Education Should Do No Harm - My Sunday Eunice News Commentary published July 27, 2014

Should Louisiana taxpayers “keep it simple,” and allow high-priced Common Core education contracts to be funded in violation of our state contracting laws?

That was the suggestion of Stephen Waguespack, LABI President, when he argued last Sunday that it was too late to remedy the badly designed Common Core Program by canceling the sole-source contracts the way our governor, Bobby Jindal, chose to do. 

Mr. Waguespack does not seem to be aware of the public testimony of teachers, parents, and administrators who are clearly making the case that Louisiana's Common Core Program was disastrously adopted, recklessly imposed, without adequate design input from teachers, subject-matter experts, or education testing experts. 

There have been dozens of hearings, media interviews, and expert testimonies in which education leaders argued that the Common Core Program is hurting our state public education system.

The legislature tried to halt the program, but, so many state legislators are financially beholding to education industry lobbyists, they dared not cross their patrons by voting down the Common Core, as their constituents asked them to.

Governor Bobby Jindal chose to halt the Common Core with a legal strategy.  He vowed to restore some modicum of democratic process to the next phase of planning for Louisiana's public schools.

But, now, the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education is trying to force the Common Core through – no matter what the people and the experts say.

Enter Mr. Waguespack, spokesperson for the Louisiana Business Institute: Go through with the Common Core, because we've already invested four years in it.  “It's just that simple.”

Mr. Waguespack did not address any of the critical concerns presented by dozens of nationally recognized educators.  He ignored concerns expressed by thousands of teachers and parents who are worried that the Common Core is not age appropriate for younger school children, but at the same time, not rigorous enough for high school age children.

He minimized our concerns using the label “doubts,” then proceeded to argue we should do the easy thing: spend hundreds of millions of dollars MORE on tests that were never subject to scrutiny by experts in the field of education.

I can think of several disasters that resulted from this kind of thinking, this kind of inattention to fundamental design flaws.

Do you remember the Challenger Shuttle that was torn apart minutes after takeoff, killing six astronauts and the first teacher to travel in space?  Days before takeoff, NASA engineers were still debating design flaws.  NASA management chose to go through with the launch, because it was just that simple:  they were fearful of the embarrassment guaranteed if there was another delayed take-off due to an inexpensive design flaw.

Do you remember our shock and awe as a nation, when the City of New Orleans was submerged under water – because design flaws in the New Orleans Levees resulted in devastating floods after Hurricane Katrina?  Three months BEFORE Katrina, scientists were testifying that MRGO, a dirt moving project that was supposed to make it easier for ships to navigate to the port were rarely used, and they actually created a funnel for storm waters to surge through – guaranteeing major flooding.  MRGO was nicknamed “Trojan Horse.”  Warnings to correct the design flaw were not heeded.  We know the rest of the story.

So many complex engineering plans have design flaws, but, we ignore them because “It's just that simple:”  Disasters rarely happen.

Do you remember our disbelief as a nation when the Deepwater Horizon wells ruptured?  This engineering project was rushed.  Warnings of impending danger by trained staff were ignored. In the interest of getting oil to market quicker, managers took the simple solution.  They rushed a job and ignored reports of design flaws.   Eleven workers were killed. 

The Deepwater Horizon Disaster caused one of the worst environmental crises in American History. 

There's no reason to rush the Common Core Program through, now that design flaws and contracting flaws have been made obvious to our legislators, our Governor, and our parents and community leaders.

Sometimes, it's smart to pull the plug on badly engineered structures.  It's just as smart to pull the plug on badly designed education programs.

In the short run, superintendents and directors and public leaders may be red-cheeked with embarrassment at the sudden change of course.  After all, they've been forced to publicly endorse a very badly designed program that is already doing a lot of harm to our children.

But, in the long run, we can produce lasting positive changes in our schools by adopting research-based curriculum and testing strategies that meet the real needs of our diverse students and our 21st century workforce  --- without doing harm in the process.

Public Education should do no harm.  It's just that simple.

Copyright July 22, 2014  

Harassment is Not Terrorism

My colleague, Deanna Vandiver recently wrote of her experience with protesters who disrupted Sunday services by spewing words of condemnation at the congregation.  She characterized the experience as "religious terrorism."   Another colleague, Krista Tavis, echoed the description of Operation Save America's "direct action"  of negative proselytizing in our Untiarian Universalist Sanctuary.

I respectfully disagree with how this event is characterized by my colleagues and by UUs who engage in social media to promote our faith.

Terrorism is a vast overstatement of what happened in First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans.  There is no question that the behavior of Operation Save America was outrageous, disrespectful, and a harrassing form of public speech.

But, while their behavior as described most certainly was disruptive, it clearly was NOT terroristic.   We should not inflate the meaning of fundamentalist intruders'  pesky drama to a level that only improves their odds of achieving media celebrity.

Media celebrity would be a win for these rude proselytizers.  Do we want that?

I've been at public events, such as Lansdowne pride parades, when fundamentalists tried to grab media attention by spewing hate speech to our gathered crowds.  One fanatic was so offensive that a town personage pressed charges against him.  The case was thrown out, as it should have been, because the court ruled that hate speech, however offensive,  is protected speech - hate speech is NOT terrorism. 

Similarly, I belonged to the Paulist Center Roman Catholic Church back in the day when some of our church members were hauled into court and jailed for committing acts of civil disobedience they committed to protest the Vietnam War.

Specifically, The Camden 28, with the help of an FBI informant, broke into Camden FBI offices to destroy draft records as a moral statement against Vietnam War (imitating previous actions by Jesuit priests Revs. Dan and Phil Berrigan).

In 1971, The U.S. government tried to characterize the "Camden 28"  acts of civil disobedience as conspiracy.  Our government leveled additional exaggerated charges to ensure prison terms of 47 years for each defendent - hoping, thereby, to trim the sails of peace activists who were gaining public favor.

"The Camden 28" spent eleven months in jail during the trial.  But, no one can dispute their success in using the media to turn the tide of public opinion against the War.  They successfully staged a media show trial to make their moral case against the Vietnam War,   They were eventually acquitted  once the  FBI informant who trained them to enter the FBI building surreptitiously admitted in court that he trained the group under the direction of FBI authorities who hoped that they could discredit the Peace Movement once this group was indicted for illegally entering a federal building and destroying government property (draft records).

Civil Disobedience is a time honored social justice strategy.  We could say that our very own Henry David Thoreau invented this tactic to draw attention to immoral government policies in the 19th century.  But, if you read the "Trial of Sophocles"  or "Antigone," you might agree with me that there have always been people of conscience who were willing to do outrageous, illegal things to make a moral statement of conscience in the hope of convincing authorities to change their evil ways.

As a young US Army duty officer at Oakland Army Base, I once had to monitor protections for Martin Sheen and his entourage when they protested the presence of nuclear missiles on the base.  Our official government position was that there were no missiles on the base.  I was just a lieutenant, so, I had no knowledge either way.

At the time, I thought Martin Sheen exaggerated his own importance when he protested by carrying the Cross of Christ up and down past all our base access points.  But, by 1985, the US government knew exactly how to minimize the importance of Sheen's protest: we were instructed to be respectful, to provide security to keep the protesters safe, and to just ignore them, or escort them off the property if they became too disruptive.

I offer these contrary examples to make this point: speech acts, however offensive they may seem, are an important means of conveying moral messages to the general public.

Sometimes, we are on the right side of history as UUs, making statements to end horrific government behaviors.  Justice has prevailed time and again when our government tried to stem our protests by relabeling sincere acts of civil disobedience as dangerous, threatening behaviors. Time and again, juries and the court of public opinion refused to accept false threatening characterizations of sincere, morally motivated behaviors when it could be proved there was no imminent danger when the speech was uttered.

Sometimes, we are on the receiving end of history, experiencing some of the free speech tactics that we have used over the decades to stop war, stop production of nuclear weapons, stop racism, sexism, homophobia, and religious persecution of marginalized faith communities.

But, face it.  We taught the religious right everything they know about media attention-getting strategies.

There's no turning back.  All we can do now is beat them at their own game when they use civil disobedience tactics against us.

We have to use smart tactics when we are confronted with obnoxious speech acts.  Call a spade a spade, but, DO NOT let a spade think it has the power of a stacked deck of cards.

Operation Save America behaved shamefully in our New Orleans UU sanctuary.  But, they were not terrorists. Do not label them as such, thereby, letting them think we fear them.

They were haters.  They came to spew hate in a church that preaches the Gospel of Love.

It makes NO sense to overplay our hand by exaggerating the significance of rude, obnoxious public speech acts committed in our sanctuaries.  We can't play the Fear card, and expect to win against bigotry.

Because even in a deck of cards that seems stacked against our minority faith, Love ALWAYS trumps Fear. Love ALWAYS trumps Hate.

May Love triumph today.

Living With Guns: My Commentary Published in July 13 Sunday Eunice News

As a military chaplain, I prayed over too many people who were murdered by their spouses, lovers, or friends. I know first hand that guns don’t kill people. People kill people.
People with guns kill the most people, though.
People with guns kill their spouses, their children, their best friends, their co-workers, their lovers, their neighbors, and even strangers who have done nothing to offend them but be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
For some strange reason, in the United States of America, we act as if it’s perfectly normal for gun owners to shoot at people when they are mad or sad.
We read in the paper that a man kills his estranged wife, then himself. Ho-hum. Who won last night’s game?
We read that a middle-class man kills four or more of his children. Ho-hum. What’s for dinner?
Our absolute allegiance to the Second Amendment leads us to falsely believe that high murder rates are inevitable if we are to protect our absolute right to bear arms.
But, in fact, the opposite is true.
We can bring down the murder rates in our society and in our state if we do a few things differently: First, we must teach our citizens how to cope with conflict, anger, disappointment without resorting to violence. In states and communities where children, teens and adults are taught it is NEVER okay to hit, attack or shoot another person, murder rates are much lower.
Second, we must provide interventions when we see early signs that a disgruntled youth or adult uses violence against animals or other humans no matter what their “reason” for resorting to violence.
Third, we must demand that the community costs of murder and gun violence are transparent to all taxpayers.
When someone kills their intimate partner, that person may go to jail, but, taxpayers are twice punished. We pay for the criminal trials, prison costs, legal fees, police, hospital and doctor bills.
But, we also have to pay for the victims and survivors of gun violence, such as the nine left behind in a recent St. Landry murder-suicide.
Taxpayers will foot the bill for raising these children for decades. Costs to taxpayers will include a lifetime of trauma counseling, medical care, housing, and special education services for the emotional disturbance that stays with child survivors.
Fourth, we must do a better job of training and regulating the people who own guns. People who own guns MUST demonstrate their competence and fitness to carry and own guns, the same way that automobile drivers must demonstrate their fitness to drive a car, and licensed doctors demonstrate their ability to properly use a scalpel.
There are plenty of laws already on the books that support these goals, but, we don’t bother to enforce the laws we have. Weak enforcement is why the United States of America has insanely high murder and suicide rates.
When I served at Fort Polk as the first woman chaplain in the Second Armored Cavalry Regiment way back in the 1990’s, I saw first hand the impact that strict enforcement of gun and domestic violence laws can have the levels of gun violence in the community.
When the commander made it clear that gun violence would not be tolerated, soldiers learned that their “I just snapped” excuses were as phony as three-dollar bills. They changed their behaviors, and learned how to handle their conflicts like adults.
I remember one soldier who was sentenced to prison for two years for firing a shot in the air to scare his girlfriend. No one was hurt, but the whole base got the message: You will pay a steep price if you take your guns out and use them at the wrong time, in the wrong way, for the wrong reasons.
Soldiers learn how to handle their relationships like adults – using words, not fists or guns to solve their problems.
It is never acceptable to take guns out and use them when we are mad at the world. What will it take for our country to embrace this fact and do what we have to do to stop the gun violence in our communities?
Copyrighted July 13, 2014 by Marie deYoung

Skimming MFP - My commentary published in Eunice News on July 6, 2014 Copyright Jul 2, 2014

Louisiana was in the fast lane of the national super highway called “Education Reform” long before other states discovered their public education systems needed to be modernized. Granted, we were further behind when we started, but, Louisiana was modernizing long before President George W. Bush passed the “No Child Left Behind Act” with strong bi-partisan support in Congress.

But, in the past few years, our progress has been stalled. One major reason for this stall: the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and Governor Bobby Jindal refuse to give the fair share of school tax dollars to local school districts.

By refusing to send the legally required fair share of Minimum Foundation Program school funds to each district, Bobby and BESE are in direct violation of our state constitution.

Our state constitution requires the Louisiana Board of Education to provide resources and funding to every district in the state, using what is called the Minimum Foundation Program to make sure that every classroom teacher can do their job right.

Specifically, Article VIII, Section 13 explains the Minimum Foundation Program funding requirements. You can look it up online and read for yourself.

The most conservative estimates suggest that in 2012-13 alone, Bobby and BESE cheated our schools of $323 PER STUDENT! In that one school year, $200 million was skimmed from funds owed to public schools.

Since 2009, we've had major teacher lay-offs every year when Bobby and BESE starved us of our funds.

I can assure you, every teacher lay-off in our schools is directly correlated with a decline in our school performance scores. But, these days, Bobby and BESE would have you believe that certified teachers don't matter. According to their theories, our kids can learn just as easily by surfing on the internet, supervised by high school graduates without college degrees.

That idea is working so badly that the NCAA listed several of Louisiana's online schools as ineligible for placement in college athletics. Bobby Jindal's highly touted K-12, Inc. is high on the list of ineligible online schools, but that's a story for another day.

Research has shown time and again that staffing our classrooms with certified teachers is a very strong predictor of student success.

But, just when school performance scoring rules got tougher, Bobby and BESE skimmed our Minimum Foundation Program funds. Our class sizes ballooned making it difficult to give our poorly performing students the support they need. Our school scores went down.

At $323 per kid, Bobby and BESE owe ¾ of a million dollars to Eunice schools for just ONE YEAR.

We could have 15 more licensed teachers in Eunice public school classrooms to coach our kids in math, reading, science, and social studies if Bobby and BESE did their constitutional jobs.

They took our children's classroom money and spent it elsewhere.

Where did the money go? To fund profit-making Charter School Management Companies, vouchers to private schools that have been rated as below standard, to set up “on-line” schools that take exorbitant fees from the state with failure rates that would put our neighborhood schools out of business.

Why are we not fussing to high heavens about this?

Probably, because most of us did not know that the Louisiana Board of Education and Governor Bobby Jindal were siphoning off our school district Minimum Foundation Program funds to pay for programs that are NOT constitutionally valid.

Bobby and BESE's spending choices ARE NOT constitutionally valid. Our state courts are saying so every time another lawsuit challenging the legality of Bobby and BESE's financial shenanigans hit their court dockets.

Our school boards did not know how to fight these constitutional violations at first. But finally, school districts across the state filed a lawsuit to get our fair share of our tax dollars returned to our schools.

Local school boards are finally leaning on Louisiana's Constitution to force Bobby and BESE to get their act together to properly fund our schools.

We will win this fight. We need your help, though. We need you to contact your BESE board member and Governor Bobby Jindal. We need you to tell these politicians that they owe us at least $323 more per student per year if they want to claim they are true Louisiana patriots.

Whenever you hear Bobby claim his adherence to constitutional principles, it is very important for all of us to respond with one voice: Where's our Minimum Foundation Program funds, Bobby?

You believe in upholding our Louisiana Constitution? Show us the money!