Here and there, ideological
opponents of recent reforms to improve elementary and secondary education in
Louisiana seem to have gone foaming
at the mouth over revelations that the administrator responsible for implementing
them is … well, implementing them.
The shakedown cruise that begun
after the legislation became law, with a compressed timeline because the
changes are to go into effect this school year, exposed areas of needed clarity
and supplementation. One such matter involved assessing whether schools
involved in the scholarship voucher portion of the change had the capacity to
handle the number of slots they could fill with students qualifying as
initially authorized by the state.
Because of the tight time
schedule, notifications went out to the schools on the basis of paperwork
submitted. Then the Monroe News-Star published
a piece that took a look at one of the dozens of schools accepted into the
program that cast doubt upon its institutional ability to educate adequately the
maximum number of students authorized under the program.
Political opponents seized upon
this because, even though the laws were passed, the funding mechanism was not
yet in place, a few days before the end of the recently-concluded legislative
session. This touched off between the state’s superintendent of education John
White and several others inside and outside of his department a discussion about
how to deal with the publicity and policy-makers’ upcoming questions, as White
was to testify to legislators about department plans as part of the
information-gathering process about the education funding mechanism. The e-mail
parts of this later became publicized by the News-Star in a subsequent
piece.
Yet for some unfathomable reason,
some
opponents became aghast at the tone of these communications, with the most
apoplexy reserved for a passage of White’s where he sought to “create a news story about ‘the next phase’ of
determining seats in schools” so as to “muddy up the narrative” being pushed by
opponents, that not being stated in the message but surely inferable as being planting
the idea that the funding formula with money for the program should be rejected
because of the claimed slipshod job of vetting schools. Opponents who read of
these accounts also speculated that this meant any further review of
participating schools would have ended after the state approved written
applications, and implied that the state would just cut a bunch of checks at
the beginning of the school year and be done with it.
This inference from the very small and selective sample of published or
paraphrased messages, which may very well have been taken out of context, is on
its face ludicrous. Why would a bureaucracy that regularly and with detail
requires information
from nonpublic schools deliberately decide not to collect a few additional pieces
of information from them, and then only when prompted by an unflattering news
story? And why wouldn’t a public official try to nullify attempts by opponents,
who have had a compliant media in the tank for them against the program from
the start and use it still such as with this criticism, to define an issue in a
selective and self-serving way?
In fact, unless you have invested into a imaginary conspiracy theory that
reformers have some kind of vendetta against education performed by government and/or
have all of these greedy and evil leaders of nonpublic schools (most Catholic)
wanting to profit from providing substandard education while shafting the taxpayer
– a clear flight from reality – Occam’s Razor applies here. Simply, White and
his department had to move fast and as a result lacked clarity initially in
getting such a tremendous enterprise up and going so quickly. They had a
general idea of what they needed to do, but had not yet formulated and implemented
the specific details, with every ability to do so before the deadline. Assuming
the second-hand story readers are forced to accept from the News-Star, and that there is no bias in
its account or a hidden agenda it wishes to pursue – perhaps unrealistic expectations
– even then this remains the most realistic and plausible interpretation.
2 comments:
That, my friends, is the epitome of apologies for the Jindal administration, for the demonizing of those who do not agree with you, and for the utter lack of transparency in the Governor's office!
Here's what the Professor fails to tell you.
What was John White's first response to a question about the contents of the email?
It was an angry, accusatory: "Where did you get that?"
That tells me that he is much more worried about his (a public official) emails becoming known that true education reform. They want no scrutiny of their statements.
This is further and clearly evidenced by his statements revealed in the emails.
It always makes me feel good, Professor, to know that public officials are out there trying to "muddy-up" public information and making over $200,000 a year to do so!
Does it make you feel good, Professor?
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