This one takes the cake.
John White has approved the Light City Church School of the Prophets to get vouchers, nearly $700,000 a year.
The man who runs it describes himself as an apostle or a prophet.
Whatever. People can call themselves whatever they like.
Please read the linked article to see how low the bar is for getting taxpayer dollars from the state of Louisiana.
The state will have no standards for voucher schools. There will be no accountability for voucher schools.
A few months ago, John White told a Reuters reporter: “To me, it’s a moral outrage that the government would say, ‘We know what’s best for your child,’” White said. “Who are we to tell parents we know better?”
Well, he is the state commissioner of education, and he is the one who is supposed to know better. If he doesn’t, why is he in that job?
But John White has no problem setting standards for public schools and holding their teachers accountable.
He thinks that once you leave the public system, no standards or accountability are necessary.
In Bobby Jindal’s world, that’s called reform.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The concept of choice is one that is difficult for educators to grasp. We’re in education to help all kids. We follow best practices. We sacrifice time with our own kids to help someone else’s kids. We strive for quality.
The choice movement could care less about quality. It is simply about choice. Once parents are given choice the market will take care of itself. If parents choose a poor school they have only themselves to blame. Quality becomes a parent perception based on no real data…but wait, public schools will still have to test and produce data for the public.
Public schools must also take ALL students. Many charter schools “encourage” students who do not conform to “seek other options” in public schools. Why doesn’t anyone ever look at student attrition in the cohorts in so-called high performing charter schools?
I am tired of this attitude about parents knowing what is best for their children. Parents are easily swayed by politicians, talk show hosts and preachers. They rarely understand how schools work unless they are teachers themselves or have relatives who are teachers. If their child broke his leg they would not try to fix it themselves even if they did not have health insurance. They would take the child to a health care professional. So what in God’s name is wrong with taking your child to an Education Professional? This debasement of teachers and deprofessionalization of of K-12 education has got to go before we get a whole generation of uneducated, dysfunctional adults.
Certainly they should have a say and be part of the decision making about the child’s education but parents also starve, beat, tie up, and rape their children. They also spoil them rotten and don’t expect them to do anything and teach them that they are “entitled”.You have to have a license to drive a car, for your dog, and to practice most professions. No license is required to be a parent. I have also seen parents demand inappropriate programs for their child and not accept the truth that a child with a 30 IQ should not be mainstreamed into a college prep program. I had a parent swear that her multihandicapped son could rollerskate when he could not even turn over on his own. But I had to clean dried feces off the little boy’s butt.
I agree that some school programs are bad. They have no vision for the children’s success. They think poor kids are in a pipeline to prison. I have known some bad teachers, some lazy, some incompetent, some functionally illiterate, two drunks and some just not bright enough to teach. But at least 95% of teachers do their best and are competent and do better as they get experience. Some of the best teachers I have known started as paraprofessionals.
Programs may be inadequate or inappropriate for some students but that is not the fault of the teachers but of the politicians and upper administrators. That is part of why I stayed in Severe/Profound. I could pretty much do what I wanted because most people thought my children could not learn anything. I could keep away from the politics pretty well until I came to Louisiana. But this place is a mess from hell.
Diane,
Not sure where to put this, but I think it will make us all sick.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/school_reform_gets_cool_yqpNFSwAlVfCwo1dQo7hAL
I guess now I know how to make an easy buck when I get dismissed due to a low VAM score. I will just declare myself a prophet, start a small church school, apply to double my enrollment with state voucher students and be careful to stay under the number of students in each grade to avoid accountability—-PROFIT!
I’d ask if I could join you since they already got rid of me, but I am a special ed teacher and your charter won’t need me.
just in case anyone was unaware or interested
http://foxnewsinsider.com/2012/08/08/louisiana-charter-school-tries-to-implement-policy-forcing-girls-to-take-pregnancy-tests/
John White isn’t the only commissioner doing that. Connecticut Commissioner Stefan Pryor (who has VERY strong ties to Achievement First–a large charter organization in CT & NY) has implemented measures that hold public schools accountable but not the charters he loves. For public schools, he uses AYP. For charter schools , he uses vertical scales. He reauthorized a charter school in Stamford which, according to AYP, is a failing school and justified it by saying that it would never be successful because it serves a disadvantaged population. Yet, he took over a public school which served a nearly identical population & was also failing according to AYP.
He gets away with it because Governor Malloy wants to be the next Arne Duncan & he does everything he can to imitate Duncan. Malloy calls his policies “reform” & is supported heavily by StudentsFirst. This is increasingly becoming the norm, even among Democrats (Obama, Malloy, etc.). The sad part is that this will continue until educators stop assuming that supporting a Democrat will change things because both Obama & Romney want to dismantle public education.
Is there some legal way to force the charters to be held to the same standards as the publics? Is there some obscure federal law that would do this?
I don’t think so but Diane and many others on here would know more about that than I. I lack their experience and expertise.
Uh Oh! First of all prophets are not taught to be prophets. They are chosen to be prophets by God. So going to prophet school is not going to make you a prophet. Second what does going to prophet school have to do with learning to read and write? The man might be a fairly good preacher but he did not show any signs of knowing how to teach. Nor did he talk in his video about the school. What a waste of MY money!
John White is the State Superintendent of Education. He is not only not a real teacher but a TFA. Obviously the man does not know what he is doing. This one is SCARY. It makes me think of the Muslim kids sent to the schools in Afghanistan run by mullahs who were illiterate themselves and the kids sitting their rocking, sometimes in chains, reciting from the Quran. Their desperately poor parents often sent them to these schools because they knew they would get enough to eat. But they were trained to be Taliban. I would trust this preacher about as far as I could throw him and I am no football player.
Is the State Department going to send out consultants to fix the mess that John and Bobby are making, to teach the charters how to run a school and what and how to teach??? They have such consultants, but Bobby is also stripping state jobs down to the bone, outsourcing and shutting down departments pretending that it will save money to destroy people’s careers.
Public dollars should go to non-prophet schools.
Alan,
You are very witty and you always make me laugh.
A little bit of humor definitely goes a long way. Thanks for the chuckle, Alan.
Louisiana has a lot of clowns that are performers in the carnival! There is not only one ringmaster but two, Bobby Jindal and John White.
If Jindal’s trying to improve the education of children, how in the hell are vouchers going to improve the failing school that the student is being pulled from???????
I’m a lifelong resident of Louisiana. I’m a teacher. I’m proud of who I am and where I come from. Well, I was proud. This is very embarrassing. We are the laughingstock of the education community. But hey, we have good food. Well, we do now, but I’m sure someone will “reform” our menu and cash in.
we were told at the three days of in-service we finished that we should not be worried about our jobs since all of us are excellent teachers and our evaluations will be wonderful. I asked what happens if our value added scores are horrific and our teacher value score drops. The response was so naive and clueless from our vice-principal (who can retire in a year with 30 yrs) “Gov. Jindal can’t possibly fire 10% of the teachers in Louisiana. Who would teach? He will have to change his mind about all this when he sees that we just don’t have that many ineffective teachers. No one is going to get fired!”
From the principal: ” You need to quit worrying and just keep doing your best. I won’t let anyone fire any of you!”
Wow! We felt so much better.
Then we were told that part of our job expectation is to be involved in a community project, church counts(of course!) and keep track of our hours. Taking graduate classes doesn’t count, nor does NBCT program enrollment or parish professional development because “It is not OUT in the community”
We then had to commit to attending courses next summer of 2-6 weeks in length because that is what is expected of professionals. All sorts of AP, STEM, Reading and Numeracy courses. Many out of town and some out of state. No stipend. No nothing. Just give up precious personal/family time! No one should plan vacations. No one should plan surgeries that are elective. (Maybe we need to get fired to escape)
We got a pep talk on how we just need to ignore politics and be here in mind and spirit for the children. Our superintendent will fight for us and he won’t let anyone fire us. Several teacher leaders commented that the merit pay will bring a little fun competition and since we haven’t gotten a pay raise in 10 years the highly effective teachers will have something to look forward to.
Those present who I have been sending this blog’s topics too and articles and links from here looked like I did, absolutely stunned by the ignorance of what is happening.