BESE: Checks and Imbalances

Once again, the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) has indicated that it feels no need to be responsive to the taxpaying public and will continue to support the education reform agenda of its financiers.

From the moment they took office, the current BESE has ignored its responsibility to appoint, and extend, a contract to a superintendent because the “simple majority” of the board wanted to keep John White on as superintendent, but a “super majority” vote of two thirds is needed to do that. Despite hundreds of thousands of dollars being spent in smear campaigns to win all eight elected seats on BESE, the public expressed its desire to replace White by blocking one of the eight seats when it elected Kathy Edmonston. BESE ignores the desire of the public.

During the summer of 2016, White launched his “ESSA tour” to gather feedback from across the state to develop an accountability plan to submit to USDOE. The entirety of the tour was treated like a Q&A session in which White responded to every question and suggestion with his justification for doing it his way. At the end of the tour, and with intense opposition from the governor’s office and organizations representing parents, teachers, principals, superintendents and school boards, BESE passed White’s plan, and it was submitted with little to no desire to work with all stakeholders to build consensus on a plan that everyone could support. The result is an accountability plan that is only supported by White and his education reform support groups, and is feared and hated by everyone held accountable to it. Not because their fear accountability, but because they know the plan is designed to hurt them. Among the egregious components of the plan are:

• Achievement levels and scales that can/will cause some schools to drop a full letter grade, even if they perform at exactly the same level as last year.
• Provisions that require school districts to utilize White’s choice of curriculum if they want to receive federal dollars intended to go to failing schools.
• School Performance Score calculations that ignore the provision of ESSA that allows for up to 5% of a school’s eligible students to be excluded from testing before a penalty is assessed. In White’s ESSA plan, schools are penalized beginning with the very first student who doesn’t test.

I have written several blogs related to the first and last items listed above, and will soon publish one related to the second one. Today, I want to focus on the last one.

On April 24th of this year, I wrote the blog titled, Finally, relief for opt-out parents. The blog was about a resolution that was authored by Senator Ronnie Johns and passed by the Louisiana Senate, unanimously. There were only two questions asked while the resolution was up for vote on the Senate floor. Both questions asked for assurance that the resolution would not result in hurting children. Contrarily, the resolution was intended to relieve tensions between parents and school districts by encouraging BESE to adopt a policy that follows the 5% rule in ESSA.

During the summer months of each year, BESE is usually presented with any new bills and resolutions that were passed in the legislative session, and they vote to either implement new policy related to new law, and/or acknowledge their intent to respond to new resolutions. Ideally, this is done soon enough to disseminate to districts before school starts, or at the very latest, before Pupil Progression Plans are submitted.

Knowing that regular BESE meetings are a rarity during the summer months, I reached out to BESE president, Gary Jones, on June 14th, to see if Senate Resolution 144 had been received and if it would be on the agenda of the next meeting. His response is below.

Satisfied with Dr. Jones’ response, I waited for the July meeting to come and go with no mention of the resolution. I was concerned that perhaps the resolution hadn’t reached BESE as it was intended. I reached out to the Secretary of the Senate and got the response below from the person in charge of documents.

After confirming that the resolution has indeed been forwarded to BESE a full month before I contacted Dr. Jones, in June, I followed up with BESE executive director, Shan Davis. Her response is below.

As you can see, the secretary of the senate, and the executive director of BESE, carried out their responsibilities. Each member of BESE had a copy of the resolution via email less than one month after it was unanimously passed in the senate. It is now four months since the resolution was passed.

Just five days after my initial communication to Jones, at its June 19th Administrative and Finance committee, BESE received a final legislative update. On page 4 of the Senate Legislation document, Senate Resolution 144 is shown with no indication of guidance from LDOE. In other committees held on the same day, policy revisions were made to accountability, administration, and other areas. No mention of SR-144.

Now, I am fully aware that a resolution, whether from the Senate or the House, holds no effect of law. It is simply an official communication stating what a legislative body would like to see happen. Resolutions are often used to establish task forces and study commissions. I don’t think I have ever seen BESE, or LDOE, disregard a resolution on a task force. In fact, BESE responds affirmatively to pretty much every resolution that crosses it desk, except this one. I know. I know. There’s still time to do it; however, it would have been appropriate to respond to it in a timely fashion so that a policy could be incorporated into the district pupil progression plans. I’ll give BESE the benefit of the doubt and assume they are working on developing a policy. If they are not, it could be a grave mistake.

I have pretty much given into the idea that all of BESE will be lost to the taxpaying public in the 2019 election. LABI will successfully secure all of the elected seats, and even if John Bel Edwards secures a reelection, BESE will be controlled by special interests, wholeheartedly. At some point, the current BESE, or the newly elected BESE, will have to appoint a superintendent. What does that process require? Well, an appointment is made by a two-thirds majority vote, and the appointee is submitted to the Senate for confirmation. That’s right. The Senate has to confirm whomever BESE appoints. Do you see where I’m going? If BESE doesn’t respond to the Senate’s desire expressed in Senate Resolution 144, the Senate Governmental Affairs (SGA) committee won’t be very approving of an appointing authority that has ignored them.

Immediately after publishing this blog, I will communicate to Senator Johns and the members of the SGA committee that BESE has not responded to the resolution. If BESE still hasn’t responded by the time the next legislative session begins, I will remind them. If no policy is adopted to allow parents to opt-out of testing and relieve the penalty that schools receive, I will remind the SGA committee, again, in the confirmation hearing. Thus far, BESE has remained accountable to no one. It is time we change that.