News

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Student Input...

Increased Transparency...

Minimum Wage...

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_original","fid":"60992","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image media-image-left","style":"width: 300px; height: 194px; float: left; margin-top: 4px; margin-bottom: 4px;"}}]]On Tuesday the House Education Committee had their first meeting of the legislative session. Typically, the MFP resolution is heard much later in the legislative process, when legislators have a more accurate picture of the budget. This MFP reflects Governor Edwards' plan to increase school funding and educators' salaries and it was unanimously approved by BESE in March: $101 million for educator pay raises and $39 million for local school districts. This week, the House Education Committee voted to send the MFP back to BESE and asked them to remove $39 million for local school districts.

After a six month stalemate, the Revenue Estimating Conference (REC) finally came to a decision on the projected revenue for the state budget on Tuesday. Playing political games, Speaker Taylor Barras has again and again refused to recognize new revenues projected by bi-partisan economists. From the first meeting, economist testified that their projections were conservative, but Barras kept rejecting them until he received a report that satisfied his political goals.

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This fiscal session will be very important for teachers and support staff all across the state and at LFT we will be watching closely. Each week throughout the session we’ll send out updates to keep you informed about what’s going on. This session is only 9 weeks long and we have a lot of work to do in order to protect our rights and ensure teachers and support employees get a raise – we need all hands on deck!

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Here’s a damning report from Education Week blogger Marc Tucker that rings true in Louisiana as well as many other states: “From the beginning, the leaders of our state education systems have invited testing experts to help them set the cut points for passing or not passing the state tests.  They listen gravely to the advice of the experts, then ask them how many students will fail at the recommended cut point and set a new one at a point that is politically tolerable.”

Tucker writes as the Nation’s Report Card’s governing board sets out to write new proficiency standards. He is president of the National Center on Education and the Economy, and he believes that current NAEP standards do not align to real-world college and career readiness. That, he says, must change.

In the last two election cycles, out-of-state billionaires, hedge fund managers and school privatizers have poured millions of dollars into Louisiana school elections.

Louisiana is one of more than 30 states to be graded “F” on our support for public education in a new report from the Network for Public Education and the Schott Foundation for Public Education.

“Grading the States: A Report Card on Our Nation’s Commitment to Public Schools,” tracks the growth of private, for-profit charter and voucher schools that divert funding from public schools.

The Legislature passed a budget: Now it's up to us to fight for our children, our schools, and our profession!

The war on teacher unions continues: We care. We fight. We show up.

Judging by the reaction from Louisiana’s biggest business lobby, you might think that a recent Supreme Court decision about public sector unions will have a major impact in our state.

It won’t. But that’s not stopping big business from using the decision to attack the LFT and other unions in our state. Here are the facts.