Yikes: Louisiana's bold bid to privatize schools

[cali]

By Stephanie Simon

June 1 | Fri Jun 1, 2012 6:04pm EDT

(Reuters) - Louisiana is embarking on the nation's boldest experiment in privatizing public education, with the state preparing to shift tens of millions in tax dollars out of the public schools to pay private industry, businesses owners and church pastors to educate children.

Starting this fall, thousands of poor and middle-class kids will get vouchers covering the full cost of tuition at more than 120 private schools across Louisiana, including small, Bible-based church schools.

The following year, students of any income will be eligible for mini-vouchers that they can use to pay a range of private-sector vendors for classes and apprenticeships not offered in traditional public schools. The money can go to industry trade groups, businesses, online schools and tutors, among others.

Every time a student receives a voucher of either type, his local public school will lose a chunk of state funding.

<snip>

Of the plans so far put forward, Louisiana's plan is by far the broadest. This month, eligible families, including those with incomes nearing $60,000 a year, are submitting applications for vouchers to state-approved private schools.

<snip>

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/01/us-education-vouchers-idUSL1E8H10AG20120601

[cali]

1. this is a long, comprehensive article and it is chilling

[Jazzgirl]

2. Bookingmarking so I can read when I have more time.

The excerpt was chilling enough. I never thought I'd see the day in the USA where anything like this would ever happen. It is beyond scary. I am so glad I don't have kids.

[malthaussen]

3. Be sure not to miss the school that doesn't teach evolution

because it doesn't want to confuse the children.

-- Mal

[cali]

4. not to mention the bunker like building with no windows

and no playground.

[Jazzgirl]

5. Now that's some real scary shit!

I have worked in a bunker like building but that's because it housed mission critical computers and people. A tornado can't take the darn thing down! I can't imagine a school room thats a bunker.

[malthaussen]

6. How about a schoolroom that's a fallout shelter?

"Now, don't lean on the horses, children!"

-- Mal

[d_r]

7. a nightmare

not only public funding of poor quality religious-based "education" but a return to segregation. Well, not a return in La. but a public funding of de facto segregation.

[WriteWrong]

8. Taking public money for that? Someone needs to stomp on that, quick.

[AJTheMan]

9. I support Governor Jindal's actions in this case

It is a step in the right direction.

(I'm from Louisiana)

[cali]

10. why? did you read the article?

instructing children that God did so and so on such and such day, is NOT science. Not teaching evolution, is a serious gap in any science curriculum. How is warehousing children in bunker like buildings with no windows and no playground, acceptable? How is placing children in cubicles with workbooksand instructing them to work at their own pace, education.

Please elaborate on how this is a step in the right direction. Your post says nothing and being from LA is pretty damned meaningless in this context.

[AJTheMan]

11. It's Simple Really

I believe that parents should have the option on how their children should be schooled. The parents know what will work for their kids and what won't. Some of these kids live in public school districts where the school has received bad grades and has a high dropout rate. If their parents want to give their kids an alternative to the failing public school and the only thing stopping them from doing so is income, then I believe the government should absolutely subsidize that student's tuition. The actions taken by the governor are about two things. Number one, is giving control of education back to the parents. In years past, only the highly affluent would be able to attend prestigious private schools. The minorities, the poor, the under privileged were forced to go to the public school. If the public school is failing and has a high dropout rate and the teachers are down right crappy, then the student would still have to go, knowing that he or she faces an uphill battle. Now that this piece of legislation has been enacted, parents have a few more options. If they feel like the public school in their area will not properly prepare their child for the future, they now have the opportunity to seek alternatives, regardless of income. For the first time, many poor to middle class parents will have a choice in how their children are to be educated. Trust me, I live near Shreveport, in Caddo Parish, where 19 schools have failing grades. If we can help just one student by subsidizing their education at a better private school, then this program is a success.

The second core issue with this piece of legislation is putting teachers on the same playing field as every one else in life. You know, how, in your job, if you constantly screw up, you're going to get fired? Well, it motivates you to do your job properly so that you don't lose your job. You keep your job, the task at hand is done successfully, and the company prospers as a whole. What if, however, your company told you that no matter what you do, save something outright lewd or illegal, nothing you could do could get you fired. What results, in that situation? Complacency. Apathy. Screw ups. You can fail at the job all you want and no matter how bad you are at it, you cannot get fired. Well, for many years, this was the case in our class rooms. Now I'm not saying that all tenured teachers are bad. I knew plenty of great teachers who were tenured. I also knew quite a few who were just awful but because they were tenured, the administration couldn't do a thing about it. I had a teacher freshman year who failed 66% of her students. And this was at a school that consistently gets ranked as one of the best in the parish. My family asked the administration if something could be done but alas, nothing could be done. She was tenured and they just had to wait for her to retire. The second issue here is that teachers, like every other profession in the planet, should be held accountable for their work. If they consistently fail students and are given bad performance reviews, then their jobs may be in jeopardy. Just like you or me. If they are consistently shown to educate students in a good manner, then they can be promoted with salary increases. This idea that your career revolves around how you perform is not all that new. Look in any other sector other than teaching and you see it in place. The bad employee gets fired, the good one gets promoted.

Now to your points. For most of my Freshman and Sophomore year, I went to a school called Evangel Christian Academy. Every Tuesday we had Chapel, where the leaders of the school would talk about God and sing his praises. (I was and still am atheist in my thinking, so this didn't phase me too much) Beyond that, however, school was exactly like public school. We learned the same math as everyone else. We learned the same science as everyone else. Believe it or not, we had to learn about the way life evolved and our ultimate origins. We learned literature such as Shakespeare and other great writers. The curriculum, for the most part, was nearly the same as at public school. We didn't learn much about the big bang but that's mostly because the big bang is covered in our eighth grade year here in Louisiana. My last two years of High School went to my local public school. There weren't very many differences, save the fact that the teachers at private school are a little more forgiving whenever it comes to test scores.

Now there may be a school that has no windows or may seem like a bunker. The best part of this legislation is that if the parents are offended by the religious elements, or the bunker like appearance of the school, they can decide to take their business elsewhere. Maybe a different private school or even a different public school.

[cali]

13. Sorry, but it's ridiculous to state that if one student

is helped, the program is a success. What if 10 students are hurt for every 1 helped?

Going to chapel is different than not teaching creationism, no? Or putting students in cubicles with a religious curriculum workbook to work on their own.

And you obviously didn't read the article because the slots available in high performance private schools are far and few between.

[AJTheMan]

16. I did read the article. What makes you think the program will hurt students 10:1?

Like I said, if the parent does not want their child to be instructed in religion, they can always choose another school. Nobody is saying "Put your kid into parochial school now!" That's not what this legislation is about. It's giving parents an option to send their kids to a more prestigious school. If they don't like what that school teaches, then they have every right to send their child elsewhere. If they have an aversion to cubicles, they can send their child elsewhere.

[cali]

17. If you read the article, you should know that many of these schools

are sub-par and the better schools are taking very few students.

[AJTheMan]

20. Well, you're correct, that is one author's viewpoint. Others would disagree.

One interesting thing about this is that my dad is a Republican but he opposed this measure because he was a teacher for 25 years. I am a Democrat and I support it.

[HiPointDem]

23. Public monies should not be used to fund religious schools. Period.

[Selatius]

14. You can't dictate to teachers like they work on an assembly line.

The biggest reason why this can't be done is patently obvious if you just think about it for a second.

Say you operate a plant that turns out potato bread. One of the necessary inputs for that operation is potatoes, and you want the best ones in your batch before you process them. With the best potatoes, you can turn out a quality product. What do you do with the bad potatoes?

You reject them.

The same can't be said for kids. As a teacher and as a school and as a societal moral responsibility to all those kids, the public school system must accept all the kids, including the bad ones and the ones with learning disabilities. Quite a lot of charter schools boost their scores precisely by rejecting the poorest performing students. Those students are dumped onto the public school. This is why so many schools are failing to achieve the high scores necessary under NCLB because they're left with the bad students, while the private charters pick and choose the best.

If you favor maximum choice for the parent, you shouldn't accept this arrangement for the fact that many public schools in Louisiana will disappear due to charters and religious schools unfairly dumping the failing students on them. Eventually, you'll be left with nothing but privately run schools and religious schools, and the nearest public school that actually is performing could be several towns over.

[AJTheMan]

18. Many of our schools are desperately over crowded and there are not that many vouchers available.

This idea that somehow our public school system will disappear because a hundred students went elsewhere is based on faulty logic. I know most of the schools in our area are overflowing with students. The few hundred who do decide to change schools will make up a very small percentage of student population.

[Selatius]

21. That's a problem of overcrowding, and that's far easier to solve than this complex bill.

If you want to solve overcrowding, build more schools and hire way more teachers. You don't get high scores if the teacher has so many students that the teacher cannot address individual needs. A classroom of 20 or 25 is preferable to 40.

Siphoning off money from already depleted public schools and using that money to pay for-profit charter schools won't make the schools any better as a whole, and the charters will still dump the poorest performing students onto the public schools.

If the politicians in Louisiana are so cheap that they don't even want to invest money in hiring as many teachers as necessary and building as many schools as necessary to increase the quality of education, then they should simply say so.

Pushing this bill through to privatize the schools won't solve the problem of too many kids and too few teachers and facilities.

[HiPointDem]

24. Baloney. Making public schools disappear is precisely what this initiative is about.

[Odin2005]

26. RW bullshit. Enjoy yojur short stay.

[ChazII]

12. A windowless school is nothing new.

Here in Phoenix they have existed for the past 3 decades or more. Learning and scoring well is possible without having windows. I taught from 1980 until 2010 in schools that had no windows.

Back to the main topic - it is chilling.

[kemah]

15. I taught at a charter school for one week and quit.

I am a Texas certified retired teacher. One year, I applied to teach at a charter school. After one week, I resigned. The teaching staff were all unqualified to teach. The director did not know how to write a lesson plan. She asked me to rewrite the lesson plans, because they were to specific. The whole goal of the school was to get student enrollment. Students were counted present even when they showed up at the last period of class.

[KamaAina]

19. This is as good a time as any to note that Booby Jindal has an Ivy League degree

in biology! Yet he himself is a creationist loon, and now he's going to send public* school kids to creationist madrassas.

[cali]

22. wow. thanks. I didn't know that he had a degree in biology.

[HiPointDem]

25. I've always wondered if jindal's family isn't related to these jindals:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jindal_Steel_and_Power_Limited

His parents come from the same area in india.

It's possibly a common name, but i've seen stranger coincidences.

[Odin2005]

27. He should have his degree revoked.

Creationists should to be allowed to have biology degrees.