Today’s Wall St. Journal lauds Louisiana’s new school choice laws, which:
1) Give each low-income parent a voucher worth an average of $8.5K per year per child to use for traditional public schools, “more demanding” charter schools, and “special language or career-training courses.” (In Louisiana, about half of all kids are low-income.)
2) Rework existing charter school laws so that there are multiple authorizers (NJ has a similar bill working its way through the Legislature), creates pathways for high-performing charters to expand, and equalizes facilities access. (In NJ, charters are on their own regarding facilities.)
3) Reform tenure in an effort to increase low-income kids’ access to high-performing teachers. To earn tenure, teachers must rate in the top 10% of their colleagues for five or six consecutive years. Any teacher in the bottom 10% doesn’t get a raise and lay-off decisions are made by performance, not seniority.
When the bills came before the Louisiana legislature, approval came from over 60% of legislators, both Democrats and Republicans, especially Black representatives from New Orleans.
From The Journal:
Louisiana voters also had a preview of reform’s potential. Since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, New Orleans schools have become almost exclusively charters—with dramatic academic improvements—and the city has run a small and oversubscribed voucher program since 2008. As for tenure, the reforms attach consequences to a teacher-evaluation system enacted in 2010.
Teachers unions were predictably opposed and even heavier-handed than usual. Michael Walker Jones of the Louisiana Association of Educators dismissed choice on grounds that “If I’m a parent in poverty I have no clue because I’m trying to struggle and live day to day.” Unions pushed principals to cancel school—sometimes giving parents less than 24 hours notice—so teachers could protest at the state Capitol. It was a tired act.
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