When reformers say that New Orleans is a success, bear in mind that it is a low-performing district in a low-performing state, ranked 69th out of 70 districts in Louisiana. In addition, New Orleans got many millions in federal grants and private philanthropy to “prove” that privatization works.
A reader from Louisiana writes:
http://www2.ed.gov/programs/teacherincentive/2012awards.html
I was just studying the Louisiana grants awarded this round and back in 2010. Astounded at the amounts of money coming from Feds to subversively promote their agenda. In 2010 New Schools For New Orleans received millions. Now, understand that NSNO is basically an arm of TFA. A major purpose of this grant is to develop effective CAREER teachers. I am going to file a public information Request to both the Feds and LDOE for the requisite progress reports that NSNO had to file. Opening this link will also provide the full grant applications and the inflated/misrepresented claims about the success of RSD schools. Very interesting reading.
This is taxpayer money!
It’s a good thing poverty isn’t destiny. Otherwise, that money might have made a difference if it had been used for better things
In 2011:
Neerav Kingsland is the Principal Officer of New Schools For New Orleans, Inc.
Over $11M in contributions, over $6M in expenses.
Grant of 2.7M for: School support and investment: the organization operates with an intense focus on student achievement, and this focus guides the organization as it invests in both new and existing schools. The organization’s school investment fund supports school founders and charter management organizations to launch new public schools and provides extensive support for existing charter schools.
Grant of 1.3M: … recruiting outstanding teachers and leaders through partnerships with TeachingNola and New Leaders for New Schools.
Sarah Usdin, CEO/Founder, $145,000 salary, + a deferred compensation lump sum payment of $100,000, which she received.
Neerav Kingsland, $117,000 salary
Board members: Anthony Recasner, James Peyser, Stephen Hales, Stephen Rosenthal, Ian Arnoff, Michael Brown, Mary Kay Parker, Hunter Pierson, David Sylvester, and Mahlon Sanford.
Interesting grants:
$300,000 to The Match School in Jamaica Plain, MA (near Boston).
$478,000 to Achievement Network, Boston, MA
$469,000 to New Teacher Project, Brooklyn, NY
$152,699 to KIPP in New Orleans
$394,801 to Credo 434 Galvez Mall HHMB 132 in Stanford, CA ???
Hoover Institution-Credo 434 Galvez Mall HHMB 132 in Stanford, CA
Think tank at Stanford
“This Institution supports the Constitution of the United States, its Bill of Rights and its method of representative government. Both our social and economic systems are based on private enterprise from which springs initiative and ingenuity…. Ours is a system where the Federal Government should undertake no governmental, social or economic action, except where local government, or the people, cannot undertake it for themselves…. The overall mission of this Institution is, from its records, to recall the voice of experience against the making of war, and by the study of these records and their publication, to recall man’s endeavors to make and preserve peace, and to sustain for America the safeguards of the American way of life. This Institution is not, and must not be, a mere library. But with these purposes as its goal, the Institution itself must constantly and dynamically point the road to peace, to personal freedom, and to the safeguards of the American system.”
The K–12 Education Task Force focuses on education policy as it relates to government provision and oversight versus private solutions (both within and outside the public school system) that stress choice, accountability, and transparency; that include systematic reform options such as vouchers, charter schools, and testing; and that weigh equity concerns against outcome objectives. Its collaborative efforts spawned a quarterly journal titled Education Next, one of the premier publications on public education research policy in the nation.
Chester E. Finn, Jr. serves as chair of the Task Force on K–12 education.
This is a conservative think tank.
Diane
This is one of their new books!
Written by this person: John Chubb, a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, a member of Hoover’s Koret Task Force on K–12 Education, and interim CEO of Education Sector, has written The Best Teachers in the World: Why We Don’t Have Them and How We Could, which will be released on October 10, 2012. In the book, Chubb argues that student achievement in the United States could rise to levels comparable to the best nations in the world if we could improve teacher quality.
Raising student achievement by raising teacher quality—a “radical” approach
Public schools face the challenge of educating large numbers of students for whom learning does not come easily. They are institutions with long-established practices, often protected by politics and therefore highly resistant to change. The Best Teachers in the World explains why changing our traditional approach to improving our schools is critical and tells how to achieve such change. John Chubb shows how we can raise student achievement to levels comparable to those of the best nations in the world through a new strategy for raising teacher quality that is very different from the approach our country has historically followed. He asserts that we must attract and retain high-caliber individuals to teaching, train teachers in institutions and programs that can demonstrate their efficacy in producing teachers who raise student achievement, and improve the quality of school leadership.
Chubb suggests moving beyond licensing and other regulatory approaches to teacher quality to focus on providing quality by measuring performance directly-including direct measurement of both teacher effectiveness and training effectiveness-with the success of each gauged by the ability of participants subsequently to raise student achievement. Given strong incentives to perform and the information to do so, he shows, the American educational system can improve teacher training and raise teacher quality to the highest levels in the world.
John E. Chubb, a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and a member of Hoover’s Koret Task Force on K-12 Education, is interim CEO of Education Sector, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization based in Washington, DC.
So this is the organization this NO school is sending money to? I can hardly wait to see what they come up with. Maybe open their own teacher training institute in NO?
I know John Chubb well. He and Terry Moe wrote a book advocating for vouchers in 1990. In recent years, he led the for-profit Edison Schools corporation. Recently, he and Moe wrote a book advocating online schooling to break the grip of unions and cut costs. No nation in the world selects teachers in the way he proposes.
Diane
How many Louisianans know that performance is so low compared to how much money has been allotted to their citizens?