Dive Brief:
- Louisiana Education Superintendent John White says the state's teachers should move forward with plans to use Common Core-aligned assessments.
- White's announcement comes days after a Baton Rouge judge lifted Gov. Bobby Jindal's contentious freeze on the state's testing contract with the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers.
- Jindal's team is looking for loopholes in the judge's ruling, arguing that the contract can be used to buy "transitional" assessment questions but not "national" exams. White isn't buying it, quoting the judge's ruling, which said that the contract "was intended by all to be used in implementation of the legal requirement for nationally recognized assessment testing in Louisiana."
Dive Insight:
Governor Jindal has caused quite a ruckus in Louisiana. When 19th Judicial District Court Judge Todd Hernandez issued his ruling, he said the governor's administration caused "irreparable harm" to the state's students when it pushed for the freeze. While the validity of the Common Core is up for debate (a new Gallup poll says support for the national standards is on the decline), at some point, Jindal and his team need to move beyond the macro and zero in on Louisiana's current situation. The school year is about to start, test scores are factored into teacher evaluations, and the teachers have no clue what test they are giving out at the end of the year. Most educators know that teaching is all about planning, and all plans begin with an end in mind. To create a great unit or year plan, teachers need to know where they are taking their students — that's why educators typically start with the exam and then plan backwards. If Louisiana teachers don't know what their end goal is, the act of teaching and educating is going to be exponentially more difficult.