Louisiana Shark Tales

     If you were out of town last week, you might have missed the biggest shark story of all. 

Governor Bobby Jindal and the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education finally admitted they threw our public schools into shark infested waters and then, they slung mud at each other while publicly arguing whether it is a good thing to push your kids in for a swim with very large hungry white sharks.

    Say what?

    On June 17^th, the US Secretary of Education (Arne Duncan) goaded our governor with the claim that Bobby Jindal is only abandoning his education baby, the Common Core, for political reasons – to gain populist support in his campaign for the U.S. presidency.  

    Instead of refusing the bait, Governor Jindal scrambled together a press conference, and did everything he could to pull Louisiana out of the Common Core Program that he himself embraced back in 2010, when he used his immense power of persuasion to convince Louisiana voters Common Core was the BE-ALL in education reform.

   

 What was the governor’s first action once he was reeled into a dysfunctional public brawl with the Louisiana Superintendent of Education?  Jindal sent a letter to The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC,) requesting that they withdraw our state from their “sole-sourced” test-preparation contract

  

  Governor Bobby Jindal DID NOT say, “We regret to inform you that we are no longer participating in these tests because your price gouging contract is bankrupting my state and we already had a rigorous education program in place that we will tweak as needed for a much lower cost to the taxpayer.”

    He couldn’t say that, because it’s the truth.  It’s hard to win presidential elections by telling the truth.

  

    In Jindal’s quest to build national support for his campaign for President of the United States, he jumped into the shark pool that is pushing the Common Core on public school systems across the country. 

    Now, years later, the governor admits that the education sharks he chose to swim with are outsiders who do not care about Louisiana’s children, but, who do have a HUGE financial stake in taking over our Louisiana public schools.

     Here’s the short list of Common Core promoters who stand to make a fortune from testing and test prep materials:

    - Bill Gates, former CEO of Microsoft pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into propaganda that would push schools to do computerized instruction and testing even though the evidence shows these trends do not produce gains in student learning. 

     -Pearson, the British company that designs one-size-fits-all tests and then, gouges the taxpayer to grade and report test results. 

     -Teach for America, the fake non-profit funded by taxpayers and by corporate stockholders who refuse to accept research-based evidence that untrained teachers may be cheap up front, but, they DO NOT turn around failing schools, if only because they churn and burn at a very fast pace.

  -Michael Bloomberg, former New York mayor bought Louisiana BESE elections to rubber stamp Bobby Jindal’s pick for superintendent – thereby quietly removing John White from Bloomberg’s New York City education system.  If John White was such a rock star, why didn’t Bloomberg keep and promote him to fix his own New York’s schools?

     Bobby Jindal also announced he suspending all PARCC contracts because they were illegal, and then, he ordered a comprehensive audit of all existing contracts relating to the PARCC tests, to determine whether any laws were violated.

     Governor Jindal must have learned this trick when he was in Congress: cancel existing contracts for services because you suspect illegal activity, and then, set up an investigation to be sure you were right.

    

    Immediately after Governor Jindal’s remarks,   John White held  a counter press conference.

   No one was surprised to hear our unqualified Superintendent of Education John White insist that HE and HE alone has the power to decide whether or not Louisiana throws hundreds of millions of tax dollars down the sewer drain that is the badly designed Common Core test-to-death program.

     As Emperor and King of the Department of Education, White claims the absolute right to control every pencil, desk, teacher, and school board on up to the governor.

    

     What are we teaching next year and what material is the state testing?  Who knows? 

      Stay Tuned for Shark Tales II.

     But in the meantime, teachers, children, and parents are all doggy paddling in deep waters, with nary a life boat in sight. And hungry sharks are circling, baring their teeth, ready to eat  lunch.
This column appeared in the Sunday Eunice News on June 29, 2014.  Copyright June 24, 2014.