Scholars: School revamp a swing for the fences
Re-election cited to explain his focus on school changes
Gov. Bobby Jindal’s 2012 public schools agenda is a “swinging-for-the-fences” plan aimed at boosting his state legacy and national ambitions, political scientists say.
“The governor appears to be trying to cash his chips in, if you will,” said Albert Samuels, chairman of the Department of Political Science at Southern University.
Pearson Cross, who holds the same title at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, said Jindal’s easy re-election win appears to have made him more willing to take chances in his second term.
“I think he feels less inclined to play small ball,” Cross said.
“As The Wall Street Journal put it, he is swinging for the fences,” he said of the governor’s education plan.
Jindal wants to revamp the way teachers are paid and evaluated, including a form of merit pay and tougher rules for teacher job protection, which is called tenure.
He has also proposed a huge, controversial expansion of state aid for low-income students to leave troubled public schools and enter private and parochial classrooms.
Other measures would make it easier to open charter schools, give parents more authority to revamp failing schools and toughen oversight of the state’s early childhood education program, including letter grades for schools that 4-year-olds attend.
Jindal said his plan would transform a public education, plagued by low student achievement for decades.
But the wish list already has sparked opposition, and likely will trigger lengthy debate when the session begins on March 12.
“This is not something that you snap your fingers and do,” said Robert Hogan, an associate professor of political science at LSU.
“It is fraught with peril,” Hogan added. “This is an ants’ nest.”
Teacher union leaders and other critics say some of the governor’s proposals would seriously damage traditional public schools, which face a fourth consecutive freeze in state spending per student.
Local superintendents and others contend that private schools that accept students who get state aid should be subject to the same scrutiny as public schools, including letter grades, which the Jindal administration opposes for private schools.
Louisiana launched its latest bid to improve public schools in 1999, including a state skills test that fourth- and eighth-graders have to pass for promotion, state takeovers of failing schools, letter grades designed to shed light on school quality and a 2010 law that will link teacher evaluations, in part, to student achievement starting this fall.
The state often gets high marks for its school and teacher standards.
However, student achievement regularly ranks at or near the bottom of national lists.
Samuels said some of Jindal’s first-term victories amounted to “low-hanging fruit,” including ethics changes and lower taxes.
“But now he needs some really big accomplishment to cement not only his legacy as governor of Louisiana, but also if he hopes to catapult this to higher office,” he said.
Samuels said Jindal will also benefit from a generally friendly Legislature — fellow Republicans control the House and Senate — and lots of legislative newcomers, who will be learning the ropes.
Jindal, 40, has repeatedly said he plans to serve out his second term, which ends in 2016. But he is often mentioned as a possible GOP national figure, which officials said dovetails with his education agenda.
“If you want to separate yourself from other rising stars within the Republican Party, you have to have some substantive, major, signature policy achievement,” said Kirby Goidel, professor of political communication at LSU.
Goidel noted that public school problems regularly show up on surveys as one of the state’s most-persistent problems.
“It is the one area where you can really define yourself in an important way and in a lasting way,” he said.
Bob Mann, a professor of mass communications at LSU who worked for former Gov. Kathleen Blanco, said Jindal missed a chance to claim a public schools mandate when he opted not to detail his public school plans during his 2011 re-election campaign.
Jindal coasted to a second term in the October primary with 66 percent of the vote.
“He could be sitting on an electoral mandate on this thing,” Mann said of the governor’s public schools agenda.
But Cross said Jindal’s list of public school changes is so lengthy than even a partial win will resonate.
“Even if he could get some sort of education reform, even half this magnitude, that would clearly establish him as a major policy player at the state level,” he said.