BATON ROUGE (AP) — In a rare post-midnight session, the state House early Friday approved Gov. Bobby Jindal’s proposal tying public school teacher job security to student performance. The measure also eliminates seniority protections for teachers when hard financial times force layoffs.

Backers of the bill say current tenure practice, tied to every-three-year evaluations that list teachers as satisfactory or unsatisfactory, fails to weed out bad teachers or reward the best.

The Jindal-backed bill sets up new criteria and more complex ratings. It requires five years of “highly effective” ratings to earn tenure and continued evaluations to keep it.

The 64-40 vote in a rare post-midnight session Friday came after passage of another Jindal-backed bill late Thursday allowing the state to pay private school tuition for students who want to escape inferior public schools. That bill also eases the way for creation of more charter schools — public schools run by private groups with a great deal of autonomy from local school boards.

Jindal was eager to get the bills passed early in the session, which began last week and ends in early June.

House leaders accommodated. After an all-day debate on the voucher-charter bill, they adjourned just before midnight Thursday, then quickly reconvened in the first minutes of Friday morning to carry on with debate over the teacher tenure bill.

The Senate will debate the measures next.

Opponents attacked the tenure bill as, in the words of Rep. Sam Jones, D-Franklin, “a war on teachers,” and said it will set up unrealistic evaluations that don’t take into account factors beyond teachers’ control, such as student poverty, classroom violence or low parental involvement.

Backers said the tenure bill and the voucher bill, sweeping and complex measures, will give parents more choice and provide competition that will improve schools in a state that continues lag the nation in school performance.

“I want us to give every kid in the state an opportunity to be prepared and an opportunity to have a successful life,” said Rep. Steve Carter, R-Baton Rouge, the House sponsor of the Jindal package.

Opponents said they feared the voucher bill would divert badly needed money from public schools.

“This will bankrupt my public school system,” said Rep. Robert Johnson, D-Marksville.

They also accused backers of the bill of unfairly blaming teachers for the state’s education ills. And they complained the bills would allow too many non-certified teachers to teach in public charter schools.

Administration supporters said lack of certification was not a barrier to effective teaching.

In length and contentiousness, Thursday’s marathon House floor session was similar to a 16-hour committee hearing last week. One difference: After fighting off substantive amendments in committee hearings last week, the Jindal administration was amenable to some limited tweaks in the House.

One was a response to critics who have long argued that the voucher provision would improperly fund private schools with tax revenue that voters in local districts have approved for public schools.

Rep. Jim Fannin, D-Jonesboro and an administration ally, won passage of an amendment in the afternoon that forbids locally approved tax money from going to non-public schools.

But it didn’t end the argument.

Rep. John Bel Edwards, D-Amite, said the Fannin amendment won’t work. He said the bill would still allow state education officials to, in effect, use the state education budget to redirect the local money to private schools. Edwards later tried an amendment of his own to more clearly block the use of local tax dollars in private schools. It was defeated in one of the closest votes of the night: 47 for, 50 against.

Changes approved in the morning were aimed at opponents who said that the bill fails to hold private schools to the same tough, performance-based standards used to grade public schools, and that it was too broad in scope.

The original bill allowed students in public schools with a C, D or F grade under the state’s public school accountability system to be eligible for vouchers. A Fannin amendment, approved 88-15, would give priority to students in schools earning a D or an F.

Another change, approved 82-21, says the state education department must develop an accountability program for schools that accept voucher students.

It was a nod to some of the measure’s critics, including non-partisan research groups such as Council for a Better Louisiana and the Public Affairs Research Council, who said the voucher program lacked sufficient accountability and that it should be a tool for students in the worst public schools. The language didn’t describe what kind of performance benchmarks would be required in the education department’s accountability program.

The amendments didn’t mollify all opponents.

Edwards, a leader of the opposition, said Fannin’s amendment should eliminate students in C schools from the voucher program, not just put them on a lower priority.

“Is a kid in a C school trapped in a failing school?” he asked, referring to a talking point often employed by the bill’s supporters.

Fannin said a C school is considered “average,” but insisted that parents with students in such schools should still have the option of private school enrollment.

Jones, said the accountability amendment by Rep. Neil Abramson, D-New Orleans, should do more to spell out how the private schools will be held accountable.

“Why in the world would you trust the bureaucracy to draw up rules for this when you already have a standard for the public school system?” Jones asked.

Abramson said he believes allowing the education department to establish criteria was sufficient.

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Online:

House Bills 974 and 976 and other education bills can be seen at: www.legis.state.la.us