I just came across an interesting statistic about Louisiana that puts the Jindal education reform plan into context.*
The majority of white children in Louisiana do not go to public school. The majority of white children go to private schools.
Black children are the majority in the public schools of Louisiana.
According to Census data, 17% of Louisiana children enrolled in grades K-12 attended a private school in 2007. By comparison, 11% of U.S. children enrolled in grades K-12 attended a private school in 2007.1
Enrollment in nonpublic schools varies widely among Louisiana’s parishes, from zero children in 14 parishes to over 22,000 children in Jefferson Parish.
White children are a majority of school-age children (55%) in the state, but are 82% of the private school enrollment.
Black children are 39% of the school-age children, but only 13% are in private schools.
This suggests an interesting and politically complicated scenario.
Vouchers and charters appeal to those already in private schools, if those schools can get additional state funding and if the conditions for getting them are not too onerous. Some Roman Catholic schools are offering seats, but the numbers are small. The early response suggests that the prime beneficiaries are likely to be schools run by evangelical denominations.
Let’s see how many of the all-white private schools (some of which had their origins as “segregation academies”) open their doors to black children from D or F schools.
About 400,000 students are eligible for vouchers, but only about 5,000 seats are available across the state.http://www.louisianaschools.net/topics/scholarships_availability.html. In nearly half the parishes in the state, no private school is participating (accepting new voucher students).
It will be interesting to see the reaction of parents now paying full tuition as their school starts accepting students whose tuition is paid with tax dollars. Will they react magnanimously or will they be angry and demand that the state pay some or all of their tuition?
Before the Jindal “reforms” were passed, the state commissioner John White said that students could get a voucher only if they had been in a D or F school for a year. Let’s watch and see if the one-year requirement is maintained, and whether some parents move their children to a low-rated school for a year to save tens of thousands of dollars in the future.
Let’s also watch to see whether the legislation encourages further racial segregation, as blacks and whites go to segregated charter schools.
And let’s see if there is any oversight of these issues from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.
The Louisiana “reforms” are intended to encourage pupils to transfer out of public education. There is nothing in them to improve public schools, just to promote alternatives so that students can “escape.”
The Jindal “reforms” are a template for the Romney education program. Romney, who went to elite private schools and sent his own children to elite private schools, views public education as a disaster. Given his Bain background, he may see public education as a business that should be shut down, with its component parts sold off. From his perspective, privatization makes sense.
Romney’s pronouncements to date mirror Jindal’s. It’s not because they chatted up the subject, but because they both work from the old songbook of Milton Friedmanites. The free market cures all ills. Break the regulatory controls of governments, give everyone a voucher, and let the market work its magic. Charters are added to the mix because they too provide an “escape” route for those who hate public schools.
It does seem odd for an advanced society to start giving away and dismantling an essential public service. It takes a certain kind of detached and cold policy wonk to engage in this sort of exercise. The sort of person who has no sense of living in community, the sort who sees a certain beauty in “creative destruction.” The sort who can look at people and institutions from afar and rearrange their lives without thinking of the repercussions.
Strictly from an educational point of view, I suspect that the charters (whose teachers need not be certified) and the religious schools will have lower standards than the public schools from which students are “escaping.”
Keep an eye on Louisiana.
Diane
*Here is the source for enrollment data: http://www.agendaforchildren.org/2009databook/Education/nonpublicschoolenrollment.pdf
White children are overrepresented in private schools in comparison to black children. White children represent 55% of the school-age child population in Louisiana, but they represent 82% of the private school population in Louisiana. By contrast, black children comprise 39% of the school-age child population in the state, but just 13% of children attending private school.
Data collected by the National Center for Education Statistics shows similar over- and under-representation at the national level as well. Nationally, white students make up 75% of the private school population, but just 57% of the public school population. Black students make up just 10% of the nation’s private school enrollment, but 17% of its public school enrollment.2
Black students in Louisiana are more likely than their white counterparts to attend a public school. While 39% of the child population in Louisiana is black, 46% of public school students are black. By contrast, 55% of the child population is Louisiana is white, but only 49% of the public school population is white. While a majority of public school students are black in 22 parishes, black students are not the majority at nonpublic schools in any parish. About half of Louisiana’s parishes have public school populations that are majority-white, but white students represent the overwhelming majority of students in nonpublic schools in each of the 50 parishes that have nonpublic schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Schools in Louisiana began in Louisiana in 1727 in New Orleans by the Ursaline Nuns. It provided education to girls, those that were called “casket” girls. It was not until 1808 that the first public school was established. It opened its doors to children in Pointe Coupee Parish. Parochial (Catholic) schools have always played a key role in the education of Louisiana’s children. When desegregation came along, there was an onslaught of other denominations, yes, the evangelical leaning churches, to quickly open their church schools. They seemed to appear almost over night and on every corner. It is those schools that have jumped at the opportunity to accept voucher students. In my opinion, the Catholic schools which
have lost student enrollment for whatever reason are also seeing vouchers as a way to keep their schools open.
I agree wholeheartedly with your, statements, Diane.
“Let’s also watch to see whether the legislation encourages further racial segregation, as blacks and whites go to segregated charter schools.
And let’s see if there is any oversight of these issues from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.
The Louisiana “reforms” are intended to encourage pupils to transfer out of public education. There is nothing in them to improve public schools, just to promote alternatives so that students can “escape.” ”
The reforms, indeed, are no ed reforms at all!
We are also seeing “Tony Charters” creeping up in middle to upper-middle class communities and they are going after the private and parochial school student market. Charters are becoming big business instead of the alternative for children from poor areas. Their lobby is strong. So where will that leave the minority??
Easy enough to answer that, Schoolgal. We have said from the beginning that MOST children who qualify for vouchers will not be able to use them. The children who can’t will be left in the dark, as always. Money will be stripped from those public schools, and their situation will get worse and worse.
Wait until the private schools realize what hit them on the head as charters move into their territory (on the public dime!!).
Reblogged this on Continuing Change and commented:
Must Read Diane Ravitch blog ….
“17% of Louisiana children enrolled in grades K-12 attended a private school in 2007.
“White children are a majority of school-age children (55%) in the state but are 82% of the private school enrollment.”
OK. Follow an ELA teacher doing the basic math.
17% * 82% = 14%
–> 14% of the k12 kids in Lousisana are white and attend private school.
55% – 14% = 41%
–> 41% of the k12 kids in Lousisana are white and attend public school.
41%/55% = 75%
1) False: “The majority of white children go to private schools”
2) True: The majority (75%) of white children go to PUBLIC schools.
Again, that’s an ELA teacher doing the math.
[…] Keep an Eye on Jindal’s Reforms (dianeravitch.net) […]
Dear Diane,
As a public school teacher on the Northshore across the lake from New Orleans, educated in parochial schools for most of my elementary and high school years, I have been wanting to discuss the truth of education in the State of Louisiana for years, but it cannot be discussed publically, even though most people know the truth, a person could get killed or maimed at worst or at best, fired from a teaching position by openly speaking the unspeakable in today’s irrationally violent world.
Under federal mandatory desegregation in 1969, I student taught English IV at a public high school in a Northshore Parish. Prior to this law, schools across the State were segregated into all black or all white public schools—“separate but equal” they called it. My senior high school class was composed of 10 white students and 10 black students, as were all of the other classes in the school. My white students could all read and write at grade level able to do “A, B or C” work. Half of my black students could not read or write at all, two of them could read and write at junior high level, two of them at elementary level and one of them could do B and C work in my class. I was horrified by the levels of illiteracy and low skill levels among my black students. Teachers were not provided with remedial materials to help the students learn at their level nor any books or handouts that would enable the non readers and writers learn the alphabet, the sounds of the letters, nor how to put the sounds together so that they could even begin to make sense of reading and writing. As a secondary level teacher, I was not even given any training to reach students who were not at grade level. I did the best I could bringing in albums of Shakespearian plays and sonnets, so that my lowest level students could get something out of the material by hearing it read, even though they could not pass the written tests on it. No one had ever heard of the accommodation for “Tests Read Aloud” that our immigrant population is given on classroom and standardized tests today.
Consequently, all through the 1970’s due to the academic problems, also resulting in behavior issues black students experienced in school system, plus the fact that the majority of students did not have anything to eat before coming to school, they were not making much progress academically. These conditions caused the parents of white students to pull their children out of the public school system and put them in private or parochial schools, so that their children could receive a good education without all the social problems black children brought with them into the classroom. At that time most black children could not attend schools that required tuition because their parents did not have the financial ability to do so since most did not have jobs that paid a middle class wage to do so. In addition, the values of many black parents regarding education, which extended to their children, were not as high as white parents, I think mainly because most of them were not very well educated themselves and could not help their children with homework or did not have time to help them due to other social problems that continue to plague the black community in Louisiana—namely single parent households, drug addiction, poverty, a lack of values shared by the white middle or upper class communities, violence and multiple levels of abuse in the home. The lack of parental support, a stable family structure, and a healthy home environment that supports learning are the main reasons black students are under performing in Louisiana schools today, as well as the inability of many black students to speak standard American English, which many teachers do not insist upon in the classroom out of fear of being called racist at worst or politically incorrect at best.
Bobby Jindal does not have the courage to face the real problem in education in Louisiana. He is taking the coward’s way out through scapegoating, blaming public schools and teachers for the failure of some black students to pass culturally biased standardized tests, one of the primary measures in assigning schools a passing or failing grade based on their AYP. The main problem is that when a public school becomes predominately black, with students and teachers alike, the standards are usually lowered and students are socially promoted, even though they cannot pass their course work or earn a basic score on standardized tests. How do I know this not having taught in public schools that have this particular demographic problem? I taught at a New Orleans community college for several years and in one of my classes had a large group of black students from the New Orleans projects, who insisted that I lower the standards in my class so that they could all get “A’s and B’s” for their final grade. They were physically and emotionally threatening in attempting to take control of the class, but I did not cave in as their public school teachers had to have done in order to get through the school year alive.
What Bobby Jindal needs to do if he wants change education in Louisiana that will last for generations to come is to have the courage to educate the black community on what it will take for their children to perform well in school and to mentor them until they are able to adopt and embrace a value system that supports their children’s education, and thus, bring them out of the impoverished conditions that keep them like crabs in a bucket into a more productive standard of living. He needs to generate higher paying, skilled jobs for the black community, especially for the women who are usually the sole support of their families, so that they can support their children preparing them for a successful life in the middle class. Through education many black people in Louisiana have done just that over the last four decades, but many more have yet to enjoy that success.
Bobby Jindal does not have the courage to do this because he does not have the heart to uplift anyone but himself. His education reforms have not been done for the people of Louisiana, but for himself, so that he can add another feather to cap, putting another initiative on his resume, so that when the time comes that he is seeking the status of President of the United States of America, the unconscious masses of voters in our country may believe he will be able to do something beneficial for them. Just about everyone in the State of Louisiana knows that Bobby Jindal has his eye on the Presidency and whatever he does as Governor of our State is merely a stepping stone to get out of the swamp into the Oval Office.
Because the ‘separate but equal’ condition of education in Louisiana has been going on for more than 40 years, superficially changing form very slightly over the years, it is not going to permanently change anytime soon especially though a voucher program that is doomed to failure because the majority of private or parochial schools can see through this smokescreen and are not willing to accept the burden of educating black children from households that do not support the prime values of education. All teachers across the United States know that students who perform well in school are those who have 100% support from their parents. This is not the case for many black children in Louisiana, nor in other impoverished areas of our country.
I would like to hear your plan for permanently changing these conditions that plague education and our society all across America because I believe, unlike Bobby Jindal, you have the intelligence, experience in education and heart to dream big.