On the Issues:

Common Core

I am opposed to the Common Core State Standards. If elected to BESE I will vote to remove them as a state education requirement. I will vote against any measure to tie any form of "high stakes testing" or school performance measure to the Common Core State Standards.

Common Core was imposed on Louisiana's citizens without the opportunity for review or informed debate. The standards were adopted by BESE in July of 2010, before they were even finalized and published.

Common Core is a federally coerced program promoted by business interests and billionaires for their own reasons. Common Core does not serve the best interests of children, their families or taxpayers that foot the bill for public education.

Privacy

LDOE has engaged in irresponsible behavior during Superintendent John White's tenure in regards to data privacy and data sharing. I will ensure the department is taking necessary steps to ensure student privacy, require investigations of reported violations and hold the department accountable for their actions or inactions on this matter.

Testing

Testing has gotten out of control across the state and across the country. I will vote to eliminate and reduce state mandated testing. Testing of students is used as a substitute for more comprehensive teacher and school evaluations. Testing and test preparation is expensive and takes away valuable class time and resources from the classroom. I will act to curb our state's obsession with testing and test preparation so our teachers can actually teach our children, not dill them on how to get a good score for their school.

Charter Schools

Charter Schools

I believe public schools are for everyone, and charter schools are often not.

Charter Schools are non-public schools that accept public students. They do not compete on equal terms with traditional public schools. Charter schools drain money from traditional public school systems. Charter schools are free to make rules that exclude or remove students or cost parents more money (like requiring transportation), thus making them inaccessible for some children. Charter School operators donate money to politicians that are tasked with overseeing them, creating conflicts of interest.

I believe Charter Schools should abide by the same laws and requirements that public schools do if they accept public funding. Approval and renewal of charter schools should be scrutinized more closely and denied if they are found to require additional burdens on parents, found to exclude more challenging students, found to be excluding students through coercion, or found to be lacking in academics or in diversity.

When the state gets involved they are more likely to approve a charter school that will be more destructive to the local school system and less accountable to the public they serve. Charter schools should work with local school systems and communities, not against them.

The Recovery School District

The Recovery School District (RSD) has morphed into an extravagant extension of LDOE and needs to be shut down. All functions RSD does are also done or could easily be done by LDOE. RSD directly manages no schools. When RSD did manage schools they were the worst the worst in the state. RSD accumulates revenue from numerous sources, and lobbies to pass new taxes to fund itself even though it serves no useful function.

Value Added Modeling (VAM)

VAM is a term used in manufacturing to describe the difference in value between a raw product (like a block of wood) and a finished product, like a carving. Children are not blocks of wood, they are not standardized raw materials in manufacturing process.

Using VAM measurements, Louisiana has identified the best teachers in the state. . . as the worst teachers in the state (when their students were unable to improve beyond near perfect scores.)

Test scores have finite boundaries and cannot be improved upon. Most true mathematicians agree that VAM is a fundamentally flawed idea and will not endorse it on principal in any form.
Louisiana's VAM system was developed by a child psychologist.