Our Views: Low hurdles, lower results

• Advocate Opinion page staff
• Published: Jun 12, 2009 - Page: 8B

• Print
• Email
• Save
• Reprints
• Twitter
• Share

• Del.icio.us
• Digg
• Facebook
• Reddit
• 

Years from now, looking back, we fear historians will say it was this governor and Legislature who killed accountability in public education in Louisiana.

Lopsided majorities favor a so-called career diploma, as does Gov. Bobby Jindal.

The plan would lower passage requirements on the LEAP test for some students who have persistently failed to achieve the modest standards now required to advance from eighth grade into high school.

Today, students must score at the basic level in math or English and “approaching basic” in the other to go on to high school.

This is not a dreadfully difficult standard on the test, but under the career diploma plan that would be watered down for students who are unable over several years to make that low hurdle.

The legislators are lowering the hurdles, instead of focusing on making students better able to run the race.

Under the new plan, overage middle-schoolers who score “approaching basic” in English or math, and “unsatisfactory” in the other subject, would be able to go on to high school in a weaker career curriculum. Legislators did agree to require that students getting an “unsatisfactory” grade would be required to take a summer  school program instead of getting a free pass into high school.

The good intentions of legislators pushing this plan are not in question: They want to do more to keep students from dropping out.

But by lowering the standard on the LEAP test, they are blowing a hole below the water line of the accountability program’s flagship.

We know that the proposed passing standard is intended to be limited to a few students, but we doubt that line will hold for very long.

Former Gov. Buddy Roemer is among the people opposing this idea. Louisiana would be the only state offering a watered-down diploma, he said, at a time when the knowledge needed in the work force is increasing because of technology.

“At a time when standards are going up in the world, we are about to lower ours,” Roemer said.

He is exactly right.