Louisiana Educator: What's Really Wrong With Louisiana Education?

Louisiana Educator: What's Really Wrong With Louisiana Education?

What's Really Wrong With Louisiana Education?

The article posted earlier this week on my blog may lead some readers to believe that I am "down" on Louisiana education. Nothing could be further from the truth. I also sincerely believe that our public school teachers are some of the most dedicated and hardest working teachers we have ever had.  This post by Ganey Arsement of the blog, Educate Louisiana, makes it clear that, Arsement at least, believes that my motives in publishing disappointing test results is to enlighten the public about the invalidity of our present state tests, and not to criticize the hard work of teachers. This blog post is an attempt to further clarify my findings about the current state of Louisiana education and to make suggestions about how we as citizens and educators may truly improve our public education system.

Our public schools are still the best choice by far
Many of the various posts of this blog demonstrate that our public education system is much more successful and reliable than the alternatives. Those alternatives promoted by the very rich supporters of so called "education reform" have included the establishment of charter schools and voucher schools in recent years that are vacuuming up and wasting many of our tax dollars, Those tax dollars should be going to the real public schools. Examples of charter failures in Louisiana are described here and here. There are many more. The voucher schools have failed even more dramatically.

The flawed assumption that has been promoted in recent years by wealthy donors to the cause of education reform, is that public schools would benefit from increased competition from privately run schools that are exempt of many of the oversight rules in exchange for a focus on results. It was believed that those privately run schools would lead the way in improving all schools. Much of the data we have provided in this blog and others demonstrate that these privately run schools have been generally inferior to public schools and have instead produced  numerous incidences of mismanagement, misappropriation of public dollars, and even scandals based on abuse and neglect of children.

It has been stated by reformers and legislators who support reform in the form of school choice, that parents are the best judge of the CONTINUE READING: Louisiana Educator: What's Really Wrong With Louisiana Education?