Louisiana governor proposes statewide voucher program

By Victor | Published: January 27, 2012

     As expected, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal announced plans to expand the successful New Orleans school scholarship (or voucher) program to underprivileged students statewide. 

     Also as expected, the state’s teachers unions are digging in against the proposal.

     DailyWorld.com reports that under Jindal’s “proposed voucher plan, students at any school graded ‘C’ or below … would be able to get a voucher for a private school. Family income can be no more than 250 percent of the federal poverty level. …”

     Over 70 percent of Louisiana’s students attend a “C”-rated school or worse and 86 percent meet the income requirements, the news site reports. That means 380,000 students would qualify under the governor’s plan.

     Those figures not only confirm the need for better schooling options in the Pelican State – it also demonstrates the breadth of Jindal’s proposal.

     Michael Walker Jones, executive director of the Louisiana Association of Educators, attacked the voucher plan by suggesting parents were ill-equipped to make informed decisions about where to send their child to school.

     “If I’m a parent in poverty, I have no clue because I’m trying to struggle and live day to day,” Jones said, according to nola.com.

     “The idea of parents making decisions simply based on choice is the abandonment of public schools,” he said.

     The unions’ arrogance is almost as appalling as their complete indifference to the dire situation in which many Louisiana students find themselves.

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Connecticut education reformers brace for ‘winner-take-all’ battle with teacher unions

By Victor | Published: January 27, 2012
Gov. Malloy plans reform to close student achievement gap 
 
By Ben Velderman
EAG Communications
 
     HARTFORD, Ct. – Since 2010, Connecticut has had the dreary distinction of having the largest student achievement gap in the nation.
    
     Students in Connecticut’s well-to-do school districts significantly outperform students in poor, urban districts, which is a major economic and moral dilemma. But it appears that state lawmakers are finally ready to get serious about addressing the problem.
    
     Gov. Dannel Malloy, a Democrat, is promising education reforms that will be “the most far-reaching in our state’s history,” and has targeted six areas for improvement – including increasing the number of charter schools, revising teacher tenure and seniority, and authorizing “intensive interventions” for the lowest-performing districts. 
    
     Education reform groups such as the Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now and the Connecticut Parents Union are expected to bend lawmakers’ ears about the need to link teacher evaluations to student achievement.
    
     Former teacher and State Rep. Douglas McCrory, a Democrat, put the upcoming education reform fight into perspective.
     “This is winner-take-all, folks,” McCrory said in a recent speech. “I don’t think we’re going to have another opportunity like this in the state of Connecticut any time soon. We need to get it done now, or you know what the future looks like.”
    
     Reformers are expecting strong resistance from the state’s teacher unions.    
   
     Last year, the American Federation of Teachers Connecticut disgraced itself when it was revealed that the union used subterfuge to water down a 2010 “parent trigger” law, which would have empowered parents to make sweeping changes to failing schools. (A union document infamously referred to concerned parents as “the opposition.”)
   
     The Connecticut Education Association, the state’s other major teachers union, is taking a softer, gentler approach to undercutting school reforms. The CEA unveiled an expensive TV-ad campaign during last weekend’s NFL playoffs that claims the union favors “bold ideas” such as “more accountability,” “smaller class sizes,” and “even replacing teacher tenure.”
    
     RiShawn Biddle, editor of Dropout Nation, calls the union’s proposals “mild” and says its tenure reform plan would “reduce the time required for firing laggard teachers by 35 days.”
    
     How underwhelming.
    
     For school reformers, Biddle writes, “(the CEA ad) is both a preview of the political battle that will come in the next few months within the nation’s statehouses – and a reminder that they will have to step up their political game to advance reform.”
    
     Let’s hope Connecticut parents and lawmakers are ready to respond, “Game on.”
    
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Teachers across the nation work for their labor unions during school hours, with taxpayers covering much of the cost

By Victor | Published: January 26, 2012
By Victor Skinner
EAG Communications
 
     DENVER – Across the United States, taxpayer dollars are being used to subsidize the salaries and benefits of teachers and other municipal employees who work for their local labor unions.
 
     This wasteful tradition costs taxpayers millions each year, and has gone largely unnoticed because the details of the arrangements are most often negotiated behind closed doors. 
    
     Luckily this practice, popularly known as “union release time,” may be coming to an end in many parts of the nation.
 
      Severe budget problems in California, Colorado, Arizona and other states have increased scrutiny on labor spending, with critics highlighting union release time as a disgusting waste of taxpayer money at a time when most schools and municipalities can least afford it.
 
      Education Action Group has documented different forms of union release time in our reviews of teacher contracts in numerous states, and the issue has been probed in depth by researchers like Ben DeGrow of the Independence Institute’s Education Policy Center.
 
      Educators are often released from their regular duties with pay - either full-time, part-time or on a per-diem basis – to serve as union officials. They are free to use school time to handle grievances, attend collective bargaining sessions, lobby government officials, do political work, and perform other union-related activities. 
 
     Recent media reports from Denver and lawsuits filed in Arizona and California are bringing needed attention to the unnecessary expense, the first step in provoking corrective action.
 
     The issue is coming to light most often in states and individual school districts with large budget deficits, including Colorado, where the Denver Post recently published a detailed report on union release time in the state’s 20 largest districts.
 
     The newspaper’s findings confirmed what EAG and DeGrow have already exposed: taxpayers are subsidizing the state’s wealthy and powerful teachers union by millions of dollars each year.   
 
The ugly, expensive truth
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Madison, WI school officials want to use taxes instead of employee health contributions to balance budget

By Victor | Published: January 25, 2012

     As districts across the state are using Wisconsin’s recent collective bargaining reforms known as Act 10 to save millions by increasing employee health insurance contributions and cutting other high labor expenses to cover their budget shortfalls, Madison school officials may take a different approach.
    
     Faced with a $12.4 million budget deficit, Madison officials said “The hope is we won’t have to take more out of employee pockets or do any layoffs” to balance the budget. Instead, the district plans to make up the shortfall by reworking health insurance options, renegotiating nonunion employee contracts, energy efficiency and raising property taxes, the Wisconsin State Journal reports.
    
     “One way Madison (schools) expects to close its $12.4 million deficit this year is to eliminate Wisconsin Physicians Service as an insurance provider, which would save about $5 million. Madison Teachers Inc. (the teachers union) agreed to that option as part of the current contract,” according to the newspaper.
    
     The Journal reports, “The union also agreed to pay up to 15 percent of the premium for the other three insurance options, Group Health Cooperative, Dean and Physicians Plus. But Madison (school officials) didn’t exercise that option last year and might not have to this year,” according to Erik Kass, assistant superintendent for business services.
    
     Requiring teachers to contribute to their health insurance costs could generate up to $7.5 million, but school board president James Howard said the increase would be a “double whammy” for teachers affected by property tax increases.
    
     “The overall picture is we’ll be able to handle this year without a lot of pain,” he said.
    
     That, of course, depends on your perspective. For years, local taxpayers have fully funded health insurance coverage for teachers as their own employers have increased required health insurance contributions in the private sector.
    
     What about the “triple whammy” on taxpayers who currently fund the teachers’ coverage, handle their own health insurance increases, and could now be asked to shell out even more for the tax increase?
    
     In the past, teachers unions across the state have resisted the idea of increased health insurance contributions as local schools have struggled to keep pace with steady premium increases. The purpose of Act 10 was to help districts to control those costs, and failing to do so will only perpetuate the problem.
    
     The fact that the union has accepted the health insurance contributions – but the district refuses to implement them – only makes the talk of increased taxes all that more egregious.
    
     We suspect that most taxpayers would agree with Don Severson, president of a local watchdog group, who put the situation in plain terms for the Journal last week.
    
     “There’s no reason in the world they shouldn’t (pay for health insurance premiums), like anybody else,” he said.

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Politics for credit at U of W

By Victor | Published: January 25, 2012
     The MacIver Institute reports that University of Wisconsin law professor Joel Rogers is working to recruit his students for a liberal counter group to the American Legislative Exchange Council, which develops model legislation to promote free market, limited government principles.
    
     The issue is that Rogers allegedly used public equipment to send his recruiting letter to students while their grades were still pending for his class last semester.
    
     Talk about an incentive to participate.
    
     In the email, Rogers also told students that college credits may be available for those who help develop the project. 
    
     While we firmly believe that Rogers has the absolute right to his opinions on policy and politics, it seems obvious that he should be prevented from using his position as a publicly funded university professor as leverage for recruiting students to his crusade.  
    
     The solution is simple, and it’s one we’ve echoed over and over: School leaders must take swift action to ensure that personal politics and partisan projects are kept out of all publicly funded classrooms.
    
     The MacIver Institute posed several important questions about the situation to Rogers, officials with the University of Wisconsin Law School and the UW Chancellor.
    
     “Have UW students received credit for helping Rogers with other political projects? Do Rogers, the UW Law School or the University of Wisconsin condone such solicitations from faculty using University resources? Do they believe it is a problem to solicit help from students while their grades are pending?”
    
     We believe that the public deserves some straight answers.
    
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Teacher evaluations, accountability at the heart of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s collaborative education reforms for 2012

By Victor | Published: January 25, 2012

Union clings to disingenuous rhetoric

By Victor Skinner
EAG Communications

      MADISON – In a recent interview, a long-time Wisconsin labor attorney made a candid assessment of the teachers union’s political influence.
    
     “You just don’t cross them on certain things,” he said of the Wisconsin Education Association Council. “And to Walker’s credit … he will not waver.”
    
     In fact, the governor pressed ahead last week with plans to reform principal and teacher evaluations and create a school accountability system – two changes WEAC would rather avoid – as his detractors claim to have collected 1 million signatures for his recall. 
    
     Rather than play it safe, Walker is busy promoting significant changes to the state’s K-12 education system developed with the help of three bipartisan task forces, including the use of student achievement to assess teacher performance and more rigorous licensing tests for elementary teachers, the La Crosse Tribune reports.  
    
     “This legislation will empower parents to make educational decisions based on quantifiable performance data on schools, and it will help fight complacency by encouraging high performing schools to excel while under performing ones will be encouraged to improve,” Walker said his radio address last week.
    
     The collaborative nature of the task forces, including Walker’s work with State Superintendent Tony Evers, a Democrat, is a positive sign that reforms like a new accountability system – designed as an alternative to the federal No Child Left Behind program – will be sound and feasible, La Crosse principal Mark White told the Tribune.
    
     “You have the state superintendent and the governor working together on this,” White said. “And that’s a good thing. It’s not just coming from one direction.”
    
Common sense reforms

   Read More »

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New film skewers Chicago Teachers Union, explains stakes of contract negotiations

By Victor | Published: January 25, 2012
By Steve Gunn
EAG Communications
 
     CHICAGO – The new documentary film is called “A Tale of Two Missions,” and it’s focused on current conditions in Chicago Public Schools.
    
     One “mission” is led by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who is working hard to provide fresh opportunities for kids stuck in failing city schools.
    
     The other is led by Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, who is determined to kill the expansion of school choice in the city, so her union can keep students (and the tax money attached to them) trapped in subpar neighborhood schools.
 
     And now, just as the documentary is released to the public, Emanuel, Lewis and their respective teams have started negotiating a new labor contract that will go a long way toward determining the future of Chicago Public Schools.
   
     The current teachers union contract expires June 30. Negotiations on a new pact are expected to take months, perhaps even beyond the expiration date of the current contract.
     
     Lewis had made it clear that teachers want higher salaries and more expensive benefits, despite the district’s estimated $720 million budget deficit and the continued threat of layoffs for young teachers and cancellation of student programs.
     
     Emanuel is dedicated to holding down costs and using limited resources to provide better school options for underserved students.
    
     In short, the mayor of Chicago is on a mission to improve education in Chicago. The union is on selfish mission to preserve a failed system that provides a guaranteed income for thousands of teachers and a steady flow of dues money to the CTU.
    
     A better future for one of the nation’s worst public school systems is hanging in the balance.
 
Documentary sets the scene in Chicago
 
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The bottom line: States demanding proof public school teachers are effective in the classroom

By Victor | Published: January 23, 2012
By Ben Velderman
EAG Communications
 
     BATON ROUGE, La. – Last month, the Louisiana state officials approved a plan to evaluate K-12 classroom teachers based on student performance. This marks a significant rethinking of how a teacher’s performance is assessed.
 
     Louisiana’s outgoing evaluation process gives almost all teachers favorable reviews, which doesn’t jibe with the dismal results produced by the state’s public education system. A 2011 federal report finds only 22 percent of Louisiana’s students perform at “proficient” levels.
    
     Fifty percent of the new evaluation process, which takes effect next school year, will be based on “growth in student achievement,” reports the Associated Press. Louisiana’s educators will be rated as highly effective, effective, or ineffective.
 
     Any teacher rated as ineffective “will be placed in an intensive assistance program and then must be formally evaluated,” reports the National Council on Teacher Quality, a nonpartisan organization that promotes education reform.
 
     Teachers that continually fail to demonstrate improvement over two years could be fired.
 
     The plan hasn’t taken effect yet, but Louisiana’s teacher unions have condemned the change as “a flawed idea” and a “fiasco” that will create a generation of “demoralized teachers.”
 
     Such union hysterics can also be heard in Oklahoma and Ohio, two other states that will soon switch to teacher evaluation models that incorporate evidence of student learning.
 
     Louisiana, Ohio and Oklahoma are part of the growing trend toward injecting more accountability into public education. Parents and taxpayers in 23 states have passed laws requiring that teachers be evaluated based – at least partly – on whether or not they are getting the job done in the classroom.
 
     Sandi Jacobs, vice president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, believes several more states could join the list of reformers in 2012.
 
     “I suspect there are some states that are poised to move in (early 2012),” Jacobs told EAG, citing Connecticut, New Mexico, and New Jersey as possible contenders.
 
     “There’s a growing realization that the old way of evaluating teachers is really dysfunctional,” she said. “There was a lot of activity about teacher evaluations in 2011.The states saw that this is not a taboo topic anymore.”
 
Big changes in two years
     Read More »
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Record number of Florida school employees earn over $100,000 in 2010

By Victor | Published: January 20, 2012
     Florida’s Marion County school district drew national headlines last summer when it announced that it was switching to a four-day school week as a way to save money. 
    
     Other school officials took a more conventional route by laying off teachers and cutting student programs, all the while blaming Gov. Rick Scott for underfunding Florida’s public schools.
    
     Now comes a report that finds 946 school employees in the Sunshine State earned at least $100,000 in 2010. That’s up 818 percent from 2005, according to the Foundation for Government Accountability.
    
     The foundation also finds the percentage of non-school employees who earn at least six-figures has increased by only 7 percent during that same period.
    
     “You don’t have to be great in math to figure out that something is wrong with these school salaries,” Tarren Bragdon, Foundation for Government Accountability CEO, told the Sunshine State News.
    
     “During these five years, you have flat student enrollment, the biggest recession since the Great Depression and skyrocketing six-figure salaries – that adds up to a raw deal for Florida parents and taxpayers,” Bragdon said.
    
     The average salary for a Florida teacher is about $47,000, which means administrators and superintendents receive the majority of those hefty paydays.
    
     Tea Party leader Patricia Sullivan summed it up best: “It appears the servant is now the master, and the children get the crumbs.”
    
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Judge orders bailout of union-dominated school district

By Victor | Published: January 20, 2012

     These days a lot of school budgets are being held together by the accounting equivalents of bailing wire and duct tape. But one Pennsylvania school district is so broke that it needs the state to provide the wire and the tape. 
     
     The Chester Upland School District began this week with only $100,000 in its savings account, and had no way of meeting its $1 million payroll – that is, until a judge ordered the state to give the district a  $3.2 million advance in its allowance, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer.
     
     The money will allow the teachers to be paid and the lights to remain on, at least for a few more weeks. The district is on track to be $20 million in debt by the end of the school year.
     
     “Anxious parents are looking at other options for their children, such as sending them to private schools or having them live with relatives and go to other public schools,” the Daily Journal reported two days before the bailout was announced. 
     
     What’s causing Chester Upland’s financial meltdown?
     
     According to school officials, the state has been illegally giving some of the district’s money to charter schools. State officials say the law requires it to fund the schools where students actually attend, and many choose to attend charter schools. A judge is expected to settle the dispute next month.
     
     While the district might win its case in court, it seems destined to lose in the court of public opinion.
     
     Since 2006, Chester Upland’s enrollment has dropped by almost 1,000 students. During that same time, the district has increased its workforce by 145 employees, and its budget by $28 million, reports the PhillyBurbs.com.
     
     Members of the local teachers union have pledged to keep working “as long as they are individually able … even if they are not paid.”
     
     While that makes for a nice press release, we have learned that none the district’s three school employee unions have agreed to open their contracts and offer any concessions to help the district survive.
     
     Just another financial crisis, courtesy of Big Labor.

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