Drew Ward: In support of Bobby

Ok, this is something you’ll not see very often on Cenlamar nor from me in general, but I’m writing today about my support for one of Bobby Jindal’s initiatives. Today the Louisiana House voted to approve Jindal’s plan to provide $10 million to send low and moderate income students of failing public schools to private schools in New Orleans.

Many have likened this move to a slide into a school voucher program. While I cannot speak for the Governor’s long-term motives, fear of such a move should in no way cloud the importance of and need for this current proposal.

It’s common knowledge that New Orleans public schools have failed; they have failed the children, failed the community, and failed for decades to provide even a reasonable minimum level of service in exchange for the massive amounts of state funding they have been provided.

There is much talk these days about public-private partnerships. Usually these are viewed in a positive light, but in this case the idea is taking a lot of flac. The fact is that government has failed the people and has shown its inability to deliver. In this same field of education in New Orleans private institutions — in particular the Archdiocese of New Orleans have excelled for generations. They have proven time and again their ability to provide among the finest educations in the State and to do so without limiting their educational scope by adherence to religious doctrine.

In this case, private organizations offer a superior product than their public counterpart. They do so at a lower cost, and provide excellent outcomes. When government fails we must look for other alternatives, and when those alternatives are sitting in our laps we’d be idiots not to embrace them.

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I have seen comments such as those posted in response to the Town Talk’s article (here) that complain that throughout the State many parents choose to place their children in private schools or homeschool. The complaint being that they should not have to pay both private school tuition as well as Parish and State taxes used to support the public education system.

These arguments are flawed, especially in respect to this bill. Most of these parents whom have chosen to send their children to a private school have done so on ideological grounds. Usually this is due to their wish to limit what their children can learn — to provide only teaching that agree with their particular religious beliefs.

A person’s dogma is not grounds for diverting public school funding, but a failed school system is. Public schools in Louisiana and especially in Rapides Parish are among the best in the nation. And with open enrollment, even if a specific school does not meet a particular student’s needs they may attend any school in the system. Parents in Rapides Parish who chose to homeschool their children or send them to a private high school are in fact depriving their children of educational opportunity in order to satisfy their moral whims. This behavior does not in any way merit recuse from school taxes.

New Orleans is a totally different animal. If we are ever going to get even a chance at breaking the cycle of crime-laden poverty that has drained the resources of New Orleans and the state in general for so long, we must give the children a chance. This is there chance.

Good job Bobby.

Responses

Lamar White, Jr

June 19, 2008

Drew,

A few thoughts:

1. De-investing from the public school system in order to incentivize private, parochial schools is simple political pandering.

2. This isn’t a long-term solution to education.

3. Fix the corruption. We have laws. We have a solvent process. And if we don’t, fix the corruption that prevents the solvency of the process.

4. These schools do not benefit from “massive” funding.
Ask the teachers and administrators.
Ask the parents.

5. How do private institutions provide education at a “lower cost” when public education is TUITION-FREE for every single American child?

6. Past failures should never be an excuse for future failures, nor should they become ground to allow for the quiet privatization of the public school system, which, in our democracy, should be considered a fundamental right of all Americans.

7. The legacy of the Diocese in New Orleans may be commendable, but ultimately, this is a short-term proposal that will only divert money to benefit a select few– at the expense of funding public education and at the expense of incentivizing private/public partnership to benefit public education. However commendable the Diocese is, taxpayer money should not be diverted to educate people, from a very early age, in a particular religious doctrine. (At least if you’re serious about fixing education, because I cannot envision how a long-term, massive privatization is, in any way, an option on the table).

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Morgan

June 19, 2008

Drew,
I agree with Lamar. I believe the voucher program may be a small band-aid to a hemorrhaging problem. No quick fix will be the answer to giving our children, as a whole, a better education. The vouchers aren’t necessarily a sustainable program, considering 10 million isn’t going to cut it in the years to come, and it only targets a small number of students. Plus, the public school system is not going anywhere.

You mentioned Rapides Parish public education as being superior to private or home schooling, so what steps do you suggest we take to rehabilitate our public school system in New Orleans because though that is the real challenge, we will benefit greater in the long run with minds, like your own, focused on the true issue instead of patting legislators and our governor on the back for avoiding the critical matter at hand.

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Drew Ward

June 19, 2008

Guys I understand your concerns. But, for one thing this is not diverting funding from the public schools, rather it is an additional fund that gives some otherwise abandoned children the opportunity to attend good schools.

The school system in New Orleans is absolutely broken and has been for decades. There must be wholesale change and it needs to occur on a scale never before attempted in the state education realm.

The entire system is bust. However, Charter schools such as Lusher have shown that alternative organizations can and do make education work in New Orleans. As taxpayers in Alexandria part of what you pay to the state goes to New Orleans schools — certainly more than what goes to Rapides Parish Schools.

They are not overfunded — no school system is. But, when funding does not yield results then that money — those taxes paid by all of us — are wasted.

The system does need a major overhaul; education in the entire state needs a major overhaul starting primarily with the training we provide teachers and then with the pay for trained teachers.

The very existence of “education” degrees beyond elementary school is absurd. Teachers at the middle and high school levels should have at a minimum a bachelors degree in their particular subject field. Then, perhaps gain teaching credentials. Compare the curricula between say an English degree and an English Ed degree — the education degree has about a third the coursework in English — and these are supposed to be the teachers?

The certification requirements are another problem as they require at least a year of additional schooling for little more than a primer in child psychology and a lot of time spent on learning how to make billboards and crap. The fact is that there are plenty of people — retired and otherwise — whom are experts in their fields and would make great teachers for our schools, but the powers that be have set up a system that protects the establishment route of getting an education degree in lieu of a system that allows professionals in their respective fields to pass on that knowledge to our students.

Finally, if we are expected to have professional teachers with professional levels of knowledge we have to be willing to pay them as professionals. How can anyone expect someone with other skills to chose a career that pays 30,000 per year? It’s ridiculous. When teachers here can make as much as an engineer or other qualified trained professional, then we can expect to have a good education system.

We need to pay more, but we need to demand more. And finally we need to toss out this silly adherence to 50 year old teaching philosophy. There’s a lot we need to do…

In the meantime, until we find a solution, what is wrong with giving kids a chance? Or should we simply leave them behind because we don’t want to admit failure.

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Lamar White, Jr

June 19, 2008

This is not about being afraid to “admit failure.”

I think you make some good points about the certification process and teacher pay, which, by the way, is generally lower in private schools.

Moreover, any time you’re spending taxpayer money to incentivize private education, you are, by definition, diverting money from public schools. You even imply this in your original post: “A person’s dogma is not grounds for diverting public school funding, but a failed school system is.”

And the more money you divert, the greater its potential for failure– and to what end, so that you can diminish the quality of education for the vast majority of students in order to provide the ability for the brightest students to enroll in private schools? How is this even a reasonable, sustainable, solution?

You have some good ideas, but admitting failure does not mean abandoning public education; it means finding new solutions– reinvesting.

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Mung

June 19, 2008

Ideology is not the rationale for most parents who send kids to private schools, especially in New Orleans. They send them for a better education. How do private schools do a better job with less money? They do not have the red tape and all the government standards. They do not have to spend money busing kids around to make numbers match. If a kid is disruptive, they just get rid of him. No hearings, suits, etc. Most of all, the parents who are shelling out the tuition are very supportive of the school and the teachers.

I am opposed to any sort of vouchers because with government monies will come government strings. Private schools would become subject to various rules and regulations that do not necessarily improve education. I do not know how to fix the public school system, but some deregulation would help.

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liprap

June 24, 2008

Little do you all know how privatized the educational landscape of New Orleans is becoming. In the best of all possible worlds, I would like to believe that the approval of these vouchers will take some pressure off the RSD and allow it to truly RECOVER in the sense of working towards better public schools. Instead, based on what we are discovering, this is only going to create another avenue with which to siphon off some kids from the system and create a gargantuan waiting list for the spots created by these vouchers – because the RSD and the BESE have made transparency a joke, the excessive number of charters in this town have tried to sell education as a choice with kids as their customers, and parents have had NO SAY WHATSOEVER in all of this, even the vouchers decision.

All of this adds up to a way to hold parents up against the wall and force them into making a decision that will most likely NOT be the best for their children. This is only throwing another sorry wrench in the works. Except THIS time, the state has been setting New Orleans up to fail for the past two-plus years with its policies and its lack of openness. Decisions like the one concerning vouchers say to parents: “You’ll take this medicine because it’s best for your kids, and because we say so.” And most parents have no damn choice in the matter.

Yes, please, pay teachers more. Train them well. Give them benefits, by God. Treat ’em like the professionals they are, rather than like chattel. This decision can lead to much, much less of that kind of consideration. It’s disgusting. And I, for one, have HAD it.

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