A Louisiana legislator who voted for Governor Bobby Jindal’s “reform” legislation is shocked to learn that students will be able to take their state vouchers to Muslim schools. She voted for the voucher plan on the assumption that students could take them only to Christian schools. Now, she is worried. She had “no idea” that taxpayer dollars would go to non-Christian schools. She wanted to help children learn about the religion of the Founding Fathers.
Meanwhile, twenty school districts are suing to overturn the law, saying that it violates the state constitution. The state constitution says that “state funding for public education shall be equitably allocated to public school systems.” Of 125 schools that have been okayed to receive vouchers, 124 apparently are religious schools.
UPDATE: although the article says that 124 of the 125 voucher schools are faith-based, friends in Louisiana tell me that it is more likely 118 of the 125 that are religious schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Rep. Valerie Hodges, the legislator, is quoted as saying: “However, once you look at the details of the bill there were more questions than answers about the long term impact these changes could potentially have.”
Excuse me, but isn’t that your RESPONSIBILITY as a legislator, acting on behalf of your constituents, to look at the DETAILS?
Here is how Bobby’s goons pulled off the whole sordid affair.
1. He appointed Chuck Kleckley Speaker of the House. Kleckley is a Jindal yes man who now has a recall on him. Keckley was about to get astroturf for a high school in his district as a reward, but apparentlyl the media squashed that yesterday. Funding pet projects is a favorite means of rewarding cooperation here.
2. He busied his hand picked BESE Board, they make school policy, with writing the regulations BEFORE the bill was even introduced.
3. He fired the head of Elderly Affairs which sent out the message of what would happen to anyone who disagreed with him (kind of like a public lynching right before an election.) right before the session. She objected to her office being put under the Department of Health and Hospitals where the state could more easily reduce their budget and abscond their grant money.
4. He presented the final bills, over 1000 pages, just a few days before the session opened so the House Education Committee would not have time to read and study them and made it the FIRST item to be discussed in the session when complex laws usually are dealt with later in the session. The bills have multiple purposes which is said to be unconstitutional under state law. That is the basis for the union suits.
5. His goons forced the Education Committee into late night sessions so they would be tired and confused.
6. He limited the access of protesting teachers to the legislature during the discussions to brief statements if they got in at all, required them all to come in through one door, go through security, and wait in an inaccessible room and before that, stand on the steps in 90 degree heat for hours.
7. When the bill was forced out of committee the goons corralled and intimidated the Republican legislators and let them know that they would lose positions if they voted against the bills. An extremely conservative Republican legislator from Oil City did and lost his committee chair for an unrelated committee.
This information came from the media but also a direct source, a state Senator from my district who was there when it all happened and called a community meeting that discussed it as part of the agenda along with the people from the Black Alliance for Educational Opportunity, a pro-charter group trying to sell their unregulated charters to the citizens. One of the things that Jindal seems to be trying to do is get support is by putting African-Americans over the Recovery District and charter school groups so minorities will think this is for their good.
Jindal just threw his weight around to get what he wanted. HIs hand was also putting the seasoning in the BESE Board gumbo for the elections. He supported the campaign of a lawyer whose children are in Catholic school over the retired Superintendent of one of the most successful school systems in Louisiana, Ascension Parish, as well as a previously employed teacher of the gifted who quit her job and who was a member of a non-union teachers’ group that is notorious for not advocating for its members and which was formed for conservative teachers who did not like the causes the NEA stood for. Then he had two direct appointees. So that gave him a majority on BESE and allowed him to put John White in, which the previous BESE Board had opposed. It’s like when George W. Bush did not start the Iraq war until the Republicans had a majority in Congress! Reminds me very much of that.
Governors in Louisiana are very powerful and seem to be able to control the legislature pretty easily. This however, is probably the worst, because even previous governors who had their hands in the cookie jar also did positive things for the people. This one is just a pure mercenary. So that is what happened and there is probably more.
It leaves you feeling kicked in the face!
I saw a mention of this on Current TV last night. A photograph of Rep. Hodges was shown to illustrate the story. She had that “deer in the headlights” look. Her comments are quite telling. More troubling is the narrowness of the legislators who passed this. I guess they are aware of only their religion and no one elses. That is truly troubling.
I’m l little shocked to learn that people who vote for bills enabling religious schools are so ignorant as to believe they will enable only schools that conform to their own preferred religion. I’m just a lowly teacher, and I’d have known better than that.
Many think that “faith-based, religious or Christian” only means the conservative and evangelical or Baptist religions, they really DO NOT even consider that others would even have schools. Remember, there are many here that consider Catholics and Jews cults so how could terrorists (which is what they also ignorantly consider all Muslim to be) actually have a school that any law in Louisiana would allow an American child to attend?
It was pretty shocking to me too, especially when the Muslim school in New Orleans withdrew its voucher request. I have not seen anything in the media about what happened but I hope their next stop was the ACLU. Some of the legislators were said to have specifically stated they only wanted CHRISTIAN schools included in the voucher system. Of course this is unconstitutional, but that will take time to work through. Meanwhile, I taught at a New Orleans PUBLIC elementary where a fraternity came in and showed the children a religious film about the death and ressurection as the Easter program and no one even batted an eye! As a Christian, I was glad to see the children exposed to faith. As a teacher, I was shocked that this was being done in 2005.
Remember too, that Louisiana has the highest percentage of children attending CATHOLIC schools in America. The New Orleans parochial schools have been receiving tax dollars since they re-opened after Hurricane Katrina. I don’t know how they pulled that off as legal, but Bobby Jindal is a Catholic convert who was born a Hindu. There is someone connnected with the Archdiocese on the BESE Board (I need to find out just who he is). Remember that Louisiana is predominantly rural. There is also not a major city close enough to be a strong influence. Houston is about 4-6 hours and Atlanta about 10 Even New Orleans is not a big city. New Orleans and Baton Rouge run close in size. So the people here are not what you could call cosmopolitan. They are very religious and most are either Catholic, Baptist, or independent mega-church, which are often connected to Assemblies of God.
One thing I love about ignorance. You can hide it for a while, but eventually it rears its ugly head. I think that happened here.
I wonder if the local MCC (a predominantly gay denomination ) asked for vouchers for a school if they would get them. After all, MCC is a Christian denomination. Their pastor is a certified teacher with 19 years of experience. The Unitarians also have a very beautiful building and a campus big enough for a school. Would they get some vouchers?
I oppose vouchers, and I won’t pretend that for me it’s anything other than a distaste for public dollars being used to support religious schools. On the flip side, though, If I were trying to protect the independence of a private school, I wouldn’t want the intrusion of public dollars (and the regulations that go with them).
But that’s the point here in Louisiana – there are NO regulations that go with the public dollars. Schools that accept voucher students will not be held accountable, will not be scrutinized. Children who accept the voucher and attend private and parochial “schools” will not have all the services (ESS, ELL, RTI) that public schools in Louisiana provide. When they misbehave or fail becuase the new school they are in doesn’t meet their needs, they will be kicked out and back to the public schools. But the money they took won’t follow them.
How do I know this when the voucher program hasn’t started yet? Because I am the principal of an inner city public school whose enrollment increased by nearly 100 students last year; many of whom were kicked out of local charters…
Yeah, that is one of their favorite tricks. A foreign language teacher at Tara in Baton Rouge said he got 45 additional students from the chartered Capitol High right before testing time. 45. He was all upset because he was a first year teacher and the job was hard enough already.
You could probably do ok. The charters don’t have to follow many of the state regulations. The head of BAEO, a pro-charter group said this. In fact, they charter school desk warmers do not have to have a college education!!!! After all if they use scripted lessons, why have real teachers to tell the children that the Loch Ness monster is a pleiosaur, the earth is only 4000 years old and the Ku Klux Klan is a group that fought for a return to morality and chastised wife beaters. That is what some of the religious charters teach in their curricula.
Christa,
Exactly! But now all the legislators are claiming they didn’t really have time to review it because the Governor pressured everyone to get all this done in a very short time.
It has been a problem for many years at state and national levels that the legislators voting on bills are not necessarily familiar with or do not possess the background to fully understand the actual and potential effects of the bill. Their staff do the research and brief them and even the most basic shallow research takes time. As the issues state and local legislators are asked to vote on become more complex and the understanding of the science research and math of the statistics and results more complicated the needs for excellent public schools becomes painfully obvious-but not to all I guess! Unless those pushing for privatization are also planning that only the privately educated will have the privilege of becoming elected or appointed officials since they alone will have access to the rigorous classes required. Which should be available to all no matter the path they choose as 18 year olds or in the future. We need students prepared to be lifelong learners not just pick a path at 14 and that is their destiny forever. Now 8th graders must choose their career path so that scheduling their classes for high school can be done. Under the name of “choice” the privatizes are building an education system of predetermined purposes for children’s lives. Ethically and morally repugnant to me.
The Muslim school withdrew its request after much outrage by elected officials. How sad that Louisiana’s phobias are so apparent.
Some people I talk with, teachers and parents and taxpayers alike, believe it won’t be as bad as all the liberal media is saying!!! They think all this will “blow over”. Others are outraged but feel powerless to do anything or afraid of getting their Mom/Dad/sister/daughter/grandmother/son-in-law who is a teacher in trouble. A grandma I happened to speak to at the local Wal-Mart said she wanted to write a letter to the local paper about how angry she was with the governor and the new laws but her daughter begged her not to because she would “get fired”. The TV news is reporting only 8000 parents have done applications so far and this is due to the parents not getting the information about the vouchers. Really? How could anyone living here not know of the mess going on? Many of my students have no computer at home but they all watch TV and the news and churches weigh in weekly on the topics in the state and somehow all these parents just missed it? I think that many parents are afraid to commit their kids to the mess no matter how badly the politicians say the public schools are doing. The parents do not feel that the vouchers are a real choice and they don’t want their kids to switch to a new school only to find out it doesn’t help or the law changes again or the courts rule the program can’t start or the hundreds of other problems that could arise. Politicians will have to come up with a new spin for the failure of the program since they claimed parents would jump at a chance to get their kids out of the public schools!
Meanwhile the second half of the mess will start in December with the submission of proposed courses for high-schools being approved and a catalog of them published in January.
http://theadvocate.com/news/education/3198495-64/slate-of-new-courses-set
I wondered when a Muslim school would start to receive voucher students and what the reaction of the Christian right wing would be. Many Protestants used to oppose government funding of religion because they were anti-Catholic, now it’s because they are anti-Muslim. Thomas Jefferson was right about the separation of church and state. I wish that Rep. Hodges and her ilk would realize that this is the best way to protect everyone’s religious freedom.
Some good info here:
http://louisianaeducator.blogspot.com/2012/07/jindal-choice-law-invitation-to-fraud.html
One wonders if this legislator and others even read the state and national Constitution. To give to one religion and not another is discrimination. Also, not all our Founding Fathers were Christians, several believed in deism. Like all other states, LA probably just followed ALEC or the Heritage Foundation’s prepared bill. Maybe the states giving vouchers fall under Obama’s waiver. Disregard of laws leads to anarchy. From all indications we are in the state of anarchy in educaton.
The legislators, teachers, parents and all citizens should be alarmed about the methods being used on young children throughout our naton. I just read the webs about the Kipp Charter Schools, and surely someone, other than a few of us, must recognize this severe method for what it is…highly structured Skinnerian brainwashing. First, the teachers and administrators must be brainwashed -then the children. No doubt the parents who have enough awarness to complain will be lied to about the method just as I was by the U. S. Department of Education regarding the ECRI program.
One can look for both physical and psychological damage to all who are subjected to such methods. I was shocked to learn that children spent 10 hours per day in these charter schools. Any and all, who are responsible should be tried for child abuse, and this includes government officials who have voted in this destruction. Prison is too good for them! Put them all in the poorly run privatized prisons throughout our nation. That is another shocking story.
Ignorance is devastating in some cases! What makes a state legislator think they can give vouchers to Christian religion schools and not make way for Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, Scientologist, Raelian, snake handling, Wiccan, Confucian, Baha’i, etc. This is another example of why LA politics is considered a “Carnival”!
I love the comment about “I thought the student was going to learn about the religion of our founding fathers”…allowing the child to go to a Muslim school would do exactly that!
The snake handlers are a Christian denomination. So they would get vouchers.
LOL…touche
Yes, wouldn’t you love it. “Here is how you hold that rattler, children. Now if you get bit you are going to die so you have to get saved first. Oops, little Johnny, did you just get bit? Well that’s what happens when you sass the teacher! Now lets get back to talking about how Noah took the dinosaurs on the Ark children while Johnny goes to sleep and wakes up in heaven.”
Whoever SHE is, she was either asleep at the wheel or is lying plain and simple. All legislators were lobbied hard but few listened. Several legislators announced on the floor during debate about the muslim schools and we had recently experienced the closing of a Turkish run charter in New Orleans due to outrageous charges. ALL were reported by the media including the muslim epiphany. She voted for the vouchers with full knowledge. I would tell her that to her face.
I can’t believe that she would even admit to being that incompetent! Applying this legislature to only one specific religion would be discrimination, Rep Hodges. So that means ANY faith-based school. Not just Christian…my initial response was to laugh, but ignorance is no laughing matter!
I don’t think there are any intelligence or educational qualifications for legislators in Louisiana. I know there are not for school boards because the previous superintendent, Paul Pastorek complained about them being ignorant almost as much as he griped about the teachers.
One result of this profound ignorance should be the requirement that transcripts, high school and college, be posted online for any public office candidate. Since many legislators love “transparency” and “data” they should have no problem with this requirement. After all, as they might argue, we need this information to make an intelligent choice when voting for legislators and other elected officials. It’s not hard to do and I’d be happen to put together the spreadsheet and database.
I love this!
This is a little off topic, although here in Wisconsin public education was gutted but several million was found to support Charter schools. I really hate that. But, speaking of poorly-educated legislators, Wisconsin’s own governor Scott Walker is a college dropout, with a 2.3 grade point average when he dropped out. And he is making education policy. The arrogance is astounding.
I don’t know if y’all know about this other interesting point about Louisiana Charters. The head of Louisiana Family Forum, an anti gay lobbying group that frequently consults with Bobby Jindal and which is connected to the American Family Association, a certified hate group, tried to put in an amendment to the school bills that GLBT students as well as recent immigrants who did not speak English well could be excluded from the charter schools. Charter schools are only for students who “fit”. The head of BEAO specifically said that “charters are not for everyone” when asked about admitting special needs students. So they get all the money but only the easy students! Wow. Utopia!
The amendment did not pass, but it is probably luring somewhere in those 1100 pages anyway.
Every one of these comments are right on! The passage of these very complicated reform bills was very well orchestrated . Gov. Jindal wanted quick passage so he could go around the country touting the success and speak on news shows to put himself in the list of a possible move up the political ladder. Thank goodness we had a few legislators who did do their homework, did take the time to communicate with educators and try to decipher what these bills dealt with. Bless them.
Rep. Hodges, what is your responsibility if it’s not to understand what you are voting on? What other parts of the bills did you not read? Obviously quite a bit!
See everybody in court!
It appears her reading comprehension skills are lacking….I wonder if her teachers inspired her with a variety of texts or were they required to read non-fiction ad nauseam?
Probably got scripted lessons from a Teach for America. Seems like she could have at least scanned the bill and highlighted sections she had questions about. Sheesh……Did she even have teachers????? Got to look Valerie up.
Orchestrated and choreographed! If it weren’t for Jon Bel Edwards and , Lord I can’t remember her name—the black female legislator with the orange hair who sponsored the bullying bill—it would have gone through even faster. I have to give them grace, they tried really hard.
Bobby has some very slick operators whom I am sure expect to follow him to Washington. Plus he, himself is far from stupid and, despite his youth, has been working in government for a long time. Plus his parents, who are Indian immigrants gave him considerable advantages that included going to Baton Rouge High which has been the public school for the well off kids, apparently for a long time. Now it is a magnet and just got this massive facelift. I guess he would have gone to Catholic school if he could have, but he didn’t convert from Hinduism until his 20s. His kids go to LSU Laboratory School, which is a sort of public school that charges substantial tuition, so its also an elite school. I don’t think he has ever been surrounded by normal people.
Very few legislators actually do their job. It has become so much you vote for my bill, I will vote for yours, consequences be damned. Of course, the legislators are usually not affected by the end results, they make sure that they are exempt or protected from the results.
FIRE DUNCAN! Hire Ravitch!
I’m confused. It’s their children and their money they earned. I’m not sure why parents can’t choose the school they want for their children?
Pretty soon now they will get their wish.
All private schools.
No public funds.
They already can. Just move into the district that one wants.
I live in the 2nd highest rated district in my state. I wouldn’t put my child in our public school.
Moving would also mean that I would have to pay a realtor to sell my house and buy a new one. Seems rather foolish to me when I can use MY money that I earned on MY child in a better way.
I used to read from the Blum Center years ago at Marquette Univ. years ago.
They were proponents of school choice and reported on the countries that had TRUE school choice.
Public schools didn’t disappear, they simply became better public schools.
I think the scare tactics that public schools will disappear is unfounded. I think MOST parents want their children in a neighborhood public school. They like the idea of their children attending a public school in the community where they live. They simply want a quality education for their children.
In my district, parents are willing to pay for private tutors to get that quality. It’s pathetic that we pay the high taxes and then have to pay tutors, but again, I think parents want their children attending the local public school.
It’s a shame that the govt. and bureaucrats have essentially destroyed public education. (at least in my state) But that’s the reality.
Parents in my district have to pay tutors, or watch as our children fall further and further behind the longer they stay in our public school system.
I decided to sacrifice and sent our kids to parochial school to avoid this mess. But many people I know can’t afford that after paying the high taxes. Moving is NOt an option and so they are stuck.
I find it incredibly hypocritical that teachers expect everyone to trust THEM but wont trust parents to make the best decisions for their own children.
Ok, I researched Valarie Hodges. She was just elected last year, so she is a freshman legislator, who got help from Bobby JIndal, is a teaparty Republican and has been a missionary and involved in a couple of ministries. Her husband is a pastor. She represents some parts of East Baton Rouge Parish that are primarily rural, including parts of Zachary which has the highest test scores in the state. Also Livingston Parish. Livingston is VERY white and very conservative and mostly rural and has the second or third highest scoring schools and apparently a majority of the metro area’s meth labs. If someone is arrested in Livingston Parish there is a very high chance he or she is white and got caught making meth. But part of her district is black and poor so I suspect gerrymandering. She does not appear to have a college degree, went to Real Estate School and some place called Light University. The biography is not real clear about the extent of her education.
She went to high school at Glen Oaks in Baton Rouge. That area has flipped racially but has many parts that are quite middle class. Some of their schools are being punished by the state for low scores and were taken over and forcibly made into charters, but they are still not doing well. I have a church friend who moved her 3rd grader out of Glen Oaks Elementary because she was being bullied for being biracial, beautiful, outspoken and smart. The bullying made her physically ill. She got her into a magnet school and she is much happier.
Valarie might be changable with the right influences. She seems to be getting a reality check from what some of her media comments look like. She would not be the first politician to start out as a supporter of Bobby and then go against him.
Light University, as in Light University-Online, #1 Online school for Biblical Counseling, Life Coaching and Crisis Response?! (only quoting their banner, not an endorsement)
Light University is an online Christian school for Christian counselors and Biblical related courses. Seems to be popular among southern preacher wives. It is all online I think, no physical location.
It’s not that difficult to see where the vouchers in Louisiana will take education in that state. Soon the wealthy will use their vouchers to supplement tuition at private schools. The middle class will use theirs to turn their neighborhood schools into exclusive enclaves for white people. And for the poor there will be an endless number of storefront academies where the classes will be huge, materials scarce, and teachers poorly paid. And of course, all kinds of religious schools of every stripe, will proliferate.
Once again Louisiana has proven itself to be near the bottom of the education heap but the good news is that other states might think twice before giving away it’s public schools.
It seems that the school “choice” proponents are searching for a lead propagandist for the state of Louisiana. Here is their classified add, dated July 6, I found in the Baton Rouge paper “The Advocate.”
“The American Federation for Children—the nation’s voice for school choice—is searching for a full- time Communications Associate to manage media relations, community relations, and marketing in the state of Louisiana. This is a salaried position—with benefits—located within the state (work from home).
Primary Responsibilities
The incumbent will be responsible for generating significant positive publicity for school choice programs and efforts in the state, as well as:
•Assisting in-state staff and allies in communicating with legislators and key stakeholders
•Developing content, including news releases, newsletters, and advisories
•Planning small-to medium sized promotional and informational events
•Conducting radio media tours, drafting opinion pieces for placement in newspapers, and scheduling editorial board meetings
•Assisting with the marketing and implementation of the state’s school voucher programs to generate increased parental interest in those programs
Secondary Responsibilities
•Assist in the writing of Louisiana-specific content for the annual School Choice Yearbook and other publications
•Assist the national director of communications in developing media strategy in Louisiana
•Regularly monitor Louisiana school choice news and compile periodic news summaries
•Other duties as assigned
Requirements
•A bachelor’s degree and two to five years of experience in political campaigns, advocacy communications, journalism, media, or public relations. Salary is negotiable and dependent on experience
•To apply, send your resume, salary requirement, and one writing sample to Malcom Glenn at mglenn [at] federationforchildren [dot] org with the subject line: “Louisiana Communications”
•To learn more about the American Federation for Children, please visit http://www.federationforchildren.org and http://www.louisiana4children.org”
Gee, no professional teacher/educator credentials required? Imagine that. I suppose if a TFA alumnus, e.g. John White, with no academic/professional credentials in education can lead Louisiana’s Department of Education, then it makes sense that someone with “experience in political campaigns” be the advocate for school “choice.” Education in Louisiana,as many have suspected and asserted, is all about satisfying those with political power and not, unfortunately, about doing what is best for our children.