Monday, October 24, 2011

BESE Elections Results

Saturday was election day in Louisiana.  All eight elected positions on the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) were on the ballot.  Two BESE districts, District 1 and District 2, cover New Orleans. 

In District 1, incumbent Jim Garvey won reelection with 58 percent of the vote.  Garvey faced two challengers – Lee Barrios and Sharon Hewitt.  In District 2, two of the candidates will face each other in a run-off.  Incumbent Louella Givens and challenger Kira Orange Jones received 31 and 39 percent of the votes respectively.  The run-off will be held on November 19th.

While the October 22nd election is not final in New Orleans, races in other key districts around the state were decided on Saturday.  Candidates Jay Guillot of District 5 and Holly Boffy of District 7, who were backed by Governor Bobby Jindal, won.  Education stakeholders throughout the state watched this election very closely because of the possible impacts for education reform.  Given that the governor appoints three of the 11 total members on BESE, the victory in districts 5 and 7–along with a victory by Jim Garvey, who has typically supported the governor’s agenda and was also backed by the governor in this election—seems to ensure that a simple majority of board members will be supportive of reforms backed by the governor.  However, one of the most significant actions of the new BESE board will be to appoint a new state superintendent of education, which requires a supermajority—eight votes.  It will not be clear until after next month’s run-off whether the governor will achieve a supermajority on the board.

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SPS Scores and Return

The Louisiana Department of Education released School Performance Scores (SPS) last week. Six years after the storm, the release of these scores marks the first time schools located in Orleans Parish that have been taken over by Recovery School District (RSD) are eligible to make decisions about returning to the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) or that the RSD is required to make a decision about how to manage schools that continuously have had academically unacceptable performance.

The following schools are eligible to choose whether to return to OPSB or remain in RSD: Arthur Ashe, Dr. M.L.K. Science and Technology, Dwight D. Eisenhower, KIPP Believe College Prep, KIPP Central City Academy, KIPP McDonogh 15 School for the Creative Arts, Martin Behrman, Sophie B. Wright Institute of Academic Excellence.

The following schools have had continuous unacceptable academic performance and the RSD has to decide whether to keep them as RSD direct-run schools, close the schools, convert them to charter schools, or transfer them to the OPSB: Dr. Charles Richard Drew Elementary School, G.W. Carver High School, John McDonogh, Joseph A. Craig, Murray Henderson, Paul B. Habans, Sara Towles Reed High School, Schwartz, and Walter L. Cohen.

According to the return policy for schools in the RSD, adopted by BESE in December 2010, schools that are eligible to choose whether to return must notify BESE of their decision by this December.  The board will take final action on the schools’ decisions at that time.

Click here for a full list of schools under the RSD including their SPS scores over the past six years and their return status starting on page 24.

Click here for the Cowen Institute’s review of SPS scores.

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Master Plan Revisions

As we wrote about in our previous legislative update , the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) and the Recovery School District proposed revisions to the School Facilities Master Plan in July. The Cowen Institute, along with many other community organizations and business groups, responded with a letter asking that the plan make every school a safe, dry, and comfortable learning environment without relying on voter approval of tax increases. Earlier this month, the OPSB and the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) adopted revisions that do just that by making the building design process more efficient, by changing the wage structure for labor to deviate from the federally established prevailing wage, by leveraging tax credits, and by refurbishing buildings that do not need more complete renovations, among other things. The revisions were approved by OPSB on October 13th and BESE on the 18th. 

Click here to see a summary of the revisions to the Master Plan.

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BESE Charter School Policy Revisions

The Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) made several revisions to Bulletin 126, the set of BESE policies for charter schools. The revisions make it possible for the Recovery School District (RSD) to hold a central enrollment lottery system, implement the new charter school oversight system, and change how charter school enrollment expansion requests are processed, among others.

With the revisions the RSD will now be able to hold a central enrollment lottery where parents or guardians turn in one application for all RSD charter and direct-run schools. The RSD will then match the students with a school based on their preferences included in their application. The revisions will also allow the RSD to collect enrollment data and factor neighborhood preferences when matching students with schools.

Also, the revisions make it possible for the RSD and the Office of Parental Options (OPO) to implement a new charter oversight system. In response to the revocation of the Abramson charter and the findings of a performance audit released by the Legislative Auditor’s office in September, the Louisiana Department of Education (LDE) and BESE are restructuring the OPO to remove contradictory responsibilities, make charter oversight roles clear, and hire new staff with charter oversight expertise.

Additionally, the policy revisions will alter the process by which charter schools apply to increase their enrollment caps or expand the number of grades served. Now the LDE will approve requests that meet certain criteria spelled out in Bulletin 126. Previously, all enrollment expansion requests were heard and approved or denied by BESE with a majority vote. Now, only requests that do not meet the criteria will be heard by the board.

To read the changes to Bulletin 126 in the BESE School Innovation and Turnaround Committee packet starting on page 173 click here.

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ESEA Reauthorization

Thursday, the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions approved a bill that overhauls and reauthorizes the most recent version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), also known as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). The overhaul would retire NCLB’s accountability system that requires all schools to meet “adequate yearly progress” or that states meet annual goals. Instead, it focuses the U.S. Department of Education’s attention on the lowest performing schools and high schools with the highest dropout rates. The overhaul would require states to create college and career readiness standards and it would consolidate the Department’s 82 programs into 40, among other changes. The overhaul does not change NCLB’s laws that require states to test students in math and science and those that require states to disaggregate data by student demographics.

The overhaul’s champions hope the bill will be approved before winter recess in order to render irrelevant the Obama administration’s NCLB waivers.  However, the bill still has a long way to go before it becomes law: it must first pass the full Senate, then the House, and finally must be approved by the President.

For more details on the ESEA overhaul bill see the article in Education Week by clicking here.

For information on the Obama administration’s plan to offer NCLB waivers, click here.

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