New Orleans has a higher proportion of students in privately-managed charters than any other district in the nation. Most get poor ratings. Research on Reforms says that 79% of the charters in the Recovery School District were graded D or F by the state. The Cowen Institute, a big supporter of charters, reported that 66% of the charters were rated D or F (see p. 7 of this report).
But New Orleans will get more. Major national chains want to get in or get more.
New Orleans will be our first city with fully privatized schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I lived in New Orleans as a little girl. I have not really read the blog posts about New Orleans much because I don’t have any real connections down there. But today, after looking at this, I googled the elementary school where I went and also the one I would have gone to if my mother hadn’t driven me to a different one because she wanted my sister and me to be in a diverse population.
The Hynes School, which was our neighborhood school and was white, turned Charter in 2006 (we did not go there because it was mostly white and my mother did not want that for us). Clips indicate it has not been stable as a charter and has moved and maybe even closed. My elementary school, Jean Gordon, was ruined in Katrina and then burned right before scheduled to be demolished. And Audobon Charter considered using the site (not sure if they did).
To me, this is like those small restaurants on the side of the road that change owners a lot because of the lack of traffic or not enough roof tops to support them, each thinking their new idea will save the restaurant site. I am thinking of one in particular outside of Asheville that in five years has been Caribean food, Mexican food, another Mexican place, and now southern cooking under the name Magnolia Ray’s. The point being that no matter the new or innovatice niche, without numbers and support (and need), it won’t thrive.
Jean Gordon was a wonderful public school. It had wonderful parental support. A natural disaster devastated it. Maybe these little charter ideas will run their course and if Lakeview fills back up with young families, maybe a new public school will eventually come in. I like to think so. Maybe, sometime. Sometimes communities get it right, even if it takes time.
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I have a friend in a different state who noticed that a charter will move into an old grocery store then two years later it is closed. Crazy. Not what education was supposed to be.
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I, too attended Jean Gordon Elem. as a child. My parents moved from renting in Lakeview to buying a house in Gentilly specifically because they wanted to have us grow up in a diverse neighborhood and attend the public school. That was the best decision they ever made for me that has had far reaching effects. I am a teacher today because of the experiences I had there as a child. You are right. It was a wonderful public school. They got it right. Today Audubon is renting the space with modulars and a locked gate enclosing the property. The neighborhood is changing but is transforming with revitalization. I am so grateful though that when I drive by I know and can still “see” what used to be there. To have experienced its magic back in the 70’s and 80’s when we were actually being taught AND living Martin Luther King’s dream as students in those public school classrooms, back when we only took the CTBS test once a year (and I was a not just a data score), before technology took over our lives,and when music, art, storytelling (going to the school library was enchanting), imagination, socialization (camp fire girls) and citizenship were valued. Jean Gordon was a prime example of what a school community should be (the daily morning meeting starting every day with a song was excellent–loved the Hey Mr. Buggy Man song!), it was child centered and it seemed like we learned more holistically and
thoroughly “back in the day” and still had time in the schedule for daily PE…go figure. Lakeview is thriving and its population fortunately has become more diverse than it was in the past. Hynes has made a beautiful comeback. It
is state of the art, now huge, pre-k through 8th
grade. What Jean Gordon was is what I wish my students could experience today. It’s a shame how some things have changed and not necessarily always for the better.
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I commented four days ago about “D or F schools”:
“This is another misleading fact that Diane repeats periodically without explaining the grading system (it doesn’t adjust for demographics) or whether this represents improvement over the schools that were replaced (New Orleans has dramatically closed the gap with the rest of the state). I’ve called her out on this numerous times (like I have on her selective use of CREDO studies), but she persists. Tribal warfare doesn’t have much use for the truth.”
(One commenter pointed out that New Orleans is a “different city” after the storm. Possibly, but my focus is that the “D or F” argument is misleading because it doesn’t consider demographics or progress, whatever that progress might be.)
Diane, what’s going on with this? Am I missing something?
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Ken,
I agree with you that using these grades and or test scores as indicators of the teaching and learning processes that go on in a school are invalid. And for either side of the debate to use them just serves to hide the inherent injustices that occur through the “grading” of students.
Duane
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If the state has set these grades as the standard for community school takeover, then the state needs to apply its own selected standard consistently. The standard is foolish, but so is saying, “We’ll take over a school by this standard but we won’t grade our results by it.”
An understatement: The state does not deal with community schools and charters consistently.
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M. Schneider: to ask the leading charterites/privatizers and their accountabully underlings to apply their own capriciously-set standards consistently, transparently and fairly is like “pedirle peras al olmo” [to ask for pears from an elm tree, i.e., to ask for or expect the impossible].
You are assuming they are capable of considered judgment and wisdom.
For example, even someone as uneducated in numbers/stats as myself can understand how foolishly dishonest it is to issue a report that unites the Orleans Parish Schools with the Recovery School District-New Orleans in order to make 76.7 look like 93.7 [for context, click on this entry in this blog: https://dianeravitch.net/2013/05/22/mercedes-schneider-deconstructs-the-hype-about-new-orleans/ ] But hey, when it’s in the service of Twenty First Century Cagebusting $tudent $ucce$$—if you’re an educrat or edupreneur, if you believe it you can achieve it!
😦
It would be comical if it weren’t so not funny.
😦
And consider how clueless they are when they assume that the rest of us are so dimwitted that they can pass off graceless nonsense and casual cruelty as hard-nosed data and scientific proof. You know, the kind that edubullies like Sarah Potter [spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education] came up with when justifying the unjustifiable closing of a charter school that was actually doing some good: “We were really forced to do this.”
But don’t expect the edubullies to abandon any time soon their self-centered ignorance or to temper their drive to inflict disastrous mandates on the rest of us: “The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits” [Albert Einstein].
🙂
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Meanwhile, it is true that the vast majority (and growing majority) of students in NOLA are being educated at privately-managed schools. It will be fascinating to see what happens from here. From the tribal warfare standpoint, I can understand why each side is particularly concerned about the results.
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Ken,
Will Wall Street pay for private charters for millions of children?
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In answer to your question: I don’t know.
I’d still love to hear your reasons for repeatedly reposting about “D or F schools” without mentioning how the grades are calculated and how they might be properly interpreted.
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Ken,
What is the definition of “privately-managed” schools?
Duane
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I have been debating that lately too. If the schools are paid for with public money why are they PRIVATELY managed with the public completely shut out and why aren’t more people complaining about it (because it seems to be mostly educators on these blogs)?
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Hey Duane,
I’d say that a “privately-managed” school is a school that is managed by a private organization as opposed to managed by government employees. In practice, these privately-managed organizations have much more independence and freedom as to how they manage a school, although it is possible that government regulation could reduce or even eliminate that gap.
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The sister of the Louisiana state board of education (BESE) president, Chas Roemer, Caroline Roemer Shirley, is the executive director of, La Assn of Public Charter Schools.
Chas Roemer is pro-charter and votes pro-charter.
Fascinating.
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Do you work in a charter or do you make money from managing a charter? Please explain your support of charters. (I’m curious)
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In an audit by the La Legislative Auditor Daryl Purpera, not only is LDOE not adequately monitoring charters; they “disagree” that they really need to hold charters to any set standard:
Click to access 00032CA4.pdf
New Orleans charters are a joke for students and teachers. But they are a privatizer’s dream.
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The text gets interesting starting on page 8.
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This kind of nonsense is going on in Michigan. They are a racket and a rip-off artist’s dream. The idea that legislators don’t won’t to hold charters to the same standards as the schools they took over displays that they have no interest in quality education. It is all about funneling money to cronies at the expense of the community, students, and staff. What a bunch of crooks.
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