Louisiana Educator: The War Against Public Schools and Teachers Resumes Next Week!

Louisiana Educator: The War Against Public Schools and Teachers Resumes Next Week!:

The War Against Public Schools and Teachers Resumes Next Week!

Two Committees of the Louisiana House of Representatives next week will go back to work attempting to further dismantle public education and do more damage to the teaching profession.

House Education Committee: 9:00 AM, Wednesday, April 29

So after all the dismal academic results of most of the voucher schools and the audits showing misuse of our tax dollars by greedy voucher school directors, and the terrible academic track record of vouchers nationwide, you may have thought that voucher fever in Louisiana had died down. . .  Wrong! Voucher proponents have a bill to be heard the House Education Committee, Wednesday, April 29 that would allow new voucher schools to enroll more than the present statutory limit of 20% voucher students.

HB 330 by Badon would allow the LDOE to waive the 20% limit of voucher students in some of the voucher schools that have been in operation for less than two years. You see, the problem is that some new private schools have trouble getting off the ground with mostly private paying students, so this would let entrepreneurs start their schools with more publicly funded voucher students if they can convince the LDOE that they have a viable school even before they start! That has not been hard to do with John White's voucher loving LDOE. This is just another scheme to let the privatieers profit using our public school students and our tax money.

Many of these new voucher schools fit my definition of Predatory Schools. That is, private schools and charter schools that get public school funding and attempt to attract only the higher performing students so that their performance will look better than the real public schools. Even though these predatory schools are supposed to be non-discriminatory (The Brumfield Dodd requirement), no one really checks to see that they attract a fair ratio of black or at-risk students. In addition, they have the freedom to reject students with disabilities if they say that they are not equipped to instruct such students, (This exemption greatly boosts their scores on state tests), and they can easily use their discipline policies to remove disruptive and low performing students (further boosting their scores).

So next time you hear the proponents of privatization reciting their slogans and talking points like: "Its time to break up the public school monopoly", or "competition will force all schools to perform better for our students" be aware that these are false claims just to help justify ways of diverting our tax dollars to non-accountable predatory schools. They do not play by the same rules. If this process is allowed to continue, public schools will become the dumping grounds for underprivileged and low performing at-risk students while the managers who run these privatized schools get rich on our tax dollars. As my friend, former School Board Association President, Noel Hammatt often says: "Follow the money."

Please contact your State Representative and ask him/her to vote against HB 330! 

Representative Ivey wants to remove all job security for teachers

HB 505 by Representative Ivey of the Central area in Baton Rouge would prevent new teachers from ever attaining tenure under any conditions, but more importantly, this bill would allow teachers to be fired at the end of each school year without legitimate reasons. Even new teachers without tenure now get some due process because of  a provision in state law that requires that any disciplinary action against them (including termination) must be supported by valid reasons. The teacher is allowed to have a court review of their termination to determine if it was arbitrary or capricious.

HB 505 would not only eliminate the possibility of a new teacher ever gaining tenure, it would allow all such teachers to be terminated at the end of each school year without the need to provide a valid reason because this new law would give teachers only one year contracts! We need to keep the present law because LAE won several lawsuits last year in cases where teachers were being denied due process.

Governor Jindal and big business groups like LABI like this legislation because their goal is to make every teacher subject to dismissal at any time, for any reason.  Right now it would not apply to experienced teachers, but I predict that if this is successful, they will go after experienced teachers next. Part of their rationale is that if teachers have no job protection, they Louisiana Educator: The War Against Public Schools and Teachers Resumes Next Week!: