[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_original","fid":"60315","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image media-image-left","style":"width: 225px; height: 162px; margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 5px; float: left;"}}]]On March 13, 2019 the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) approved a K-12 funding plan that designates $101 million dollars to reoccurring pay raises for teachers and school support employees. This could mean an extra $1000 for teachers and $500 for support employees and a first step towards getting Louisiana to the Southern Regional Average, but it isn't over yet:  This legislative session our representatives and senators will vote whether or not to approve this funding plan.

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.

(New Orleans – September 25) Louisiana’s charter schools must recognize and bargain with unions if that is the desire of teachers and school employees, according to a unanimous ruling by the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The September 21 ruling by a three-judge panel affirmed a decision by the National Labor Relations Board, asserting that the International High School of New Orleans violated the National Labor Relations Act when the group holding the school’s charter refused to recognize the school’s bargaining unit.

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.

(Baton Rouge – August 13, 2018) Louisiana spends more than a billion dollars less on education, adjusted for inflation, now than it did prior to the recession of 2008, according to a new study by the American Federation of Teachers.

“It has taken our legislature 10 years to finally adopt a budget that is stable and predictable, without playing budget tricks and sweeping funds for one-time money,” said Louisiana Federation of Teachers President Larry Carter. “Now it’s time to address the neglect the situation that bad decisions by the previous administration brought us to.”