Consistency is required

Vouchers in Louisiana, like it or not, are probably here to stay. Still, that’s no excuse to keep funding private and parochial schools which fail to educate. If “D” and “F” graded Charter schools eventually have their public funds pulled, so should failing Catholic schools—or those of any religious denomination for that matter. Even “C” rated schools should not be acceptable long-term, just as the conventional public brethren are not.

The largest participant in the Louisiana Scholarship Program, the schools of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, matriculate 3,700 scholarship students, more than half of the vouchers funded by the state. Currently, students can attend any private or parochial school (provided it accepts the voucher-scholarships) if they enter Kindergarten or if their public school maintains a grade of “C,” “D,” or “F” under the state’s test-based evaluation regime. Seventeen schools within the Archdiocese of New Orleans enjoy a scholarship enrollment above fifty percent in the latest school year. State records show every student at St. Benedict the Moor is on scholarship. Resurrection of Our Lord and St. Leo the Great have 94 percent scholarship enrollment. Overall, twelve private and parochial schools in the program had voucher student enrollments of 85 percent or more.

Specifically to cover tuition payments last year, the Louisiana Scholarship Program directed $19 million to the Archdiocese of New Orleans school system. Those students fare better with a private education, the Archdiocese declares, and majorities of some of these Catholic schools easily pass LEAP and other measurement tests. However, upon too many other Church campuses, too many students fail.

Right now, if a particular parochial school cannot achieve passing grades from the tests of the majority of its students, the state merely refuses to fund any future applicants until the average score improves. As a result, the current crop of children continues to endure just another abysmal educational regime, and Louisiana loses another generation of kids. It matters not if the school emblazons a Saint’s name over its front doors. Failure is failure.

The legislature passed the post-Katrina educational reforms to close chronically-failing public schools if their teachers could not educate. So we were willing to shutter beloved neighborhood public schools for that justification, yet state-funded religious schools are somehow exempt?

It’s all public tax dollars in the end, and accountability matters. Gov. John Bel Edwards has called for an overhaul of Louisiana’s scholarship voucher program, saying the structure that uses public money to pay for private school tuition for nearly 6,900 underprivileged students was poorly conceived. Our editors could not agree more.

Two-thirds of all students in the voucher system attended schools where they performed at a “D” or “F” level for the 2017-18 school year. Edwards, who as a state legislator raised questions about the voucher program when it expanded statewide in 2012, maintained that the “hastily conceived” program was not properly vetted by the state. Many private schools purport to be superior than their public counterparts, but in reality are not.

A recent Fox 8 investigation found that state education officials ask very little of private schools that seek to become eligible to take students paying with public vouchers. The process demands far less than the applications required for prospective charter schools in Louisiana. Administrators of would-be voucher schools need only fill out a 16-page document with straightforward questions, many satisfied with yes/no answers. No site visit by state officials is required and virtually every private or parochial school which has sought state permission to take vouchers has received it, according to the state’s Education Department.

U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos criticized the Pelican State’s voucher program at a conference in Baltimore two months ago saying “that the Louisiana program was not very well conceived.” When even Trump’s hand-picked acolyte of vouchers complains, change becomes a necessity.

Not a single school in the statewide voucher program in 2017-18 (with a majority receiving scholarships under the most recent data available) received an “A” or “B” based on the LA Department of Education rating system. Three schools received a “C.” Of the remaining schools with a grade, 19 got a “D” and 15 got an “F.” (The state did not release test score results for schools where the number of voucher students on those campuses constitutes a significant minority of the student body.)

If — after four years! —a private school does not produce “A” or “B” level scores from most of the applicants whom it pulled from “C,” “D,” or “F” rated public schools, should it receive any public dollars at all?

Was not the whole purpose to provide a superior education to the underprivileged? Just as failing charter schools should close each year, it’s time to force all voucher operators to live up to the same standards.

This article originally published in the June 24, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.