We all have heard or read or seen the stories in the mass media about the “miracle” in New Orleans. Hurricane Katrina, which Secretary of Education Arne Duncan called the best thing that ever happened to education in that city, wiped out public education and the teachers’ union. Now New Orleans is the only city where more than 75 % of students are in charter schools with minimal government regulation.
Experienced journalist and scholar Andrea Gabor here goes behind the curtain and takes a closer look than Oprah or the other high-profile celebrants of the “miracle.” Her article appeared in Newsweek-The Daily Beast. (I link to another site here because I had trouble opening the Daily Beast site.)
In a tour de force of investigative journalism, she takes a close look at what is happening in the best charters (typified by a degree of regimentation that most parents would abhor), and what happens to the thousands of kids who disappear and are not included in the statistics.
She concludes:
“In New Orleans, critics argue that the pressure to show high test scores and get kids into college, combined with the broad leeway given to charter schools to suspend and expel students, means the “difficult to teach” kids have been effectively abandoned. New ideas on how to teach disruptive and unmotivated students have not emerged from charter schools,” charges Barbara Ferguson, a former superintendent of public schools in New Orleans and a founder of Research on Reforms. “Whether the difficult-to-teach high school students are expelled by charter schools or whether they attended schools closed by the RSD, they are an outcast group, thrown into an abyss … Neither the RSD nor the state Department of Education tracks these students to determine if they ever enter another high school.”
“But even for students who don’t fall through the cracks or get expelled, it bears asking: have the pressures and incentive systems surrounding charter schools taken public education in the direction we want it to go? Anthony Recasner, a partner in founding New Orleans Charter Middle School and FirstLine, is visibly torn between his hopes for the New Orleans charter experiment and his disappointment in the distance that remains between today’s no-excuses charter-school culture and the movement’s progressive roots. “Education should be a higher-order exploration,” says Recasner, a child psychologist who left FirstLine in 2011 to become CEO of Agenda for Children, a children’s advocacy organization. The typical charter school in New Orleans “is not sustainable for the adults, not fun for kids,” says Recasner, who is one of the few African-American charter leaders in New Orleans; his own experience as a poor child raised by a single parent mirrors that of most students in the charter schools. “Is that really,” he asks, “what we want for the nation’s poor children?”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“. . . means the “difficult to teach” kids have been effectively abandoned. New ideas on how to teach disruptive and unmotivated students have not emerged from charter schools. . .”
Reap what you sow! What goes around comes around! Instant Karma come to get you!
Do not the edudeformers see that this is truly a “civil rights” issue in the sense that the state is constitutional mandated to provide education for all children not just some???
Rahm said he that 25% of kids in Chicgo were not worth wasting money on. Jamie Woodson in TN said we aren’t going to spend money on those kids.
They see it and don’t care.
Re new ideas about working with disruptive and unmotivated students…people interested in those youngsters might want to check out the High School for Recording Arts, Minnesota New Country School, and Avalon Charter.
All work with young people with whom traditional schools were not succeeding. All have done well with many of these youngsters.
“Abandoned” is a word that comes up a lot these days regarding public schools. I think it comes up all the time because it’s an accurate description of how traditional public schools fare under reform.
It certainly describes my now decade-long experience with reform.
Have the traditional public schools in New Orleans improved under reform? Does anyone even ask or care? Because that’s what we were promised. Not that public schools would be replaced, that they would be improved. Has that happened? Anywhere?
“State monitoring has virtually stopped,” says Margaret Lang, who retired last year as director of intervention services at the RSD. “The kids who get churned the most are those with the most disabilities and challenges.”
Deregulation! Freedom to innovate! The market is working, and markets have winners and losers. They’re the losers. Markets are working. The problem is, “markets” were never intended to be applied to children.
State monitoring & compliance in SPED ended with Arne. If he is capable of feeling shame, he should be ashamed for systematically dismantling nearly 40 years of inclusive policies that disability advocates and educators worked to secure for children with disabilities.
Reblogged this on Crazy Crawfish's Blog and commented:
And what is more, many of the miraculous results may be the result of withholding lower performing students from taking tests, and thus getting tests scores, and possible cheating. I have reports if both and LDE makes it a point if only showing percentages and highly manipulated scores without providing underlying data or even numbers of students being tested in various subjects.
Long before charters, markets were applied to children. Wealthy families had (and have) lots of choices in schools. Children of the poor had few if any other than the neighborhood school.
Then people began creating options within districts. Those people were vigorously attacked by some as “destroying public education”. Then as now, those who try to help create options for low income kids are attacked by some for, as Al Shanker put it, “daring to move outside the lock step.” (Shanker was not attacking the innovators).
Sometimes unethical people get involved in innovation. Sometimes their actions give ammunition to critics. But I salute the educators who are trying to create new, potentially more effective public school options, open to all kinds of youngsters, whether inside or outside traditional districts.
Did you even read what the article said, Joe, or did you just reflexively fill in the blanks on your charter school apologetics template?
It’s always the same: confronted with overwhelming evidence that charters are not public schools, that they cherry-pick students on the front and back end, that they divert resources from the public schools, that the most politically-juiced among them have, at best, authoritarian and paternalistic practices (and arguably racist ones), we invariably get weasel words about how “some” charters behave badly, along with “some” public school districts.
False equivalence is a common rhetorical device used to misdirect debate, but it gets increasingly less useful when overdone.
At this point, your opinions transact at an extremely high and ever-increasing discount.
Sure did read it.
Joe, the people financing these charters DON’T CARE about kids who can’t improve the school’s bottom line on paper. Don’t you understand that these schools are a “choice” for kids who would be high achievers in regular public schools anyway?
Or do you have some kind of financial stake in charters and can only see the bottom line?
Jim, many charters serve youngsters who have been “encouraged” to leave district public schools.
But as I have noted, there also are some district public schools that serve kids “pushed out” of traditional public schools.
Our 3 children attended urban non-selective public schools. My interest is in seeing more great public schools.
Are you a teacher? A parent?
@Joe…I truly support those who are trying “to create new and more effective public schools”, IF they are actually experienced teachers and administrators who have taken the time and effort to get buy-in by other teachers and parents, and who are not beholden to stockholders and other puppet-masters. IF the deep pocketed philanthropists would put their money where their mouths were and truly help PUBLIC education with no strings attached and requests for profit potential (do they really need more $$$$?) and no very real concerns about conflicts-of-interest, all this talk would be towards actually helping all students and especially disadvantaged students succeed. I distrust all the incestuousness running rampant throughout this reform movement. Show me one who does not stand to make a profit in some background way from funding charters and testing, then, and only then, will they have some credibility with me.
Tracy, here are a few examples of many that are available
High School for Recording Arts, St. Paul – started by some inner city educator and activists – works with inner city kids, many of whom have been encouraged to leave more traditional schools:
http://hsra.org
Southside Family School (Minneapolis)- started by a group of educators, parents and activists:
strong focus on Civil Rights Movement
http://www.southsidefamilyschool.org/
Codman Square Boston, shares space with a medical clinic, inner city school using Expeditionary Learning
http://www.codmanacademy.org/
Minnesota New Country School, Henderson, Mn – started by rural educators whose parents belonged to farm coops. This school is run on the coop model – the majority of its board of directors are teachers who work in the school. They have helped create more than 30 similar schools, both district & charter:
http://www.newcountryschool.com/
Many more examples available. Thanks for asking.
How has reform benefitted the traditional public schools in New Orleans? Was any consideration given to that? Is anyone in reform even looking at it?
The public was told that reform would benefit traditional public schools. We’re still being told that. Again. MOST children attend traditional public schools. Surely you understand why supporters of the public school system would object to a state and national reform agenda that HARMS our public schools, right? You can continue to insist that you’re “agnostic” on schools, but that’s just a word.
How are traditional public schools faring under reform? How are the VAST majority of kids faring under reform? Are things better or worse for them after a decade of this?
Chiara – The impact varies. In St. Paul, for example, the district declined the request for years from parents to have a Montessori middle school. So a number of parents and educators created a Montessori Middle/High school. Now the district has responded and opened up a Montessori Middle School.
Minneapolis/St Paul Parents asked for a Chinese immersion school, as there are many parents who have adopted children from CHina and wanted them to have a chance to learn the language. The two urban districts did not respond, so a Chinese immersion charter was created. Now St Paul and a suburb have created Chinese immersion district options because there is so much interest.
In Boston, the teachers union suggested a program like the New VIsions program in NYC, which allowed district educators to create new options within the district. School board (aka “school committee”) turned down the union’s idea. Then the charter law passed and some Boston district teachers began making plans to create charters. The school committee reversed itself and worked with the unions to create charters.
In Rochester, Mn,some parents liked the COre KNowledge Curriculum. School board said no. THey proposed a core knowledge charter. School board said let’s work together to create a core knowledge district option. Parents said fine.
In some places, district & charter educators are working together, learning from eachother.
Many examples like this.
There also are some real frustrations around the country.
I do not have a problem with “choice.” My issue is that rich families have always had the option of selecting between a variety of high performing schools. Why have we decided that it’s acceptable for a public school to “fester” with poor achievement and in some cases, unsafe environments? Students should not be forced to choose between a failing public school and an unproven charter school. Futhermore, proponents of choice hardly want to address what happens to students who attend underperforming charter schools. Often, students who do not fit the program requirements of a charter school, re-enroll in a public school. These students return grades behind when the left and the public school is again penalized. ALL schools should provide a quaility education. We should not be starving the public school system to feed the charter school community. If we really cared about the education of children, this would be the true focus. I’ll believe in charter schools, when rich and middle class parents start enrolling their children en droves.
Wow, what an innovation, firing about 7,000 school employees ( teachers and principals to janitors and bus drivers) after hurricane Katrina, effectively wiping out the union and violating the civil rights and contract promises of the fired employees. It’s called the shock doctrine or disaster capitalism.
What was the economic affect of gutting the middle class base of those communities? Were they harmed or helped by that?
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/25/a-report-card-on-education-reform/
If anyone wants to read the US secretary of education’s latest, here he discusses how public schools are all failing (but you knew that) but charter schools are doing extraordinary things.
Remember, he’s an “agnostic”. He just calls balls and strikes! Ignore that fact that 99% per cent of what he says about traditional public schools is negative (that’s if he bothers to mention the schools that MOST children attend at all) and he promotes charters every chance he gets.
That’s the new definition of “agnostic”.
He is not saying all district schools are failing and all charters are great. In fact, he is saying that we as a country need to better, and that we need to learn from the most effective schools, whether district or charter.
Arne knows nothing. The corporate puppet says what he is told.
Sure Joe….
Do We Need More Heroes?
by JOHN MERROW on 25. SEP, 2013 in 2013 BLOGS
Joe Nathan 25. Sep, 2013 at 5:04 pm
Well done, John.
Chiara – The impact varies.
Joe: the impact hasn’t varied in my district. Reform has harmed my district. We have less funding and more mandates. Reform has narrowed our curriculum and discouraged our teachers. I’ve watched it happen. My children range from 25 to 11.
I’m helping with a bond issue right now, to replace our schools (which were built in 1916). You know what people are telling us when we go to ask for their vote? They won’t support it because public schools are “failing”. You know where they got that idea, that all public schools are failing? National reform lobbyists and politicians with an agenda like Arne Duncan and John Kasich.
Our schools aren’t, actually, failing. It’s an ordinary rural working class and middle class district. We have the same problems and successes as one would expect.
Why don’t you tell me how I’m supposed to “support” my local public school amid this national campaign to discredit public schools and label all of them as “failing”? I’m not Bill Gates. I don’t have a grant. I have a full time job. It’s like bailing a boat with a thimble. I’m a lawyer. I’m a professional advocate. I see it as advocating for my kid. I don’t pretend to be “unbiased”. I’m biased. I’m in FAVOR of my kid’s public school and I’m in FAVOR of this community because I live here and love it. I’m not “agnostic”, Joe. It is my belief that traditional public schools have been treated inequitably and unfairly. It is my belief that our public schools have not only not been helped by reform, they’ve been harmed. If I see that, I will object, and I am.
Chiara, glad you are working on behalf of your local district. I’ve done the same thing.
Duncan and Gates are not saying every district school is bad or every charter is great. They are saying as a nation, we need to do better. I agree.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/25/a-report-card-on-education-reform/?_r=0
Here’s a portion of an this interview with Duncan:
Leonhardt: A lot of other Democrats and liberals say, “Hey, this stuff hasn’t worked nearly as well as the proponents say. Charter schools don’t perform any better. A lot of the stuff has been oversold.” What is your answer?
Duncan: The truth is that the results are mixed. The truth is also that the highest-performing charters are doing extraordinary things for communities who haven’t had those opportunities. For me, there is nothing inherently good or bad about a school with a name charter. We just need many more high-quality schools, and this is why I think in education, we fight all the wrong battles.
The battle is not traditional versus charter. We have one common enemy, and it’s academic failure. Where charters are reducing academic failure and increasing graduation rates, and sending kids to college, we need to replicate that and learn from it and support it. Where do we have success? Where are parents and students voting with their feet – where you have 1,000 to 2,000 kids looking for that kind of option? They are telling us something. We’ve got to listen. We owe it to them to listen. Take those lessons into traditional schools. And where traditional schools are doing that same thing, we’ve got to listen.
Anyone who said that every charter is successful is part of the problem. Anyone who says that charters are all part of the problem is part of the problem.”
Joe, it’s politician-speak. It’s a straw man. No one is saying “all charters are the problem”.
Duncan was in Cleveland Ohio a couple of months ago, pushing yet another “reform”. Now, while Arne Duncan was closing public schools in Chicago, I was here, living in Ohio. I watched Cleveland be “reformed” under Arne Duncan’s predecessor. Cleveland is now undergoing the exact same plan of “reform” that they have been undergoing for a decade now.
I want to go in a different direction. I think 16 years of free market reforms is enough. Arne Duncan works for me. Part of his JOB is to advocate for my kid, not sell his legacy Common Core by throwing my kid under the bus.
I wouldn’t be doing this if there was a single state or federal actor who was working on behalf of traditional public schools. We have no advocates. The only time anyone in “reform” ever pays attention to traditional public schools is to deliver a stern lecture on how much we suck or to impose another ill-considered mandate. I’ve been dealing with this for a decade now. I’m to the point where I feel we would be better off completely abandoned. We joke that we don’t want any more “help” from reformers. You’re killing us with kindness! Help someone else. Please.
I laughed out loud when I saw what was a serious headline the other day. “Do public schools stink? Maybe not” Duncan was quoted in the piece. Apparently he’s not permitted to defend public schools, or he will lose the “agnostic” label. That’s ridiculous. It’s nonsensical. It puts abstract theory (and politics!) ahead of the interests of the millions of kids who attend real, existing traditional public schools. They need and deserve an advocate.
For goodness sakes. Now public schools “stink”? Is this reform movement run by 7th graders? You’ve become a parody. I thought I was reading an Onion piece.
Joe Nathan
September 26, 2013 at 10:54 am
It’s pretty simple. Joe. I want a Sec of Education who mentions traditional public schools. I have a governor who is actively hostile to traditional public schools. I have enough problems without a Sec of Education who agrees with him.
“Bipartisan” doesn’t mean “right”. Iraq was bipartisan. It was also tragic.
As a lawyer, a lively and fractious debate doesn’t scare me, lock-step bipartisan agreement scares the hell out of me, because dissenters aren’t heard. That’s happening here. We’re moving right from conclusions to reformers reached WITHOUT broad public consensus to demands that everyone get along, by reformers. Do you see why I won’t accept that? Do you see how that’s an “agreement” that is exclusively on your terms?
Yes, I hear you want someone to speak on behalf of traditional district public schools. Apparently you and I read what Duncan said quite differently. He did mention traditional public schools and some are doing very well.
I have no expectation that everyone will get along. Very little progress happens if we wait for everyone to agree
Everyone didn’t agree when some of us marched for civil rights
Everyone didn’t agree when some people insisted on equal pay for equal work
Everyone didn’t agree on expanding voter rights to include women and people of color.
I understand that you are frustrated by what you see happening in Bryan Ohio, in other parts of Ohio and around the country. Many people involved in trying to improve schools agree with at least part of what frustrates you.
Leonhardt: I think – whether you like the term or not – you all identify yourself as sympathetic to the goals of the school-reform movement. Given that, I’d be interested in your thoughts about what has the school reform movement – the “choice” movement or the accountability movement or whatever it is – learned? What did it not have quite right initially, and what has it learned?
Duncan: A huge thing: No Child Left Behind was very well-intentioned. It did lots of things to spotlight the achievement gap. What it didn’t get was the need for high standards. What actually happened, which is really, really insidious, is that you had almost 20 states, in reaction to the law, dummy-down their standards and lower their standards.
The worst thing that I think can happen to kids and families, and particularly disadvantaged communities, is that people expect less of them, to make politicians look good. What I think the reform movement got wrong fundamentally is it was very loose on goals but very tight on how to get there.
I just fundamentally believe in a different theory of change. I believe in being tight on goals – having a very high bar – and loose on how to get there. We should give people a lot more room and flexibility to create and to be innovative.
I think that the reform movement got that wrong in a big way. Not from lack of good intent. And I think that was big. It hurt the country in a way that we’re working hard to correct.”
Joe, I ask questions and listen to responses for a living. Duncan was given an opportunity to critique his own performance. Do you see what he did? He critiqued NCLB. I wouldn’t have accepted that response at hearing. It’s not a response. Arne Duncan can’t find a single thing wrong with his agenda or agenda, yet he travels the country slamming public schools. That’s a REAL problem.
Reformers are perceived by people here as arrogant. There’s a reason for that. Duncan is very tough on middle class school teachers. Not so tough on Arne Duncan. That’s a problem.
I just wish the language of the anti-charter or pro-reform articles wasn’t so vague yet slanted that it almost forces the reader to have an emotional response.
The charters I’ve been in in NO do not expel special needs students, and they don’t have the ‘luxury’ of an alternative school to give teachers and staff a break when their behavior gets so out of control that they disrupt the learning of an entire building.
No one argues that the students in NO are behind their same-aged peers nationally, so intensive instruction and intervention is needed to catch them up, especially when CCSS are going to introduce texts 2 grade levels above a level they already aren’t at. This article says the rigor needed to catch them up is too much? Well what the heck are you supposed to do?
Also, the no fun in charters in NO is factually incorrect. Peek your heads in and you’ll see for yourselves.
Too many Joes here, nevertheless to Joe 11:50 am: Too many charter schools do indeed engage in counseling out problem kids and overall and on average charter schools do not have the same percentages of free/reduced lunch kids, special needs and disabled kids though your charter school is an exception. So charter schools are off doing their thing independent of the district schools and sapping funds from the real public schools. What could possibly go wrong?
Joe, I have several parents whose children were in fact pushed out of charter schools and are in alternative schools. Perhaps you are not aware of the charter alternative schools operating in New Orleans. ReNew Accelerated Charter School, The Net and Crescent City Leadership Academy are all alternative schools. Students do get expelled from charter schools in New Orleans. Perhaps you should check with the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana and Families and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children for the Data. You can also dig deep into the Louisiana Department of Education’s own data to find the statistics about expulsions and suspensions. You should also look up the data about the number of students who leave schools under dubious exit codes. I know even have documentation from various charter schools as it relates to specific students where they have “pushed out” students. The documentation sometimes say that the student is dis-enrolled due to not following rules. I’ve seen paperwork that has said that the parent needs to find a new school because they child did not meet expectations due to the child’s disability. I even had one RSD charter school put into writing that a child could not come back to the school and should go to another location outside of their school and an teacher would come a couple of times a week for 2 hours a day to provide instruction. All illegal and we were able to get most of these kids back into school. However, not without further damage to the child by the ineffective charter school personnel. Sadly, a few of these kids pushed around by charter schools have dropped out. If you are not seeing this, perhaps you are blinded by the propaganda of success. Trust me, there are real live children being pushed through the cracks of the charter movement in New Orleans. I’m sorry you don’t like the emotional response the article evokes, but it’s real in the lives of the people. Spouting data relieves the public of feeling the full weight of an experiment gone horrible wrong. If you really care about children, you will open your eyes to the full truth of what happens to the kids who don’t fit into the charter school models that exist in new Orleans. I’m easy to find, I am happy to point you to real examples. Hit me up on Twitter @KHRoyal to connect.
“perhaps you are blinded by the propaganda of success”
“If you really care about children, you will open your eyes to the full truth”
See. My point exactly. Yes, I’m very aware there are charter alt schools. All I said is not where I work/not universal.
A lot of the compliance issues you’re talking about aren’t unique to NOLA charters, and they aren’t unique to Louisiana. It’s arguable what happened to children with special needs was worse back in the day (yes I know a certain superintendent said that recently, but I am fully capable to do my own research).
The problems you all have on this site aren’t best served or going to be fixed by spouting emotional propaganda similar to what’s coming from the other side. That’s all I’m saying.
Agreed, lots of Joe’s here. That’s part of the reason I use my full name. Leaving now to visit some district & charter public schools with which we work. Hope each of you has a good day.
Most of us are working in schools Joe…..please stop making this all about you and what you do. We don’t each sign off informing every reader of the great work we do…give it a rest please.
The charter school proponents talk a good game. They love to wow you with their data about gains. However, they have no magic for certain students and have resorted to getting rid of them by any means possible. I see this in my work with parents. I hear about the students with high needs from professionals working in juvenile justice and mental health. I see in our community the evidence of the reforms not addressing the needs of students who don’t fit into the nice neat “no excuses” box every time I hear about violent crime in our city where young people are the victims or perpetrators. Now that they have pushed many of these kids off into “alternative” schools, they want a pass on how the alternative schools are held accountable. This will incentivize getting rid of more kids from the charter school and the few remaining regular public schools. Initially, the charter movement tried to sell us on the idea that they could do better with the same kids for the same or less money. Apparently this is not true. It’s it’s time to recognize that charter schools have not worked the way they promised us in the Louisiana law. We have not taken the successful practices and used them to improve regular district schools. One only has to look to the performance of the Recovery School District’s direct run schools to see the failure of charters as a reform tool. If there were something to learn from charter schools, we would see RSD direct run schools performing on par with their charters at the least. When you consider that RSD direct run schools do not have to deal with a teacher’s union, a meddling school board and has the freedom to innovate and hire the best staff available, why are 100% of their remaining direct run schools rated F? Why are 79% of the RSD charters that even have letter grades, rated D or F? I like that Andrea has put a human face on the charter school rhetoric of reform data. The bottom line is that we must do more to reach the children the previous system failed and those who are being failed by the so called reforms.
What is happening in New Orleans is happening across the U.S. I certainly have enough of it in California. In fact, three of the CORE Federal Waiver schools have students not coming to school everyday from 17-24%. Why were these losers given more flexibility? At LAUSD in 2001-02 with 86,000 more enrollment than now only 14,500 or 2% did not come to school everyday. When Monica Garcia became board president of the “Reform Board” of the billionaires it was 40,000. Today with 86,000 less enrollment than in 2001-02 it is 117,000 or 17% of the student body for a lost revenue of only $1,250,000,000. You only get paid for those who come to school. LAUSD is bragging about their wonderful 3 API point gain. This is in reality terrible. Now, consider what that number would be if those 117,000 low performers and draggers down of test scores were in school. Well, you know the scores would drop like an elevator not connected. The advantage is what would happen with society. Don’t you think it is better to have lower overall test scores and have our youth in school rather than on the street getting into trouble with the criminal justice system or condemned to a life of poverty? This is the choice to make and the wrong choice has been made. Many K-12 failures end up in the criminal justice system at extremely high costs. Youth Authority here is about $75,000/year. I just saw costs for jail in N.Y. at $161,000/year. So what has happened is that the schools to raise test scores will throw away the low performers because of test scores being god and pass those costs onto other government agencies at dramatically increased costs to the general taxpayer and society through poverty and crime. This is who is running this mess now. Total sociopaths is what I say. I have 10 year spreadsheets on many school districts. The state has them. Torlakson asked for them and stated in a State Board of Ed. meeting that staff was studying them. I have been told no one has ever seen anything like this. I ask “What are you people doing? This is as simple as it gets to get real information.”
I worked for the LDoE for over 9 years, primarily in accountability from 2001 to 2010. I was in charge of policy when Bulletin 111 was codified. I evaluated the accountability pieces of the charter proposals for the 5 charters granted before Katrina. I ran the data that helped define LA Revised Statute 17:10.6 (an essential piece for the creation of 17:10.7). When 17:10.7 was established (the law that took the New Orleans schools after Katrina), I ran the data to determine the list of schools that met the criteria to be taken by the state. My group eventually produced the majority of the report cards and SPS releases. Things got pretty questionable when Pastorek came in. He hired Vallas and suddenly the RSD was handling it’s own reporting, although we still produced the actual SPS results. The RSD published results that weren’t calculated using the same formulae as the rest of the state. We never knew who did those calculations. Certain historical data started disappearing from the website – redesigned by Pastorek decree. I produced the first list (very short) of High Poverty High Performing Schools and was instructed to lower the standards until we could generate a list of at least 20. I was asked to falsify a list of schools eligible for federal grant dollars to include specific charter schools and refused, but my supervisor still provided a list with those schools included to Pastorek (and Tyler at that time). Former employees indicate this still occurs. In fall 2010, I’d left that job but was asked by a BESE member to look into some RSD test data. I took a quick look one day between meetings and noticed twice as many students were reported as TAKING the tests as there were INCLUDED in the school performance scores. I realized I needed several years of data to determine what might have caused this phenomenon (the Vallas Effect?), but when I returned to the project the data were no longer available. The first voucher students in New Orleans took the state tests, and the results were evaluated and provided to the upper echelon. They changed those numbers to show much better results when released to the press. The numbers coming from the LDoE, particularly related to the RSD and charters just do not make sense to anyone vaguely familiar with the data. So now, data is not available. Districts frequently can’t get their own data. Legitimate public records requests are ignored. Policy isn’t followed. I can only hope that we ALL remember these details everytime we enter a polling booth.
Thank you Tom. Over the years I have attended many OPSP, RSD and BESE meetings. I’ve visited many OPSB ans RSD schools and interacted with some of the staff and families in my role as a parent advocate. I know that the data regarding what is happening with these schools is flawed. I know that the state has become protective of it’s data. It’s a shame that people want to believe a miracle is happening here but there really is no miracle, it’s fraud, plain and simple. I am now suspicious of the classroom grades at several schools now that I have seen a few questionable transcripts. I can see that there is a huge disconnect in student performance at the high school level on the ACT compared to the school performance score. Check out the percentages of students tested and you will find that very small numbers of students were tested at so called college prep RSD charter schools and even those composite scores aren’t high enough to get students into a Louisiana 4 year college. Something is very wrong with data in this state and you have confirmed what I haven suspected for years based on my interactions with families and schools.
Gabor’s article is plagued with problems and clearly biased: https://medium.com/education-reform/88fda2453613
So is Cook’s. For starters, why not explain to readers why nine charters, though their SPS scores would qualify them as D of F, are excused from being graded and instead are given a “T”?
Allow me: According to Louisiana Bulletin 126, charters are given a free pass until their thrid year, at which time they are expected to demonstrate the amazing academic rigor of achieving a D. If they don’t they could (not definite) lose their charter at the end of their fourth (not third) year. If the charter operator does lose its charter, then the churn continues: New operator; new ungraded grace period of two years (hence the “T”); and so forth.
So, based upon the 2012 SPS link Cook includes in his article,
https://skydrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=D3F2909F6ACA3757!155&app=Excel&authkey=!ADjmNqreCfp5jWE
the 22 charters that have F’s are candidate for charter churn, having an F in at least their third year, and the 18 charters with a D are considered as “apssing”– even though Jindal has publicly defined a “failing” school as one with a C, D, or F.
Stellar.
No Mercedes, the question is why didn’t Gabor explain it? That’s the issue – technically, what she said isn’t correct. I thought that a statistician would prize accuracy, but since you’re clearly more interested in “raging against the machine” incoherently, I guess not.
The ungraded charters rate as D or F but are excused. According to their numeric scores, they are D or F. Staisticians go for the number, Cook.
Background on Peter Cook of Mass Insight School Turnaround:
http://www.massinsight.org/stg/about/staff/
Thank you Dr. Schneider. I’ve given up addressing anything P.C. Says. As a parent in the NOLA system for over 20 years, I know OPSB was not perfect, but they are a heck of a lot better than this sham called the Recovery School District. People who make their living off of pushing what they term reform for other people’s, children refuse to accept that this thing they created is worse than what we had. There absolutely was a lot of room for improvement in our schools. However when I look at the mess these so called reformers have brought to us, I could not have imagined a worse nightmare. At least before public education was not a dictatorship like it is now. As a parent and as some term me, an activist, I was able to work with the system to make positive change for children. When I tried to work with the RSD, it became clear that they did not want parents and community members involved although they strung us along as if they wanted our input until they spent all of the Walton money. This was more dishonest than any of my experiences in dealing with the Orleans Parish School Board. P.C. And others really need to stop trying to silence the voices of people who can see through the propaganda and go back to wherever it is the came from. They are making things worse for our most challenged families by pretending that there is success where there really is just a shifting around of children.
Mass Insight’s fat financial gain from ed reform:
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2010/02/turnaround-millions-mass-insight-and.html
My investigation of New Orleans charter schools was the product of a year of research and reporting, including visits to over half-a-dozen charter schools and interviews with close to one hundred people, including pro-charter folks, anti-charter folks, parents, students, academic researchers, and community leaders. As an academic with research funding, I had the luxury of digging deep and really trying to understand the complexities of the New Orleans education experiment. The only people I did not interview were current officials with the LDOE and RSD who refused repeated requests for interviews and clarifications of their data.
A few other important points that are misrepresented by Peter Cook, and one egregious ethical violation on his part:
By far the most shameful statement by Mr. Cook has to do with Lawrence, the 18-year-old who cycled through SIX RSD schools in just two years. Not only does Mr. Cook refuse to acknowledge that this boy/young man was let down by almost everyone, including the New Orleans school system; as Mr. Cook surely knows since he has close ties to Sci Academy, after 2 years in the RSD, there was still no IEP for Lawrence in Louisiana’s Special Education Reporting (SER) system. Rather, Mr. Cook maligns Lawrence on a public blog by referencing incidents that occurred before the one for which he was incarcerated. If Mr. Cook is correct about his accusations about Lawrence, the incidents he refers to occurred while Lawrence was a minor, which raises the question: How does Mr. Cook know? Is this the sort of gossip that charter-school folks circulate about the children in their care?? How would he feel if the actions of his own under-age children were publicly, and gratuitously, aired?
Far from being “an exception”, as Mr. Cook insists, there are many kids who fall between the cracks in New Orleans and are not included in the official statistics. New Orleans now has a thriving new group of “alternative” schools that are full of kids who have cycled through multiple charter schools. The aim of at least some of these schools is to help kids who would otherwise have fallen between the cracks—because they are overage, have been incarcerated, kicked out of school etc.
Re SPS scores and school letter grades…
The chart Mr. Cook links to does not include several schools that were closed for poor performance. For example, Sojourner Truth, one of the charter schools attended by one of the students I profile, is not on Cook’s spreadsheet because it was closed.
I never said that schools have “carte blanche” to expel students…
Rather, schools have any number of ways to ease students out. Some kids are not allowed to reenroll. One parent I spoke to said she was asked to sign what she thought was a routine document and it contained fine print saying she would “withdraw” her child. I asked many pro-charter folks in New Orleans about these practices and none denied that they occur. Rather, they argued that the industry is trying to address these problems.
Cook said that I omitted OneApp, which is NOT true…
I refer to “the chaotic first years of the RSD, when parents had to apply to every charter school individually, which led to widespread allegations that schools cherry-picked their students. (Last year the RSD instituted a streamlined application process.)”
NOTE: The “streamlined application process” is OneApp, an unnecessarily jargony term that won’t mean anything to readers outside New Orleans.
Regarding Teach for America…
The quintupling of TFAers in New Orleans occurred over the last FIVE years, according to TFA’s own website. NOT eight years, as per Mr. Cook’s blog post. Moreover, many many of the first TFAers sent to New Orleans are very angry about being sent there to replace tenured teachers (mostly experienced African-American teachers) who were illegally fired.
https://www.teachforamerica.org/where-we-work/greater-new-orleans-louisiana-delta
For the record, since Mr. Cook refers to me as a “Ravitchite in journalist’s clothing”: I know Diane Ravitch slightly. We have met once and spoken on the phone two or three times. In fact, I have spent far more time with charter-school leaders in New Orleans than I have ever spent with Ms. Ravitch. Having said that, and having read a great deal on the subject of education reform over the past few years, I would recommend her book Reign of Error to anyone who is interested in a thoughtful and important alternative perspective on the privatization movement in education.
Reblogged this on Education Talk New Orleans and commented:
Andrea Gabor has done a great job of putting a human face on the changes in the New Orleans public education system over the last years.