In education, Louisiana turns tables on New York

After all that’s gone wrong in the past month with Louisiana’s disaster preparedness and response, it’s nice to see the state make some good decisions, in contrast to the silliness and corruption in other places whose policies and politicians have been held out as a model for our bumbling lot.

Louisiana’s Board of Elementary and Secondary Education almost got it right when it decided to give a pass to fifth and eighth graders on accountability exams being used to determined whether they are promoted and to ask the federal government to count only students in a school for two years in assessing school accountability. The adjustments became necessary in the widespread displacements following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The disruptions involved would introduce extraneous elements unrelated to education in the data, disrupting any valid measure of accountability and learning.

The only thing BESE could have done better was to waive the requirement only for those students who showed up between the first day of school and the Oct. 1 reporting deadline, meaning those in the classroom from the start would have to pass the LEAP test to be promoted.

Contrast this sensible approach to education delivery to that in New York, where the disaster response to the terrorist bombings of Sept. 11, 2001 has been used to draw comparisons with Louisiana’s to Katrina. Here, you have their Legislature trying to circumvent their BESE-equivalent by politicizing history education.

Perhaps the New York Legislature ought to look into better civics education, particularly emphasizing that corruption is a non-no, instead. That would be appropriate after the co-author of the law to appoint a commission to introduce the politicization, Democrat ex-Assemblyman Clarence Norman, simultaneously was convicted of accepting illegal campaign contributions (which means he loses his office – guess he timed that well).

I’m sad that New Yorkers had to put up with this idiot, but it’s refreshing to see our officials in a position to be used as models compared to those elsewhere.