Board of Elementary and Secondary Education/LDOE

Anti-Reformers’ Strategy: If You Can’t Win, Obstruct Instead

BESE insiders say: “Get ready for the marathon.”

It seems that Louisiana’s education reform critics, being unable to advance their agenda via the ballot box, have instead decided to obstruct the work of education policymakers. Furthermore, it seems that Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) member Lottie Beebe is working in concert with anti-reform groups to turn this week’s board meetings into an unending nightmare for all involved.

BESE Member Lottie Beebe plans on making this week’s meetings a nightmare

As noted by the Times-Picayune, Beebe has packed Tuesday’s BESE committee meeting agendas with discussions — not votes, mind you — on topics like Louisiana’s Compass evaluation system and the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) — issues that are always certain to bring the kooks out in force.

In explaining her decision to place these discussions on the agenda, Beebe used a familiar excuse, claiming that LDOE and her fellow board members (of course, with the exception of fellow anti-reformer Carolyn Hill) refuse to communicate with her, making BESE’s public meetings the only venue where she can get answers to her questions.

However, reform opponents have been planning to disrupt Tuesday’s BESE meeting since well before the agenda was even made public, leading some to wonder whether Beebe’s agenda-packing is all part of a behind-the-scenes scheme. Adding to the suspicion is the fact that the Louisiana Federation of Teachers (LFT) has cranked up its misinformation campaign in recent days with the release of several press releases that attack Compass and call for a delay in the implementation of CCSS.

In its statement on Compass, LFT President Steve Monaghan once again makes alarmist and wholly inaccurate claims about the state’s teacher evaluation system, apparently believing that everyone has forgotten that his prior dire predictions never came to pass. He even makes the totally erroneous — albeit, somewhat hilarious — assertion that the state’s value-added measurement “is a formula that was originally developed to increase the profitability of sweet potato farms.” [N.B.: Although the term “value-added” is sometimes used in the agricultural sciences to describe the increased yields produced by the use of fertilizers, etc., there is no direct relationship to the VAM formula used in Compass.]

LFT’s Steve Monaghan: The Boy Who Cried Wolf or Mr. Potato Head?

LFT’s press release on Common Core is no less misleading and inaccurate. For example, it says: “LFT believes the state may be setting Louisiana children and Louisiana schools up for failure by imposing rigorous new standards too quickly.” Of course, LFT makes no mention of the fact that State Superintendent John White has already indicated he plans to ease accountability provisions for schools and students during the transition to CCSS, so as to avoid exactly this issue. Then again, anti-reformers never let something as insignificant as the truth stand in the way of their efforts to protect the status quo — or in the case of CCSS and Compass, to turn back the clock.

However, their efforts this week will do little to change the equation. BESE has a sizable block of pro-reform members who have made no indication that their positions have shifted. Therefore, by seeking to bring BESE’s proceedings to a near halt, Beebe, LFT, and their allies are simply borrowing a page from Republicans in Congress — they don’t have the votes to win, so obstructionism is the next best option.