Louisiana Pays Attention

The New Orleans Times-Picayune has a report that the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education has passed stricter rules for schools that are accepting government vouchers. Writes Andrew Vanacore:

The state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education approved a new set of academic standards Tuesday for private schools participating in Louisiana's expanded voucher program. By a vote of 9-2, the 11-member panel, known as BESE, adopted a plan proposed by state Superintendent John White that will require private schools to hit roughly the same academic bar that public schools do in order to continue accepting more students through the program.

The standards exclude those schools with less than forty students, however, which has drawn criticism. It is hard not to see this as a result of widespread coverage of Louisiana school children looking for the Loch Ness Monster and being taught creationism.

Test scores aside, the program is also drawing concerns that state tax dollars could end up going to schools that reject evolution in favor of creationism. Zack Kopplin, a college student who gained notoriety in 2010 when he attacked a state law that critics saw as a backdoor endorsement of creationist ideas, turned up at the BESE meeting Tuesday with a list of schools in the voucher program that appear to promote a biblical interpretation of human origins.

Kopplin cited a line from the student handbook at Faith Academy, in Gonzalez, requiring students to "defend creationism through evidence presented by the Bible versus traditional scientific theory."

Somebody saw the handwriting on the wall and realized that if the voucher program was going to survive and not suffer a constitutional challenge, changes had to be made to make sure that creationism wasn't being taught and they weren't using curricula that trash evolution.

White's plan gives BESE responsibility for ensuring private schools "maintain a curriculum of quality at least equal to that prescribed for similar public schools," with the power to hand down penalties "including ineligibility to participate or ineligibility to accept new students."

But during a conference call Tuesday, White suggested that he would rely instead on the science portion of the state's LEAP exams to weed out schools that aren't teaching biology up to acceptable standards. "The test measures evolution," he said.

As it should.

Louisiana Continues to Open the Door to “Academic Freedom”

The Louisiana State Senate Education Committee voted on May 27 to kill a bill that would repeal the much maligned SB-70, the “academic freedom” bill that allows teachers to bring additional materials into the classroom to supplement standard curricula in an effort to examine all areas of a scientific topic. Sounds great, huh? Witness Livingston Parrish, where the school board, under cover of the bill, started advocating young earth creationism. According to the current story:

A state Senate committee Thursday rejected a bill to repeal a 2008 law that critics say could change the way evolution is taught in public school classrooms. The measure, Senate Bill 70, failed in the Senate Education Committee. The vote was one for the repeal and five opposed after nearly two hours of discussion. The repeal effort is aimed at the Louisiana Science Education Act, which backers said has paved the way for freewheeling classroom discussions on evolution and other topics. Critics noted that the law has been denounced by the scientific community, including 43 Nobel laureates. “It is fundamentally embarrassing to have the law on the books,” said state Sen. Karen Peterson, D-New Orleans and sponsor of the legislation.

Barbara Forrest, as usual, put a fine point on this legislation:

This law was promoted only by creationists. Neither parents, nor science teachers, nor scientists requested it. No one wanted it except the Louisiana Family Forum (LFF), a religious organization that lobbies aggressively for its regressive agenda, and the Discovery Institute (DI), a creationist think tank in Seattle, Washington, that couldn’t care less about Louisiana children.

While I think this is, perhaps harsh in its characterization of the LFF, it is true that it lobbies for young earth creationism, which is the matter at hand. Her section on how the LFF got involved and its attitudes toward evolution is particularly insightful. The 2theAdvocate story also notes:

Senate Education Committee Chairman Ben Nevers, D-Bogalusa and chief sponsor of the law under fire, said the measures requires that supplemental materials brought into science classrooms have to be supported by empirical evidence.

That is a smokescreen. Sites like the ICR and AiG would not exist if they didn't think they had empirical evidence for the young-earth model. That the evidence consists of warrantless extrapolations of local events to global ones or distortions of the fossil record and genetics, is of little matter in this debate.

As the NCSE's commentary notes, this effort to repeal SB 70 was the brainchild of high school student Zack Kopplin and was taken up by other supporters. It was a momentous task which was, given the current climate, perhaps doomed to failure.

Once again, the only “no” vote was from a democrat and the five “yes” votes were from republicans. My conviction that I need to be politically an independent is growing.