by David Safier
This whole thing sounds like the plot of a satirical musical about vouchers, but the story comes from Reuters (h/t to Cheri for the link) and can be found in lots of other reputable news outlets. So I guess it must be true.
Louisiana will have a new school voucher program this fall. The state will furnish as much as $8,800 per student (the average cost per student at public schools) toward private school tuition. The state has listed 125 schools as qualified to participate. They include schools like these.
New Living Word in Ruston, which has a top-ranked basketball team but no library. Students spend most of the day watching TVs in bare-bones classrooms. Each lesson consists of an instructional DVD that intersperses Biblical verses with subjects such chemistry or composition.
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The Upperroom Bible Church Academy in New Orleans, a bunker-like building with no windows or playground.
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Eternity Christian Academy in Westlake, [where] pastor-turned-principal Marie Carrier hopes to secure extra space to enroll 135 voucher students, though she now has room for just a few dozen. Her first- through eighth-grade students sit in cubicles for much of the day and move at their own pace through Christian workbooks, such as a beginning science text that explains "what God made" on each of the six days of creation. They are not exposed to the theory of evolution.
[snip]
Other schools approved for state-funded vouchers use social studies texts warning that liberals threaten global prosperity; Bible-based math books that don't cover modern concepts such as set theory; and biology texts built around refuting evolution.
New Living Word now has 122 students and plans to use the vouchers to expand to 315, without the needed classrooms or teachers.
[C]onstruction will begin this summer on a metal school building though [Jerry Baldwin, the school’s principal and pastor of New Living Word Ministries] isn’t sure when it will be done. Current students now attend class in rooms used by the church’s Sunday school. If the new building is finished by the fall, he said, new students can hold class in the church gym.
No surprise so many of these schools schools accepting the voucher students are religious. Nationwide, 70-80% of private schools are religious.
Louisiana is determined to create a spoof-worthy voucher scenario for fall. The sad thing is, they'll probably spin it as a giant step toward "school choice" and get away with it.
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The real shame of it all is that these schools will receive $8,800 per student and not be held to the same standards as any other school paid for with your tax money. Voucher students will not have to take LEAP or iLEAP, GEE or End of Course tests. Teachers in these schools will not be evaluated using Louisiana’s new Value-Added performance assessment system. Check me on this, but I’m pretty sure that is the case. In any other state, I’m not sure this could fly.