For the third straight year, the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry has made eliminating payroll deduction of union dues one of their primary goals. Like well-heeled extremists in other states, LABI hopes to get rid of any organized resistance by making union membership as inconvenient as possible.
Although the final decisions will be up to the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, steps were taken this week to make Louisiana’s teacher evaluation system fairer and more accurate. The biggest of these is a recommendation to suspend Value Added Model component of teacher evaluations for another year.
The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools has ranked Louisiana as the second highest of all the states, based on how our state’s charter school law aligns with the organization’s model law. Their rankings reward states for making charter schools less accountable to local voters and taxpayers.
In a recent editorial,The Advocate noted that the Supreme Court’s reversal of a lower court ruling that Act 1 of 2012 violated the constitutional prohibition on bundling multiple objects into a single bill is troubling.
Camron T. Cheeks, a sixth-grade student at Mary McLeod Bethune Elementary School of Literature and Technology in New Orleans, is the designer of the Louisiana Federation of Teachers’ 2014 holiday greeting card. Camron’s teacher is William Jones.
Speaking to more than 200 delegates and guests at the Louisiana Federation of Teachers’ 50th Annual Convention, LFT President Steve Monaghan called for reclaiming the promise of public education and returning the joy to teaching and learning.
Obviously the Louisiana Federation of Teachers is disappointed by the high court’s decision. After a district court ruled three times that Act 1 is wholly or in part unconstitutional, we had hoped for a different outcome.
LFT President Steve Monaghan: “Let’s talk about the inherent unfairness of comparing Louisiana children with children in other states, given the current chaos and the documented failure to prepare students, parents, and teachers for these changes,”
(Baton Rouge – July 29, 2014) Moments after the state’s highest education board voted today to sue Gov. Bobby Jindal for blocking the funds to pay for Common Core testing, LFT President Steve Monaghan urged the board to suspend high-stakes testing until the controversy is resolved.
