Remember last year when Governor Bobby Jindal rammed through his voucher proposal, whereby more than half the state’s children were eligible for a voucher to attend any private or religious or entrepreneurial school? Remember that critics said that Superintendent John White gave out vouchers without due diligence and that the school that got the most vouchers had no classrooms, no teachers, and no curriculum for the influx, which would triple their enrollment? And remember that White said that “parents know best” and that it was not his role as state superintendent to tell anyone how to educate their child?
It is also worth remembering that Jindal’s voucher plan (and charters and online charters and course choice for entrepreneurs) was saluted by Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education hailed the plan as a formula for bold change. And Bush’s “Chiefs for Change” issued a statement endorsing the program; then-Indiana superintendent Tony Bennett called it “student-centered” and said, ” “Students will no longer have to settle for failing schools. Countless families will be able to select the best education option for their unique student’s needs. And superintendents and principals will be empowered to hone faculties of talented, dynamic, and effective educators. Armed with these bold reforms, Louisiana will soon lead our country in quality public K-12 education.”
That was then, this is now.
Well, now we know that White has barred New Living Word from accepting vouchers, not because of the quality of its education but because of financial improprieties. It seems that they were receiving more money from the state for voucher students than they charged their own students, and the church now owes the state nearly $400,000.
Today the New Orleans Times-Picayune published an editorial saying that the vouchers awarded to this school were a waste of taxpayers’ dollars.
Not only did the school overcharge the state, but test scores were abysmal there, as they were in many of the voucher schools.
The editorial says:
“LEAP scores for third- through eighth-graders released in May showed that only 40 percent of voucher students scored at or above grade level. That compares with a statewide average of 69 percent for all students.
Seven schools in Jefferson and Orleans parishes posted such poor results that they are being barred from accepting new voucher students this fall, although they can keep those they already have.
New Living Word’s iLEAP scores for third-, fifth- and sixth-graders were substantially lower than their counterparts in Lincoln Parish public schools and the state as a whole, according to the Department of Education report.
Those poor results wouldn’t have triggered the school being removed from the voucher program this year, though. A school has to post three years of poor LEAP results before getting sanctioned.”
Lot of critics warned that vouchers should not be paid for out of the state’s Minimum Foundation Budget for public schools; the Jindal administration ignored them, and the voucher funding was struck down by the state’s highest court.
Lots of critics warned that the state should set consistent standards for all schools receiving public dollars, but the state ignored them.
In a democracy, public officials would do well to listen to their critics before committing to a disastrous and radical course of action.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Why such a little penalty? You have fraud and conspiracy to defraud so prosecute and do civil recovery of the funds.. Shut down the so-called school. Obviously it is a failure for the students. We do not have a right to ruin their lives anymore with the proof. What are their lives worth, NOTHING? If you read the proposed Florida Parent Trigger law there were provisions in it for accountability and transparency for charter schools which I wished we had in California and all across the country. They would no longer be able to hide behind non-transparency as they do now as now all you have access to is their federal non profit tax records and that is how they caught Steve Barr from Green Dot with the $60,000. If you do not read, you do not know, it is that simple.
Now I think they passed a law in Louisiana in which a poor performing chanter school for 3 years can be disassociated and the charter taken away by a vote of the parents. This is very good. Jindal’s crazy scheme seems to be getting a backfire in Louisiana.
It is rather sad that the Supreme Court has set such a strong precedent saying “Separate but Equal is Unequal” but here we have the charter system set up such that the public is TOLD the system is not equal (charters are the answer!) – and it’s not equal because of the charters – who have entirely different rules that they play by (and still can’t seem to “fire their way to success” via booting students).
It’s highly likely that the folks who ran this school were actually rather modest. I have some dealings with religious people and those who fund them. They are well meaning people. They undoubtedly thought that making the school more affordable for non-voucher students was a great thing for their families – it’s not like they were out back pocketing the money. They likely didn’t realize that something like this would or could happen – they just didn’t have the experience within their organization to do that.
That brings us full circle to why this plan simply does not work. With no transparency especially, you can’t hand out what are essentially no bid education contracts to organizations that simply do not have credible experience meeting childrens’ needs – particularly those who are in special education and english language learners.
It invites this kind of malfeasance – whether it be intentional or unintentional.
I also don’t believe in the “no harm no foul” approach whereby they give back the fraudulently obtained money, don’t get the chance to do it again, and everyone is happy. There at the least needs to be a penalty attached to that – ignorance of the law is not an excuse though I acknowledge they likely didn’t interpret it AS fraud – this does need to send a message.
However, getting back to the initial point of this post – we funded a public school system because we acknowledged that education is a right and that we needed to pool our money to get the best system we can devise that meets all childrens’ needs while not foisting particular philosophies/religions on them. Funding 2 separate school systems is going to make one of them fail – and is inherently unequal.
Why we don’t have lawsuits that charge that charters are a form of segregation of public systems is beyond me. It shouldn’t be possible for them to exist side-by-side – yet they do.
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. There is no excuse for the damage and disruption to the lives of the children and their families. Charters have caused both with the underlying purpose for many of them which has little to do with the education of the children and everything to do with another self serving purpose. Whether it is greed, part of urban shrinkage, finding public dollars to support religious institutions and kick the separation of church and state to the curb, measurement and sorting for a workforce for tomorrow, destroying a system of government that has worked well and been part of the public and the people (not just some people and some peoples wealth), control over the minds and future of our children, on and on!!!! You said “They are well meaning people” and I think not!
That includes the charter movement in it’s entirety.
Charter Schl scandals read like The Gilded Age scams to plunder the public treasury, steal land and buildings, take the money and run, with full cooperation of thug politicians like Jindal, Bush, Emanuel, etc. Hard to know when we’ll reach the limit of the charter thefts of public assets but when we do, the bill will be simply enormous, enough to reduce class sizes, outfit all public schls with needed equipment, fund field projects and aides in every classroom, pay for parent organizers in each grade, air-cond. schools in the hot zones, feed the legions of hungry kids and shelter the army of homeless youths. All these needs have been high on the list of activist demands for several decades, but the corpr. and their politicians preferred to facilitate plunder instead. Let it be written and never forgotten what the Billionaire Boys Club and their policy princelings like Duncan and Rhee have done to the public sector whose restoration and renaissance will be our task.
..exactly…
How will history judge these times? I often wonder what my grandchildren will think of this period of greed and injustices subjected on our most at-risk children in the name of progress. I am mindful of my own actions when I think about how history has judged other movements of our past. This truly is the civil rights issue of our time. Only, not for the reasons Ms. Rice states. It starts with poverty and will always end at poverty. Fix poverty and everything else will fall into place. Why aren’t our Philanthropic Billionaire Corporate Baggers putting their money into programs to fix poverty? Oh Yeah, there’s no money to be there…
The Cultural Revolution in China in the ’60’s was a period when the Stalinist bureaucracy felt threatened, particularly by intellectuals. Teachers were sent to peasant communes to learn the life-style of the peasants and schools were turned into indoctrination centers. For ten years a generation of China’s youth were given an ideological education, not a scientifically based education. As a result, this generation is viewed in China today as the “lost generation” and have been relegated to a life of low paying jobs and menial labor.
Are we going to allow that to happen to this generation of youth?
Why is no one being held accountable. They say that as teachers, we need to be accountable!
A must read.
>________________________________ > From: Diane Ravitch’s blog >To: joyousvb@bellsouth.net >Sent: Friday, July 5, 2013 3:36 PM >Subject: [New post] NOLA Times-Picayune: Voucher $$ for New Living Word School Was Waste of Taxpayer Dollars > > > > WordPress.com >dianerav posted: “Remember last year when Governor Bobby Jindal rammed through his voucher proposal, whereby more than half the state’s children were eligible for a voucher to attend any private or religious or entrepreneurial school? Remember that critics said that Superi” >
I think.the vouchers to religious schools are purely political for the business end of reform. A political alliance they need with religious conservatives.
Too, charter schools pull students from religious schools, so religious schools need some compensatory measure for that loss.
I think we probably see more and more vouchers from the reformers, in more and more states, because they can’t cut out religious “choice” advocates or they lose a bunch of political clout.
Sadly, the only kids who don’t have politically connected advocates are public school kids. The vast majority of kids. They lose with this “reform” coalition.
In Utah, we fought against vouchers. The legislature passed a voucher bill, and teachers and others were able to get enough signatures to put it on the ballot. That is no small feat in Utah, where you have to get 10% of the voters in each county to put an initiative on the ballot. Vouchers lost in a major way. It was a fine time. We still have a very small voucher system for children with disabilities–mostly autism–but we did it! And in one of the most conservative states in the nation! FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT this thing!
One of the reasons the Times-Picayune is one of my very favorite newspapers in the U.S. (and most likely why they’re trying to shut it down)! Continue your solid journalistic standards, T-P reporters!