooms across the state, at a cost of about $960,000. The very ambitious goal, Millhollon writes, is to wire up 4,000 classrooms.

That would cost some $24 million, to be raised by Mrs. Jindal's foundation. In comparison, the governor's frenetic nationwide quest for campaign funds has raised about $8 million over the past few years, making it seem unlikely that the 4,000 classroom goal is reachable during Gov. Jindal's tenure.

But the airy promise held out by one hand has already been trumped by the stark reality clenched in another: Gov. Jindal's budget cuts have led to a $30 million decrease in the Department of Education budget - the part of the budget dedicated to classroom technology.

And while the distaff side of the Jindal household upholds the "support our schools" banner, it looks like deep cuts might be on the horizon in the governor's budget.

That's the impression one gets from this article by Advocate reporter Will Sentell.

Ironically posted in the same edition as the Supriya Jindal article, this one quotes Board of Elementary and Secondary Education President Penny Dastugue as saying that it will take a fight to keep education funded at the same frozen level as the past two years.

Despite rising costs and new mandates on local school boards, the Minimum Foundation Program has not received the usual 2.75% inflation factor, much less any new funding, in the last two fiscal years.

“I think we will have to fight (to keep the level funding),” Dastugue told Sentell. “I don’t know what the Legislature wants.”

Which is sort of a disingenuous comment. The legislature is only one of the three players to determine MFP funding. Gov. Jindal, whose executive budget plan will be released in a couple of months, will say how much he expects to spend on education next year.

Dastugue's own BESE board has a crucial role to play - it is BESE's responsibility to decide how much money should be in the MFP in the first place. BESE has not fought very hard for the MFP over the past couple of years, and don't expect the board to buck the governor this time, either. Dastugue is one of Jindal's three appointments to BESE.

The legislature does have to approve funding for the MFP, so it is disappointing that Dastugue says she has no idea what lawmakers have in mind. Shouldn't they be communicating about something this important?

So as BESE dithers while education burns, the governor's PR machine grinds relentlessly on, expertly positioning him for a brighter future than our state can anticipate.

School letter grades are "messy and confusing"

The Board of Elementary and Secondary Education passed a new rule assigning letter grades, from A+ to F-, to all Louisiana schools, beginning next October. Supporters said it would make it easier for parents to understand how successful their schools are.

But what will a single letter grade tell you about a school? When little Johnny brings home a report card, he has a grade for each of his subjects, not one lone mark to sum up his whole educational experience.

As Associated Press reporter Melinda Deslatte writes here, the process for assigning letter grades to schools will be "messy and confusing," not the simple process described by BESE President Penny Dastuge, who defended the new system by saying, "People can relate to grades."

Well, yes. But a grade is a symbol with a deep context, and unless people understand everything that the symbol stands for, it can be very misleading.

In her column, Deslatte raises the issues that the legislature and Gov. Jindal should have considered before passing a law requiring the letter grades:

• Should a school be rewarded for how much it improved its students' achievement rates and given a better grade even if its overall results still show a large percentage of students performing below their grade level and the state's standards?
• Is it fair for a school in a poor neighborhood where many students don't have parental support and don't get basic reading training before they enter school be graded against a school in a wealthier neighborhood where more students start off with greater advantages?
• If you curve the system, will it really provide any useful information to parents and will it meet the intent of what lawmakers and the governor wanted out of the grading scale?
• Does a letter grading system in some cases discount the strides a school is making or the hard work its teachers are doing? Could it damage morale and make it more harder for a lower-graded school to attract strong teachers and education leaders to help improve it?

In their haste to show that they are committed to anything that can be labeled "school reform," our leaders have saddled schools with yet another bureaucratic layer that won't improve anything, but could contribute to unfair perceptions of public education.

Which just might have been the goal in the first place.

Penny Dastugue's bag of bromides

Newly-elected Board of Elementary and Secondary Education President Penny Dastugue dug deep into the right-wing bag of bromides for her appearance before the Press Club of Baton Rouge on Monday.

Reporter Will Sentell of The Advocate picked up on her desire for radical change in this article, but did not go into the details of her agenda.

For teachers and school employees who may be curious about what the Dastugue era will mean for public education, here are a few clues.

As far as the budget is concerned Dastugue said she wants to "tackle inefficiencies and impose fiscal discipline" on our schools. She warned against allowing local school systems to do the discipline, however, noting that districts "do more harm than good" when left to their own cost-cutting devices.

Dastugue said she's fairly sure that once again there will be no increase in the Minimum Foundation Program formula, but was vague about whether or not Gov. Jindal will impose cuts on the school formula (as one of Jindal's three appointees to the board, will she buck cuts if they come?).

As far as "reform" is concerned, she stuck to the predictable conservative formula. That means we can look forward to attacks on teacher tenure, battery pay, extended sick leave, retirement benefits and salary increments for advanced degrees and experience in the classroom - at least those are the ones she mentioned by name.

She followed the strict conservative line in calling for "student based budgeting," which is thought by true believers to empower individual schools by giving principals almost complete control over the budget.

Dastugue's timing was unfortunate, however, coming just a few days after every principal in Livingston Parish - no liberal bastion, that - signed a letter opposing student based budgeting.

As Advocate reporter Faimon A. Roberts tells it here, the principals believe the scheme "would divert the current predominant focus on classroom instruction and put it on school finances instead."

According to the article, school leaders in Livingston Parish believe that "giving principals the responsibility of determining salaries and making other financial arrangements would harm the quality of the education at their respective schools."

On Monday, Dastugue made it obvious that lines are being drawn. She represents the pro-Jindal faction on BESE, which has been balanced by a succession of presidents who did not always kowtow to the governor. Pundits will be watching closely to see how far to the right her election tips that scale.