Vouchers Are Not Real Educational Reform

The following head line appeared in today’s Baton Rouge Advocate :  Jindal addresses group that praised his school plans.

Let's not be confused about this headline, Jindal was praised for giving parents a choice to educate their children in one of the worst school systems in America.  One in which he and his predecessors have done very little to systemically change.

Specifically, the Brown Center on Educational Policy at the Brookings Institution praise Jindal for:

1)      Offering lots of choice through charter schools and voucher programs.

2)      Providing good information to help parents compare schools.

3)      Providing an easy centralized application process for enrollment in the various schools.

4)      Ensuring taxpayer funds follow the students into the schools and courses of their choosing.

It's kind of a ridiculous recognition!  Instead of providing a long range, adequately fund funded school improvement paradigm for ALL students, Louisiana continues to limp along with in-state developed testing programs which deceive the public into believing substantial educational gains are occurring. 

If one examines the historical trends of Louisiana students' academic performance on national assessments, these substantial gains immediately evaporate and one clearly sees that little has changed previous to and during Jindal's educational leadership.  Below is a quote from the Times/Picayune discussing the most recent 2011 national assessment results:

The average marks in both reading and math on the National Assessment of Educational Progress for Louisiana's fourth- and eighth-graders improved slightly, and in two of the four categories gained a little on national averages.

But the change from two years ago, when the test was last administered, was not big enough to qualify as statistically significant. Overall, scores in Louisiana still rank near the bottom among other states.

Jindal touts his voucher system as an example of real educational reform taking place in Louisiana. 

He claims that it provides "an opportunity for individuals that have limited resources to enroll their child in a NON-PUBLIC school that is performing well, as opposed to the poor performing PUBLIC school in their neighborhood." 

However, in reality vouchers are just PR and are an avoidance mechanism that fails to address real educational reform for the masses and do little to elevate the educational achievement of the entire state.

Additionally, Jindal needs to learn that he was elected to improve the lives of ALL school age children in the entire state of Louisiana and to stop pitting one socioeconomic class against the other, something he often accuses the president of doing.

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