Louisiana Educator: Last Chance for Accountability for Charters and Vouchers

Louisiana Educator: Last Chance for Accountability for Charters and Vouchers:

Last Chance for Accountability for Charters and Vouchers

At its next meeting on April 16, the House Education Committee will resume its consideration of bills that would curtail abuses of the voucher and charter school programs. It is very important that supporters of our public schools ask committee members to vote "yes" for several of these bills if we are to insure the continued viability of our public school systems. Make no mistake about it. Our public schools are threatened by the continued abuses of charters and vouchers.

There is no evidence whatsoever that the addition of charter schools and voucher schools have improved the opportunities for our students in Louisiana. The original reasons given by Governor Jindal for the expansion of charters and vouchers by Act 2 of 2012 is that parents needed a way to escape "failing" public schools. However it has become clear that initial screening and monitoring of new voucher schools by the LDOE has been inadequate, allowing fly by night vouchers schools to receive tax dollars with little accountability. The testing data and legislative audits have shown that performance and accountability of these schools is sub standard. Also, new predatory, for-profit charters are being given financial advantages to attract students away from many successful public schools. There are no restrictions on how much of our tax dollars can be diverted from student education for slick ads and for the enrichment of developers.

HB 89 by Miller would restrict funding to charter schools that are not paying their fair share of  unfunded liability for retirement costs that are mandated by the legislature to all other public schools. (See the explanation of this bill on the post below. One of the rich charter developers from Florida has a 40 foot yacht with