Is New Orleans a national model?
Simple formula: have a major catastrophe. Wipe out public education. Get rid of the unions. Hand schools over to private operators. A miracle. A national model for school reform. Read this article by a British reporter.
Or the contrary view: The New Orleans story is an example of hype and spin by entrepreneurs seeking new markets. The district ranks 69 of 70 districts in the state. Read this letter by a teacher in the state.
What do you think?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane,
The teacher link isn’t working.
I fixed the link.
Yes, I got it..thanks…and you are lickety split on the dueling basketball stars. One a good guy and one doing his wife’s bidding….it is crazy here in CT.
I noticed that, too, Linda. The other link is …um…interesting. Those bad teacher unions don’t even want to feed children! “Won’t Back Down Redux”.
Here’s the correct link to the letter from the teacher:
http://theadvocate.com/news/opinion/4226130-123/letters-john-white-faces-school
Thanks for posting.
John White appears to be another Teaching Fraud for America……..it must be tiring to keep track of all your lies, spin and tricks.
Hmm….well, it’s going to be difficult for other cities to replicate a national disaster if that’s the first step in the formula!
Hi, Unfortunately the link from the teacher didn’t seem to work. Any ideas?
Kim
*Powered by…….*
I fixed it. Thanks for letting me know. This is the right link: http://theadvocate.com/news/opinion/4226130-123/letters-john-white-faces-school
I posted this comment to Mercedes’s letter to the editor (Mercedes is a teacher with a Ph.D in our high performing school district.)
What John White (and much of the public) doesn’t understand (or does understand and is using to his advantage) is that no matter what method he uses to “grade” schools, there will always be those at the bottom of the scale , those at the top of the scale and those everywhere in between. In his competition there will always be winners and losers. And that is the reality of what he calls “the status quo,” sort of like breathing and walking.
So while at the same time he criticizes the status quo, he capitalizes on the premier example – standardized testing which when it became high stakes and a singular, unreliable and invalid indicator of learning it signaled the beginning of the end of a public school system. Our big mistake was in not seeing the real nature of the beast at its birth and in not fighting then to bring about its demise. Educators were too focused on bringing about meaningful learning in the classroom to take notice of the growing movement to privatize education. The one single element of private schools that is absolutely superior to our public system since No Child Left Behind is their refusal to be coerced into, controlled by and constrained by high stakes standardized testing. By falling victim to the federal mandates of this testing, public schools have paid lip service to individualized instruction (frustrating teachers) but in the end sacrificing all students to the concept that they can or should be standardized.
So in an effort to maintain the system whereby he can continue the proliferation of charters, vouchers, virtual schools. . . He (White) simply manipulates the rules of the game enlisting competition. He has adopted a teacher evaluation system that guarantees at least 10% of certified teachers will fail every year regardless of their quality (remember on a grading scale there will always be those at the bottom, those at the top and those everywhere in between). He has a School Performance Score system (grading scale) whereby there will always be those at the top and those at the bottom and since there is the added component of an unjustifiable or controllable measure of PROGRESS required, even high performing schools will be subject to “failure.” No matter how high you raise an ARTIFICIAL bar you will achieve failure and don’t be fooled into thinking it will be failure at a higher level.
He has created a system of CHOICE that eliminates any of the advantages of consistency, persistence or stability either for students or schools by moving students from one school to another, changing school environment from one administration/faculty to another or one charter management company to another.
He has taken an already inequitable and confusing funding system (MFP) and manipulated it to squeeze the budgets of even the most economically viable districts like St. Tammany by diverting LOCAL taxpayer money from public schools to virtual or brick and mortar charter schools, private/parochial schools, out of district special schools, homeschoolers (on line classes) and now through course choice which requires local districts to pay for coursework not offered in a student’s regular school. It is a mathematical slight-of-hand that White’s slick rhetoric cannot obfuscate.
All but two BESE board members are complicit; those legislators – some of whom claim they didn’t know then what they see now – who will not now move to reverse the destructive legislation they pushed through are complicit; LDOE employees who HAVE TO KNOW what is going on are complicit; The media that refuses to report using the tenets of good journalism are complicit.
It’s time for the public to stand up for themselves and for all the children who are being and will be left behind. The growth and well being of our communities are being stunted. The effects of total privatization of education, healthcare, prisons, insurance, social security etc. will affect everybody in some way, but most importantly will undermine the benefits of a democracy.
Why doesn’t Bobby Jindahl just do what our governor in Wisconsin has done and simply exempt the voucher and private schools from the standardized testing that the public schools are subjected to? Because, you know, they need to be freed from the red tape and restrictions of the regular education system in order to flourish.
I don’t think much of our governor Walker, but at least he is enough of a chess player to look one move ahead and make a plan for the inevitable, unlike this doofus from Louisiana. Of course, Walker did have the advantage of the nation’s most extensive experiment in vouchers in Milwaukee to inform him of what was going to happen with the scores, so he could see it coming better than most.
<>
They’ve never state tested private schools in Louisiana. There are no requirements to run one and no requirements to teach at one, but they’ll still receive voucher money no matter what.
As a Louisiana teacher with a degree in Statistics, I have to argue on the basis of RSD being the 69th ranking district state. While that figure is true, that doesn’t tell the full storm. RSD doesn’t simply operate charters; they also take over failing schools and operate them as district schools. The measures in Louisiana require schools to be beyond failing before they are taken over. They need to be on “academic watch” (equating to approximately 80% of students being below proficiency in all core content areas) for three consecutive years before they can be taken over. These schools on “academic watch” are not only the worst schools in the state, but among the worst in the country.
Many have been able to independently lift themselves up out of that category. However, some do not and are taken over. This same three year rule applies to charters, which are then taken back by the state. As a huge proportion of RSD’s total roster of schools were the lowest performing in the state, that skews their overall district scores greatly. Despite these low scores, RSD still made more growth than any other district this year. Some schools are still failing, but it takes time to go from <80% proficiency to <50% or <10%. Additionally, not all charters in Orleans parish or Louisiana as a whole are a part of RSD. There are many charters that are either part of the local district (such as the one I work for) or operate without any district, not even RSD.
It is also irrelevant to compare the current success of the remaining Orleans parish public schools with RSD. Orleans parish has only a handful of schools remaining, and almost all of them have magnet programs requiring gifted/talented status or other forms of selective admissions. RSD schools do not. Apples and oranges.
Good for you! I, too am so sick of the bureaucratic bullshit of a broken system. Be at peace with your decision …more people should be so brave!