A high school student in the state capital is spearheading an effort to repeal a 2008 law that advocates of mainstream biology education characterize as a Trojan horse for creationism. Zach Kopplin, a senior at Baton Rouge Magnet High, is targeting the Louisiana Science Education Act in the upcoming legislative session that begins in April.
The law, passed unanimously in the state Senate and by a 94-3 vote in the House — every member of Lafayette’s delegation voted in favor of the act — allows for the teaching of “supplemental materials” in high school biology classes. Those supplemental materials are widely understood to be related to Intelligent Design, a pseudo science concocted by creationists to do an end run around repeated federal court rulings barring the teaching of religion in public schools. ID posits that because life is so complex there must have been an “intelligent designer,” i.e., a supreme being, that created it. The LSEA was pushed primarily by Louisiana Family Forum, a conservative Christian group.
State Sen. Karen Carter Peterson, D-New Orleans, has announced she will sponsor the legislation.
The effort to repeal LSEA comes on the heels of a battle late last year over the state school board’s purchase of mainstream biology textbooks that make no mention of Intelligent Design. Reason won the day over the objections of LFF and BESE member Dale Bayard.
Kopplin is the son of Andy Kopplin, the former chief of staff to Govs. Mike Foster and Kathleen Blanco who now serves as first deputy mayor and chief administrative officer for the city of New Orleans.
Read more about the fight over science education in Louisiana public school’s in The Ind’s Dec. 8 cover story, “Devolve!”
Read more about Kopplin's repeal effort here.
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.
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