Bishops’ lobbyist: Gov. Edwards supports scholarships

Gov. John Bel Edwards has indicated he supports the Louisiana Scholarship Program that last year provided 7,400 students statewide in kindergarten through 12th grade with more than $42 million in scholarships to attend nonpublic schools, said Rob Tasman, executive director of the Louisiana Conference of Catholic Bishops (LCCB), the public policy arm of the state’s seven bishops.
Tasman said in campaigning for governor, Edwards made it clear that he fundamentally supports keeping the state scholarship program intact, with the possible exception of changing the definition of what constitutes a “failing” public school, the trigger that allows parents to take advantage of the scholarship program.

Currently, state law classifies a “failing” public school as one that receives a grade of C, D or F from the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE). Edwards favors classifying a school as “failing” only if it receives a D or F grade.

“He does not believe a C school is a failing school, but a D or an F is,” Tasman said.

Tasman said Catholic school superintendents in the seven Louisiana dioceses have supported the scholarship program because it gives children access to quality, faith-based education.

Lancaster confident
Dr. Jan Daniel Lancaster, superintendent of Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of New Orleans, said she is confident Gov. Edwards will support the continuation of the scholarship program because it has produced proven results.

“He wants strong education – that’s what I heard him say,” Lancaster said. “He’s looking at programs that work and programs that don’t work, and clearly there is quantitative data that says this program works.”

The program began in 2008 as a pilot only in Orleans Parish and then was expanded statewide in 2012. With the track record in place, Tasman said the benefits of the scholarship program have been clear.

“We’re very, very pleased with the scholarship program, and we feel like now we have had a number of years to see the great success among the students who have benefitted from being in our schools,” Tasman said. “It’s not just the hard data and the tests results. It’s also the stories that have been shared with us by the families who have been able to access choice in education. It’s a way out of a failing environment for their children, and they’ve been incredibly appreciative.”

Long history of support
The local push for school choice originated in the 1960s with Archbishop Philip Hannan, who lobbied vigorously to get the state to direct more taxpayer funds to Catholic schools. Emile Comar and Kirby Ducote, the LCCB’s lead legislative lobbyists, fought hard to get state funds to pay for required school services and bus transportation.

When Gov. Bobby Jindal took office in 2008, he fulfilled a campaign promise by supporting a pilot scholarship program in New Orleans.

“The rationale was that we knew how heavily impacted people in New Orleans were by Katrina, and it would be a great test case to see what could be accomplished for some of the most vulnerable children in the state,” Tasman said.

One of Jindal’s “lasting legacies” was the sweeping education reform bill of 2012 that expanded the scholarship program throughout the state,
Tasman said.

Scholarships save money
Tasman said the scholarship program actually saves the state money because for every child who has a scholarship to a nonpublic school, the state’s financial commitment to the public school district in which the student resides – called the Minimum Foundation Program (MFP) – is reduced. The cost of the MFP is higher than the scholarship, thus saving the state money.

Funds for the scholarship program are included as a line item in HB1 – the state’s budget bill – which means they have to be approved by the Legislature each year, Tasman said.

“That’s what makes it susceptible (to cuts) every year,” Tasman said. “It’s always up to the Legislature to fund every year. It’s a constant battle to advocate for the program’s existence and for the funding to benefit the children.”

Lancaster said Catholic schools now have the testing results to prove how they have helped children. In testing scholarship students, Our Lady of Prompt Succor School in Westwego made a 35-point jump from 2014 to 71 in 2015. St. Anthony in Gretna advanced 28 points to 71.8. St. Benedict the Moor showed a 6-point increase for a composite “A” score of 106.3.

State education officials said “the scholarship program’s increases in student achievement outpaced the majority of public school systems.”

“We’ve seen the improvement, and it’s unbelievable,” Lancaster said. “You can’t argue with numbers.”

Need to start early
One of the “valuable lessons” school choice advocates have learned since 2012 is that the scholarship program “benefits children the most when you can take them at the earliest stages of their education,” Tasman noted.

“Ideally, it would be kindergarten,” he said. “Then you have more time to work with the students and give them time to learn the culture and charisms of the school they’re attending as well as the academic standards expected of them.”

Each student on a state scholarship at a nonpublic school is required to take the state’s standardized tests.

“That was the measure of accountability that the state wanted,” Tasman said. “They wanted to know if the students were benefiting from the school.”

Most students have shown improvement, but Tasman said when a school does not reach benchmarks for improvement set by the state, “it’s beneficial because the school can reflect on what it is not doing or needs to be doing to benefit their students as a whole, not just their scholarship students.”

While he has not yet provided specifics, Edwards also has suggested he would like to see more accountability from the schools participating in the scholarship program “so that parents can make the best choice in where to send their children,” Tasman said.

While Edwards is expected to push for keeping the scholarship program intact for the 2016-17 school year, Tasman said he appears to be less favorable to the much smaller Tuition Donation Rebate (TDR) program that last year offered
about $61,000 in taxpayer-funded scholarships.

“We are very concerned because we don’t believe he is supportive of that program, and we are going to be very vigilant about maintaining that program,” Tasman said. “Right now, it’s not a lot of money, but they know it could grow.”

Lancaster said she thinks Gov. Edwards will support the TDR program because, like the separate state scholarship program, it is showing benefits to student achievement.

“The commonality in these two programs is that kids are coming into our schools – maybe through two different venues – but we have data to show this is working,” Lancaster said. “These kids are doing better than they did before.”

What makes the TDR program intriguing to high schools, particularly, is that they retain the right to maintain their own admissions standards. Under state scholarship program, conversely, a participating school must take any student who wants to attend that school, Tasman said.

“High schools that have very high admissions standards have shied away from the state scholarship program because of that,” Tasman said.

The TDR program likely will be discussed during a special, two-week legislative session, which Edwards will convene in February. Tasman realizes legislators will be looking at every avenue to close a state budget deficit that is estimated to be as high as $2 billion.

“I don’t know how you can solve that problem without raising taxes,” Tasman said.

The huge budget shortfall also might force legislators to look at accepting federal funds for Medicaid expansion “to fill the holes in the health care budget,” Tasman said.

Peter Finney Jr. can be reached atpfinney@clarionherald.org.