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The Daily Signal
Jindal
Emphasizes Teacher Tenure Reform, School Choice in Sweeping Education
Plan
Ken McIntyre
February 09, 2015
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, hoping that a push for education reform
can set him apart among prospective Republican candidates for
president, today begins to tout a national plan he says would create
“an ecosystem of freedom and choice” for parents, students and teachers.
His proposals, Jindal says in the plan to be released this morning,
would push the public education system out of “a rut” it has been stuck
in for 50 years because of Washington’s ever-increasing involvement,
which he sees as holding back generations of children.
“Reform along the principles outlined in this paper will restore the
balance in education toward parents and teachers, and away from the
bureaucracies that stand as obstacles to change,” Jindal says in the
introduction to the plan, a copy of which was obtained by The Daily
Signal. “Most importantly, it will give parents the power to choose
from among many quality educational options, instead of taking away
their power by keeping children in poor-performing schools.”
The bulk of the 42-page “K-12 Education Reform: a Roadmap” is divided
into three sections devoted to what it calls the principles of parent
choice, limited government and educator freedom.
In his introduction, Jindal emphasizes these guiding approaches:
Allowing education dollars to “follow the child,” meaning to be used as
parents and families deem best inside or outside conventional
“government schools” — and including online learning and homeschooling.
Reforming teacher tenure laws: “We must get out of the mode of paying
teachers for how long they have been breathing. … Good teachers need to
be rewarded, and underperforming teachers need to be put on notice, and
ultimately dismissed if they do not improve.”
Rejecting the “national curriculum” created by Common Core education
standards and returning education decisions to the local level: “It’s
bad enough that the federal government has begun tying compliance with
Common Core to federal funds, but once you see the methods and the
homework that accompanies Common Core, the verdict is in: Common Core
must go.”
The Jindal plan concludes the nation must heed, in addition to pressing
economic and fiscal considerations for reform, “a moral
imperative to provide a quality education to each child.”
Government spending on public education is more than three times what
it was in 1970, the Jindal plan notes, yet the “sad truth” is
that U.S. children continue to emerge as “mediocre at best” compared
with other developed nations on the world stage.
Even as Jindal again condemned Common Core standards last week in a
speech to the American Principles Project in Washington, D.C., CNN
reported that critics note Louisiana’s school system continues to lag
behind nearly every other state in K-12 achievement. The state finished
49th in an annual report from Education Week.
Jindal’s national education reform plan calls for partnering educators
with the private sector to update training and certification, and for
“unbundling” a school system’s education dollars to meet children’s
individual needs.
Citing evidence of growing school choice in Louisiana, the plan urges
states to create and expand scholarship programs, establish education
savings accounts, cut regulations on both private and public schools,
put parents in charge of special education and do more to encourage
charter schools.
The plan emphatically calls on states to repeal Common Core and
“restore” state and local standards, an issue that has put Jindal at
odds in court with Louisiana’s school superintendent and school board.
The governor, who switched from supporting Common Core to seeking to
pull his state from participating, recently sued the federal government
over the issue.
The Jindal plan argues for reduced federal “meddling” and promotes
control at the local level, as well as eliminating duplicative or
coercive federal programs, reducing government data collection
and restoring student privacy rights in such data gathering, and
improving the flow of information to parents.
It also calls for higher academic requirements for prospective
teachers, evaluating and overhauling teacher preparation by emphasizing
subject matter rather than general education, and repealing state and
federal mandates for teacher certification.
The plan proposes experimenting with more “practical” teacher
evaluations at the local level, doing away with “lifetime job
guarantees” for teachers, ending forced membership in teacher unions,
and restricting collective bargaining to salaries rather than matters
such as classroom temperature and the size of bulletin boards.
Other proposals include giving principals control over their own staffs
and budgets, cutting laws and rules that restrict innovation, and
eliminating most federal curriculum mandates and incentives that aim to
bend state programs toward national models.
Jindal’s America Next political action committee posted the education
paper this morning.
The Republican governor was set to introduce the details in two
meetings today with reporters in Washington, D.C. – one at the regular
newsmakers breakfast organized by the Christian Science Monitor, the
other at a lunch at The Heritage Foundation co-hosted by The Daily
Signal, the think tank’s multimedia news organization.
Updates: Between the two briefings, Jindal stopped by a daylong forum
on school choice on Capitol Hill sponsored by Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C.,
where he participated in the initial panel discussion.
One positive early review of the Jindal plan came from Lindsey M.
Burke, Heritage’s Will Skillman fellow in education policy, who found
it focused on “returning dollars and decision-making back to states and
local leaders.” The plan cites two of Burke’s research papers.
“His proposal, critically, leads with parental choice,” Burke told The
Daily Signal. “It includes smart policy such as eliminating
assignment-by-Zip code policies, having dollars follow students to
educational options of choice, and unbundling education financing from
the delivery of services. And it supports the most innovative education
choice option to date: education savings accounts. ESAs empower parents
with the ability to direct every dollar of their child’s state
education funding to services and products of choice, and represent the
next generation of school choice
Read this and other articles at The Daily Signal
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