Gov. Jindal reveals plan to reform Louisiana education system

BATON ROUGE, LA (FOX44) — Governor Bobby Jindal has made education reform the centerpiece of his second term in office. Today, he unveiled the plan he says will turn around Louisiana's struggling schools.

Jindal spoke to the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel. He notes that the plan will empower both teachers and parents and reward excellence in the classroom. He believes it'll help reverse a trend that saw 44 percent of the state's schools receive a grade of "D" or "F."

"I think it's fairly self-evident,” Governor Jindal said. “I think it's fairly clear that we need to move faster and we need to do it now. And let us remember this; our children don't have time to wait. Where will be people after they hear all these reforms that say we need more time, we need more money. Our children only grow up once. They only have one shot to receive a quality education."

Currently more than 200 thousand students in Louisiana are performing below grade level.

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Below are points listed in Governor Jindal’s Education Reform Plan provided by the Governor’s Office at today’s meeting:

Governor Jindal’s Reform Plan will Empower Teachers by Rewarding Excellence:

-Empower districts to use compensation to keep good teachers by stopping forced pay increases to ineffective teachers, allowing them to pay effective teachers more, and by allowing them more flexibility in how they structure salaries.

-Ban the practice of using seniority to make personnel decision of any kind, including ending the practice of “last in, first out” in reductions in force, prioritizing effectiveness instead.

-Empower superintendents and principals and get school boards out of the hiring and firing business.

-Stop blanket job protection in the form of tenure to teachers who are ineffective after one year. They will simply return to probationary status. Under Louisiana’s value-added law, districts start dismissal proceedings after two years, and teachers lose certification after three years, of ineffectiveness ratings.

-Give superintendents, not school boards, the lead role in the public hearing process when he or she decides that a poor performing teacher should be removed.

-Tie teacher certification to effectiveness, removing the red tape of meaningless federal “highly qualified teacher” requirements, and emphasize effectiveness when selecting Teachers and Principals of the Year.

Governor Jindal’s Reform Plan will Empower & Reward New Teachers:

-Give school districts the flexibility to create their own salary scales based on the elements they believe matter to them, such as effectiveness, hard to staff subjects, high poverty schools, and core subjects.

-Reserve tenure status for teachers that have been rated highly effective for five years in a row.

-Make granting of tenure an active process rather than an automatic one so that tenure becomes a recognition given teachers who have demonstrated excellence, rather than merely survived for three years.

Governor Jindal’s Reform Plan Will Empower Parents By Providing More Choices:

-Expand the existing Scholarship Program statewide for low-income students at C, D and F schools.

-Expand course choices for students by allowing a variety of providers, including school districts, virtual schools, colleges and universities, and businesses with training programs, to offer students additional options.

-Plan the state’s Career and Technical Education regionally to better meet the needs of businesses and address individual student interests, while ensuring students have access to full Industry Based Certification programs.

-Encourage students who want to pursue a career in Science, Technology, Engineering, or Math by making it easier to take high level coursework, recognizing when they are successful with that coursework, and helping districts make those courses available.

-Make it easier for high quality charter operators to expand by fast tracking operators with proven track records, streamlining the application process, and giving charter schools the same rights to facilities.

-Allow charter operations who want to open schools in districts with grades of D and F the opportunity to apply directly to the state.

-Create a rebate for donations made to nonprofit organizations that offer scholarships to low-income students to attend private school.

-Give a scholarship to students who graduate early from high school equal to one-half of the dollars the state would have spent had they prolonged their time in high school. Students will be able to use these dollars as a scholarship—above and beyond any other scholarships—at the postsecondary school of their choice.

Governor Jindal’s Reform Plan Will Give Parents More Levers To Effect Change:

-Allow community organizations, nonprofits, universities, and other local entities to apply directly to the state to become charter authorizers to maintain local control of charter schools in their communities.

-Give parents whose children are at a failing school a parent trigger to effect change more quickly. Rather than waiting until a school has been failing for four years, parents can vote to have their school eligible to be a Recovery School District charter after three years.

-Hold school boards in failing school districts accountable for the performance of their superintendents by requiring state review of their superintendent contracts to make sure there are performance targets for improvements.

-Call on the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to change how the state funds students so that dollars follow the child to whatever educational options meets their needs.

Governor Jindal’s Reform Plan Will Get Parents More Engaged In Their Child’s Education:

-Let superintendents and principals reward teachers for engaging parents.

-Give districts more ways to engage parents with federal dollars for tutoring and after school programs and be rewarded for it, which also saves parents money for after school care.

Governor Jindal’s Reform Plan Will Empower School Leaders By Giving Them More Flexibility to Innovate:

-Allow districts to recruit the best and the brightest personnel, retain them by rewarding them, and make smart decisions about who to employ so as to maximize their investment in human capital.

-Give districts more flexibility over their federal dollars though applying to waive burdensome federal regulations and let schools spend their federal dollars in the ways that work for them.

-Reduce federal reporting requirements and more strategically align interventions in failing schools, including those required by federal law, to meet the unique needs of students.

Governor Jindal’s Reform Plan Will Empower Early Childhood Service Providers & Preschools:

-Reduce red tape, align conflicting standards, and streamline data to reduce the administrative burden for early childhood providers and better leverage dollars.

-Create and accountability system for early childhood programs focused on outcomes and based on Kindergarten Readiness that gives parents clear actionable information in a letter grade on which to base their decisions about where to send their child.

-Protect taxpayers by cutting off public funding to low performing early childhood programs, even pulling licensing from low-performing programs, and aligning incentive structure through the School Readiness Tax Credits to reward Kindergarten Readiness.