Louisiana needs to stick with Common Core

I can’t believe the continued ruckus about the Common Core Standards.  The concept for Common Core State Standards originated from state governors of BOTH parties.  They were developed by a collaboration of teachers, school administrators, and educational experts, to provide a clear and consistent framework to prepare our children for college and the workforce.

The standards were formulating using the highest, most effective models from STATES across our country and countries around the world, and provide teachers and parents with a common understanding of what students are expected to learn.  Consistent standards will provide appropriate benchmarks for all students, regardless of where they live.

The Common Core Standards are benchmarks, NOT a curriculum. They simply state what students should be able do after teachers finish teaching them. How you get to that goal is still the job of each state.  No one at the federal level is telling anyone how to teach, or requiring teachers to use a specific curriculum or learning materials.

Contrary to the misinformation being published, feedback from parents across the nation was collected during the development process. 

However, now all of a sudden we have ‘experts’, including school boards,  from all over Louisiana telling everyone that the  standards are all wrong and are somehow a plot by the federal government to control our children’s mind in  a George Orwell type of way.

Just for the record, if you were developing educational standards,  would you believe any ‘expert’ from a state that ranks in the BOTTOM five in every educational measure known to man?  If Louisiana did provide feedback on the Common Core, I certainly wouldn’t put too much faith in what they suggested.

For decades Louisiana has been depriving its young people of an excellent education, and now all of a sudden we know what’s best for our students.  Just when did this sudden burst of enlightenment occur?

New Orleans Needs to Take Heed

New Orleans may be the fun capital of Louisiana, but Baton Rouge is on the fast track to be the economic capital.  The Standard and Poor’s Rating Service just upgraded Baton Rouge’s credit rating to ‘AAA’, the highest in the state.

While New Orleans has chosen to rely almost entirely on tourism to support its economy, Baton Rouge has chosen to take a more realistic, diversified business approach.  One less influenced by the whims of the national economy.

Even though Baton Rouge is our capital city, it has always played second fiddle to New Orleans.  However that appears to be changing.  While Standard and Poor’s assigns a lower rating of ‘A’ to New Orleans, the Finch Rating Service just recently downgraded New Orleans to the negative category of ‘A-‘.  This negative outlook is based on the city's finances, which remains a credit weakness.  Efforts by the current Landrieu administration to regain structural budgetary balance have shown gains, but new challenges in the form of jail and police mandated spending, and fireman pension contributions place additional pressure on the city’s operations.

Additionally, the city continues to depend heavily on federal recovery monies from Katrina to help finance its infrastructure needs.   Soon these funds will cease.

While the residents of New Orleans continue to feverishly defend their city as the best city for partying and eating in the world,  maybe it’s time for them to pull their heads out of the sand and face the realities of our present day economic system for city survival.

Presently, New Orleans relies disproportionately on federal grants for its budgetary needs.  A funding source destined to be drastically reduced due to the present political agendas operating at the national level.

Bottom line, New Orleans can no longer continue to survive on a t-shirt, tourism economy.  As repulsive as this may sound to New Orleans, it’s time to take a lesson from Baton Rouge.  

Commom Core Standards in Louisiana

In the Spring of 1989, the Louisiana Educational Assessment Program (LEAP) was begun.  It was created to revolutionize the educational system in Louisiana which for years remained at the bottom of the list nationally in educational preparedness for the students it served.  Classroom curriculums were rewritten to address the standards incorporated as part of the LEAP paradigm.   A series of high stakes tests was developed to assess the success of the overall program.  Specifically, these tests were given at the 4^th and 8th grades, and children were held back if not performing at a specified level.  Also, students had to master another test at the senior high level known as the Graduation Exit Exam (GEE) to receive a high school diploma..

Over the years public relation blitzes abounded showing continuous improvement in LEAP test scores.  With the advent of Charter schools, even more fantastic performance gains on the LEAP tests were reported.

Soon a system of letter grades was developed to give parents a clearer understanding of the quality of education provided at each public school.

Once again the Louisiana Department of  Education  issued  media blitzes filled with examples of tremendous shifts in schools moving from a rating of ‘F’ to ‘C’s, ‘B’s and ‘A’s based in part upon LEAP scores.

After years of holding students back and denying graduation to seniors, we find that in the latest measure of how states perform nationally in the areas of reading and math skills, Louisiana is still almost dead last. 

The latest results showed out of the 50 states tested nationally that Louisiana was:

Tied for 50^th in fourth grade math

48^th in fourth grade reading

Tied for 48^th in eight grade math

Tied for 48^th in eight grade reading

After 24 years this is what the public got from the various educational gurus that existed in this state, and now some are clamoring that we should abandon the recently state adopted Common Core Standards, because these are not ‘appropriate’ for our students.  From past performance, I doubt that these educational experts even have a clue as to what is ‘appropriate’ for our students, or, for that matter, have the ability to develop educational standards that should serve as a guide to educate our youth.

However, the Common Core Standards do provide such a guide and were created to be used in developing curriculum for students.  Despite all the misinformation now circulating among  small factions of citizens throughout the state, the core simply serve as benchmarks of what children are expected to know at specific times throughout the educational process.   In actuality, the Common Core Standards concept was originally proposed by state governors of BOTH political parties.  They were developed by a collaboration of teachers, school administrators, and educational experts throughout the nation, to provide a clear and consistent framework to prepare our children for college and the workforce, and to prevent what has happened in our state (educational fraud) by insuring that children get a good education no matter where they live.   They are NOT a curriculum, as some would have us believe.  Curriculum development is still the responsibility of each local school system as was the case before the adoption of the core standards. 

Louisiana needs to ignore the naysayers with little credibility and proceed with the Common Core adoption.