The Hard Truth – The educator’s new clothes

7th November 2011   ·   0 Comments

By J. Kojo Livingston
Contributing Columnist

Talk about nausea!

It’s the exact equivalent of naming a known wife-beater “husband of the year.”

Forbes magazine just named Leslie Jacobs one of the “seven most powerful educators” in the United States.

Jacobs is the person responsible for pushing through Louisiana’s mis-named “accountability” system in education which uses the LEAP test to determine whether a child passes or fails.

For those who don’t know, there are several problems with this, including:

1. Like most people who have sat on Louisiana’s Board of Secondary and Elementary Education, Jacobs is NOT an educator. She is a businesswoman who thinks education should be run like business. Wrong philosophy! So the “bottom line” is scores? No, measuring real education takes more effort. Real education should produce critical thinkers and children who develop a love for learning. The LEAP has made schooling a punitive, unpleasant, fear-inducing process. High-stakes testing has been denounced by every major education research body on earth. Maybe that’s why Jacobs likes it. Of course, it’s always been difficult to find a BESE board member who actually had children in public schools. There’s no “flesh in the game.”

2. Real educators knew and know that basing a child’s advancement on a single test is not a realistic way to assess their progress. You might even say it’s not the “accountable” thing to do. A real assessment would have to factor in homework, class participation, quizzes and other tests to determine what a child has mastered. We know that humans have different learning styles. Real education is tailored to the needs of the learner. My son’s fourth-grade teacher had a 98 percent success rate in helping students pass the LEAP, but she hates the test to this day because it is not real education (teaching the test), it is harmful to the children and it does not accurately tell what they have learned. I have interviewed countless seasoned educators who have the same sentiment.

3. The state’s scores and other numbers are constantly manipulated to reflect progress. There are countless games they play, such as the “October 1st Massacre.” This is when the “good” schools dump their low-performing students on the “bad” schools. They do this because after that date the MFP (funding per student) is locked in for the school year. This means that the “bad” schools now have to manage more students and more needy students with a budget set for smaller student body. The “good schools” keep their money and have fewer students per teacher and fewer problem students. And you wonder why their scores stay high?

There are other games designed to keep failing schools failing, such as demanding ridiculous annual increases in scores from troubled schools and getting rid of older students who are not scoring well without them counting as dropouts. First you set a school up to fail, then you take it over. BESE was recently accused of omitting as many as 30 percent of the state’s schools in their count to keep state scores looking high. If you see a statistical improvement in Louisiana’s education you need look for the numerical smoke and mirrors. Every educator in this state knows it. Yet with all of the subterfuge, Louisiana still has to admit that 40 percent of its schools are failing.

Do we even want to know how bad it really is?

Jacobs and her false accountability crowd don’t like to talk about the soaring (real) dropout rate or the disastrous results of demonizing and oppressing good teachers. What do you think a 17-year-old middle-school student is going to do? What about the number of good, seasoned teachers who have given up because the system is so rotten and laden with paperwork? They are replaced with young white kids who don’t mind “teaching the test” to ghetto children.

Jacobs’ movement has benefited the prison industry (dropouts going to jail) and whites who wanted to regain control of parish school districts. The latter may be the real reason she has become the “dah-ling” of both the local media and those national forces who want to make education, especially education budgets a totally white-controlled aspect this society. Of course, Forbes magazine would never have recognized Jacobs if she were an advocate for anyone who is not white and wealthy.

It is unfortunate that President Obama’s people have not seen through this and want to encourage the nation to replicate the insanity of Louisiana. It is even more unfortunate that educators and child advocates have allowed this wide scale mental/ emotional ab­use of children to continue unopposed. Even people who have the data to prove it lack the courage to openly declare the nakedness of these educational emperors. They know they will be attacked, so the young victims of this con game are on their own.

New Orleans is a city on fire with violence and murder. Dig beneath the surface and you will find that the past 12 years of highly-celebrated, but ineffective education policy have contributed to the hopelessness and frustration that makes blood run in the streets.

I cannot prove the evil and racism that I believe festers in the heart of Leslie Jacobs but the harm she and her ilk have done is very much measurable.

Black folks, you know we need our own system…

…And that’s the Hard Truth!

This article was originally published in the November 7, 2011 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper