Monaghan defends the teaching profession

When Advocate reporter Will Sentell wrote this story about teachers who enter the profession through alternate certification, it was followed almost immediately by a letter from the right-wing Heartland Institute think tank.

That letter, from Heartland's Joy Pullman, created a context that did not exist in the original article, equating teaching to 19th century factory-style jobs. We now live in an age where young workers "switch jobs five times in their first 10 years in the workforce, " she wrote.

But as LFT President Steve Monaghan pointed out in this rebuttal, there is a difference between professions and jobs.

"Teaching, like law, medicine and engineering, is a profession," Monaghan wrote. "We can’t believe that Pullman would make the same assertion about physicians — that the idea of switching professions 'five times in their first 10 years' is a good one. "

For too many so-called reformers, it has become an article of faith that teaching need not be a true profession or calling - that teaching is something anyone can do for a couple of years before going on to a "real" job. All teachers really have to do, they reason, is prepare children to fill in the right bubbles on standardized tests.

That idea has been taken to cynical lengths by some politicians who see it as a way to create education systems on the cheap. No need for salary schedules, expensive health insurance coverage or pension plans as long as schools are revolving doors for idealistic young folks operating on a peace corps model.

Which should not be the point of alternative certification. As Monaghan wrote, "Of course, we appreciate the opportunities and advantages associated with making it possible for people trained in other disciplines to come into our classrooms. They can bring fresh perspectives and specialized information that can serve our students well."

Whether teachers enter our profession through traditional routes, or make a commitment to education through alternative certification later in life, they deserve the respect due to professionals.

"(W)e reject Pullman’s apparent belief that better education for children will be the outcome of a transitional teacher corps' Monaghan concluded. "Pullman’s letter is frankly insulting and does a disservice to honorable members of a most honorable and critical profession."

Budget cuts threaten pre-K program

A very successful pre-kindgergarten program in one of the state's top school districts is being reduced because of state budget cuts, according to this article by St. Tammany News reporter Suzanne LeBreton.

Data show that early education programs are very important in helping students succeed in school. That is increasingly important because the state keeps raising the standards for schools that are considered academically acceptable.

Members of the St. Tammany Parish school Board are plainly upset that the state is cutting funding at the same time that standards are being raised.

Said board member Mike Dirmann, "This is one of the best program the state has come up with, and for them to start cutting our funding I think is just ludicrous.”

Board member John Lamarque added, "This program was started by a school superintendent that cared about educating the children. Since (Former Superintendent of Schools) Cecil (Picard) passed away, we don’t have anybody up there that is putting forth the effort for the La4 program and all of the other programs that are important to educating the children of this state.”

PBS Teacherline offers CLUs

Enrollment is now open for the Fall 2011 PBS TeacherLine online professional development courses!

Start the new school year by checking out two new courses on STEM—Global Climate Change Education for Middle School and Inspire Elementary Students with Engineering for PreK-6th grade.

Receive CLUs and graduate credit for courses to go towards recertification or your 30+. Fall courses begin October 26th and end December 6th.

To browse the Course Catalog and to register for a course go to http://pbsteacherline.org/. For more information contact Nancy Thompson at nthompson@lpb.org.

AFT President Randi Weingarten talks reform

In this interview with American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, Truthout blogger Amy Dean gets the union leader to talk about a back-to-school season in which teachers "are preparing to meet a new wave of attacks on public education and on themselves personally."

Dean begins the interview with the observation that across the country, teachers and their unions are under assault by politicians whose number one goal is the privatization of public education.

"Little would you know, from this assault," Dean writes, "that some of the states with the best public schools in the country are those with the strongest teachers' unions. "

Weingarten's passionate defense of teachers and the teaching profession is bracing.

"Teachers and kids are totally and completely interconnected," says Weingarten. "Teachers advocate for things that they need that are in the interest of kids and vice versa. Trying to divide teachers from kids is only a way of hurting what parents and students need to create
opportunity in this country."

When the subject of teacher accountability comes up, Weingarten notes that AFT "has worked to introduce a system of evaluation and professional development that goes beyond superficial 'snapshot' evaluations of teachers and that also allows them to engage curriculum more substantive than mere rote teaching for a standardized test."

The union, she says, developed "a framework for a comprehensive and meaningful evaluation system that...measured teachers' performance in multiple ways that included teacher practice as well as student learning."

Around the nation, Weingarten says, over 150 school districts are using all or part of the AFT model for evaluating teachers.

The full interview is worth a read. Check it out here.

Louisiana students improving on key tests

High school students in Louisiana are showing improvements in key tests, according to reports issued by the State Department of Education this week.

The state's average composite score on the ACT test rose by one-tenth of a point in the past year, matching the national gain.

Even better news for the state came when the scores are disaggregated: minority populations in Louisiana out performed their peers in four out of five categories on the ACT test, according to the State Department.

"The steady growth Louisiana has achieved in our composite ACT score confirms that we’re indeed doing a better job of preparing our students to succeed in their college and career pursuits," Acting State Superintendent of Education Ollie Tyler said.

A day earlier, the State Department released a summary report on high school end-of-course tests, announcing dramatic gains in achievement.

"Comparing student scores on the English II test from 2009-2010 to 2010-2011, the percentage of students performing at the levels of Excellent, Good, or Fair increased from 80 to 89 percent. Additionally, the statewide percentage of students scoring Excellent, Good, or Fair on the Algebra I exam rose from 71 to 79 percent between 2010 and 2011. In fact, the percentage of students receiving a score of Excellent, Good, or Fair has risen 15 percentage points (23 percent) since 2007-2008, the first year EOC exams were administered for Algebra I. Geometry results have likewise risen, from 66 percent scoring at the passing level in 2010 to 75 percent in 2011," the report says.

Jindal a no-show at privatization debate

LFT President Steve Monaghan addresses the League of Women Voters.

Even though thousands of public employees are wondering how they will be affected by the proposed privatization of a state health insurance plan, Gov. Bobby Jindal and his advisers skipped a League of Women Voters forum on the subject Tuesday.

That left only opponents of the privatization scheme, including Louisiana Federation of Teachers President Steve Monaghan, to talk about the issue.

Privatizing the PPO plan offered through the State Office of Group Benefits is one of the main goals of the Jindal administration. That office provides health insurance for teachers and school employees in 44 school districts, as well as for state retirees. In all, some 62,000 employees and their dependents are members of the PPO plan.

Read the rest of this story here. Gannet reporter Mike Hasten covered the debate for this story, and Advocate reporter Michelle Millhollon had this report.

Poll shows strong support for teachers and school funding

The public gives high marks to public school teachers, respects the teaching profession, supports investments in education, and rejects tax-funded vouchers for private school tuition, according to the 2011 PDK/Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools.

"At a time of breakneck change in what students need to be successful in this economy, sandwiched between years of school budget cuts and economic turmoil, Americans' respect for public schools and teachers is strong and growing stronger," AFT president Randi Weingarten says.

"The public thinks more highly of teachers than they do of principals and school board members. Further, when asked about the attacks by some governors on teachers' collective bargaining rights, the public sides with the teachers.

"Americans' strong support for teachers and public schools is all the more heartening given that more than two-thirds of respondents say they hear more bad news about education than good news. This suggests media coverage of education, at odds with the experiences and impressions of parents and the public, needs to change.

"No doubt a question last asked in 1976 and repeated in the latest survey will get some attention. It asks about general opinions on teacher unions, framed in a way that implies union work is limited to narrow issues of compensation and working conditions. The wording doesn't reflect the current work of the AFT and our quality education agenda, which focuses on what students need to succeed and what their teachers need to facilitate success. We look forward to every opportunity to educate the public about the work we do to help teachers teach and children learn—something that has been hard when the media's coverage is so negative. But, at our core, we hope the enduring goodwill the public has for teachers will grow as we continue our work to improve public schools."

State skimps on erasure analysis

Louisiana's Department of Education is willing to spend $44 million to the company that "prints, issues, writes, grades and analyzes Louisiana’s No Child Left Behind-compliant state tests."


But when it comes to paying for the erasure analyses that can keep the system honest, the state balks at paying a bit more than $58,000.

Reporter Mikhail Zinshteyn writes about it here, in The Washington Independent.

Roemer running on anti-tenure platform

An incumbent candidate for the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education has announced that the biggest plank in his campaign platform is the abolition of teacher tenure.

Chas Roemer was elected to his first term without opposition in BESE District 6. He quickly established himself as the member who is most disdainful of public schools, public school teachers and the unions they choose to represent them.

Roemer is now the second BESE candidate to take direct aim at one of the most basic rights that educators have. The first was Holly Boffy, a director of the Associated Professional Educators of Louisiana, who will challenge incumbent Dale Bayard for the District 7 seat.

Tenure is essential to guarantee academic freedom and to protect teachers from favoritism, abuse and political meddling. Before you vote this fall, be sure to ask candidates about their position on teacher tenure!

Superman explains it all for you

The rest of this 1952 cartoon is here.

Failure to reauthorize NCLB may lead to waivers

One result (or lack thereof) of the deadlock in Congress is a failure to reauthorize the federal No Child Left behind act. Because of the legislature's inaction, President Obama has announced that states may apply for waivers of the act so long as they "agree to adopt a prescribed set of education reforms," according to this Education Week blog post by Michele McNeil.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced last June that the administration would proceed with a waiver plan if Congress fails to reauthorize NCLB by the start of school.

Duncan said waivers would be offered as long as states meet other requirements, which will not be spelled out fully until next month. Areas likely to be considered in waiving the 2014 proficiency deadline are: raising standards for achievement, new strategies to help low-performing schools, and implementing educator evaluation systems that are tied to test scores.

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten had a cautious response to Duncan's announcement.

"We understand and feel the frustration with No Child Left Behind, and we support changing it in a comprehensive way to better assist teachers and students," Weingarten said. "Time will tell whether moving to a waiver plan that bypasses the full legislative (and public comment) process is the right approach."

"Waivers, if issued, should be informed by what works to improve teaching and learning," she continued. "We will continue to encourage Congress to get the education law right to ensure that students in this country have a fair, equitable, high-quality public education system."

Teacher tenure is under attack

No doubt about it, an orchestrated attack on teacher tenure is underway in Louisiana.

As previously reported in EdLog, a staff member of the Associated Professional Educators of Louisiana (A+PEL) is running for the state board of education on a platform of abolishing tenure. "We need to get rid of it as soon as we possibly can," says Holly Boffy, a former teacher of the year and A+PEL's director of professional development and university programs.

Then there's business bigshot Lane Grigsby, who promised financial support to candidates who will oppose teacher tenure.

Now comes this article by Advocate reporter Will Sentell, who lays out the basic argument that tenure opponents will use: Not enough teachers have been fired to suit them; therefore, tenure must be abolished.

Not surprisingly, the abolition of tenure is also being pushed by the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, a corporate-dominated lobbying group that opposes worker rights and supports privatizing public services.

Sentell's article focuses on the fact that "only 52 tenured teachers were fired statewide in connection with their evaluations over a 10-year period starting in 2000."

LFT President Steve Monaghan sarcastically asked the reporter, “What would be the number I need in terminations that would make people think that the system is working?”

In all seriousness, we should hope that there would be few terminations of tenured teachers. Tenure ought to be considered a guarantee of teacher quality. Here's why.

In order to earn tenure, a teacher must have college degree and pass a rigorous national examination called Praxis. For the next three years, the teacher undergoes constant supervision and professional development. In those three years, a teacher can easily be terminated for any legitimate reason. It is the responsibility of administrators to ensure that teachers who make it through the process deserve tenure.

During that time, about half of all prospective teachers leave the profession. This weeding-out process is the real reason that so few tenured teachers are found to be incompetent.

Once it is earned, tenure is not a guarantee of lifetime employment. Teachers must still undergo regular professional development and periodic evaluations. Tenure merely guarantees that a teacher cannot be fired unless a fair process is followed.

In Sentell's article, one principal whines that tenure hearings are "tedious" and that "I felt like I was the person on trial."

Well, yes. The purpose of a tenure hearing is to determine the facts. If a principal alleges that a teacher is incompetent, the teacher has a right to question the accuser. Otherwise, we would return to the bad old, good-old-boy days when who a teacher knew was much more important that what a teacher knew and could bring to a classroom.

BESE yanks charter from troubled N.O. school

Faced with allegations of rape, sex between kindergarten students, cheating on science fair projects, a lack of resources for special education students and a host of other infractions, the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education revoked the Pelican Educational Foundation's charter to operate Abramson Science and Technology Charter School in New Orleans.

According to this article by Times-Picayune reporter Andrew Vanacore, Acting Superintendent of Education Ollie Tyler said that her investigation revealed "a threat to the safety, health and welfare of students at Abramson."

The school is expected to open under the management of the state Recovery School District, and the Pelican Educational Foundation may file suit to regain the charter. The revocation of the charter does not affect another school operated by Pelican, Kenilworth Science and Technology Charter School in Baton Rouge.

That school has its own problems with investigations, reported here by Joe Gyan of The Advocate.

LFT leader exposes corporate agenda for education

A corporate funded organization that writes model legislation for state lawmakers was exposed for its anti-public education, anti worker and anti-democratic agenda at a press conference in New Orleans Wednesday. LFT Vice President Jim Randels, who is a member of the United Teachers of New Orleans, was one of the speakers at the press conference.

Randels was joined by Orleans Parish School Board member Brett Bonin and several others, each of whom brought to light a part of the agenda espoused by the American Legislative Exchange Council, which is holding its national convention in New Orleans this week. Bonin, along with LFT and others, is a member of the Coalition for Louisiana Public education.

One of ALEC's stated legislative priorities is to privatize public education, making education a profit center rather than a public good. That, Randels noted, "is dangerous to the American way and to the education of our children."

“The ALEC way turns parents into consumers shopping for schools rather than citizens building high quality public schools,” Randels said. “ALEC’s privatization, profit model wants parents to be consumers. But America needs parents to be citizens.”

“Education policy must be based on best practices and what is in the best interests of children not a profit driven corporation and a legislator meeting in secret,” Randels said.

The profit motive behind ALEC’s agenda for public education thwarts the ideals of public education and democracy, Randels said.

“In ALEC world, schools would become private entities funded by public money. As a taxpayer, I would have no voice in the way public schools are run. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to return to an era of taxation without representation.

“We should be working together to do away with separate and unequal schools, to ensure that taxation without representation does not return, to nurture citizens rather than create consumers, to work for the public good rather than for private profit,” Randels concluded.

Read the rest of this story - click here.

Exposed: How big business brings bad ideas to the legislature

When protesters greet members of the American Legislative Exchange Council at their annual convention in New Orleans on Wednesday, it will probably be the first time that most Louisianians have heard of the organization.


ALEC probably likes it that way. Despite the non-threatening sound of its name, the group is behind some of the worst public policy initiatives ever introduced in state legislatures.

Vouchers for private and religious schools, attacks on teacher tenure, watering down special education rules and stripping local school boards of authority to charter schools are all ideas promulgated by ALEC.

But its not just education. From privatizing prisons to stripping worker rights, ALEC has a bag full of model legislation that it pushes in state legislatures across the nation.

As it turns out, ALEC is funded by huge corporations that have a vested interest in changing state laws to siphon public money into corporate pockets. To read more about ALEC's nefarious schemes, click here to access the Center for Media and Democracy's "ALEC Exposed" Web site.

The current president of ALEC is Louisiana State Representative Noble Ellington. He, along with a handful of other Louisiana lawmakers, are being treated to the convention by Louisiana taxpayers.

That's right. Our tax dollars are paying for state lawmakers to attend a convention where they will learn how to send more of our tax dollars straight to the corporations that sponsor the convention.

As the Lafayette Advertiser pointed out in this editorial, we are paying for our legislators to be lobbied on behalf of big business: "ALEC represents the expenditure of private money to influence the political and legislative process, and that makes it lobbying. And the state government has no business picking up the tab for it, whether it's lobbying from the left, the right, corporations, unions, up, down, backwards or forwards."

Commenting on the corporate greed that can warp a capitalist system, former Soviet Union Premier Nikita Kruschev once said, “You will sell us the rope that we will hang you with.”

In Louisiana, it appears that citizens are paying for the scissors that will be used to shred the fabric of our society.

Teachers March is underway

The four-day Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action is underway in Washington, D.C. Education Week has an article about the march here.

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.

Report: N.O. charters "dumping" students

A new report from Dr. Barbara Ferguson's Research on Reforms organization documents ways in which charter schools practice selective admissions in spite of legal requirements for open admissions.

It's called "dumping." According to Dr. Ferguson, some charter schools in New Orleans find creative ways to legally remove students that they consider undesirable. Traditional public schools, on the other hand, must follow strict state laws regarding the expulsion of students.

That can have a very negative, two-fold effect on public education: it makes charter schools look more successful with the same student population than they really are, and at the same time, place more of the most disruptive students back into traditional public schools. That, in turn, creates the impression that traditional public schools are less successful than charters.

Here's one of the ways dumping works:

Lafayette Academy charter school, for example, can expel students for sleeping
in class, failing to report to the office as directed, disobeying a teacher,
cheating, lying, or for any other conduct that is disruptive, disrespectful
or disobedient, as determined by the principal. Lafayette was taken-over
because its 2005 performance score was 44.4, and now Lafayette has
a score of 77.3. At the time of its takeover, Lafayette could only expel students for
the offenses listed in Louisiana law, now it can expel students for just
about anything.

Dr. Ferguson's article offers several other examples of dumping and its negative effects on public education. Here is her conclusion about the practice:

Dumping kids out is a misuse of the charter school concept. Louisiana law
requires charter schools to address the “best interests of at-risk” students.
Yet, many New Orleans charter schools are allowed to dump out the at-risk.
This practice causes many ills. First, it becomes impossible to determine the
effectiveness of charter schools by comparing them with traditional schools,
because traditional schools cannot employ the dumping out policy.
Next, dumping kids out shifts the burden of educating the at-risk; it does
not address the issue for which charter schools are intended; thus,
diminishing the charter school movement. Also, dumping kids out of a public
charter school violates public law. Most importantly, dumping kids out of
public charter schools burdens the community. For the community to thrive
and prosper, the public schools must provide for the education of all
children and youth. Charter schools are public schools, but, when they dump
kids out they become more like private schools. Private schools are privately
funded; whereas, charter schools are publicly funded. And, all publicly
funded schools should be for the public purpose of educating all students.

Post-vacation catch-up edition

The world kept turning while EdLog was on brief hiatus. Here are some of the nuggets we missed:

Jindal's response to the Red Tape Act being declared unconstitutional: While educators celebrated Judge Mike Caldwell's decision ruling the "Red Tape Reduction and Local Waiver Empowerment Act" unconstitutional, Gov. Jindal's PR team went into spin mode.

A spokesman told AP reporter Melinda Deslatte for this article that it is "ironic that the unions would obstruct the very reforms that will help teachers."

The reforms he is talking about would allow school boards to ignore laws concerning tenure, class size, curriculum, discipline, certification, special education and a host of others.

What is really ironic is that the governor's office needs a lesson in civics from the union.

BESE candidate wants to abolish teacher tenure: It is a shame that any serious candidate for the state education board would campaign on a platform of abolishing teacher tenure. When that candidate used to be a teacher herself, it verges on the bizarre.

Yet that is what former Teacher of the Year Holly Boffy told the Rotary Club of Baton Rouge, reported here by Will Sentell of The Advocate.

Boffy is running the District 7 BESE seat currently held by Dale Bayard of Sulphur. She is currently working as a functionary for the Associated Professional Educators of Louisiana , also known as A+PEL.

Higher education faculty layoffs: If education is the engine that will drive our economy out of the dumpster, why are we firing so many higher education faculty? Is this what politicians mean when they say we can do more with less? Advocate reporter Jordan Blum spoke with some very upset professors.

Charter school scandals erupt (part 1): Teachers at Baton Rouge's Capitol High Academy charter school were nonplussed when they found out that they won't be paid on schedule, as reported here by Charles Lussiere of The Advocate.

The charter is held by a non-profit organization, 100 Black Men. However, the organization outsourced the operation of the school to a for-profit education corporation called EdisonLearning. Last February, 100 Black Men severed their connection with EdisonLearning, citing the company's failure to provide an appropriate audit.

Charter school scandals erupt (part 2): This one is complicated, and includes hints of charter school connections to an Islamic movement, rape, bribery and the firing of two education department officials, one of whom tried to warn about the problems a year ago.

Start your journey into this twisted tale here, with Times-Picayune reporter Andrew Vanacore's story about the firing of Folwell Dunbar, who reported to his superiors a year ago that there were problems at Abramson Science and Technology Charter School in New Orleans.

According to Vanacore, "Dunbar concluded last year that Abramson, which has connections to Turkish-run businesses and charter schools in other states, was at the very least 'terribly mismanaged' and recommended that the state board of education take away its charter."

Vanacore reported that Dunbar was offered a bribe to ignore problems at the school. According to this Associated Press report, those problems included inappropriate sexual contact between kindergarten students, a potential rape, unstaffed classrooms and "potential cheating in science fair competitions."

Abramson has been closed while the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education conducts a thorough investigation, and Dunbar's boss, Jacob Landry, has also been fired.

But the story doesn't end yet. The Pelican Education Foundation, which operates Abramson, also runs the Kenilworth Science and Technology charter school in Baton Rouge. That school is now also being investigated, according to Advocate reporter Will Sentell.

And what of the Islamic angle? Vanacore followed his Abramson story with this report about the Pelican Education Foundation's connection to the Gulen movement, a Turkish group that takes its inspiration from Muslim scholar Fethullah Gulen.

While spokesmen for Pelican deny any connection with Gulen, Vanacore's article is loaded with subtle hints connecting the school to the Turkish movement. Hints like one school board member saying, "I'm on the advisory board of the schools -- the Gulen schools in Louisiana."

By coincidence, this article, originally posted in the Church of England newspaper, provides some background into the Gulen movement, whose founder has variously been described as the "world’s top public intellectual" and as the "world’s most dangerous Islamist."

All things considered, it's fair to say that July has not been an auspicious month for Louisiana's charter schools.

Jindal touting education in reelection bid: In this column, Advocate bureau chief Mark Ballard explored Gov. Bobby Jindal's claim that he is "strengthening schools" in the state.

The governor's volunteers are handing out door hangers touting the governor's accomplishments, but ignoring the cuts to education that have left the Minimum Foundation Program frozen for three years, decimated higher education and required local school boards to pick up some $83 million worth of programs formerly funded by the state.

As LFT President Steve Monaghan told Ballard, the governor's "reality hasn't kept pace with the rhetoric."

Jindal protects his secrecy and punishes his enemies: Veteran Lake Charles journalist Jim Beam watched as Gov. Jindal "used his veto pen to protect the secrecy of his administration’s operations and to punish his enemies."

In this column, Beam took the governor to task for vetoing a bill by Sen. Butch Gautreaux that would have helped put the state teacher retirement system on a sounder financial footing, calling it "a perfect example of how the governor punishes his enemies even when others get hurt in the process."

The governor also vetoed a good bill by Sen. Robert Adley, a lawmaker who has tried to push for more transparency in Jindal's official records, according to Beam.

"Jindal should be above this kind of petty politics, but it has become a characteristic of his administration," wrote Beam. "You would think a public official with the popular support the governor enjoys would be more open in his operations and more magnanimous toward his critics. "

LFT wins: "Red Tape Act" declared unconstitutional

Score one for the rule of law! Today Baton Rouge Judge R. Michael Caldwell declared Gov. Bobby Jindal's so-called "Red Tape Reduction Act" unconstitutional.

The law was the governor's signature education legislation in 2010, and it would have allowed the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to waive virtually any state law upon request by a local school board.

LFT opposed the law when it was in the legislature, on the grounds that the legislature does not have authority to cede its lawmaking authority to any other body.

"Insofar as the act grants this right, it is unconstitutional in my opinion,” the judge said. “Allowing BESE to waive or suspend law is a violation of Article 3, Section 12(b) of the constitution.”