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“Louisiana’s high court to hear school voucher suit today”
by Mike Hasten
Alexandria Town Talk
March 19, 2013

Attorneys on both sides of the debate over using public funds to pay for students to attend private schools are honing their arguments for a showdown today with oral arguments before the Louisiana Supreme Court.

No witnesses may be called and each side has a limited amount of time to present arguments. Written arguments have been filed, so justices are familiar with the case.

Baton Rouge District Judge Tim Kelley’s ruling that using the funding formula, known as the Minimum Foundation Program, or MFP, violated a constitutional provision that says the fund can only be used for public schools has drawn national attention. Organizations on both sides of the issue are at loggerheads arguing for separation of church and state or for offering children the best chance for an education.

The Interfaith Alliance has joined an amicus brief in the appeal that challenges the program on the grounds of religious freedom. The brief, authored by another Washington, D.C.-based organization, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and also joined by the American Civil Liberties Union, argues that public funds should not be used to teach religious belief.

“Let me be clear,” said the Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, head of the Interfaith Alliance and pastor at Northminster Baptist Church in Monroe, “I am not bothered by a Christian school teaching its students the same tenets that children in my church learn every Sunday. What I find appalling is that these schools are teaching theology in science, history and math classes and, through school vouchers, are doing so with my taxes. I defend their right to teach future generations about their faith, and the right of any Louisiana citizen to choose a private religious school over a public one — but neither the parents nor the schools should receive financial support from our government to do so”

Many of the schools accepting voucher funds are religion-based and use religion-based curriculum.

“Louisiana legislators are siphoning money from tax-starved public schools to feed private schools that promote dogma and aren’t accountable to the taxpayers,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United. “It’s a travesty, and the court should put an end to it.”

The anti-voucher groups are on the side of the Louisiana Federation of Teachers, Louisiana Association of Educators and Louisiana School Boards Association, the organizations which originally filed suit challenging the Legislature’s Act 2 of the 2012 session as being unconstitutional.

The Washington, D.C.,-based Black Alliance for Educational Options, The Institute for Justice, the American Federation for Children and Stand for Children, national organizations pushing school choice, also are involved on the state’s side. They argue that children in failing schools deserve to receive vouchers so they can have a chance to receive better education.

Black Alliance President Kenneth Campbell said after Kelley’s ruling, “As a result of this decision, hope and opportunity have been taken away from families who are only trying to escape failing schools and gain access to better educational options.”

Gov. Bobby Jindal, the lead proponent of the vouchers and a larger education initiative, called Kelley’s ruling “wrong-headed and a travesty for parents across Louisiana who want nothing more than for their children to have an equal opportunity at receiving a great education.”

But this particular argument before the high court is over whether state money in a fund that has traditionally paid for public school education can legally be used to pay private schools to educate students who normally would attend public schools.

It’s not about church and state or whether children deserve a better education. It’s about the constitutional use of state funds.

Kelley did not rule that vouchers are unconstitutional; only that it’s unconstitutional to use the Minimum Foundation Program to fund them.

The attorney general’s office hired Jindal’s former executive counsel, attorney Jimmy Roy Faircloth of Alexandria, to represent the state in the case and the appeal to the state Supreme Court.

Faircloth maintains that it’s the state’s responsibility to provide the best education available and that schools graded C, D and F schools are failing to do that. The vouchers are available to students who are zoned to attend schools with those grades.

After Kelley’s ruling, a second Baton Rouge jurist, District Judge Michael Caldwell, threw out the other piece of Jindal’s education package, Act 1, which primarily deals with tenure, because the legislation contained too many objects. The Louisiana Constitution contains language that limits bills to a single object.

Besides making it harder for teachers to earn tenure and easier to lost it, the bill also stripped school boards of the authority to hire and fire teachers, required school systems to submit superintendents’ contracts to the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, eliminated salary schedules and eliminated layoff policies based on seniority.

The state also has appealed Caldwell’s decision.

Kelley didn’t rule that Act 2, the voucher bill, contained too many objects, but Steve Monaghan, president of the Louisiana Federation of Teachers union, said the organization is asking the Supreme Court to rule on the issue. He said the federation has filed a “cross appeal” to the one filed by the state asking the Supreme Court to rule.

Besides vouchers, Act 2 cleared the way for creation of numerous charter schools and set up a “course choice” program so outside sources can offer online and in-person classes that aren’t available in local schools.

“We are confident that we will win in the Supreme Court,” Jindal and White have consistently said, expressing confidence that Kelley’s ruling would be overturned.

But for the first time Thursday, Jindal said he would call the state Legislature into special session to re-approve the bills if the high court rules that House Bill 2 was unconstitutionally constructed.

The Black Alliance is sponsoring a Tuesday morning rally at the Supreme Court building in New Orleans to show support for vouchers. Parents of children enrolled in voucher schools are to tell of the successes their children are having in private schools.

The hearing is set for the court’s 2 p.m. session.

“We hope that the letter of the Louisiana Constitution will prevail,” said Joyce Haynes, president of the LAE. “Judge Kelly made the decision to uphold what is set forth in the constitution of the great state of Louisiana. It’s sad that our governor continues to ignore the constitution and spend money on attorneys and court fees all at the expense of Louisiana tax payers.

“We’ve been fighting for the 99 percent of Louisiana families who chose not to partake in the voucher program,” she said. “We need to adequately fund the institutions where the vast majority of our students learn, and a majority of Louisiana’s students learn in public school classrooms. As advocates for public education, it is our job to make sure that our public schools are adequately funded so that the educational experience is optimal for all of Louisiana’s children. This is their constitutional right.”

Monaghan says the Louisiana Department of Education is ignoring the state Constitution in its pursuit of its ideas of improving education.

White’s newest concept is “Louisiana Believes,” which is also the name of the Education Department’s website.

“It’s more of a belief system” he said. “If the research is there” proving something works, “they believe it. If it doesn’t, they ignore it.”

The new Minimum Foundation Program presented to the Legislature does not contain the traditional language referring to funding being in compliance with the Constitution.

If the Supreme Court upholds Kelley’s ruling, the funding formula will have to be reworked. It currently funds vouchers through the Minimum Foundation Program.

“New study finds that median D.C. charter schools outperform median traditional schools”
by Emma Brown
Washington Post
March 13, 2013

Student proficiency in math and reading improved at the median D.C. public charter school over the past five years, while student proficiency at the city’s median traditional school declined, according to a new analysis of school data.

The study, which the nonprofit D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute expects to release Wednesday, also found geographic trends. In more-affluent wards, proficiency rates at the median school rose over the past five years, while in poorer wards the median school’s proficiency rate fell.

The findings suggest that charter schools are slightly outperforming traditional schools and that to meet ambitious improvement goals, city school leaders will have to make greater strides over the next five years than they have in the past five, a period of rapid and wide-ranging reform efforts.

“We still have a long way to go to see citywide performance go up,” said Soumya Bhat, the study’s author. “That theme is consistent.”

Public officials often assess school progress by tracking the average scores of students in charter schools, in traditional schools and citywide. Between 2008 and 2012, the share of all D.C. students proficient in math and reading rose five points, from 42 percent to 47 percent.

Bhat instead examined the trajectories of individual schools. Using the results of annual standardized tests at 152 schools that existed in both 2008 and 2012, she analyzed the share of students who scored proficient or advanced at each school. She then tracked how the median school — the one squarely in the middle of the pack, with the same number of schools doing better and doing worse — performed.

Citywide, that middle-of-the-pack performance did not improve over the past five years, dropping slightly from 41.8 percent to 41.2 percent.

Proficiency rates at the median charter school rose from about 44 percent in 2008 to about 50 percent in 2012. At the median traditional school, proficiency rates fell from 40 percent to 37 percent over the same period, chiefly because of declines in reading.

Bhat said those numbers suggest the traditional school system might need to consider substantial changes to boost achievement, particularly at the 40 lowest-performing schools, where the goal is to raise proficiency rates by 40 percentage points by 2017.

School system spokeswoman Melissa Salmanowitz was provided with an advance copy of Bhat’s analysis. She said officials could not comment, because they have not had an opportunity to fully review the data.

Median school proficiency rates dropped in poorer parts of the city, including east of the Anacostia River and east of Rock Creek Park in Wards 4 and 5. They rose across Wards 1, 2, 3 and 6, which include the more affluent Upper Northwest and Capitol Hill neighborhoods.

The study points out that performance trends varied widely within every category of school. Since 2008, proficiency rates have risen significantly — by at least five percentage points — at about one-third of all traditional and charter schools. They have declined by that much at another one-third of schools. And one-third of the city’s schools have had modest changes of less than five percentage points.

“States draw a hard line on third-graders, holding some back over reading”
by Lyndsey Layton
Washington Post
March 10, 2013

A growing number of states are drawing a hard line in elementary school, requiring children to pass a reading test in third grade or be held back from fourth grade.

Thirteen states last year adopted laws that require schools to identify, intervene and, in many cases, retain students who fail a reading proficiency test by the end of third grade. Lawmakers in several other states and the District are debating similar measures.

Not every state requires retention; some allow schools to promote struggling readers to fourth grade as long as they are given intensive help.

Advocates of the new tough-love policies say social promotion — advancing students based on age and not academic achievement — results in high-schoolers who can barely read, let alone land a job or attend college. Literacy problems are best addressed at an early age, they say.

Critics say the policies reflect an accountability movement that has gone haywire, creating high-stakes tests for 8-year-olds. The child, not the school, bears the brunt of the problem, they say, pointing to research that shows that the academic benefits of repeating a grade fade with time while the stigma can haunt children into adulthood.

“This is completely unsettling. I’m concerned about a number of those legislative initiatives,” said Shane Jimerson, a University of California at Santa Barbara professor who has studied retention for 20 years and found that, from a child’s perspective, being held back is as stressful as losing a parent.

“This is deleterious to hundreds of thousands of students,” he said. “But children don’t have a voice. If you were doing this to any group that had representation, it would not be happening.”

Third grade has become a flashpoint in primary education because it’s the stage when children are no longer learning to read but are reading to learn, educators say. If children haven’t mastered reading by third grade, they will find it hard to handle increasingly complex lessons in science, social studies and even math.

In large urban districts, retention policies can affect a large share of third-graders. In the District last year, for example, almost 60 percent of third-graders were not proficient in reading, according to the city’s standardized tests.

“It’s been that way for a long time,” said D.C. Council member Vincent B. Orange (D-At Large), who is proposing a third-grade retention law that would apply to traditional and charter schools. “And we have to try something different. There has to be a full-fledged assault on the problem in the classroom.”

In some places, retention has morphed from an educational issue into a political fight.

Tony Bennett, Indiana schools superintendent, lost his elected position in November to Glenda Ritz, a teacher who ran because she was angered by Bennett’s third-grade retention policy.

“It was the final straw,” said Ritz, adding that her state should emphasize reading as early as kindergarten and help struggling readers well before third grade. She wants to stop retaining children based on standardized test scores.

Bennett, meanwhile, became state education commissioner in Florida, where the third-grade retention policy has served as a model for other states.

Ending social promotion has become so popular in some policy circles that Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) boasted to a recent meeting of the National Governors Association that he had accomplished it, though Virginia’s laws actually fall short.

“We essentially put an end to social promotion in third grade by major new third-grade reading incentives,” McDonnell told a panel of other governors on Sunday. “I mean, we just do a disservice to these young people, we all see it in our schools. If they get passed along to eighth, ninth grade, it contributes to the drop-out rate if they’re not able to read.”

Virginia requires school districts to identify struggling readers by third grade and provide intensive help. But students do not have to pass a reading test to progress to fourth grade, and schools are not required to retain third-graders who are weak readers.

Literacy is a struggle for many U.S. children, with 33 percent of all fourth-graders nationwide reading below basic levels in 2011, according to federal data. For minorities, the picture was worse: Half of black and Hispanic fourth-graders were below basic in reading.

Children who don’t read proficiently by third grade are four times more likely to drop out of school than those who read well, according to a recent study by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

A matter of debate for more than a century, decisions about whether to hold back a child usually have been made by teachers and principals in consultation with parents.

But in an accountability era ushered in by the 2002 No Child Left Behind law, the new retention policies offer little wiggle room. Decisions are based on test scores, not the subjective judgment of teachers and administrators. Parents have little recourse. And individual students bear the impact, as opposed to an entire school being sanctioned for failing to perform.

The new approach began in earnest in 2002 in Florida under then-Gov. Jeb Bush (R), who promoted an education strategy that also featured private-school vouchers, data-based assessments for schools and teachers, charter schools and online learning.

Mary Laura Bragg, who ran Florida’s third-grade retention program under Bush, said it forced elementary schools to get serious about literacy. Principals moved their best teachers to kindergarten and first and second grades, she said. Schools sought state funds for diagnostic reading tests and other help.

“I saw a sea change in behavior,” Bragg said. “It’s a shame that it was the threat of retention that spurred these schools into doing what they should have been doing all along.”

A study that tracked third-graders retained in Florida found that they showed significant academic gains in the first two years, but those effects faded over time. Still, fewer students have been retained each year since the policy took effect, which suggests the emphasis on early reading is having an impact.

After leaving office, Bush created the Foundation for Excellence in Education to promote his education policies across the country. The foundation, which reported more than $9 million in revenue and assets in 2011, has lobbied and provided technical and strategic help to state officials and lawmakers who want to adopt third-grade retention laws.

Bragg, now a policy director at the foundation, is in frequent contact with lawmakers and education officials across the country. “Our mission is to help spread reform state by state, and a K-3 reading policy is one of those that states are very interested in,” she said.

In Ohio, Gov. John Kasich (R) signed into law the Third Grade Reading Guarantee, which says that starting this year, third-graders who fail a statewide reading test won’t be permitted to enter fourth grade. Similar laws are rolling out in Indiana, Iowa, New Mexico, Tennessee and Colorado.

Most policies require that schools evaluate children as early as kindergarten and notify parents if their child is below grade level. Schools are required to create a plan for each student and provide intensive reading tutoring, summer reading programs or other help. Most states make exceptions to the retention policy for English language learners, students with disabilities or children who have been previously retained.

Retaining a student can be expensive. In addition to providing additional coaching during the school year and summer programs, districts essentially must add another school year to a child’s academic career.

Paula Peterson, principal at Charles Fairbanks Elementary in Indianapolis, said she’s seen children slump under the weight of Indiana’s new law, which took effect last year.

“The children all knew if you didn’t pass, you weren’t going on,” she said, adding that children who failed last spring’s test were demoralized. “A lot of them gave up. They weren’t trying to do any work. The attitude was, ‘What’s the difference? I failed.’ ”

Of 64 third-graders tested last spring, 29 did not pass. After exemptions were granted, 12 children were held back. Seven of those children did not return to Charles Fairbanks Elementary in the fall; the school is in a high-poverty neighborhood where children are frequently moving in and out, Peterson said. That left five students to repeat third grade.

“I know there has to be accountability,” she said. “But I have a problem with anything that hinges on one picture, on saying that one quick snapshot means anything. One test and everything hangs on the balance.”

Cameron Flint, 9, is intensely aware that she must pass the third-grade reading test this month at her school in Evansville, Ind.

“She talks about it, she’s even cried,” said her mother, Bobbie Flint. “She says things like, ‘I hope I go to fourth grade with all my friends.’ ”

Even though she is an honor-roll student, Cameron finds reading difficult and doesn’t perform well on tests. Her teachers notified Flint at the start of the current school year that Cameron was at risk of being held back.

“I freaked out,” said Flint, who learned that Cameron was almost a full grade behind her peers and is mildly dyslexic. Flint hired a tutor and says her daughter has made progress.

“I feel confident she’s going to pass that test,” Flint said. “But I still feel these tests aren’t fair. It’s good to know where your child stands. . . . But let’s not go so far as saying we’re going to retain your child, and you have no say. Don’t threaten my child and her educational career because of one test.”

Worries about stressed-out children are misplaced, Bragg said.

“The pressure shouldn’t be on the kids, it should be on the adults,” she said.

Ralph Smith, managing director of the Campaign for Grade Level Reading, a collaboration between political, education, philanthropic and business leaders to improve literacy, said the country shouldn’t be arguing about social promotion vs. grade retention. If teachers and schools performed well, the debate would be moot, he said.

“Adults should just do what they should be doing, which is to identify the challenges that kids face and respond to those challenges early,” he said.