Private Schools… Take a Look at Louisiana

Filed in Common Core State Standards, Education at State Level by on December 27, 2012 • 3 Comments

Full disclosure, I’m an advocate of school choice.  I’m also an advocate of no strings being attached to school choice initiatives.  I pointed out how Florida’s private schools were being impacted by the Common Core.  Now we are seeing this in Louisiana.

While again, I liked the Louisiana school voucher initiative, I expressed some concerns since the accountability system requires the same testing for voucher students as they would receive in public schools.  It looks like my concerns are being realized as Louisiana shifts its testing standards to align with the Common Core.

This shouldn’t be a surprise as they recently shot down textbooks not aligned with the Common Core.  Private schools take note.

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About the Author ()

Shane Vander Hart is the Editor-in-Chief of Caffeinated Thoughts, a popular Christian conservative blog in Iowa. He is also the President of 4:15 Communications, a social media & communications consulting/management firm, along with serving as the communications director for American Principles Project’s Preserve Innocence Initiative.  Prior to this Shane spent 20 years in youth ministry serving in church, parachurch, and school settings.  He has taught Jr. High History along with being the Dean of Students for Christian school in Indiana.  Shane and his wife home school their three teenage children and have done so since the beginning.   He has recently been recognized by Campaigns & Elections Magazine as one of the top political influencers in Iowa. Shane and his family reside near Des Moines, IA.  You can connect with Shane on Facebook, follow him on Twitter or connect with him on Google +.
  • Diane

    Sir I would appreciate it if you could explain to me why you favor school choice. My research shows me that Charter schools with their lenient legislation and communist intent are failing at a much greater rate than regular public schools ever came close to.

    In addition, they are failing for the very reasons I am against school choice/vouchers in the manner in which they have been legislated – embezzelment, no control of number of board members and how often they meet, cronyism, private enterprise money, school to work programs, lack of oversight, taxation without representation and I could go on.

    To add to the mix it allows things like Tony Bennett just moving from one place of spewing his communist agenda to another all with the support of a crony state school board and the power of money driving education for their profit.

    Again I ask sir, how can you support choice? Would it not be better if you think we have failing public schools to take them out of the hands of the business mongrels and the federal government and put the responsibility squarely back to the states and remove the unions from the decision making process? Politics has no business in our schools nor do the lobbyists or profiteers.

    Our children are being used as pawns and collateral for an ugly goal of ruining this country and leading us into an immoral world of communism.
    http://www.truthabouteducation.org

    • http://shanevanderhart.com/ Shane Vander Hart

      I don’t recall saying anything about favoring charter schools, did I? Perhaps that’s the problem that everyone assumes when you talk school choice you’re automatically referring to charter schools. I was actually thinking private schools and homeschooling. Sure charter schools are just one option, but there are plenty of others.

      I favor school choice because a parent should have the ability to send their student to whatever school they please and not be bound to a school based on their zip code.

      Parents should have sovereignty over their children’s education, not the state or local school board.

      • Trace Pickering

        Here’s where I think we all get messed up around school choice. I’m for choice – as a student of and professional in social systems thinking, choice is a critical dimension to a vibrant and relevant culture. Without choice there is no freedom (or responsibility). Our country’s conversations tend to focus on choice of schools. As a parent and life-long educator, I’m interested in redesigning and transforming education rather than continue to assume the core underlying assumptions about school are correct and we only need apply existing solutions better. Simply assuming one entire school is better than another is faulty thinking – which is why Shane’s view is so much more relevant that most of the conversation around choice. But I digress…

        IF we would move to a deeper and more meaningful accountability system – one, say, that established a basic set of competencies, and was managed by both criterion-referenced tests and actual demonstration and professional judgement of competency then my version of choice might be a game-changer (otherwise, in the example to come, the argument would be grade inflation and fun so that teachers could attract students). Simply this: as a parent my child and I get to choose who teaches them. If my child is able to learn and achieve critical and important competencies best from teacher X, we should get to choose teacher X instead of being forced to take teacher Y “because they teach that class.” All of a sudden the game changes. If I’m a teacher whom no one wants to be taught by because I’m boring, irrelevant, and/or simply can’t connect with kids and, as a result, don’t help them move forward with their competencies, then there is no market for me. Principal: “Trace, I’m sorry but only 5 students have chosen to include you in their learning team. Either find a way to engage and interest them in order that they learn important content and concepts or we have no job for you.”

        As a teacher I would love this – I get freed up to come up with engaging, interesting and deep learning experiences with other teachers and people in the community and then engage with kids equally excited about that learning. We share a goal of ensuring that the students exit the experience with a new set of competencies that they can demonstrate across a myriad of contexts. Of course, such a system would mean a student could choose their parent, an on-line instructor, a local businessperson, or the college professor as their teacher as well. The goal isn’t who teaches them, its that the student engages in learning that is interesting, relevant, and unfolds their potential and future opportunities.

        Maybe a crazy idea, maybe I’m a crazy person, but offering up the same set of non-solutions over and over and then arguing over which one is “right” fits Einstein’s definition of crazy.

        Thanks, Shane.

        Trace

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