Readers may notice that I often post about what is happening in Louisiana.
There are several reasons for this.
One is that Louisiana is truly an important site for what is now called school reform. It became important after Hurricane Katrina wiped out most of the public school system, and New Orleans became a closely-watched experiment in privatizing public education. Corporate reformers frequently refer to New Orleans as their shining example of the good that will come as a result of getting rid of public education, teachers’ unions, and veteran teachers.
Another reason is that I have amazing contacts in Louisiana. The most important contact is Dr. Lance Hill of the Southern Institute for Education and Research. He sends me the latest studies, reports, and news articles. Hill is a careful researcher, and I frequently rely on him to get the facts right. And experience has proven to me that he is invariably correct in his data and use of data. I want to mention here that Lance Hill was first to spot that 98 percent of the eligible students in Louisiana passed up the chance to apply for a voucher. Lance also has supplied me the data demonstrating that New Orleans is one of the lowest performing districts in the entire state. And one other thing, at a time when the elites of New Orleans are gaga for privatization, Lance knows the other side of the story, the one the national media never reports; he hears those who have been dispossessed and left out. Lance invited me to New Orleans two years ago, and I spoke at Dillard University, where I heard some of those voices. I thank him for his integrity, his moral center, and his commitment to the children of the state. And his friendship.
And last, I have gotten myself on some really terrific email lists in Louisiana. I read Mike Deshotel’s blog Louisiana Educator. I get regular updates from two other lists. And I have friends that I made when I spoke to the Louisiana School Boards Association this past March. I can’t name all my contacts, as some have relatives working in state government and I don’t want to get them fired.
And now I have a number of Louisiana teachers who are regular readers of this blog. I learn from them. They keep me informed. I’ll keep doing what I can to tell the public what is happening in your state. You keep hanging in there, ignoring the insults from the governor and the legislature, and stand by the children.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane, I too have a passion for Louisiana, and a couple of friends there who also keep me in the loop.
Your tireless efforts to tell the truth about what has happened in Louisiana since Milton Friedman decided to use “Shock Doctrine” to his advantage is very important to stopping Jindal from his merciless destruction of public education and democracy itself!
For those who are not familiar with Naomi’s introduction to “The Shock Doctrine – The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”- here is a brief excerpt from her intro:
“Over at the shelter, Jamar could think of nothing else. “I really don’t see it as cleaning up the city. What I see is that a lot of people got killed uptown. People who shouldn’t have died.”
He was speaking quietly, but an older man in line in front of us overheard and whipped around. “What is wrong with these people in Baton Rouge? This isn’t an opportunity. It’s a goddamned tragedy. Are they blind?” A mother with two kids chimed in. “No, they’re not blind, they’re evil. They see just fine.”
One of those who saw opportunity in the floodwaters of New Orleans was the late Milton Friedman, grand guru of unfettered capitalism and credited with writing the rulebook for the contemporary, hyper-mobile global economy. Ninety-three years old and in failing health, “Uncle Miltie”, as he was known to his followers, found the strength to write an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal three months after the levees broke. “Most New Orleans schools are in ruins,” Friedman observed, “as are the homes of the children who have attended them. The children are now scattered all over the country. This is a tragedy. It is also an opportunity.”
Friedman’s radical idea was that instead of spending a portion of the billions of dollars in reconstruction money on rebuilding and improving New Orleans’ existing public school system, the government should provide families with vouchers, which they could spend at private institutions.
In sharp contrast to the glacial pace with which the levees were repaired and the electricity grid brought back online, the auctioning-off of New Orleans’ school system took place with military speed and precision. Within 19 months, with most of the city’s poor residents still in exile, New Orleans’ public school system had been almost completely replaced by privately run charter schools.
The Friedmanite American Enterprise Institute enthused that “Katrina accomplished in a day … what Louisiana school reformers couldn’t do after years of trying”. Public school teachers, meanwhile, were calling Friedman’s plan “an educational land grab”. I call these orchestrated raids on the public sphere in the wake of catastrophic events, combined with the treatment of disasters as exciting market opportunities, “disaster capitalism”. ~Naomi Klein, “The Shock Doctrine – The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” [2007] ~ read the excerpt as taken from here: http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine/excerpt
I would like to see three media sources come to do a follow-up on Naomi Klein’s introduction to her world renowned book: “The Shock Doctrine – The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”.
Can we get Naomi Klein to do a follow up?
How about teaming up with Joanne Barkan who wrote, “Got Dough” [see link to this article here: http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/dissent/v058/58.1.barkan.pdf ] in Dissent Magazine?
And of course, how about teaming up with Ed Shultz? Cant he three of them get together with you to increase the public’s awareness of the unconscionable crimes being committed against Louisiana’s children, against their own state constitution? Gotta love, Ed! I’m so glad he had you on his show. I want him to invite you as a REGULAR guest! Still wish Maddow would wake up and bring you on too, but I digress.
I think the 4 of you could do some real good together as partners to help Louisiana get out of “disaster capitalism” and spread that healing to the nation, ridding us of the marriage between Neoliberalism and Neoconservativism through corporate education reform that is destroying public education and democracy!
Thank you again for helping the children, families, teachers, and communities of Louisiana by shining a light on the horrors of corporate education reform in this state.
Do you think partnering with these 3 other people would give this story some clout?
How about it Diane? What do you say?
I wish I could go back to edit my comments. : ) Correction: “to do” after Naomi Klein above. Thank you.
Hey, Louisiana:
I have one question. Do you guys want Paul Vallas back? Just asking…we don’t want him here in CT.
Hell no! Be careful. Is he driving a government vehicle and taking personal trips with it? He wrecked one here. That was just a sideline story.
Answer: No.
xoxo, Louisiana
Thank you from St. Tammany Parish!
Diane, you have some excellent sources from whom your getting information. Your attention to Louisiana is much appreciated. It keeps us hopeful when things seem so bleak. It’s helping the rest of the country get more information about the harmful things that are happening here to education. You are welcome to our state anytime. Thank you!
Thank you! School is so close to starting and so many of us ended last year half dead and losing hope. I am constantly working, 10 years now, to improve my teaching. When last year was so draining I chalked it up to my needed more skill but each year seems harder then the one before. However, when I see teachers I greatly respect and admire and know as the ones who give everything for their students and profession also looking dazed and worn out; it really scares me. In an attempt to re-energize myself prior to school I applied to and was accepting into the National Writers Project Summer Institute for Science and Social Studies Teachers at NSU in Natchitoches, La. Between this inspiring class filled with just as worn out but just as hopeful teachers and this blog we will be able to keep going!
Diane,
I am a Louisiana teacher who thanks you for your tireless advocacy of public education in general and your focus to Louisiana in particular. The past year was a difficult one for me personally and professionally. I teach students in one of the so-called “failing” schools and know first hand how hard we work and how much we are trying to educate the students we have. At my high school, we often have students who arrive in ninth grade reading below the 5th grade level. We aren’t given any solutions or ideas or help from the state department. We do our best to take them where they are and guide them where they need to be. We do this despite many who lack any parental support, some who are parents themselves, some who live in dangerous conditions, and many other challenges. Yet the message we receive from the state is that our efforts aren’t good enough.
Thank-you for writing and shining the spot light on our plight.
Monroe, LA
Many of the metro New Orleans school districts are doing a great job without charters. John White never discusses anything but the RSD and leaves out other parishes that are doing a great job!
It is easier to manipulate the schools with low test scores in poor cities and intimidate those teachers and parents. The more informed people become, the more difficult it will be for them to spin their bull____!
They are making up as they go along…they are not experts. They are masters of deception.
Keep reading, forwarding and stay alert.
We need a full time governor http://www.bossierpress.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=7541:we-need-a-full-time-governor&catid=7:other-opinion&Itemid=144
Second-in-command Dardenne ‘never’ notified By Marsha Shuler Capitol News Bureau
July 13, 2012 http://theadvocate.com/home/3333894-125/whos-the-boss-when-jindals
Ignoring his state while running around with vice-presidential plans and making his own rules by leaving no one officially in charge or even away he is gone.
http://www.bossierpress.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=7511:on-the-road-again&catid=7:other-opinion&Itemid=144
Governor Jindal traveling the country campaigning
“…..Campbell: ‘Jindal is a hypocrite’
Democratic Public Service Commission Chairman Foster Campbell says that Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal is exhibiting “the worst form of hypocrisy” by refusing federal health care assistance for uninsured Louisiana residents.
“Bobby Jindal and his family live in a three-story mansion paid for by the state. He eats free, his laundry is free, he has servants and bodyguards and chauffeurs and free travel,” Campbell said.
He added, “He and his family have access to state-subsidized health care, and yet he denies health care for hundreds of thousands of Louisiana residents who cannot afford it. It’s the worst form of hypocrisy.”
Campbell was reacting to Jindal’s declaration that Louisiana would refuse to cooperate in the federal government’s plan to expand Medicaid coverage to the uninsured.
“We have parishes in the Mississippi Delta where three of every five children live in poverty – the worst poverty in the United States. Bobby Jindal is turning his back on these children, just like he did last year when he refused an $80 million federal grant to deliver Internet service to schools, hospitals, and people in these same rural areas,” Campbell said.
Campbell noted, “He accepted $3 billion in federal aid to balance his budget, but he refuses federal help for health care and economic opportunity. The inconsistency and hypocrisy of his actions are beyond belief.”
He went on to say, “Bobby Jindal apparently believes that his own political ambitions and his pandering to the extreme right are more important than the well-being of his own people. As the governor of the poorest state in the country, he should be the last politician to forget the needs of the less fortunate,” Campbell stated.”
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