Our Views: No excuses for failure

• Advocate Opinion page staff
• Published: Jul 2, 2009 - Page: 8B

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In the real world, when someone or something doesn’t measure up, one looks for the root of the problem and seeks to address it.

In Legislature World, when students and schools don’t measure up, lawmakers figure out a way to change the rules. It’s the yardstick that’s the problem — not the schools.

That’s the bottom line on one of the worst bills of the 2009 legislative session — and that’s saying something.

House Bill 495 by Rep. Herbert Dixon, D-Alexandria, allows an alternative high school in Rapides Parish to avoid state takeover. The school started with underachieving students, but it apparently has underachieving leaders, teachers and school board members; after four years, its scores on the state accountability measure were dismal.

The local school board also had failed to work with the state Department of Education to develop a plan to reconstitute the school’s leadership so that it can get off the takeover list the right way — not by changing the rules, but by meeting the standards so its students have a chance in life.

This exemption for the one Rapides school was opposed by Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek and Gov. Bobby Jindal. Yet it passed both chambers and awaits the governor’s signature. The governor has pledged to veto the bill if the Rapides board and the state officials cannot work out a plan for the school’s success.

That this bill passed shows how deep is the Legislature’s aversion to accountability.

“By exempting a single school from the state’s school and district accountability system, this bill opens up the whole system to piecemeal deconstruction,” the Public Affairs Research Council commented.

PAR is right, and we hope Jindal will veto this bill.

Whatever happens, we hope the local board will stop complaining about the measurements and start doing something to get schools off the takeover list.

Changing the rules is no way to advance in a modern society.