Introducing: Louisiana Believes Anything

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION INTRODUCES LOUISIANABELIEVESANYTHING.COM

BATON ROUGE, La. – In response to the feedback of pro-charter and reform groups, virtual  school operators, and testing companies, the Louisiana Department of Education today announced a complete overhaul of its website. The website’s URL has changed to louisianabelievesanything.com, reflecting the state’s comprehensive plan to ensure every student is fleeced for the maximum state funding before they track to prison or an exciting chicken plucking career. With the change comes a redesign of the entire website with the goal of making navigation through the site easier, by eliminating all useful or historical content. The Department tailored the changes to address concerns that the old site was too revealing and contained accurate information that contradicted pithy press releases like this one. The new site reflects the premise of Louisiana Believes Anything. Based on this discovery, our true bosses expect high profit margins from warehousing students and incessant testing. Empowering charter operators and testing companies to charge exorbitant fees that can be kicked back to fund political campaigns and candidates favorable to this agenda is key to the success of the Louisiana Believes Anything mantra.

“As part of our commitment to providing clear, concise information to help families and educators make informed decisions, we redesigned our website to ensure virtual visitors can find useless information and photos of me with my sleeves rolled up handing out giant fake checks, quickly and efficiently,” said State Superintendent of Education John White. “Rather than an expansive list of programs and regulations, which we have discontinued in favor of hiring more PR folks and lawyers to fend off legal challenges to our draconian policies, the new site focuses on distracting visitors from the lack of support for true student achievement.”

“Louisianabeilevesanything.com is constructed with stooges, politicians, and the legally blind in mind, specifically the exclusion of anything that contradicts the narrative I’m trying to craft that is unsupported by the actual data being collected and reported. The new website also features a Library that contains some random documents, forms and other information about education in Louisiana that to a casual observer might seem useful. This Library was created with all of Louisiana in mind, realizing that I just asked BESE to stop requiring schools to fund actual libraries or librarians, I thought it would be ironic to create an empty useless “library” on the Department’s website. In this new “Library”, families can find information about what their old libraries used to contain as well as a coupon for a free smoothie with the purchase of any LouisianaBelievesAnything John White action figure, complete with real sleeves that can be rolled up to wrist, elbow or even ripped off for an effect I call the “Rambo.” We’ve also included extremely summarized data detailing the state’s academic results we want to show, without any context or supporting figures. We originally shied away from showing even this much, but ultimately we were compelled to do so because we accepted a 4 million dollar grant from IES, the Institute of Education Statistics in return for showing something data-esque-y – and John White Action figures don’t buy themselves.”

Additionally, information about Department programs and initiatives are now categorized under one of eight headings –Alphabet Soup, Teaching to the Test, You can’t spell Assessment without ASS, Accountability Shmountability, Funding Campaign Contributors, Early Childhood Lost, Shadow Schools, and Coursers and Other Big Horses. The new website also will highlight “Hot Topic” fashions – a Goth inspired chain store. This was done in part to confuse people a little more, but mostly because they donated 5,000 dollars to Jindal’s election campaign and another unspecified sum to his wife’s, Supriya’s, “charity.”

“We encourage everyone to click around our new and charter approved website,” said Superintendent White. “If you have thoughts or suggestions to improve our website, please email us at louisianabelievesanything@la.gov so we can add those items to our list of things never to do.

To access the Department’s redesigned website, please visit louisianabelievesanything.com.