Common Core in Louisiana: Two Days, Two Lawsuits
In May 2009, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and then-State Superintendent Paul Pastorek signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to commit Louisiana to be “state led” and participate in the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) Initiative, a show that the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) had actually “initiated.”
On June 2, 2010, CCSS was officially completed and released to the public.
One month later, on July 01, 2010, the Louisiana State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) recorded in its minutes that BESE adopted CCSS.
Neither CCSS nor PARCC tests are explicitly named in the Louisiana Register, which is defined as follows:
The Louisiana Register is a monthly publication which provides an access to the certified regulations and legal notices issued by the executive branch of the state government. All of these go through the formal rulemaking process.
For four years, this sketchy means of CCSS (and by extension, PARCC) “adoption” remained unquestioned, for the honeymoon was still on, with the governor, BESE, and the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) all holding hands as they sat on the same side of the pro-CCSS/PARCC table.
I guess that BESE and LDOE never thought they’d see the day that the governor would set himself at odds with the CCSS/PARCC plan for Louisiana. Otherwise, BESE and LDOE might have taken just a smidge more care in making sure that CCSS was adopted and PARCC tests procured according to proper administrative procedure.
However, that day did come, and the honeymoon did end on June 18, 2014, the day that Jindal announced his plan to drop PARCC and to cancel Louisiana’s CCSS MOU. The real sting came on that same day with the Division of Administration’s (DOA) Common Core in Louisiana: Two Days, Two Lawsuits | deutsch29:
