Four Senators Block Evaluation Changes
The vote for HB 160 in the House Education Committee was unanimous and the vote on the House floor was 102 to 0. But yesterday the vote in the Senate Education Committee was 4 to 3 to kill the bill. It was obvious that LABI and the Jindal forces had done a simple math calculation and found that they needed only four votes to kill HB 160 and to move forward with fully implementation of the new Act 54 teacher evaluation system despite all of the flaws and potential for destruction of good teachers' careers. The following Senators voted with LABI and Jindal to kill HB 160: Conrad Appel of Jefferson, Jack Donahue of St Tammany, Elbert Guillory of St Landry and North Lafayette, and Dan Claitor of Baton Rouge.
I want to emphasise that the great majority of the legislature knew that HB 160 was very much needed to restore some of the morale of the teaching profession that was so damaged by the ill conceived and poorly executed Act 54 plan, probably the most punitive and error prone teacher evaluation system in U.S. Even the original author of Act 54, Rep. Hoffman , pleaded with the Senate Committee to adopt the carefully crafted compromise in HB 160 that would simply have delayed the most harmful parts of the new evaluation system. Rep Hoffman had made a commitment upon adoption of Act 54 that he would demand that the evaluation be halted if it was found to be
I want to emphasise that the great majority of the legislature knew that HB 160 was very much needed to restore some of the morale of the teaching profession that was so damaged by the ill conceived and poorly executed Act 54 plan, probably the most punitive and error prone teacher evaluation system in U.S. Even the original author of Act 54, Rep. Hoffman , pleaded with the Senate Committee to adopt the carefully crafted compromise in HB 160 that would simply have delayed the most harmful parts of the new evaluation system. Rep Hoffman had made a commitment upon adoption of Act 54 that he would demand that the evaluation be halted if it was found to be