NO BOTTOM TO THE SINKHOLE

In a sign of rising tensions over Common Core, state Superintendent of Education John White told Louisiana’s top school board Wednesday that he is being unfairly targeted personally for possible wrongdoing by Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration and its allies.

“I am no stranger to politics, and I know that political rhetoric can be heated,” White said in a four-page letter to members of the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.
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White sent his letter on the same week that Smith said controversy over Common Core test contracts could spark charges of ethics violations by White and others in the state Department of Education.

Smith cast her concerns in general terms — a posting on Facebook and a telephone interview — and did not offer any documentation.

However, she said unnamed parties are investigating whether employees of the state Department of Education acted improperly.

How low will Governor Jindal sink in his vindictiveness toward his own appointee, Superintendent of Education John White, because of their disagreement over Common Core?

Are there any limits at all to what Kristy Nichols (Commissioner of Administration) will do and say to support her boss and his unbridled ambition? I guess not, or she'd quickly be out of a job, for Jindal brooks no dissent.

Jane Smith, a staunch supporter of the governor, lost her bid for election to a seat in the Louisiana Senate, so Jindal gave her the consolation prize of a seat on BESE (Board of Elementary and Secondary Education) to continue the march to destroy public education in Louisiana. Now, Jane Smith resorts to smearing John White by innuendo on Facebook.

Thanks Governor. You and your honchos are a real class act. 

BOBBY JINDAL - DICTATOR OF LOUISIANA

Igniting new controversy, Gov. Bobby Jindal said Wednesday he is ordering Louisiana out of the Common Core tests as part of a series of moves to drop the new academic standards after the Legislature refused to do so.

“We need to start this process over,” Jindal told reporters.

But state Superintendent of Education John White, who Jindal pushed for the job, took the unusual step of publicly charging that the governor is wrong on the law and that Common Core plans will continue for the 2014-15 school year.

Though I'm not a great fan of Common Core, what Jindal is about is disallowing intrusion by the feds in schools in Louisiana and allowing instructions in creationism, a 10,000 year young earth, and humans walking with dinosaurs in science classes because of pressure Christian fundamentalists including the likes of Tony Perkins and his Focus on the Family tribe. Also, students in some of the junk charter schools that the state supports with tuition vouchers will never pass the tests, but Jindal does not want anyone to know.

I hope his latest maneuver to throw out the tests without the approval of the State Superintendent of Education, John White, whom he appointed to great fanfare, and Chas Roemer, president of BESE (Board of Elementary and Secondary Education), is illegal. I hope he does something illegal that has consequences, because Jindal is a virtual dictator, since even the usually supine state legislature would not vote to throw out Common Core, and he's determined to act on his own.

He's living a fantasy if he thinks he will be the candidate of the Republican Party, but, in the meantime, he is destroying the state. Since John White is defying Jindal at the moment, I would not be surprised if Jindal fired him.

Jindal is under great pressure from fundamentalist Christians like Tony Perkins and his gang. He graduated with a degree in biology from Brown University and was a Rhodes Scholar. Presumably, he knows the science, but he operates from pure personal lust to be president or, at the very least, vice-president of the US.

WHERE LOUISIANA'S VOUCHER MONEY GOES, OR IS OUR CHILDREN LEARNING?

Brilliant post by CenLamar exposing the lack of responsibility and oversight of the school voucher program, a pet project of Bobby Jindal and State Superintendent of Education, John White, part of a plan to destroy public education in Louisiana.

Yesterday, after more than a year of sustained criticism in the state, national, and even international media, Louisiana Superintendent John White (no relation) announced the Department of Education was banning the New Living Word School in Ruston, Louisiana from participating in the so-called Student Scholarships for Educational Excellence Program (the SSEEP), more commonly known as the school voucher program. Under the direction of Governor Bobby Jindal and the majority Republican state legislature, Superintendent White is responsible for rolling out and implementing the most expansive school voucher program in the nation’s history, a program that potentially qualifies as many as 56% of Louisiana students.

Read it all, and weep for the children of Louisiana.  Note especially the leaked email from White to "muddy up the narrative," rather than deal with the revelations about the inadequacies of New Living Word School long before now.

Since the Louisiana State Legislature is responsible for enabling this type of scam, I blame them for supinely bowing before the governor to pass legislation allowing the mad voucher scheme to go forward.

THE VAUNTED VOUCHERS, OR IS OUR CHILDREN LEARNING?

As Gov. Bobby Jindal tries again to fund his controversial school voucher program, new test scores indicate that many of the current students educated with public money in private schools are not thriving. Or at least they aren't yet.

Released Wednesday, LEAP scores for third- through eighth-graders show only 40 percent of voucher students scored at or above grade level this past spring. The state average for all students was 69 percent.
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[Superintendent John] White said the 2013 scores for voucher students were low because of the large influx of students from failing schools.

That's right, Superintendent White, blame the public schools for the less than stellar results of the brilliant plan by you and Governor Jindal to improve education in Louisiana by privatization.  I'm not at all surprised at the results.  At least some of the voucher schools teach junk science and junk history.  What do you expect?  Roman Catholic schools do a creditable job of educating children, but it appears that a good many of the new "academies" that sprang into existence when vouchers became available to private schools are not the solution to poor performance by educational institutions in Louisiana.

Public schools have been struggling from cuts in funding from the state since Jindal took office in his first term, and, were it not for the Louisiana Supreme Court ruling that paying for vouchers from public school funds was unconstitutional, the schools would have suffered further as more and more voucher money was siphoned away from their budgets.  Keep in mind that private schools can weed out troublesome students and students with challenges, but public schools must accept all who apply.
Why not focus on improving public schools?

"Anytime you start something new, it's going to take some time to grow," White said. "Nearly two thirds of the kids taking tests in those schools had only been there six months."

And he pointed out that the state did take seven schools off the voucher list. "After a period of time we cannot tolerate failure," he said.

Come now, Mr White, no more excuses for the poor results in the private school voucher program that you and Governor Jindal esteem so highly; take responsibility for the consequences of your grand plan.  If the two had their way, the end result would be the gradual destruction of public school systems in the state, and what would replace them?  More "academies"?

According to the article, White did not actually take seven schools off the voucher list; he merely stopped them from accepting new voucher students, so, in my book, he is still tolerating failure.

Oh, and lets not forget the earlier glitch in the effort by Jindal and White to provide quality online education by private companies to the students of Louisiana. 

When will Jindal and White have gone far enough down the road of poor results to give them a grade of  F in educational reform?