News

AUGUST 31, 2015 – BATON ROUGE, LA – The leaders of Louisiana’s two largest public education unions –the Louisiana Federation of Teachers and the Louisiana Association of Educators – today announced a joint effort to spotlight candidates who support the best interests of public education.

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.

New standards to be adopted in March, 2016

Did you take the Department of Education survey on Common Core standards? Why or why not? Click here for a short survey.

Louisiana’s review of Common Core standards began last week amid controversies over higher education participation, a questionable survey purporting to show overwhelming support for keeping current standards without changes, and missing test results.
 

Governor Bobby Jindal has signed a $24.6 billion state budget that includes an additional $36 million for public education, but vetoed a 1.5% cost of living adjustment for retired teachers, school employees and other public servants.

A new report finds five fundamental flaws with the financial and academic oversight of Louisiana’s charter schools.

A totally unnecessary clash between the big business lobby and public sector unions was avoided on Tuesday, May 12, when a bill that would have prohibited payroll deduction of union dues was returned to the calendar by its author.

For the third straight year, the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry has made eliminating payroll deduction of union dues one of their primary goals. Like well-heeled extremists in other states, LABI hopes to get rid of any organized resistance by making union membership as inconvenient as possible.

Although the final decisions will be up to the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, steps were taken this week to make Louisiana’s teacher evaluation system fairer and more accurate. The biggest of these is a recommendation to suspend Value Added Model component of teacher evaluations for another year.

The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools has ranked Louisiana as the second highest of all the states, based on how our state’s charter school law aligns with the organization’s model law. Their rankings reward states for making charter schools less accountable to local voters and taxpayers.