Education disciplinary shift moves past woke

Now that peak woke has passed, Louisiana has a better chance of educating its children.

Woke is acquiring belief in the notion that society, with government institutions to match, was irredeemably racist in its present form until interventions created equity in outcomes, meaning that observed differences in outcomes by race unimpeachably indicated racism in action with any other explanation considered invalid. As a corrective measure, treating races differently because of race is blessed; in other words, neo-racism poses as anti-racism.

And as soon as Democrat Pres. Joe Biden assumed office, he embarked on a woke agenda (Vice Pres. Kamala Harris, his attempted heir apparent, already was there well in advance), replicated down the line to other Democrats. It also washed over institutions and people who should have known better, such as Louisiana’s Board of Elementary and Secondary Education that had at the time a 6-5 Republican majority.

Welcome to thug left, Bossier juror Parks

For an elected official who labels herself a Republican and calls herself ideologically conservative, Bossier Parish Police Juror Julianna Parks sure acts like she’s a leftist Democrat.

Typically, not a lot of earth-shattering topics come up at Police Jury meetings, so it’s difficult to build up notoriety over the debate and votes that come along with that. The Jury as a whole has had a problem disregarding its following of the law, but that has been a collective failure. Until this year, whatever controversy on her own Parks stirred up came from comments at local Republican Party meetings and through social media that came only to tempests in teapots.

That went onto steroids when her political ally GOP Bossier City Councilor David Montgomery appointed her to the city’s Charter Review Commission, a thinly-disguised – which she eventually publicly would admit – vehicle by which to try to stop a petition for strict term limits on councilors and the mayor that would prevent long-serving councilors like Montgomery from running for reelection next spring. Connected as well to the powerful in city politics as her husband Santi is city judge, she became the most vocal advocate against strict limits, which last month was the subject of a petition process successfully completed to bypass the Council that legally should place the matter on the ballot Dec. 7.

Whiny attitude threatens LA education progress

If you want to understand why Louisiana elementary and secondary education students only haltingly have made progress in achievement from the bottom of the states, look no further than the attitudes expressed by some representatives of those with the task of educating them.

A common myth spread by the public education industry is that Louisiana students do so poorly because there’s not enough money – chiefly in teacher salaries – slung its way. Not only is this a false narrative, it is predicated on a false assumption.

A report earlier this year issued by the Reason Foundation explains why. Reviewing financial and achievement data form 2002-20, it notes that the assumed relationship between resources shoveled to schools and student achievement is essentially nonexistent. It noted that states which hardly budged on per pupil spending notched at least as large, if not larger, gains on the nationally-normed National Assessment of Educational Progress test than did states that increased theirs by around 50 percent. Certainly, resources matter but clearly other factors in fact are more important in spurring better outcomes.

LA needs both fiscal reform and right-sized govt

The decoupling of Louisiana’s fiscal year 2026 budget and tax reform seems to have arrived, reinforcing the idea that the latter isn’t a panacea for the former.

Off-and-on discussions about whether the Legislature should conduct a special session dedicated to tax reform soon, or at least before year’s end, have foundered absent an appetite of legislators to tackle the weighty issue relatively soon. Ideally, by having a session next month any constitutional changes necessary could head for voter approval in the scheduled Dec. 7 election that then would guide budgeting during next year.

But legislative leaders detected that legislators didn’t feel a rush to make changes would work effectively. Nor did Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, who could call a session on his own, perceive legislators as ready to embark in that direction. Fiscal reform has drawn plenty of attention over the decades so ideas on how to proceed aren’t new, but the feeling is that if amending the Constitution has to happen, given the experiences particularly since 1990 — failure by Republican former Gov. Buddy Roemer at the ballot box, success on less dramatic shuffling by GOP former Gov. Mike Foster — that lawmakers will get just one shot at it and it has to be right to convince voters.

UNO dilemma illustrates bad policy, management

The University of New Orleans has become the sick man of higher education in Louisiana, providing a lesson of what happens when a school loses focus, faces shoddy political governance around it, and suffers from poor state higher education policy.

My alma mater has received a string of distressing news since the spring as it stares down budget cuts of 15 percent on the academic side and 25 percent on the athletics side. This is in response to a projected $15 million budget deficit for the upcoming year. The symptom of all this is declining enrollment that has plunged nearly 62 percent over the past two decades, going from the second-largest campus in the state in enrollment now to the tenth-highest and in the bottom half of senior institutions.

There are reasons for this, and they don’t reflect well on higher education and UNO leadership, state policy-makers, and governance particularly of New Orleans and to a lesser extent its surrounding areas. Starting at the top with the broadest big picture, policy-makers set up failure by their steadfast refusal to pare the state’s overbuilt system of higher education. When the realization came some three decades ago it was top heavy, partial corrections were made by building up the bottom with community and technical colleges, but the top itself wasn’t reduced (in fact, it was made even bigger with the addition of Louisiana State University of Alexandria as a senior institution).