Members of the Louisiana Association of Educators’ Political Action Committee Interview Gubernatorial Hopefuls

Committee Meets with Four of the 10 Candidates Vying for Louisiana’s Top Leadership Position

BATON ROUGE, LA– October 3, 2011 – Members of the Louisiana Association of Educators’ political action committee – the LAE Fund for Children & Public Education (LAE-FCPE) – met over the weekend to interview the contenders vying for Louisiana’s top office. Of those running, LAE-FCPE members met with Ron Ceasar of Opelousas, Tara Hollis of Haynesville, Androniki “Niki Bird” Papazoglakis of Baton Rouge, and Ivo “Trey” Roberts of Gretna.

“This is an extremely important election and members of our political action committee are taking this process very seriously,” said LAE-FCPE Chairperson Joyce Haynes. “The future of Louisiana relies on the decisions made and the policies enacted by the individual who is elected to this position. We would really like to see someone who is a supporter of public education – someone who is going to make the children of Louisiana a priority.”

Each candidate went through an extensive screening process where they were asked to answer a questionnaire exploring their views on such issues as teacher accountability, charter schools, teachers’ retirement, privatization and state funding. The candidates then met with nearly 20 members of the LAE-FCPE, where they were given an opportunity to elaborate on their questionnaire answers, as well as their campaign platforms. Committee members reviewed each candidate and will soon make a recommendation to the full LAE-FCPE. The decision to endorse is forthcoming.

“The candidates we met with interviewed well and we appreciate the initiative that each is taking by running for this very important office,” said Haynes. “If we do decide to endorse, we will go with the individual whose platform is most in line with our values as educators.”

The 2011 gubernatorial primaries will take place on October 22nd. If needed, a runoff is scheduled for November 19th.

For more information visit www.lae.org or contact Ashley Davis at ashley.davis@lae.org.
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Gubernatorial Debates

The Louisiana Association of Educators in conjunction with several education and community organizations

Invites you to attend the

Gubernatorial Debates
Hosted by Louisiana Education Stakeholders

Wednesday, October 12, 2011
7:00 to 9:30 p.m.

Cox Communications Academic Center
On the LSU Campus
http://www.acsa.lsu.edu/

These debates will be covered by the major electronic and print media in the Baton Rouge Metropolitan area and will be co-sponsored by numerous organizations including the following:

• Louisiana Association of Educators (LAE)
• Coalition for Louisiana Public Education (The Coalition)
• Louisiana School Board Association (LSBA)
• American Association of University Personnel (AAUP)
• American Association of University Women (AAUW)
• Louisiana State University Faculty Senate
• LSUnited

All candidates for the office of governor have been invited to participate.
For more details on this event, please contact either:

Dr. Michael Walker-Jones, Executive Director, at 225-343-4243 or mwalkerjones@lae.org
Ms. Ashley Davis, LAE Communications Specialist, at 225-343-4243 or Ashley.davis@lae.org

Conference Call with Vice President Biden

Following President Obama’s speech to a joint session of Congress, Vice President Biden would like educators to join him for a conference call on Monday, September 12 to discuss the Administration’s commitment to preventing educator layoffs.

Please encourage all NEA members to take part in this important conversation and share this call-in information with your colleagues. Please distribute this information far and wide.


Date of Call: Monday, September 12, 2011
Start Time: 5:00PM Eastern (please plan to dial in 5-7 minutes early)
Call Number: (800) 260-0719
Participant Access Code: 216646
NOTE: This call is closed to press.

About the American Jobs Act & Teachers: As many as 280,000 education jobs are on the chopping block in the upcoming school year due to continued state budget constraints. These cuts could have a significant impact on children’s education, through the reduction of school days, increased class size, and the elimination of key classes and services. The President’s plan will support state and local efforts to retain, rehire, and hire early childhood, elementary, and secondary educators (including teachers, guidance counselors, classroom assistants, afterschool personnel, tutors, and literacy and math coaches). These efforts will help ensure that schools are able to keep teachers in the classroom, preserve or extend the regular school day and school year, and also support important after-school activities. To watch the President’s speech or to find out more, click here:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/09/08/american-jobs-act

http://www.educationvotes.nea.org/2011/09/08/obama-jobs-program-would-boost-education/

What Do You Think?

Teachers’ Colleges Upset by Plan to Grade Them
By TRIP GABRIEL
Published: February 8, 2011

Grades are the currency of education — teachers give them to students, administrators grade teachers and states often assign grades to schools.

Now U.S. News & World Report is planning to give A through F grades to more than 1,000 teachers’ colleges, and many of the schools are unhappy, marching to the principal’s office to complain the system is unfair.

Numerous education school deans have protested that the ratings program’s methodology is flawed since the program was announced last month. In a letter last week, officials from 35 leading education colleges and graduate schools — including Columbia, Harvard, Michigan State and Vanderbilt — denounced an “implied coercion” if they do not cooperate with the ratings.

U.S. News and its partner in the ratings, the National Council on Teacher Quality, an independent advocacy group, originally told schools that if they did not voluntarily supply data and documents, the teacher quality group would seek the information under open-records laws. If that did not work, the raters planned to give the schools an F.

That got the attention of educators.

Brian Kelly, the editor of U.S. News, said the push-back from education schools was evidence of “an industry that doesn’t want to be examined.”

“These teacher-education programs are hugely important and not very well scrutinized,” Mr. Kelly added. “This is coming at a time when you have this tremendous national push for improvements in teacher quality: Who’s teaching the teachers?”

But in response to the criticism and to many schools’ refusal so far to cooperate, Mr. Kelly rescinded the plan to flunk schools for which data could not be obtained.

“We regret that language,” he said Tuesday. “It’s really not the way we want to be doing business.”

Education schools have faced criticism frequently over the years. They are faulted by a recent wave of education advocates as emphasizing education theory over hands-on classroom training, and as graduating teachers with weak academic skills.

The federal education secretary, Arne Duncan, has said that many, if not most, teacher-training programs are mediocre. “It is time to start holding teacher-preparation programs more accountable for the impact of their graduates on student learning,” Mr. Duncan said in a speech in November.

Kate Walsh, the president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, said that school principals were “deeply dissatisfied with the quality of candidates coming through their doors.” Ms. Walsh said that rating education schools would be valuable in teacher recruitment.

The project, which will cost $3.6 million and be completed next year, is being underwritten by education foundations including the Carnegie Corporation and the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation.

The education deans who have voiced objections do not echo the familiar complaint of college presidents about U.S. News rankings — that they have turned undergraduate admissions into an arms race.

Rather, the deans object that the teacher quality council’s methods for arriving at ratings are not transparent enough and are not supported by research. To arrive at its ratings, for example, the group has requested detailed information about courses, textbooks and admissions selectivity.

“Nobody’s against being evaluated or having good reliable information available to the public about how we can prepare better teachers,” said Mary Brabeck, dean of New York University’s school of education. “But what will we know if everybody uses the same textbook? What will that tell us about how you prepare highly effective teachers?”

Sharon P. Robinson, president of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, said the ratings were focusing on superficial “inputs” rather than “outcomes,” like how well teacher graduates perform in the classroom.

“We have serious skepticism that their methodology will produce enough evidence to support the inferences they will make,” said Dr. Robinson, who has advised her 800 member schools that the U.S. News project is “not worthy of your involvement.”

Ada Beth Cutler, dean of the education college of Montclair State University, said she would not cooperate, based on her earlier negative experience with a National Council of Teacher Quality survey. That convinced her that the group “has little interest in making responsible and evidence-based judgments,” Dr. Cutler said.

“There are a significant number of teacher-preparation programs in the country doing an outstanding job,” she added. “A large number are doing an O.K. job, and a smaller number ought to be shut down. But given the current climate, which is extremely critical of university-based teacher preparation, it would be terrible to put out results that are not valid and reliable and based on un-vetted criteria.”

Ms. Walsh, whose group was founded “to provide an alternative national voice to existing teacher organizations,” according to its Web site, said that short of sitting in on a college’s classes for a year, her evaluation methods are sound.

She called the colleges’ critique of her focus on course content “a bit of a red herring.”

“What they want us to do is hold off until a perfect assessment is in place,” Ms. Walsh said.

In response to the criticism, her group has scheduled a Webinar on Wednesday to explain its methodology, for which 450 educators are signed up.

The ratings system, which will employ 17 standards, was field-tested in smaller studies the teacher quality group did in Texas and Illinois.

The Illinois ratings, which gave high marks to only a handful of 53 schools in the state, were criticized on release last year even by some schools that earned good grades.

An alliance of organizations representing education schools said in a statement at the time that grading them based on textbooks and course descriptions was like “evaluating the quality of restaurants by only requesting that menus be mailed to the evaluator — without sampling the food or visiting the site.”

Penelope L. Peterson, dean of the education school at Northwestern, whose school got an A minus, the highest grade in the state, said she would participate in the national ratings, despite some misgivings.

Dr. Peterson learned last year that it was better to ensure that Ms. Walsh’s group got the information it sought than to have it rely on what is publicly available on a Web site. Had Northwestern not provided extra information, Dr. Peterson said, it would have received a zero on four of the evaluation standards.

But Deborah Curtis, dean of the education college at Illinois State University, took away the opposite lesson from her efforts to communicate directly with Ms. Walsh’s research staff.

“They did not want facts,” Dr. Curtis said. “They had their own preconceived notions.” She said the teacher quality group, whose advisory board includes advocates for charter schools and alternative-teacher training programs like Teach for America, is biased against traditional teacher colleges.

It did not listen to Illinois State’s efforts to clarify its data, Dr. Curtis said, and so the education school, the largest in state with 5,000 students, stopped cooperating.

Its grade was an F.

A version of this article appeared in print on February 9, 2011, on page A16 of the New York edition..

LAE BARGAINING TRAINING

INTRODUCTION TO BARGAINING

A la Louisiane

February 11-12, 2011

Baton Rouge, Louisiana



Friday Night Dinner: 7:00 – 9:00 pm

Ralph & Kacoo’s

6110 Bluebonnet Boulevard, Baton Rouge, LA



Saturday: 8:30 am - 2:30 pm

LAE Office

8322 One Calais Avenue

Baton Rouge, LA 70809



If you plan to attend, please RSVP directly to me via email: aurelia.young@lae.org

2011 LAE LEGISLATIVE/MEMBERSHIP REGIONAL CONFERENCE

MARK YOUR CALENDAR TO ATTEND THE 2011 LAE LEGISLATIVE/MEMBERSHIP REGIONAL CONFERENCE

Join us at our Regional Conference to be held on March 29, 2011, at the Marriott, 5500 Hilton Ave, Baton Rouge, Louisiana , from 5:10 p.m.-7:00 p.m.


We need you to attend this conference and hear President Haynes address the major issues affecting public education (Funding & Retirement).


Learn how it is more important than ever to belong to LAE, the only organization fighting to preserve public education.


Space is limited. RSVP by March 4, 2011, by calling 800-256-4523, ext. 105

Important LAE Dates to Remember

Dates to Remember

Southeast Regional Conference: Feb. 4th – 6th;

LAE Board meeting: Feb. 18th – 19th;

Read Across Louisiana: Feb. 26th;

Annual ESP Conference: March 11th – 13th;

National Black Issues Conference: March 25th– 27th

2011 NEA Higher Education Conference
Friday, March 25, 2011 8:00 AM - Sunday, March 27, 2011 1:00 PM (Eastern Time)
The Boston Park Plaza Hotel & Towers
50 Park Plaza at Arlington Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02116