Thank you for being a member of the Louisiana Federation of Teachers and School Employees.
This year has gone by so fast, but through our collective power we’ve accomplished a lot. From raises, to new friends and election victories, 2019 has been a year to remember.
Join members and staff from LFT, the AFL-CIO and locals around the state to volunteer this election day! We need to knock doors, make phone calls, send texts and do everything we can to get out the vote for Governor John Bel Edwards and other pro-public education candidates.
Here's how you can help:
Here’s a damning report from Education Week blogger Marc Tucker that rings true in Louisiana as well as many other states: “From the beginning, the leaders of our state education systems have invited testing experts to help them set the cut points for passing or not passing the state tests. They listen gravely to the advice of the experts, then ask them how many students will fail at the recommended cut point and set a new one at a point that is politically tolerable.”
Tucker writes as the Nation’s Report Card’s governing board sets out to write new proficiency standards. He is president of the National Center on Education and the Economy, and he believes that current NAEP standards do not align to real-world college and career readiness. That, he says, must change.
(New Orleans – September 25) Louisiana’s charter schools must recognize and bargain with unions if that is the desire of teachers and school employees, according to a unanimous ruling by the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The September 21 ruling by a three-judge panel affirmed a decision by the National Labor Relations Board, asserting that the International High School of New Orleans violated the National Labor Relations Act when the group holding the school’s charter refused to recognize the school’s bargaining unit.
In the last two election cycles, out-of-state billionaires, hedge fund managers and school privatizers have poured millions of dollars into Louisiana school elections.
Louisiana is one of more than 30 states to be graded “F” on our support for public education in a new report from the Network for Public Education and the Schott Foundation for Public Education.
“Grading the States: A Report Card on Our Nation’s Commitment to Public Schools,” tracks the growth of private, for-profit charter and voucher schools that divert funding from public schools.