Tuesday 25 March 2014

4 Doors: Personality Test That Will Surprise You!

psychological test 4 doorsAnswer the question and follow the instructions. Mark answers in a piece of paper and then see the interpretation. You will be impressed with the results!


You enter a room and see 4 doors around you: a white, a black, a blue and a pink.


In what order will you open the doors and what will you see behind them?


You have the right not to open all the doors if you do not want. Give your answer before you see the analysis and interpretation…












don’t cheat! :)














a bit more patience…














if you are ready, you can finally see the results :)


White: Personal life
Black: Death
Blue: Occupation
Pink: Love


White, you are a person who has self-confidence and cares enough for him/herself.


Pink, you are in love or in an active search of a relationship.


Blue, you put a high priority on your career, which means that you either sideline other spheres of life for the sake of your career, either you chase money too much.


Black, you are depressed or in full introspection. Generally the choice of black door shows a bad psychological condition and sometimes avoidance tendencies and even a full denial.


White, maybe you put your personal life on the back burner, but you have self-esteem and love yourself.


Pink, you are in emotional balance, either because you have a smooth relationship, either because you are a balanced person.


Blue, you spend enough time at work to the detriment of other important areas of life. Sometimes this position indicates a person who has put in to work to fill in the gaps of his/her life.


Black, you have avoidance trends, perhaps not as pronounced as if it was your first choice, but still these trends are strong enough. Many teens have this door in the second place, because often adolescence is associated with tendencies of avoidance.


White, you seem to have given up your life. Usually people who have the white door in the third place have low self-esteem and are inclined to pessimism.


Pink, you are either in a stagnant relationship, or have denied the right to love and be loved.


Blue, you feel comfortable and seem to be satisfied with your job.


Black, you suffer in one of the areas of life. To find out in which, just look at the fourth door you’ve chosen. The problem is overstated in the field shown by the last door and you feel that something is missing from your life and do not feel ‘complete’.


White, you have entirely given up your personal life. Often this answer is given by women who have completely lost themselves in the responsibilities of home, husband, children and grandchildren. In any case, it shows a very vulnerable situation.


Pink, you seem to have completely escaped from the emotional world, either because you live in a completely stagnant relationship, or because you have neglected this part of your life.


Blue, you don’t like your job and work only to make a living.


Black, you are psychologically healthy and have a desire to live.


1. The order of opening the doors is most important.


2. Whatever you imagined behind the doors is a simple notation that shows your emotional attitude to each area.


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Astonishing Personality Test Used in Finnish Army

personality test mental disordersThis is a personality test that all army recruits in Finland have to take, whether they are women or men. The main goal of the test is to reveal potential mental health disorders in future soldiers so that army physicians and officers are aware and particularly careful of them.


The concept of the test is very simple. The recruit looks at the circles and names all the numbers he sees in them. If he can see numbers in all the six circles, then he is healthy. If the future soldier cannot see numbers in several circles at a time, then he has to be checked for color blindness. If he cannot see only one number, then he may be having the following problems:

Not able to see number in the circle 1. Increased aggressiveness and conflict behavior.


This group of soldiers is recommended to pay most attention to contrast shower and physical exercise.


Not able to see number in the circle 2. Decreased intellectual ability.


Additional measures are not required for soldiers serving in general purpose forces.


Not able to see number in the circle 3. Gluttony.


Enhanced meal and physical exercise are recommended. At the same time, it is recommended to avoid sedentary work or work in the kitchen.


Not able to see number in the circle 4. Sadism.


Soldiers with mild form of sadistic tendencies are recommended to the Troops to Teachers, those with the severe form – to the Armed Forces Disciplinary Control Boards.


Not able to see number in the circle 5. Latent homosexuality.


Poorly controllable seizures of attraction to persons of the same sex can take place. Additional measures are not required.


Not able to see number in the circle 6. Schizophrenia.


Full check at psychiatrist is recommended.
P.S. Can you see all the numbers? Don’t worry if you can’t, first of all, the credibility of the test is not guaranteed. I just stumbled upon it on the net and found it really astonishing and uncommon, so I decided to share it. Secondly, it is aimed at revealing potential disorders, i.e. they may never show. To be honest, I also couldn’t see one of the numbers but I won’t tell which :mrgreen:


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Sunday 16 March 2014

5 Most Common Nightmares and Their Interpretation (Part 1)

common nightmaresNightmares are an integral part of our dreams. Our pleasant dreams are caused mostly by our dreams and desires, unlike the nightmares that are a manifestation of such feelings as stress and anxiety.


In the nightmares, as well as in all kinds of dreams, all seen images are symbolic, so they should never be interpreted literally. Their interpretation can help you decipher an important message that your subconscious is trying to send you.


Feeling of being lost or trapped in a dream indicates the same feelings experienced by a person in real life in a certain situation. Does anyone make you do something against your will? Do you have exhausted all possible solutions to a problem and feel despair?


Understand that this dream is a direct warning of internal problems, so you should indicate the problem before it is too late.


Do you feel too much pressure or responsibility? These disturbing feelings can lead to a nightmare of falling or drowning. Nightmares about an infinite fall or drowning demonstrate our inner confusion or concern about some issue. Your specific response to this nightmare, most likely, is a mirror of your reactions to some circumstances in reality.


At the same time, such nightmares are a great opportunity to take part in a lucid dream. If you realize that you are dreaming, you can control your fall/drowning and turn it into flying/ swimming. After all, in your dream you can do anything you want.


You call someone in your sleep and you hear endless ringing out? Maybe your hard drive is dead at the moment of writing an important document? Although these dreams may not be classified as nightmares, for some people a hard drive failure is equivalent to a car crash.


If you dream of a technological failure, especially connected with communication, it may mean that you are not able to reach someone on an emotional level. Have lost touch with a good friend? Or maybe a wall has formed between you and your beloved one? If you have such a dream very often, take the time to analyze your relationship and identify areas that need to be “fixed”.


This is one of the most common nightmares of people of all ages. This kind of dream is an estimation of the level of self-confidence. In this case the function of clothes is to hide those things about yourself that you do not want to be learned by others.


If you feel “comfortable” being naked in your dream, then you are safe in revealing your feelings and you have nothing to hide. If you feel confused, it shows your vulnerability, the presence of guilt or shame. And finally, if you do not pay any attention to your nakedness, it could mean a lack of self-awareness.


Thus, if you are hiding something from others or are afraid that one day they will learn it, be prepared to have such an “erotic nightmare”.


Regardless of whether you dream about it or experience it in reality, being in the midst of a natural disaster is a terrible experience. Such disturbing nightmares are always very important, as they can say a lot about the current condition of a person.


Usually they signal an impending disaster in real life. Perhaps you are afraid of not being able to cope with a problem, so you are lost in a lot of debris left after a natural disaster in your sleep. If you have seen something like that, think about what you are currently overburdened with and try to solve the problem efficiently.


The continuation of the article with the next 5 most common nightmares and their interpretation is coming soon… In order not to miss it, you can subscribe to the blog by entering your email address in the field below.


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Thursday 6 March 2014

Funding for La. Voucher Program is Declared Unconstitutional

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Baton Rouge Struggles to Keep Control of Schools

Efforts to create a new school district and reshuffle student assignments in East Baton Rouge Parish, La., have set off a heated conversation between state and district officials about accountability and the future governance of schools in that area.

A bill that would allow the creation of a new school district that includes the southeastern part of the city of Baton Rouge—home to many of the 43,000-student district's white and more affluent students—passed the state Senate and the state House of Representatives' education committee earlier this month.

The proposed Southeast Baton Rouge Community School District, which is being promoted by a group called Local Schools for Local Children, would be the fourth new district to be carved out of East Baton Rouge Parish since 2003, and the first within city limits. The previously formed districts in Zachary, Baker, and Central City now serve many of the white students in the parish as well. And the Zachary district has some of the state's highest test scores.

Meanwhile, Bernard Taylor Jr., who is in his first year as the superintendent of the parish school system, has proposed changes aimed at improving its low student performance—and also at preventing more schools from being taken over by Louisiana's state-run Recovery School District.

They include moving a 101-student gifted education program to a lower-performing school nearby. A group of students from the lower-performing school would be transferred to the school that housed the gifted program, Mr. Taylor said.

The district's board has also approved a "family of schools" plan that would change student assignment in areas of the district, restructure several failing schools and close another, and move overage students to "superintendent's academies" that target their needs.

In an interview, Mr. Taylor played up the academic and logistical rationales for the planned moves, but was unabashed in saying that the changes were also aimed at preventing schools from being taken over by the Recovery School District.

"Absolutely, I hope to avoid the RSD taking over schools," he said. "I don't know of any superintendent who wants to see them taken over by an entity whose primary focus is not just the students in that area."

If approved, the Southeast Baton Rouge Community School District would be the fourth new district to be carved out of the East Baton Rouge Parish district since 2003. The state-run Recovery School District also runs eight schools in the parish school district.

The state-run district, which already oversees eight schools in East Baton Rouge Parish, was created in 2003 with the aim of improving persistently low-performing schools in the state, often by turning them over to charter operators. Schools that have failed to meet state student-achievement benchmarks for four consecutive years are eligible for takeover.

Twenty schools in the East Baton Rouge Parish district were classified as failing last year.

Louisiana schools Superintendent John White, who previously led the state-run district, described the planned moves in Baton Rouge as "cynical" and "craven." In an interview, he said that the parish district's plans were aimed at improving test scores rather than the quality of education.

"It's a cover-up," he said. "They've put forward a plan that moves kids around to try to cover up failures. ... It just makes a complete mockery of the pillars of education."

Student-assignment changes and new districts in the Baton Rouge area have frequently been fraught with racial implications. The East Baton Rouge Parish district was the subject of a desegregation lawsuit that lasted from 1956 until 2003, with federal oversight of the district's desegregation plan ending in 2007.

While students are no longer bused to maintain racial balance in schools, some students from poorer areas of the parish still travel to schools in better-off communities—sometimes to attend special programs, sometimes to address space concerns, district officials said.

Many students who would have attended schools now run by the state district opted to remain in the East Baton Rouge Parish system instead, which has also led to crosstown busing, said Tarvald Smith, the vice chairman of the district's school board.

District spokeswoman Susan Nelson said some proponents of the proposed new district are unhappy that students opting out of RSD schools from less affluent northern neighborhoods are being sent to schools in the southeastern part of the city of Baton Rouge.

State Sen. Mack "Bodi" White, who wrote the bill that would create the new district, said the proposal stems from decades of mismanagement by the existing school board.

"It's hard to recruit companies and corporations to this parish if they know their kids have to go to the [East Baton Rouge] system," said Sen. White, a Republican. "Half of the kids go to private or parochial schools."

A group called One Community One School District is opposing the creation of a new district, saying that the East Baton Rouge Parish system is already struggling with legacy costs related to the creation of the previous three districts, and that the demographic changes caused by the breakaway district would hurt students and the district.

The proposed district means, for instance, that the current school system would go from having 86 percent of students eligible to receive free and reduced-price lunch to 90 percent, while 67 percent of students in the new district would qualify for subsidized lunches.

Fifty-seven percent of the new district's students would be black, compared with 86 percent of the remaining district. The state legislature's black caucus has stated its intention to vote against the bill.

Meanwhile, Mr. White, the state chief, said the state would consider making changes to its accountability system—including taking into account growth in student scores on standardized tests, rather than their achievement levels—to deter districts from moving programs to improve a school's state-test scores.

Chris Meyer, a former deputy superintendent in the RSD who is now the executive director of New Schools for Baton Rouge, a nonprofit group founded last year to bring high-quality charter operators to the district, said the state-run district had a rocky start in the city: Seven of the first schools it took over were entrusted as charters to local organizations that, while well-intentioned, did not have much experience running schools.

Those charter holders later returned their schools to the state-run district, and each school is now considered to be failing by the state.

"The RSD is a four-letter word here when it runs schools directly," Mr. Meyer said.

Patrick Dobard, the superintendent of the RSD, said that the difficulties of the previous charter operators did not mean the state district should change its strategy.

"We don't want to give up on bringing in empowering, higher-quality teachers and leaders just because the first group we tried weren't of the ilk we need," he said.

And he is skeptical of Mr. Taylor's plan to move students around. "I don't see from a pedagogical standpoint how that'll make a difference for the kids in the chronically low-performing schools," Mr. Dobard said.

But Mr. Taylor said he is concerned about the future of the parish schools if the state is able to take over more schools while yet another section of the district breaks off to become its own school system.

"The disaster-in-waiting is, if you keep carving something up piece by piece by piece, the educationally savvy, regardless of where they sit, will be just fine. ... Those who are not educationally savvy, we'll probably wind up serving," he said, "and we'll have less resources to serve them."

State Superintendent White said the parish district's long record of having low-performing schools has not helped its case.

"If they're so concerned about the state taking over their schools," he said, "there's an easy way to do that—that's to improve. We're not interested in running schools, we're interested in them being successful."

Vol. 32, Issue 32, Page 6

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Louisiana's 'Course Choice' Program Gets Underway

A new Louisiana program that allows students to shop for publicly funded high school courses is getting started after hitting a roadblock this spring when its original funding mechanism was deemed to violate the state constitution.

The initiative, now supported with some $3 million in state aid, is enabling several thousand students to select from a broad swath of courses—whether online, face-to-face, or blended—supplied by a mix of public and private providers. The most popular offerings include Spanish and French, algebra, biology, and ACT preparation, according to the state education department.

As of Aug. 21, more than 3,700 students across Louisiana had requested enrollment in about 90 courses offered by 28 providers for the new school year, with the final deadline for open-enrollment ending this week, a spokesman for the state agency said.

Experts say the statewide program appears to be unique, even as it combines elements of some existing approaches, such as virtual and charter schools and voucher programs. ("Louisiana Opens Novel Marketplace of K-12 Courses," Sept. 12, 2012.)

Among the state-approved providers to attract significant numbers of applicants so far are the Louisiana School for Math, Sciences, and the Arts; Princeton Review; SmartStart Virtual Academy; and Bard Early College in New Orleans, a high school program operated by Bard College in New York. Others on the approved list include community colleges, the Florida Virtual School, Louisiana Public Broadcasting, and two school districts.

"It's a complex program, and it's been lost in the media [coverage] sometimes that it is not a virtual school, not an online education program, not a MOOC," said state schools Superintendent John White in an interview. "It is a much more diverse platform through which providers of a wide variety can create courses and avail students who have a wide variety of needs."

He adds, "The promise of Course Choice is it's scalable reform, scalable choice."

But the pilot program has drawn considerable criticism, with opponents arguing it's a misguided experiment that's an inappropriate use of public dollars and that it lacks adequate safeguards to ensure program quality.

"This is much more about advancing Milton Friedmanesque policy than about sound education policy," said Steve Monaghan, the president of the Louisiana Federation of Teachers, referring to the free-market economist who promoted private-school vouchers. The union was a party to the lawsuit that successfully challenged the original funding source.

"If we were to put this kind of energy as a state into public education, into funding our schools, early-childhood education," Mr. Monaghan said, "we'd be in a lot better place than we are now."

Mr. Monaghan and others also lament that at the same time the state is launching the new program, it has shut down the Louisiana Virtual School, a statewide program that allowed students to take online courses at a cost of $150 per student, per class.

But Mr. White said Course Choice has the same types of offerings as the Louisiana Virtual School, and then some.

"It isn't killing it," he said of the Louisiana Virtual School. "It's just significantly expanding on it and doing a hundred other things," he said. "Everything it does, Course Choice does, and more."

The program was established under legislation passed last year. The same measure also expanded statewide a private-school-voucher program. In May, the state supreme court ruled that the funding source was not permissible under state law because it diverted aid intended for public schools.

Twenty-eight public and private organizations that won state approval under Louisiana's Course Choice program had received requests for student enrollment as of last week, from community colleges to private online companies and local school districts.

• Bard Early College of New Orleans
• Bossier Parish Community College
• Florida Virtual School
• K12 Inc.
• Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts
• Louisiana Public Broadcasting
• mSchool
• Pelican Chapter, Associated Builders and Contractors
• Princeton Review
• Rocket Learning Partners, LLC.
• SmartStart Virtual Academy
• St. James Parish School District

As conceived, Course Choice was to be financed with a portion of school districts' combined state and local aid under the Louisiana Minimum Foundation Program.

After the ruling, $2 million was tapped from a special state fund drawn from a settlement with oil companies. When that was insufficient to meet all the student demand, the state agency said it would provide $1 million more by discontinuing a statewide test for 2nd graders and trimming "travel and overhead expenses."

"We have cast this year as a pilot, and we will be seeking more sustainable funding in the future," Superintendent White said.

The average cost to the state for an individual student to take a course is projected to be $800, according to the state education department.

Under the program, state aid will cover course fees (with some limits) for any student attending a public high school rated C, D, or F under the state accountability system. Students in A or B schools may be eligible if their school does not offer a course equivalent to one approved by the state.

Stephen B. Tremaine, the director of Bard Early College in New Orleans, said the classes his school is offering under the state program are face-to-face seminars for juniors and seniors on intellectual history.

"Each semester seminar has a question, and students will read across intellectual history," he said. One topic is, "What does it mean to be human?"

The seminars will help students build "the habits of inquiry and habits of mind ... to help them succeed at the highest levels of higher education," he said.

Students will come to the New Orleans campus from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. each weekday. The courses are limited to New Orleans students, but the school provides free transportation.

Patrick R. Widhalm, the executive director of the Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts, a state-supported residential high school in Natchitoches, said his institution has long been engaged in offering distance learning. The school, which previously partnered with the state education department to operate the Louisiana Virtual School, is offering 15 online classes through Course Choice, including several Spanish courses, as well as Advanced Placement psychology, calculus, and computer science, Mr. Widhalm said.

In fact, some of the same teachers who taught in the Louisiana Virtual School will teach through the new program, he said.

One question raised about Course Choice is the state's ability to ensure quality across so many courses and providers.

Mr. White said the state is making that a high priority.

"This is the greatest level of accountability that we or any state has ever placed at the course level," he said. "We are daily monitoring providers, will provide an annual review, and we will be very vigilant about recommending any providers exit from the initiative if they don't fulfill their mission."

He also said providers went through a rigorous vetting process upfront, akin to how the state authorizes charter schools.

Darrell J. Fairburn, the superintendent of the 5,500-student Washington district, about 80 miles north of New Orleans, saidearly last week that 161 students from his schools had enrolled in Course Choice. The majority will take Spanish 1 and 2, he said, since his district only has one Spanish teacher.

Mr. Fairburn said he's sorry to see the Louisiana Virtual School go, but on the upside, Course Choice won't cost his district a penny, at least for now.

"Louisiana Virtual School was really good," he said. "You start new, you worry about the quality. Hopefully, those people who have accepted the providers know the quality and will monitor that."

Brigitte T. Nieland, a vice president at the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, said she's confident the state will be a strong accountability watchguard.

She sees the program as a welcome addition to the state's educational choice offerings.

"Not only can it help children do everything from act prep to high-level math and languages, but also [develop] very technical-oriented skills leading toward industry-based certifications," she said.

Ms. Nieland wants it to catch on. "I hope it becomes so popular that we find a way to sustain it and grow it."

Vol. 33, Issue 02, Pages 22-23

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More Variation Seen in Evaluation Scoring

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Wednesday 5 March 2014

States Seek to Calm Districts' Common-Core Jitters

State education leaders are moving to calm political tempests over the Common Core State Standards by adopting or reaffirming policies aimed at asserting local control over data, curriculum, and materials. But the classroom-level impact of those moves could be negligible as states forge ahead on common-core implementation.

On the one hand, officials' actions in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Michigan highlight anxieties over the privacy of information about individual students and what some see as state and federal intrusion into classrooms. At the same time, the specific steps, all in states run by Republicans, largely emphasize existing policy or practice.

"That might turn down the heat on a lot of these criticisms, ... but I don't think this stuff addresses the real issues with the implementation and actually making the common core work," said Michael Q. McShane, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who tracks the standards. "It doesn't really solve anything, because it doesn't really do anything."

Florida, which in September curtailed its relationship with a consortium developing common-core-aligned assessments, backed away from a controversial supplement to the standards when the state school board voted 5-1 on Oct. 15 not to adopt any of the standards' appendices, including a list of text "exemplars" or suggested reading.

The exemplars have angered conservative anti-common-core activists in other states like Alabama and Georgia for including books deemed controversial because of their treatment of sexuality (in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye) or radical politics (in Julia Alvarez's In the Time of Butterflies).

However, a spokeswoman for the Florida education department, Cheryl Etters, said the choice remains with local districts whether to use none, some, or all of the suggested reading when developing common-core-aligned curricula.

The day after the Florida board's vote, the Louisiana state school board announced that it had barred the state and the federal government from "forcing school systems to use a specific curriculum or course content." Six days before the Louisiana vote, the state's St. Tammany Parish school board had passed a resolution opposing the common core.

The state said it would also require the Louisiana education department to use student ID numbers that couldn't be traced back to individual students, and would require schools to notify parents about high school English reading lists and give parents an "opt out" option.

Several state school boards last month took steps intended to ease anxieties about how the Common Core State Standards would impact local education decisions and the privacy of student data.

Louisiana: Clarified that school districts maintain control over classroom content, and cannot have course materials forced on them. State that ID numbers used to track students couldn't be traced back to individual students.

Alabama: Adopted a policy that no data that can be traced to individual students is to be shared with the federal government. State Superintendent Tommy Bice has also offered a resolution rescinding a 2009 agreement between the state and two state-based organizations regarding the Common Core State Standards' development.

Florida: Refused to adopt appendices accompanying the common core that include suggested specific fiction and non-fiction selections. Some of the suggested literature has come under fire from conservative activists for how they portray radical politics and sexuality.

The president of the state board, Chas Roemer, said in a statement that all those moves allowed officials to "reaffirm that common core is not a federally mandated curriculum."

The policy about local control over curriculum had been implicit in the state, but not official, before the board's vote, Louisiana Superintendent of Education John White noted in an interview, while the parental-notification policy is new.

Mr. White argued that the policies in Louisiana deal with serious concerns, at the same time that they buttress the state board's common-core support.

"Parents, I think, are probably more concerned about knowing what their students are learning and the privacy of their children's information than they are about the intricacies of testing policies," Mr. White said.

None of the moves by the state board, he said, is solely related to the common core.

The Alabama state board recently tried to put to rest concerns about both privacy and the state's links to the two national groups that spearheaded development of the common standards in English/language arts and mathematics, which the vast majority of states have adopted. In addition to adopting a student-data-protection policy Oct. 10, state schools Superintendent Tommy Bice, a common-core supporter, offered a resolution Oct. 24 that would rescind a 2009 memorandum of agreement the state had with those groups, the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers.

Mr. Bice said in a statement that while the 2009 agreement only acknowledged that "internationally benchmarked" standards that could be shared across states were in development, ditching the memorandum allowed Alabama officials to show that the standards did in fact spring from "a state-initiated and a state-led effort."

Clearing up misconceptions over issues like data privacy is important as individual states deal with the common core in their own ways, said Carissa Miller, a deputy executive director of the CCSSO.

"I see state boards and legislators doing that as a way to say: 'These are state-owned standards,'?" she said.

Ms. Miller added that the common core doesn't change how states have to handle student data.

But Mr. Bice's proposed Alabama resolution, in particular, should be viewed as a purely political move, said Shane Vander Hart, a consultant for the American Principles Project, a conservative free-market Washington advocacy group opposed to the common core.

In Mr. Bice's statement about revoking the agreement, the phrase "common core" is not used.

"It's an empty gesture," Mr. Vander Hart said. "It does nothing."

A resolution approved by Michigan lawmakers last month that allowed state spending on the common core to resume—after a state budget-mandated spending freeze on common-core activities that began at the start of October—also emphasized local school boards' control over curriculum and classroom materials, and districts' right not to provide lessons that compromise their communities' values.

John C. Austin, the president of the Michigan board of education, who consulted with lawmakers about the resolution's language, said it "reaffirmed" the power of districts, while shielding the board from political meddling in academic-content standards. The board adopted the common standards in 2010, the year of their release.

"We do not want the state legislature revising our standards every two years," Mr. Austin said. "It would whipsaw our standards and our educators without mercy."

The Michigan resolution deals with one other politically sensitive area for the standards: the aligned assessments. It requires the state to re-examine its options for those tests. Michigan is a member of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, one of two multistate groups developing common-core tests.

For those who oppose the common standards, the recent state board actions, overall, are encouraging but small steps, Mr. Vander Hart said.

"I don't think anybody should be doing victory laps right now," he said.

Vol. 33, Issue 11, Pages 1,23

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La. Protests Federal Voucher Challenge

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Louisiana Vouchers, Desegregation Case Prove Volatile Mix

There’s a clash of eras going on in Louisiana, where the last remnants of a long-standing desegregation case threaten to thwart state officials who say they have a more modern approach to school reform—one that embraces private school vouchers.

The two eras will soon come face to face in a federal courtroom in New Orleans. President Barack Obama’s administration last month filed court papers seeking to enjoin the state from issuing vouchers to students at schools still under court supervision for desegregation unless the state gets the approval of the court overseeing the relevant desegregation plan.

The motion, filed under a decades-old statewide desegregation case, might have been classified as routine. The 2012 state law expanding the voucher program statewide acknowledged that the program was “subject to any court-ordered desegregation plan in effect” for a particular school district.

The U.S. Department of Justice, in court papers, argued that the state was ignoring such desegregation plans and that its award of vouchers last year pulled children away from public schools in a way that “caused the schoolwide racial demographics to stray further from districtwide demographic percentages and resulted in an increase in racially disproportionate representation in 24 historically segregated schools.”

State officials all but declared war on the federal government over the motion.

“The Justice Department has challenged my state in court for having the temerity to start a scholarship program that frees low-income minority children from failing schools,” Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican, wrote in an opinion essay in The Washington Post. “[President Barack] Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder would rip children out of their [voucher] schools and handcuff them to the failing schools they previously attended.”

John White, the state superintendent of education, said in an interview, “We’re making a moral argument. … It’s a question of whether this is the right thing for the Justice Department to do.”

Asked for a comment, a Justice Department spokesperson issued a statement noting that the department is not seeking “to take vouchers away from students currently receiving them.”

“We are not opposing the voucher program,” the statement said. “We simply want to ensure that it is implemented in a legal way, consistent with court-ordered desegregation plans.”

The Justice Department points out in its brief that Louisiana used to provide a different form of aid to private schools—contributions of books and transportation help in the 1960s and early 1970s to segregated private schools, which gave white families an easy escape amid efforts to desegregate the public schools.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal addresses attendees during the Americans for Prosperity Foundation's Defending the American Dream Summit in Orlando, Fla., on Aug. 30.

In 1975, in a case known as Brumfield v. Dodd, a federal court in Louisiana barred the state from providing support to private schools in ways that further racial segregation or discrimination.

To this day, Louisiana private schools receiving any form of state aid must file forms certifying that they don’t discriminate. The Brumfield case has remained active, with the Justice Department a party. It was under this case that the department filed its Aug. 22 motion regarding the state voucher program.

Meanwhile, 34 of Louisiana’s 64 parish (or county) school systems remain under federal court supervision for desegregation; the Justice Department is involved in 24 of them. Some cases are technically active but largely dormant. Other districts have won at least partial “unitary” status, in which a federal court has released the school system from its desegregation obligation in areas such as teacher assignment or transportation.

Many of the districts, though, require court approval for actions such as moving school attendance lines and achieving classroom diversity goals. Just last week, members of the Tangipahoa Parish school board met with the public over a proposal to modify attendance lines to achieve greater racial balance in the 20,000-student district northwest of New Orleans.

The voucher program began in 2008 for New Orleans students and went statewide in 2012. It offers vouchers to poor students in public schools that have received grades of C, D, or F from the state. While most voucher programs in other states allow recipients to choose a participating private school, in Louisiana placement decisions are made by the state, with families allowed to re-enter the program lottery if they are dissatisfied with their initial award.

The state awarded 5,766 vouchers last school year, and was expected to award some 8,000 this year.

The Justice Department alleges that the vouchers, which were awarded to at least 570 students in 22 districts under desegregation plans last school year, have had an impact on racial demographics in at least half of those districts.

“Some of these schools had achieved or were close to achieving the desired degree of student racial diversity, and the loss of students through the voucher program reversed much of the progress made toward desegregation,” the department said in court papers.

The Justice Department cited examples. One elementary school in the St. Martin Parish school district lost six African-American students to the voucher program last year, making a mostly white school in a mostly black district even whiter. Meanwhile, in Tangipahoa Parish, a mostly black elementary school lost five white students to the voucher program last year in a school that already had a substantial majority of black students.

“The state’s continued issuance of vouchers without proper regard for existing district desegregation orders or consent from appropriate federal courts impedes these school districts’ desegregation efforts, and deprives the students of their right to a desegregated educational experience,” the Justice Department says in its court filing.

The Justice Department’s motion does not seek to force any voucher students from private schools back to their public schools. Nor does it seek to block the award of vouchers for the 2013-14 school year, though it does ask that the state analyze the impact of the vouchers of school desegregation this year. And it asks the federal court to enjoin the award of vouchers for 2014-15 to students from schools under court supervision unless the state receives court authorization.

The Justice Department has support from at least one quarter: the school districts under desegregation plans and their advocates.

Scott Richard, the executive director of the Louisiana School Boards Association, said districts, though they may have opposed the desegregation plans at the outset, have spent millions of dollars to develop those plans and to fine-tune them over the years.

“At the end of the day, the voucher program does not help those matters,” said Mr. Richard, whose group not incidentally joined in a state-law challenge to the funding of the voucher plan last year because it took money from the state’s minimum foundation program for school districts. (The challenge was successful, and Gov. Jindal was forced to find alternative sources to fund the program.)

School districts “are under federal oversight for every decision they have to make, yet legislation from the state comes along and sets up processes that perhaps run counter to desegregation plans that are in place,” Mr. Richard said.

Mr. White, the state superintendent, said that district desegregation plans have a “program interest” in achieving racial-diversity goals for their own sake, while the state voucher program has a “moral and justice interest” in helping recipients, most of whom are African-American, depart substandard public schools.

School districts “have had 45 years to get out from under their desegregation plans, and now they are relying on those plans” to argue against the voucher program, Mr. White said.

He added that he believes the examples cited by the Justice Department presented evidence that was “slim at best” that the movement of a few students here and there would upset desegregation goals.

The state has attracted much attention and support from conservative editorial pages and some education analysts. Grover J. “Russ” Whitehurst, the director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, wrote on a Brookings blog last week that the Justice Department is denying “black parents the right to send their children to the school the parents choose and force them to send their children to the school the courts choose because if they do otherwise it will mess up [its desegregation] spreadsheets.”

The state also has support from African-Americans who embrace the voucher program.

“When we have public schools that have not been meeting the needs of kids, to block this opportunity for kids just to make sure we have some classroom diversity is an unfortunate thing,” said Eric B. Lewis, the state director for the Black Alliance for Educational Options.

“This is not a situation where we have segregated schools and white people are trying to flee the public schools,” he added. “At least 85 percent of the kids benefiting from the voucher program are black kids. So for us that is the irony of the situation.”

A hearing before U.S. District Judge Ivan I.R. Lemelle of New Orleans was scheduled for this week, though the state was seeking a postponement to have more time to gather information.

Gary Orfield, the co-director of the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, said he considered the state’s response to the motion “99 percent political” and that the Justice Department is on very strong ground.

“While desegregation orders are in effect, you can’t take actions that undermine those orders while under the supervision of a federal court,” said Mr. Orfield, an expert on and longtime advocate for desegregation. “I think the reaction of the state is completely out of proportion with what the Justice Department is proposing.”

Vol. 33, Issue 04

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Court rules for voucher, tenure laws in parish - Education Week

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Federal Oversight Backed for Lousiana Voucher Plan

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White suggests slowing down impact of Common Core

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana's education superintendent Thursday proposed a two-year delay for the consequences from toughened educational standards on school grades, teacher evaluations and student promotion in public schools.

John White outlined recommendations for how he'd like to roll out the statewide shift to the Common Core standards, a more rigorous set of grade-level benchmarks adopted by most states for what students should learn in reading, writing and math.

He is suggesting the raising of accountability standards — like grading of students, schools and teachers — to match the Common Core shouldn't start until 2015, with a slow adjustment to toughen the school grades set to phase in through 2025.

White's proposal will be considered by the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education next month. His recommendations are designed to lessen criticism of the state's use of the Common Core by lawmakers, parents and teacher unions.

"If we want Louisiana jobs to go to Louisiana graduates, we have to raise expectations for students," White said in a statement. "I have traveled the state seeking the input of educators and parents on how best to do this, and I believe that providing more time for educators, parents and students to learn these new expectations is critical to achieving that objective."

Forty-five states have adopted the Common Core. BESE agreed to use the standards in Louisiana three years ago, and they are being phased into public school classrooms and testing, with plans to have them fully in place by the 2014-15 year.

Critics have said the transition to the standards in Louisiana has happened with too little guidance, training and funding. Lawmakers at a recent hearing said state education officials were holding teachers and students accountable without giving them enough preparation.

Changes proposed by White include:

—Tests taken by students in 2015 will be the baseline for slowly raising the bar for how schools are graded over a 10-year period. Public schools will be graded on a curve in 2014 and 2015, so that the same number of schools will be rated at the A, B and C level through 2015.

—New tests planned for 2015 will be taken by students in third grades through eighth grades, but not students in high school. Students in third and fourth grades will take the tests on paper, and the older students will take computerized tests. Schools will be eligible for one-year waivers on computerized testing if they don't have the technology.

—Teachers won't be judged based on growth in student achievement on standardized tests for 2014 and 2015. Their evaluations instead will rely on other information and scoring.

—Local school districts can give promotion waivers to fourth-grade students even if they don't pass the standardized testing requirements in 2014 and 2015, if the districts feel students are showing progress. Meanwhile, eighth-graders who don't pass the standardized testing requirements during that time can advance to high school and take remedial classes there.

White's also agreed to provide curriculum guidelines to school systems, after complaints that districts were left on their own to determine what they should be teaching to meet the standards.


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Tuesday 4 March 2014

Private Pre-K Feels Heat From Public Providers - Education Week

Every year, Pearlie Harris hustles to keep 4-year-olds enrolled in the child care center she runs in the Hollygrove neighborhood of New Orleans.

Louisiana regulations require one caregiver for every five children under 12 months old in center-based care, such as Ms. Harris' Royal Castle Child Development Center. For 4-year-olds, regulations allow one teacher for every 16 children. Ms. Harris' center uses a more labor-intensive formula: one caregiver for four infants and one teacher for 10 4-year-olds. The tuition for the 4-year-olds subsidizes the more expensive care for the younger children.

But Royal Castle, which charges $165 a week for infants through 4-year-olds, is in competition with Louisiana's publicly funded preschool program for at-risk children, which is free to qualified families. And the center, which is certified by the National Association for the Education of Young Children and highly ranked under the state's rating system for child-care programs, sometimes finds itself on the losing end of such competition.

The pressure on private child-care providers can be an unintended consequence of the expansion of publicly funded preschool programs for 4-year-olds. Centers rarely earn much money on infant care, because the caregiver-to-child ratios have to be kept low. But when 4-year-olds, with their more favorable ratios, leave for a publicly funded program, some private programs falter.

Research into this situation is nuanced. A study of universal preschool programs in Georgia and Oklahoma has found that so-called preschool "crowdout" isn't always a given.

But some early-education advocates have seen evidence of the strain, and they say it puts them in a quandary. None of them want to discourage public funding for early-childhood programs, but when private providers disappear, fewer high-quality slots are available for parents of babies and younger toddlers.

"Seventy percent of children in Louisiana ages 0 to 5 have all parents in the workforce. So we know they're somewhere when their parents are working," said Melanie Bronfin, the policy director for the Louisiana Partnership for Children and Families. "Our fear is they're in unregulated, unlicensed settings."

Louise Stoney, the co-founder of the Alliance for Early Childhood Finance, an information and advocacy group, said that she "fully supports expansion of preschool. I am 100 percent supportive. I will take any money you give me, in any way it comes."

But, she said, "it's really easy for well-meaning initiatives to have unintended consequences."

Ms. Stoney described what she calls the "iron triangle" of finance for early-care providers: full enrollment, full collection of fees from parents, and revenues that cover the cost of caring for children.

The triangle is often quite shaky for the small businesses that comprise most day-care centers, Ms. Stoney said: They may be underenrolled, have a hard time collecting fees from parents, or charge fees that barely cover their costs for fear of losing customers.

Pearlie Harris, the director of the Royal Castle Child Development Center, works with children at the school in New Orleans. The private early-childhood center, which serves children up to age 4, finds itself in competition with Louisiana's free preschool program, especially for older enrollees.—Ted Jackson for Education Week

Once an outside player enters the market—such as a publicly funded program—the whole system for a private provider can collapse.

That's what happened to some providers in St. Louis, where the school system used money from the settlement of a long-running desegregation case to add 700 tuition-free preschool slots three years ago, bringing the district-run program to about 2,000 seats in all. The program offers free before and after care, and has waiting lists at almost every school where it is offered.

But in the wake of the expansion, the Nursery Foundation, founded in 1946 as a rare racially-integrated child-care program in the city, shut down last year. Cuts to federal Head Start funding through budget sequestration, along with state cuts and dwindling enrollment, doomed the center, executive director Terri Olack told the St. Louis Beacon newspaper.

"We've had a lot of competition from the free program," she told the paper in March, before the center closed. The program charged parents from $5 to $70 a week, per child. "When you're a single parent trying to put food on the table, a free program outweighs a quality program."

Paula Knight, who as associate superintendent of the 27,000-student district manages the early-childhood program, said that she was aware of the discontent among some private providers when she assumed oversight of the program last July.

She said she has visited day-care providers around the city to get a better idea of their offerings. If parents find that they are wait-listed at a school, they can be steered to one of the prescreened providers.

"I knew this was something worth mending," Ms. Knight said, as did the superintendent, Kelvin Adams. "We don't want people to think we're just grabbing at kids."

For Ms. Harris, at Royal Castle, the competition is not just for students, but for teachers. To meet state rules and Head Start regulations, teachers of 4-year-olds at Royal Castle have to have college degrees. But she is not able to pay her staff more than $13 an hour, and employees—including Ms. Harris—receive no benefits.

"Degreed teachers want to get paid for their education. That is always the issue for me," Ms. Harris said. "I can't pay them what they're worth." After employees gain experience working at Royal Castle, they are often snapped up by local charter schools and placed in positions where they can earn nearly twice as much, and receive health-care and retirement benefits, she said.

The feared impacts of publicly funded programs aren't always a given, however. Researchers Daphna Bassok, Maria Fitzpatrick, and Susanna Loeb explored the phenomenon of private preschool crowdout in a paper published in 2012 for the National Bureau of Economic Research. They studied Oklahoma and Georgia—two states with universal preschool programs for 4-year-olds.

In Oklahoma, preschool is provided through the public school system, and about 40,000 students were enrolled in the 2012-13 school year. In Georgia, the program is a more voucher-like subsidy, which parents can use at public and private providers. About 82,000 children were enrolled in the 2012-13 school year.

The researchers found a complex series of effects.

In Georgia, the number of private programs expanded with the advent of the publicly-funded program, which might be expected, the researchers said, because parents were able to use the subsidy at either a public or a private preschool. In Oklahoma, the public program did not lead to a significant contraction in the private child-care market, the study found. The researchers hypothesized that existing private programs got smaller but were able to stay in business, or they were able to provide services to children enrolled in half-day public preschool programs.

The best situation for private providers, said Ms. Stoney, of the Alliance for Early Childhood Finance, would be a situation where they could also have access to the public dollars. "States need to get much more sophisticated about enabling diverse delivery," she said.

Allowing a multitude of high-quality providers undergirded West Virginia's universal preschool program, said Clayton Burch, the executive director of the state's office of early learning. The lawmakers who voted for universal preschool back in 2002 also required that jurisdictions provide at least half of their slots for 4-year-olds through collaboration with private providers, Head Start programs, or child-care centers. Currently, about 74 percent of 4-year-old preschool slots are operated in collaboration with community partners, Mr. Burch said.

Burch said such work is best done when a state or city is in the earliest stages of expanding preschool programs. "It's really difficult if you've already got a system, and you've already put these places out of business," he said.

Such a partnership is something Ms. Harris dreams of in New Orleans. She has already reached out to a local charter school to see if she can forge a connection where children from her center matriculate to that school. Her employees might be able to share in the benefits package offered by the charter.

Until then, she works to keep her program afloat.

"I really try to push our program," she said. "I tell parents, we do have a degreed teacher working in the classroom, we are the same program that they have at the Catholic schools. We are required to make sure the kids are prepared for kindergarten." She also provides a Head Start program, which brings in federal dollars.

Some parents, however, are drawn to the state-funded program for their 4-year-olds, or to a program based at a school that feels more academically oriented than her center, she said.

"We need to think about how to still provide care for the zero to threes," she said. "We have to get these kids ready. They're important too."

Vol. 33, Issue 22, Pages 1,11

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Many La. Voucher Students Attending Failing Schools

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Lafayette may lose funding to charter schools - Education Week

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Katrina School Employees Fired Improperly, Court Rules - Education Week

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Judge: Ensure vouchers don't promote segregation

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