Louisiana teachers' union threatens to sue private schools | The ...
By Joy Pullmann is
managing editor of School Reform News and an education research fellow
at The
Heartland Institute.
August, 2012
EXCERPT: Two unions and the Louisiana School Boards Association have sued the
state, arguing that the new voucher program is unconstitutional. Fortunately, Louisiana judges have refused union requests to delay
implementing the program until the lawsuits are settled.
Unfortunately, Louisiana’s
union leaders have decided their future rests on denying a better one to Louisiana kids.
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Last week, a
lawyer for a Louisiana teachers’ union wrote a
letter to 95 private schools that have agreed to participate in the Pelican State’s new school voucher program. His message? That vouchers are unconstitutional and if schools accept
them, “We will have no alternative other than to institute litigation against
[you].”
Nice little
private school you got there. It’d be a shame if an angry education monopoly
sunk it with groundless lawsuits.
The letter
demonstrates the union’s desperation. Teachers’ unions hate vouchers because
they require schools to compete on cost and quality, which means they’re
unlikely to increase union rolls by hiring extra teachers. And the unions have
every reason to be worried about Louisiana’s
initiative: More than 10,000 kids have already signed up for the four-month-old
program, five times as many as the state superintendent expected to sign up by
this point.
Bill Maurer
of the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm, tells me
that this legal intimidation is “unprecedented.” The Institute for Justice and
the Alliance
for School Choice have retained a lawyer to defend
these schools pro bono.
Louisianans’
interest in vouchers grew out of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina.
In the wake of the storm, which destroyed many of New Orleans’ schools, state legislators
instituted a series of education reforms targeting students in the impoverished
city. One of the reforms was a New Orleans-specific voucher program; another
allowed independently run, largely non-unionized public charter schools to open
in the city. Those reforms have proven both popular and successful. Based on
this success, Gov. Bobby Jindal made passing a statewide
school choice bill one of his top priorities after winning re-election with
two-thirds of the vote in 2011.
“This is not
about the next election. This is not about the next poll. This is about the
next generation,” Jindal repeatedly told state legislators. “If we want
to preserve the American Dream for our children, if we want them to do better
than we did, then it is important they get a great education.”
But, as Jindal knows, it’s hard for Louisiana students to get great educations
when the state forces them to attend particular schools regardless of quality,
expense, or family fit. And Louisiana’s
schools are some of the worst in the country: the state ranks 49th in student
performance on the well-respected National Assessment of Educational Progress.
Nearly half the state’s fourth graders essentially can’t read, for example,
while more than a quarter can barely add and subtract.
In April,
Gov. Jindal signed into law a statewide voucher
program. It applies to nearly half the state’s kids (to qualify, students must
be slated to attend low-performing schools and come from families that can’t
afford better private schools).
Two unions
and the Louisiana
School Boards Association
have sued the state, arguing that the new voucher program is unconstitutional.
Fortunately, Louisiana
judges have refused union requests to delay
implementing the program until the lawsuits are settled.
Unfortunately,
Louisiana’s union leaders have decided their
future rests on denying a better one to Louisiana
kids.
http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/02/louisiana-teachers-union-threatens-to-sue-private-schools-over-voucher-program/