Inside Report: Dissension over education inside BESE
by WILL SENTELL - Advocate (excerpt)

The state’s top school board used to be a mostly collegial panel. It met monthly for parts of three days. Heated disputes surfaced from time to time, especially over how tough standards should be to get Louisiana’s academic achievement off the bottom of many lists. Yet ever since the state started taking over public schools in 2006 the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education has changed.

Trying to undo decades of academic and other failures in New Orleans public schools is a gargantuan task. That is especially true when the job is overseen by 11 board members from Houma, Sulphur, Shreveport, Monroe and elsewhere.

Board votes of 6-5 on key issues used to be rare. Now they are not unusual, including some earlier this year on the state’s push to take over eight public schools in East Baton Rouge Parish.