Let’s look at Bobby Jindal’s education reform for what it really is: teacher bashing. I’m not saying teachers aren’t to blame; I’m saying they’re not the only ones to blame. What Jindal is trying to do, by the privatization of public education, will undoubtedly strangle our current education system and replace it with a volatile mixture of private and charter schools.

Jindals education reform basically will:

• offer vouchers for low income families to send their children to private schools if they attend a low performance school;

• propose to end regular annual pay increase for teachers;

• require that teachers lose their certification after three years of ineffective ratings.

While these plans look excellent on the surface, if one digs a little deeper into the issue one would find that education is a multifaceted subject. Think about private and charter schools that have selective admissions. They will not admit poorly performing students because it will cause their scores to go down. Therefore, while these students may have vouchers, they may not be able to get in.

Ending regular annual pay increases for teachers may seem fine and dandy, but there’s nothing stopping these new teachers from going to Texas or Mississippi where teachers get regular increases and are paid up to 20 percent more.  This will leave Louisiana with more poorly paid teachers, who won’t have the motivation to perform.

The real problem here is the way teachers are rated. The state uses standardized tests to generate School Performance Scores. Public schools don’t have the option of selective admission; they have to take every student that comes in the door. Including the ones that are only there because the law requires it. Naturally, these students are not going to perform well because they don’t want to perform well. When these low-performing students take the standardized tests, they hurt a school’s score. So even if you have a hard-working teacher, they will be misjudged due to the inaccuracy of standardized tests.

I’m not sure what the perfect cure for the education system is, but I do know that the best medicine for it is teachers, students, parents and administrators who care. Education should work like fire. There are three elements needed to make fire: fuel, oxygen and ignition. If just one of these things is missing, then there can’t be fire. Education should operate the same way with everyone working together to teach the children of this state and nation.

If we could all work together to strengthen the children of this nation, then we could truly live up to the dreams that the founders of this nation held. Because it’s the children who will carry on the torch of liberty, allowing it to shine into the darkest places of this world.