Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2012
[Editor's Note: Read accompanying Independent investigation and analysis, "Incomplete," here.]
Readers of this newspaper are well aware that Gov. Bobby Jindal spent much of his first term in office as a frequent flyer in our Pooyie! franchise, more often under the Pas Bon and Couillon headings for cuts to higher education and health care, pushing to privatize some of the state’s most efficient programs, notably the Office of Group Benefits and its half-billion-dollar surplus, and decrying 2009’s federal stimulus while passing out stimulus checks emblazoned with his name.
But The Ind has been steadfast in its support of upending the status quo in public education both locally and statewide — clearly and empirically, public education in Louisiana is not working well and must be revamped — and we’re ready to give qualified praise where it’s due.
There’s much to like among Jindal’s proposals on changing public education in Louisiana — the details of which will be hashed out beginning March 12 when the legislative session convenes.
We’re ready to embrace the governor’s proposal to give school districts more flexibility in how they compensate teachers — no more automatic, across-the-board pay raises — and we’re tentatively behind changes to how teachers are hired, fired and achieve tenure.
But we greet the governor’s push to expand the private school voucher program — the governor is doggedly trying to re-brand it a “scholarship” program — with a reaction somewhere between wary and suspicious.
Nearly 400,000 public school students in Louisiana attend schools that are rated C, D or F — the threshold for voucher eligibility under Jindal’s plan. The vast majority of children eligible for a voucher will not find a slot in a private school; there simply aren’t enough private schools to accommodate the need.
But as newly minted state Superintendent John White told us recently, school choice “is going to stimulate people who are outside the traditional K-12 system to create new options.”
In other words, privatization.
Gov. Jindal, we suspect with but a hint of hyperbole, would be willing to privatize just about any function of government. He proved it in his bid to privatize the aforementioned OGB despite overwhelming evidence that the agency is working just fine and that privatization would have an adverse economic effect on retirees.
There are so many connections, well-chronicled by mainstream news sources, between the “school choice” voucher movement and wealthy, hyper-conservative foundations — the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation — and individuals like the Koch brothers and the DeVos and Walton families whose ultimate goal is the dismantling of government regulation.
We’re willing to set aside the political shell game that lurks behind education reform, and we do acknowledge that the school choice movement has, on the surface anyway, bipartisan support. But even if we look past the governor’s track record of ideological exercise, Jindal’s actions of late suggest an agenda based on rhetoric, not reform.
It’s no coincidence that Jindal’s aggressive marketing campaign is relying heavily on the Black Alliance for Educational Options, a national school choice advocacy group that pours millions into splashy advertisements featuring happy black families extolling the virtues of school choice.
But there’s a lot of evidence the BAEO is financially underwritten by some very radical forces, not the least of which is the Milton and Rose Friedman Foundation. Milton Friedman laid out the real goal of vouchers in the 1950s, according to a 1995 Cato Institute briefing paper: “Vouchers are not an end in themselves; they are a means to make a transition from a government to a free-market system.”
Also joining Team Jindal in the education reform trenches is The Heartland Institute, which issued a press release Jan. 31 announcing Jindal’s endorsement of school choice legislation crafted by the nonprofit. The Heartland Institute’s president was quoted in 1997 as saying, “[W]e see vouchers as a major step toward the complete privatization of schooling. In fact, after careful study, we have come to the conclusion that they are the only way to dismantle the current socialist regime.”
C’est what? The current socialist regime? Oh yeah, Bill Clinton was in office back then.
Equally troubling is Jindal’s hedge on committing to holding private schools that educate voucher children accountable, saying instead that “parents are the best accountability program.”
Well, no, they’re not — standardized tests are, according to state law. But as staff writer Heather Miller’s reporting demonstrates, getting an accurate picture from the state Department of Education of just how many voucher kids in New Orleans’ Recovery School District are actually being tested is a herculean feat, and the data arguably suggests they’re not doing very well to begin with.
Why in the world would we not expect private schools taking our tax money to be accountable, to demonstrate that they’re doing a better job with our money than public schools in terms of attaining educational progress? Could it have anything to do with the possibility that were we to get a true measure of how these voucher students are performing, we’d see the voucher, er, scholarship, program as the boondoggle it may well be?
MAY 21 Gambit columnist Clancy DuBos writes about the Mother's Day shooting, and how the stages of shock and blame and healing mirror those traveled by the same city following Hurricane Katrina. The city will recover, just as it did following the storm, by reaching out to help the people injured most seriously by the event, DuBos writes. It's how we heal, he says.
MAY 21 Here's a post on the Advocate (but buried on a subpage, not on the front) that reports something Louisiana Voice reported some time ago: a top DOE official lives in Los Angeles and "commutes" to Baton Rouge. The positioning of the story caused a stir on Facebook Monday, with several posters asking if the Advocate was covering someone's hiney. Sentell's stories on DOE are notoriously soft, and this one is no different: don't expect any hard questions in here.
MAY 21 Here's another post from blogger Tom Aswell about the "course choice" program. He's already reported on kids being signed up without their consent or knowledge, and has more here: For example, he tells of a six-year-old who was signed up for high school Latin. He also digs a little deeper into the sister companies of the main one operating in Louisiana; all of them seem to have complaints against them. Stinky.
MAY 21 Given the 80 percent cut in higher ed funding since he's been in office, it's clear Gov. Jindal would rather give tax cuts to out of state companies than have a functioning system, blogger Dayne Sherman argues in this post. The cuts have been such a disaster, Sherman says, that it will take 30 years to fix what's been broken. He says he believes the aim is to shut down most of the schools before Jindal leaves in 2016.
MAY 21 Blogger CB Forgotston says there are too many elections in Louisiana, and they're costing us too much money. The proof is in the pudding: turnout for most of these nonsensical pollings gets worse and worse, CB opines, even as millions of dollars that could be spent on health care or higher ed go down the tubes. The legislature must take action to stem the tide of pointless elections, he says.
MAY 21 Here's an interesting investigative piece by WVUE on the retirement benefits of some Jefferson Parish public employees. According to the story, the taxpayers are paying 100 percent of the retirement contributions of employees who started work prior to a certain date in April 1986 -- and have done for more than 30 years. It costs the parish millions annually, and might not be legal, the story reports.
MAY 21 This post on Bayou Buzz provides insight from Louisiana's intrepid pollster, Bernie Pinsonat, on the winners and losers from this year's legislative session. But to hear Bernie tell it, there's almost nuttin but losers: Jindal, the Republican party, the Fiscal Hawks all get big goose eggs in his win column.
MAY 20 This post on The Lens takes a look at a huge (either $500K or $250K) bill that one NOLA charter now has for school lunches. The RSD says the charter group didn't fill out the proper paperwork for federal reimbursement, but the story details how the RSD didn't ensure the people running the charter had the proper training, despite requests from hapless charter employees trying to fill out forms. Either way, somebody's asleep at the wheel.
Most Read
in case you missed it
Subscribe to this comment's feed