District 3 Member Dr. Lottie Beebe: “Louisiana cannot believe the claims that the 2012 reforms work.”
A Board of Elementary and Secondary Education member is taking issue with an editorial in The Advocate praising the state education board for the so-called reforms enacted in 2012 and pushed by Superintendent of Education John White and a majority of BESE members.
The Advocate repeated claims that students are making great progress because of the reform agenda. The editorial says that “test scores are up while dropout rates are down.”
Not so fast, says District 3 BESE Member Dr. Lottie Beebe, who is also the Superintendent of Schools in St. Martin Parish.
In a letter to The Advocate’s editor, Dr. Beebe says that the public can’t necessarily trust the glowing reports from John White’s Department of Education.
“While the LDOE should be a trustworthy, unbiased source of education data,” she writes, “the politics of the past four years have created a perception that the LDOE is misrepresenting information.”
Researchers have shown that the department of education “changed the curve on its standardized tests to make it appear that students were doing better on the tests,” Dr. Beebe writes.
Additionally, she writes, the department “changed its metrics for calculating graduation rates and the number of students that go to college in order to improve these scores.”
Verifying information released by the department is difficult, according to Dr. Beebe. “Numerous, lawful requests for public information from citizens have been ignored by the LDOE; some citizens had to take the LDOE to court to get data released,” she writes.
Manipulating that data is part of a political agenda, according to Dr. Beebe.” A record amount of money was spent four years ago by LABI (the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry) and other special interest groups to ensure that a BESE majority would be in place to hire White, the choice of Governor Bobby Jindal for the position,” she writes.
The Advocate’s editorial quotes LABI President Stephen Waguespack, saying that it is important to big business to re-elect current BESE members who support the reforms.
The editorial includes a quote from another business organization, Lafayette’s One Acadiana, as saying “Abandoning these reforms will be a major step backwards.”
Dr. Beebe and some BESE members have been at odds with LABI, One Acadiana and others for an agenda that includes privatizing public education in order to divert funds to for-profit schools and private and religious schools.
“Local school districts would welcome true support and collaboration with business and industry to help address the ill effects of poverty on the students we serve, rather than business and industry trying to promote choice policies that redirect scarce resources to unproven education options,” she writes.
