Friday, May 11, 2012

Louisiana Educator: Public to Public Vouchers Only First of Many Failures

Louisiana Educator: Public to Public Vouchers Only First of Many Failures:


Public to Public Vouchers Only First of Many Failures

Part of the Jindal reform legislation is supposed to allow students in so called D and F schools to have an opportunity to transfer to other public schools in a different public system that has achieved a rating of B or better. The problem is that the receiving school system must first agree to offer seats to such students. The Zachary school system had initially offered to accept 30 such voucher students for the 2012-13 school year, but protests by parents to their locally elected school board members nixed the deal. The superintendent of theOuachita parish school system has also announced that his school system would opt out of the public to public voucher program.
I believe these announcements are just the tip of the iceberg of failure of much of the governor's education “deform” package as education officials attempt to implement the poorly thought out programs. The entire reform package was rammed through the legislature early in the session with orders from the governor to the majority Republican legislature that amendments would not be allowed. As a result, much of the legislation which was based on ALEC templates drawn up by big business lobbyists and TFA corps members (you've got to read this