Fronted by one of the state’s two main teachers’ unions, this tour,
with a few brave exceptions, features commentary by those either directly
responsible for or who have served as fellow-traveling hacks for promoting and
implementing an ideology that has led to trashing Louisiana public education and
its a richly-deserved past reputation of failure. While any topic seemed to be
fair game, the rhetoric focused primarily on the COMPASS teacher evaluation
system now in place across the state that evaluates core subject teachers half
on the basis of quantifiable student progress, and secondarily on the
scholarship voucher program where the state pays for students in
poorly-performing public schools to attend other, almost all, private schools.
As always in these cases, the commentary that came must be translated. Regarding
COMPASS, union-bought-and-paid-for
Board of Elementary and Secondary Education member Lottie Beebe (a former
school official who soon will take over – parents be on alert – the St. Martin
Parish School District) asserted, “Teachers do not object to the teacher
evaluation process. However, we have real concerns with COMPASS.” Translation: “Teachers
don’t object to a process where only 2.38 percent of
experienced teachers get fired despite having horrendous learning outcomes.
Our real concern is that our incompetents now will be found out by COMPASS.”
Beebe claims the process was not properly vetted before implementation this
school year – essentially a factually incorrect statement. The COMPASS system
was tested in a pilot program for a year prior to implementation, with changes made
in response. The only thing materially different not thoroughly investigated was
changing the value-added portion from a 22-category rubric to one with only five,
a simplification decision about which the originator
of the instrument is unsure would replicate faithfully its validity. But if
for some reason a problem did arise, as the consequences of the outcomes would
not apply until two years after implementation, there would be plenty of time
to go back and to delay using the results for a year. This simply isn’t an issue
and the lack of justification provided to make it such does not warrant delay,
as Beebe and others advocate, at this time.
Other rhetoric verged into the realm of conspiratorial power-seeking
with no recognition of the looking-glass quality it represented. Thus, we got
from Kwame Asante, president of the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People Baton Rouge Chapter, this gem concerning the effect of vouchers:
“This isn't about the majority of black children. It's about the few. It
becomes a private corporation running your child's education.” He further
claimed it was a tactic to turn the black community against public education institutions.
This came in the broader context of the recent narrative that elites
dispossessed of power in the state over the past few years have tried to
propagate, aided by a willing and uncritical media, that bogeymen are out there
(in their most recent formulation, in the guise of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a group
to which maybe a quarter of Louisiana legislators belong, that promotes
market-oriented public policy and limited government) trying to disserve the
people generally, and in this specific case black children, by the introduction
of these reforms, in order to profit off of them.
With such as asinine statement and related attitude, it’s best to begin
its dismantling at the level of factualness. Hardly any of the participating
schools are for-profit and almost all are religious-based. Add to this the implied
imperiousness that, because his race-conscious group is against the public
policy approach represented by the reforms, therefore any black person that
sees benefit in the reforms is at best a fool, at worst a traitor to … to what?
Well, keep in mind that this is spoken in the context of full knowledge
of an educational system that has disserved children, but most particularly
black children, for decades, yet the speaker wishes to continue supporting the
same system without any real change. In this warped theology, government always
knows best, and the government-monopoly model of provision is best; only
government educators and the policy-makers and special interests who support
them have pure motives while those outside that are exploiters.
In essence, you are a black traitor, according to these nimrods, if you
go against an ideology that has failed school children for decades in the
state. It’s not that those who continue to give it full- throated support are
too stupid to figure out they can’t keep doing the same thing and expect
different results, or that they are too ideologically-enthralled with the idea
of big government and the payouts it gives through jobs, contracts, and
services geared to their particular special interests, but that you the
dissenter to this orthodoxy are the problem – simply because that it is the
divine right of those who arrogate to themselves the mantle of what is good for
the group they claim to represent to dictate to you what must be right and
wrong for you, regardless of you. No, you’re at fault and to blame for wanting
better because it is politically incorrect and inconvenient for the elites,
putting their power and privilege at risk.
Which leads to a final bit of idiocy as expressed by one of the less
useful members of Legislature, state Rep. John Bel Edwards,
who editorialized that reforms were designed as “part of an overall effort to
undermine public confidence in our public institutions.” It hasn’t seemed to
occur to this dunderhead that reform demands, emanating from the people through
the ballot box into the makers of public policy, do not cause but are a
reflection of a lack of public confidence in public schools, coming about
precisely because of the failure of public schools. The only undermining of
this confidence is as a consequence of miserably underperforming public schools
for decades, brought about by these public institutions themselves being
operated by elites who can’t give up their faith in the government-monopoly
model.
2 comments:
It is truly regrettable that you, a professor in one of our institutions of higher education, has to resort to the crass demonization of others to ATTEMPT to make your point and persuade your readers, as you have done in this blog.
Example:
"screeds"
"fellow-traveling hacks"
"union-bought-and-paid-for"
"conspiratorial power-seeking"
"elites dispossessed of power"
"asinine"
"warped theology"
"nimrods"
"idiocy"
"dunderhead"
All in one short blog.
IS THIS THE ONLY WAY YOU FEEL YOU CAN EFFECTIVELY EXPRESS YOURSELF AND ADVANCE YOUR POSITIONS?
(That was rhetorical - you don't have to answer it.)
(Finally, that "dunderhead" John Bel Edwards has an undergraduate degree from West Point and a law degree.)
Are we ascertain that you're finally admitting you're not an educator? Because if the premise expressed in your title is correct, why should anyone listen to your ideas either?
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