Mike Deshotels is an experienced Louisiana educator and currently a blogger about education in his state. His blog is called Louisiana Educator.
He read a blog by Andy Smarick on the Education Next website and found it superficial and inaccurate. Smarick has worked for various Republican administrations and conservative think tanks and once served on the board of a KIPP school. Smarick would like to see public education turned over to the private sector.
Deshotels says that Smarick is wrong to use the Recovery School District as a model. It is actually a failing district. The most amazing feature of the RSD is that so many people, like Smarick, believe the hype and spin about it.
He explains the facts about the RSD here:
“A blog by Andy Smarick in Education Next describing the Louisiana Recovery School District as a good model for the new Tennessee Achievement School District has to be a joke. Either that or Smarick is one of the most misinformed education commentators I have ever seen. I live in Louisiana and I have watched the operation of the Louisiana RSD, and I find that Smarick is totally wrong on almost every point he tries to make. I feel compelled to point out a few of his misstatements.
Smarick likens the current education reform movement to a big Play. He claims that the formation of the Louisiana Recovery School District was the “high point” in the play of education reform. If that’s the case then the play is going to be a flop!
Here are the facts: The RSD in New Orleans was allowed to take over a broad cross section of schools including schools that were performing just below the state average at the time. Many of the students captured by the RSD in the takeover were pretty good students with parents who supported them properly. Many others were minimally supported by their parents and community.
Out of the 70 or so schools formed by the RSD in New Orleans, only a few succeeded in recruiting the most motivated students. All the rest continued to be low performers. But the cheerleaders for the RSD, like Smarick, only talk about the few schools that have done slightly above average by using now well known selection and culling techniques. So using the state grading scale (which is seriously flawed but which was pushed by the reformers Smarick has praised) only 5 schools in the New Orleans RSD are now rated as “B”. There are no “A”s in the RSD. There are only three “C”’s and all the rest D or F. In fact 87% of the RSD New Orleans schools at last count were rated D or F, with the F’s predominating. But it gets worse.
Soon after taking over the bulk of New Orleans schools the Recovery District started taking over low performing schools in Baton Rouge, Shreveport and a couple of rural Parishes. Those have been run by the RSD for 5 years now. All of them are now rated F and on average are doing worse than before they were taken over. They are performing so poorly that the State has taken them over from their charter operators and no longer releases the letter grades for most of them, using the excuse that it would be premature to publish their letter grades because they are in the process of being reorganized. By the way, that’s also how the state covers up the poor performance of some of the New Orleans schools.
Smarick makes the assertion that the RSD is not really run by the state, but just answers to the state. He could not be further from the truth. In fact, except for the small handful of charters in New Orleans that were able to cream the best students, all of the other charters and direct run RSD schools are totally controlled by the state. The state has now built such a large bureaucracy to run the RSD in the Baton Rouge area, that it has taken over a whole school building to house their administrators. But that was no problem since the parents had withdrawn so many of the students that the RSD ended up with a vacant building that originally belonged to the local school board. Now the parents in Baton Rouge are running a petition to have the building returned to the East Baton Rouge school system which has experienced major growth through transfers back from the RSD.
It would be very sad if the Tennessee Achievement District were to follow the example of the Louisiana Recovery District. It is also sad that Smarick is allowed to publish his totally inaccurate analysis.
Michael Deshotels
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on Crazy Crawfish's Blog and commented:
This is about as good a summary of RSD as I could come up with. We must end the RSD and return the schools to the local districts. RSD was an abysmal failure that children in other states are soon to be victimized by as ours have been.
Why continue to talk about failing “schools”. Schools don’t fail, students fail, for reasons that occur mostly outside the school. As long as the dialog uses terms like “failing schools” the “reformy” crowd will continue to get what they want…..privatization and handsome profits.
Michael,
You are absolutely correct. There is no such thing as a “failing school.” A school is a building. The leaders of the system should be held accountable for making sure that every building has the resources it needs for the children it enrolls. What reformers call “failing schools” are schools that enroll children whose needs are not met. If you use their terminology, you buy into their assumption that these schools should be closed.
Yes, if you use their terminology you further their ideology. For example, I continue to ask the question about one of the deformers favorite terms-standards: What is a standard? What is the definition of an educational standard?
If there is no agreed upon definition, how can we expect to be able to use the term in a fashion that might be useful in bettering the teaching and learning process?
But “standard” sure sounds good, who can’t be for “high standards”? (except for those low life LIFOs)
It’s their definition. Surely they can take some of their own medicine.
Michael – we cannot even say that all these students are failing because the method of “measuring” failure is so flawed. I challenge anyone to visit a “failing” New Orleans school to see for themselves the conditions, administration and students.
I agree. The schools are under resourced. I blame the politicians who fail to adequately fund schools so they can provide for student needs. It’s not a failing school but rather a failure by political leaders to help that provides the privatizer crowd the opportunity to label schools as failures and set them up for takeover.
What?? Lies, prevarications, obfuscations, speaking falsely or uttering untruth knowinglywith intent to deceive and express what is false and/or conveying a false impression by the edudeformers? Tell me it isn’t so! An antonym = truth!!
Exactly right! When you measure the wrong things, you don’t know what is really happening. How about let’s measure some things that could be used to evaluate and THEN SUPPORT education. For example: Students and teachers should have the resources they need in the classroom. How about a “standardized” profile of basic instructional resources for each classroom(lab) type to compare schools and classrooms across the country; what about a “standardized” class size chart for comparison at each grade level for every school. Lets develop some measures of parent and community support that measure things like attendance at PTSA meetings, community activities that engage school children; finiancial and volunteer support at the school, local media coverage of academic competetion events and other school activities besides sporting events. Student and school success should be recognized and reported so that our children can know that they are valued members of the community. How about evaluation of the school environment: do the toilets work, are the bathrooms kept clean, is the school campus maintained? These things affect the children’s preception of their own worth and could serve to make the community and the nation aware of the plight of public schools in less affluent districts.
Then, after developing and comparing schools with these “standard tests,” (see post above) we issue school profile report cards for community support of education. Maybe then these well financed Foundations can do something really useful to support education and get those test results up instead of ripping our public schools apart.
Of the original about 120 schools in New Orleans I think only about 20 or so are left. They had this plan on the shelf waiting for a certain to happen disaster to happen so that they could implement it in the dead of night and disaster. This is another Paul Vallas failure. He ruined Chicago, Philadelphia and then New Orleans and I think he is on his way to wipe out another one as the “Savior of Education.” Chicago has produced major education failures. Vallas, Duncan and Obama being the most prominent. These failed bought and sold ideologues are now leading the discussion on destruction of public education and they are democrats, so they say anyway. The same corporatists privatizers now own both parties and have bought them on the cheap. For instance, when you look at the Koch Brothers campaign contributions for the Tea Party they average only $5,000 with the highest being $15,000. Now if you are worth $45 billion each lunch cost more and a bottle of wine. So who cares as they laugh all the way to the bank and offshore accounts. If the public is this stupid and politicians can be bought this easily why not own the world. Remember, “IT’S JUST BUSINESS.” And there is nothing for your power and business than to train the future generations to be the way you want them to be for YOUR purposes not theirs.
You are right. They are definitely failed policies. They’ve created nothing but cheap education that offers less to the individual student and community. Yes, they were bought easily. Democrats turned their backs on the base of their party for campaign bucks and tax money for their cronies.
Look no further than the charter scandal in Chicago with people connected to Rahm. A bunch of crooks.