Education Super gets good review

BESE reviews White’s job after 1st year

State Superintendent of Education John White got a positive job review Wednesday from the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Chas Roemer, president of the board, said the superintendent got the second-highest rating of four — effective/proficient, which is defined as meeting between 75 percent and 99 percent of goals.

The ratings range from 1 to 4, with 1 being the lowest — ineffective — and 4 being the highest — highly effective.

White said later in the day that, with one category still unfinished, his overall rating was 3.15.

Roemer made his comments after BESE met behind closed doors for nearly two hours to discuss White’s job performance.

The superintendent has held the job for about one year, and the review was the first of its kind since he took the job.

“It wasn’t an easy conversation,” White said.

“It is not easy to listen to people talk about your performance,” he said. “At the same time, I know that it needs to happen. It is an important part of being a professional.”

The superintendent recommends and carries out policies for about 712,000 public school students statewide.

White, who is paid $275,000 per year, would have been eligible for a $16,500 pay raise under the original terms of his contract.

But the agreement was amended last year when, under legislative pressure, White agreed to forgo any such increase unless rank-and-file state employees got a pay boost, too, which they did not.

Disappointing state revenue collections sparked a wide range of financial problems in 2012, including reductions in state aid to colleges and universities.

White presided over the education agency during some of the most sweeping public school changes in state history, including an expanded voucher program, new rules for public school teachers to earn and retain tenure and an overhaul of early childhood education.

White is Gov. Bobby Jindal’s chief public school lieutenant.

He has drawn criticism from leaders of teacher unions and others who oppose the governor’s education overhaul.

The superintendent said individual BESE members filled out their views on his performance in six areas under the heading of qualitative performance.

The scores ranged from 1 to 4.

White said the averages for the six areas are:

• Vision and leadership, 3.4.
• Management and oversight, 3.5.
• Policymaking to boost student achievement, 3.3.
• Stakeholder outreach and engagement, 3.2.
• Board relations and involvement, 3.4.
• Relationships with BESE staff, 3.

In a part of the job review that measures quantitative growth, the superintendent got scores of 2 in improving the rate of students entering kindergarten ready to learn and a 2 in students arriving in the ninth grade on time and on grade level.

He got a 4 in the area of students arriving in the fourth grade on time and ready to learn.

Unfinished is the state’s latest high school graduation rate, which is due in February.

Those results are not expected to have any major effect on the overall evaluation.

Roemer, who lives in Baton Rouge, said White got generally good reviews, but there is room for improvement.

White said that, while BESE members were generally complimentary of his outreach to teachers and parents, they suggested that he work closer with professional education associations.

The superintendent said late last year that Louisiana’s two largest teacher unions — the Louisiana Federation of Teachers and the Louisiana Association of Educators — are hindering efforts to improve student achievement.

Leaders of the groups disputed the criticism.

White said he plans individual meetings with some members of BESE to review their scoring sheets, including Lottie Beebe, of Breaux Bridge, who is a frequent critic. She is the incoming superintendent of St. Martin Parish schools.

Comments

1) Comment by Noel Hammatt - 18/01/2013

@Being_Stupid: Just for you, and the rest of the so-called Reformers. Measuring a "school's" success by the scores of its students without accounting for the poverty and challenges those students bring to the school makes as much sense as comparing the scores of a school filled with students selected based on grades to another school whose students are selected for them, by being kicked out of other schools. That is to say, no sense at all. And yes, the system in place right now does exactly that! And the schools run by the Superintendent, are failing by his own measures.

2) Comment by HMaltravers - 17/01/2013

Please explain to me how a 35-year-old white male with little teaching experience can walk in off the street and become state superintendent of education making 250K a year? While any 35- year-old man/or woman who has been in the classroom 12 years makes only in the mid-40K? Yet, HE knows more about education than the teacher.

3) Comment by Being_Stupid - 17/01/2013

Noel Hammatt, please send me the Cliff Notes for your below comment. My attention span is limited.

4) Comment by jwarren - 17/01/2013

If you want to learn about the failure of the RSD under White's leadership both during his tenure at RSD and now, here is a great web site with numerous reports that document those failures and expose the state's repeated lies in what it tells the public about the RSD. This is Mr. White's scorecard. This is his evaluation. He failed at RSD. How is he rewarded? Through promotion. Why? Because Jindal is holding out RSD as an example to show what a great 'education governor' he is. Thus the deceptions from the state, with White right in the middle of the mess. http://www.researchonreforms.org/html/documentreposit.html

5) Comment by Buck - 17/01/2013

Thanks Noel. What are you, some kind of trouble maker? Using actual facts regarding education in Louisiana. Sadly this issue and others in Louisiana are impacted by our wonderful political structure which has its historic background designed and controlled by economic entities from outside our community. Perhaps one day we will have the courage to call for a constitutional convention with its main purpose to find a balance between these interests and the encouragement of constructive participation of all citizens.

6) Comment by Scrooge - 17/01/2013

Being_Stupid say, speaking of public education, "This institution that is being dismantled has a 30 plus year history of complete failure" but wasn't BESE in charge for those 30 years? So BESE should be dismantled? Dismantling the political institutions which put the unqualified in positions of undue influence to disseminate incompetence and failure might be a good idea. But then how would donors be rewarded?

7) Comment by crabby - 17/01/2013

I'm with freedom2012 -- how come he doesn't get evaluated on the basis of some bone-headed, ill-functioning metric like the one he subjects teachers to? I guess he has been reviewed by the State Board which is comprised of failed teachers so that's something.

8) Comment by freedom2012 - 17/01/2013

Still waiting for one of the $150k+ BESE apointees to explain why teachers evaluations should be tied to test scores but not Whites?

9) Comment by crazycajun - 17/01/2013

Thanks Noel.

10) Comment by Noel Hammatt - 17/01/2013

The following three posts are what the people of Louisiana have NOT been hearing from their leaders, or from the media. I invite anyone to challenge their validity, but please do so with data and logic, and not with invective, if possible. If The Advocate did not have a policy of refusing to actually publish such things, I would have let them do it. Thanks to all who take the time to read these comments.

11) Comment by Noel Hammatt - 17/01/2013

@8point6 and @Being_Stupid: Right up until the arrival of Pastorek, Louisiana had been increasing its scores as measured by the National Assessment of Education Progress, commonly referred to as the Nation's Report Card, to the point where every single major student demographic group in Louisiana was at the national average for its peer group. Let me explain something that the reformers have never wanted to explain, even though some of them even knew and understood it. Whether we like it or not (and it irritates the heck out of me when certain people tried to say that my pointing it out it was an "excuse"), when we look at patterns of student achievement across the nation, and across this state of ours, there are some incredibly powerful patterns. The most powerful pattern is that the achievement scores as measured on standardized tests for every group of students, whether from Pre- K or from Graduate school, rise as the family income rises. Every single standardized test in the US, and internationally, shows this pattern. And no, it doesn't mean that a student from a low- income family can't learn, and can't be the valedictorian. It does suggest, however, that when looking at large groups of students in different states, for example, that scores for states with higher poverty levels will almost always be lower than states with lower poverty levels. Ladies and gentleman, what the media doesn't seem to want to mention and the reformers never want to admit, is that Louisiana has the second highest rate of students qualifying for free or reduced meal prices of every state in the entire nation. Mississippi has the highest. All of the following comparisons are for the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, commonly referred to as the nation's report card. It is consistent, and is not easily "tweaked" by state departments of education trying to prove their case. By 2005, Blacks qualifying for Free or reduced meal prices in Louisiana were scoring at the national average for Blacks who qualified for free meals. This was true for every subject, and at every grade level. Middle class Blacks scored equal to middle class Blacks throughout the country. Middle class Whites scored at the national level for middle class Whites in the US, and Whites qualifying for free or reduced meal prices scored at the national average for their peers across the country. Why then was Louisiana at or near the bottom of the nation on overall measures of achievement. It was simply because we had higher percentages of students who were in the lowest income categories of any other state (again, with the exception of Mississippi). This phenomenon is known as "Simpson's Paradox." Want to see how this works in Louisiana? Zachary has consistently had the highest scores in the state from the first year they departed EBR. (And if we took only the scores of those students in the Zachary area PRIOR to their departure from EBR, THEY would have been highest in the state.) It wasn't getting our from under EBR that suddenly made them smarter, or better educated. It was that they already had the lowest rates of students qualifying for free meals in the state. No surprise, they still had the LOWEST percentage of students qualifying for free (the lowest income families) meals in the state, and hence, the highest scores, on average. St. Helena has always been at or near the bottom. They also have had the HIGHEST percentage of students qualifying for free meals.

12) Comment by Noel Hammatt - 17/01/2013

The pattern fills out within the parishes the same way. In Ascension Parish, when you plot the elementary, or middle, or high school scores on an XY graph, with the school performance score on one axis and the percent of students qualifying for free meals on the other... it is nearly a perfectly straight line. Why did I choose to mention Ascension? It is because Ascension Parish has neither magnet schools nor charter schools. So the pattern is nearly perfect? What do charter schools and magnet schools do to the pattern? And why? Today I tweeted a great article (you can follow my Tweets @EdTraveler) by a national group supporting charters, where they finally admitted charters "cream" their students and were proud of it. That means they either selected the most engaged students from the local schools, or they ensured that their policies weeded out the lower performing students from their schools during the year. No surprise, we have known this for years, but charter supporters never wanted to admit it. They lied about it, in fact, and most still do. At any rate, charter schools and magnet schools, because they SELECT for certain characteristics, can actually change the patterns of scores such as those in Ascension. BUT, it is NOT that the magnet school or the charter school necessarily does a better job of teaching students. It may, but even if it doesn't, the scores at that school WILL (or at least SHOULD) be higher than a school with similar demographics because, like private and parochial schools, they have CHOSEN THE STUDENTS or RETAINED students based on characteristics of students that produce higher scores. When a charter or a magnet school pulls out the highly motivated and higher performing students from any income level (and of course, there are high performing students from low income families, but they are more the exception that the rule), then other schools show LOWER than predicted scores, because the higher performing students have been concentrated in the magnet or charter school. Now, I think it is worth noting, on this day that the Superintendent was rated as Effective, that every school in the state of Louisiana that is run directly by him and his Recovery School District, by his own scoring system, is rated "F". Is failing. Every one. Did you know that? BESE is the "School Board" and the Superintendent is John White. And every school that they directly run through their RSD (that is, not a charter) is currently, by the measures THEY use to condemn other schools, FAILING. Every one. Now the "reformers" will say that they took over failing schools. But, actually, that is not completely true. But even if it were… they have run every one of these schools for over four years, and they are all still FAILING! Now, when you say that Louisiana's public schools have failed for 30 years, as @Being_Stupid said, or 50 years, as @8point6 says, you have to ask the question. Is it really the school system that has failed? By the way, for private schools, the gap between scores for students who do NOT qualify for Free or Reduced meals (middle class or higher) and those who DO qualify for free meals (Low-income or poor) is actually greater than the gap in the public schools.

13) Comment by Noel Hammatt - 17/01/2013

There is no school system in the entire nation made up of students with the demographics of the public schools of St. Helena, or the RSD, or Washington, DC, or Baton Rouge or Baker that comes close to the academic achievement of districts made up of middle class families. Not one. Lest someone state that I am making excuses, let me say one more time. None of this is what I want, or "believe." It is a fact. And I DO think there are things that can be done. Unfortunately, none of the things being done by this Superintendent or by any of the "reformers" across the country is likely to change the patterns I have described. There ARE things we should be doing. I advocated for them, on the Board and in posts on here. But they are not simple, and they involve doing a lot more than moving the desks around in the schools (public or private) of Louisiana. Want to truly think outside the box? Then let us start by being honest and thoughtful and not ideological and petty. The powers that be know that the accountability system in Louisiana is based on ideology, and not on science or mathematics or logic. It was designed to hide the reality of the power of poverty, and to use that power to break up the school systems. Will they be willing to be intellectually honest and admit it? We will see. And the NAEP scores, which had risen prior to the arrival of Pastorek at a higher rate then in the country as a whole, and had arrived at a point where Louisiana students were doing as well as their peers across the country for every subgroup. Well, they dropped back with the arrival of all the "reforms."

14) Comment by 8point6 - 16/01/2013

Wow! This article sure did upset my "progressive" "educators"! @Being_Stupid: It's more like 50 years of complete failure.

15) Comment by HMaltravers - 16/01/2013

I challenge Mr. White to teach for just a month in an inner-city school whose student population comes from very low socio- economic backgrounds. He wouldn't last a week. Those kids would chew him up. It's easy for him and his white, upperclass colleagues to tell teachers in the trenches how to educate kids who routinely hear gunshots at night. They make me sick.

16) Comment by freedom2012 - 16/01/2013

Why is his review not tied to test scores in the state like everyone else?

17) Comment by morellok2 - 16/01/2013

Who are those two little boys playing grownup???

18) Comment by jwarren - 16/01/2013

He was a failure at RSD, so he got promoted. Check the real facts about RSD, btw, not what the state reports and the Advocate parrots. Now he gets the seal of approval from a board dominated by Jindal toadies. So let's really start doing some reforming and cutting here. The idea is to give schools more freedom. So let's free them of state mandates and eliminate the superintendent position and the state education bureaucracy. Why isn't Jindal doing that?

19) Comment by Being_Stupid - 16/01/2013

This institution that is being dismantled has a 30 plus year history of complete failure. About time somebody dismantle this Socialist Archaic School System Failure.

20) Comment by LSU_Valley_Girl - 16/01/2013

um.....huh? "Real" public education reform is the opposite of what is happening. Jindal is consciously dismantling the entire institution in order to privatize education for financial gains. Know your facts. (And no, I'm not a "freeloader" who "thinks" they're a teacher. I have 4 degrees in education from LSU, including my PhD; I'm know I'm a good teacher.) It sounds like backers of Jindal and White are the ones who are standing in the way, pretending to know what they are talking about.

21) Comment by Being_Stupid - 16/01/2013

I am also very satisfied with John White and Chas Roemer and their attempt to reform public education. Unfortunately we have way too many Freeloaders that think they're teachers, Democrat Party Elites, Union Bosses, and Government School Board Micromanagers obstructing real public education reform. These Obstructionists need to get out of the way and let progress happen and quit freeloading off our tax money that is supposed to fund education, not their pensions and "non-profit"-for-profit union salaries. These Obstructionists are a brick wall. We don't need their "education". We don't need their thought control. All in all they are just bricks in the wall.

22) Comment by LSU_Valley_Girl - 16/01/2013

Well, since I am one of those teachers leading the mass exodus from Louisiana's Public Schools, I find this unsurprising....it'd be laughable if it weren't so sad. I love that the media keeps saying teachers are leaving because of the "new evaluation system". Right. They have no idea how bad everything is about to get. Vomit.

23) Comment by Concerned_Parent - 16/01/2013

So, is he a 1,2,3,4? Is he doing better than 80% of his peers? What were his test scores like? Is teacher retention part of his evaluation? How do we know that the job he is doing is better than the other state superintendents around the country?

24) Comment by crazycajun - 16/01/2013

It's called rubber stamping. That's the L'il booby way. My way or the highway. Gotta love it.

25) Comment by Mygulfbleedsforu - 16/01/2013

No, huh?