LETTER TO EDITOR: War declared on education

College test for the non-college bound
March 12, 2012
What’s your grade?
March 12, 2012
College test for the non-college bound
March 12, 2012
What’s your grade?
March 12, 2012

Dear Editor,

Gov. Bobby Jindal has declared war on public schools and public school teachers.


In the upcoming legislative session, the governor is proposing a school voucher program that would make thousands of public school students eligible for transfer to private schools using our tax dollars. None of these private schools will be evaluated or graded the way public schools now are. The teachers in those schools are often not certified and will not have to pass an evaluation.


The governor wants to allow almost unlimited expansion of privately run public charter schools. These new charters have few restrictions. In addition to paying administrators big salaries, they can use our tax dollars to pay for student recruitment campaigns that will attempt to recruit the highest performing students away from public schools to boost their own performance ratings.

The governor wants to enlarge virtual charter schools where our tax dollars will allow students to attend school by just sitting at a computer at home and communicating with an online teacher. These “for profit” schools claim they provide individualized instruction yet they are allowed to have a pupil teacher ratio of as much as 50 students to one teacher. We don’t know of any evaluation system for these online teachers.


The new public school teacher evaluation system is designed to fire and replace 10 percent of our public school teachers. That number was just picked out of the air without any real evidence for its validity.

When the lack of accountability for the use of our tax dollars for private schools was questioned, the governor simply responded that “the parents are the best form of school accountability.” He also said the teacher union representative who disagreed with him should be fired. My question is if parents can judge schools for themselves, why are we spending millions and millions of dollars grading our public schools? Why does the grading system blame schools for lack of student and parent responsibility?

This war on public education is like the war our country started in Iraq. It’s a lot of shock and awe, and the governor is the one using the WMDs.

Michael Deshotels,

Retired teacher,

Zachary, La.