There is much to take issue with regarding Governor Jindal's heavy-handed reform of education in Louisiana. We think any plan that essentially disassembles public education instead of improving it is transparently political and likely to win some battles at the expense of losing the war.
But even more heavy-handed are the clumsy threats of litigation by the Louisiana Association of Educators union against the state's private schools.
The LAE fell short fighting the plan in the Legislature, so now it is suing schools. While understandable from a strictly legal standpoint, it smacks of intimidation, though an LAE spokesman says that's not the intention.
The union's action also seems transparently self-serving; an attempt to leverage anger among Louisiana's public school teachers into new membership. But from a public relations standpoint, suing schools while parents and students make final plans for the first day of classes just turns the LAE into a schoolyard bully.
The LAE would have more credibility had it led efforts to overhaul education in Louisiana instead of fighting them. Now we urge them to drop this ill-advised legal tactic and we hope the state's private schools simply ignore it.
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