To read the entire LFT submission on Race to the Top funds, please click here.
To read comments submitted by the American Federation of Teachers, please click here.
(Baton Rouge – August 31, 2009) As Louisiana enters the competition for over $4 billion in federal Race to the Top education funds, the Louisiana Federation of Teachers reminded Secretary of Education Arne Duncan that poorly defined or implemented reforms can produce painful consequences.
“Too often in the recent past, school reform has meant no student left untested and no teacher left unblamed,” said LFT President Steve Monaghan. “We hope that Race to the Top can open a new chapter in the school reform movement, one that values the professionalism of teachers and embraces a whole-community model for change.”
In comments posted with the U.S. Department of Education, Monaghan said that while the Federation supports efforts to improve schools, Louisiana’s experiences in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina “have caused us to be much more sensitive to both the intended and the unintended consequences of every policy decision.”
The LFT president pointed out that, even though almost all New Orleans schools were starting to show real improvement before Katrina devastated the city, afterward all 7,500 of the city’s teachers and school employees were summarily fired and the storm “used as pretext for wholesale changes in public education policy. Arguably, some were driven more by ideological persuasion and the profit motive than in educational improvement.”
“What happened after colossal calamities causes us to be very wary undefined policies,” said Monaghan. “One hopes that ideology and the strong smell of billions of dollars and potential profit for education management organizations and legions of consultants won’t take precedence over what students and teachers really need.”
While Race to the Top rewards states that encourage many more charter schools, Monaghan said that Louisiana, which launched the nation’s most extensive charter experiment after Katrina, has lessons to offer. Charter schools, he wrote, “have certain obligations that mirror those of traditional public schools. They must be accountable to the public, ensure educational equity, open themselves to all students and give their employees a real voice in decisions.”
Monaghan wrote that “all students have a right to be taught by high-quality, effective teachers.” That goal,” he wrote, “is hard to meet when the resources of school systems are as unequally distributed as they are in Louisiana: “Adequate funding is an issue that must be addressed. If the $15,500 per pupil spent in the New Orleans Recovery School District is the true cost of educating a student, then children in the rest of the state deserve no less.”
Monaghan called for Race to the Top to recognize a requirement for “high standards of practice for teachers as well as evidence of student achievement.”
But warning against dependence on high-stakes tests alone, Monaghan wrote, “a corruption of the very concept of accountability will be the end result if we continue to make quantitative accountability systems, specifically the ‘darken the bubbles’ standardized test, the sole determiner of either student competence or teacher effectiveness.”
Looking at education over the long term, Monaghan wrote, requires a bolder, broader approach “which lifts entire communities.”
“That means any long-term evaluation must include components that measure the contributions of parents, administrators and school boards to student success,” he wrote. “Broadened further, the process should include the roles played by systems of health care, juvenile justice, higher education and all the other elements of community that have an impact on the growth and development of an individual student.”