Noel Hammatt is an independent researcher and former board member of the Baton Rouge public school board. He is one of the best-informed and most courageous researchers in a state where truth is to be found not in official statements, which are political, but in the work of bloggers and independent researchers like Hammatt.
This is a great analysis he made of the state’s grading system, in which he asks why schools fail and wonders: what if a failing school is not failing at all?
Here is another link in which Noel writes for a popular audience.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
A number of years ago, a couple of articles were written in the local Sacramento press about the conspiratorial dictates of a Republican governor to engineer a path toward the charterization of Sacramento High School with claims of poor academic performance driving this move. These now archived articles in the Sacramento Bee and Sacramento News and Review revealed that claims of poor performance were completely fictional, but nonetheless unquestioned by the local school board, which handed the keys to the campus, and over $20 million renovation costs, to one Kevin Johnson, now mayor of Sacramento and husband of Michelle Rhee, whose St. Hope organization has become the subject of a once ongoing investigation, saved from criminal prosecution, by the skin of their teeth, for fiscal malfeasance and allegations of child sexual abuse made against Johnson himself, by the last minute intervention of the Obama administration. The St. Hope case seems to have been a demonstration project in how to falsely present academic performance data to manufacture the case for privatization/charterization by well funded organizations who squander that wealth on ephemeralities such as using Americorps volunteers as chauffeurs for school founders, among other things… They CERTAINLY don’t use such resources to pay teachers a decent wage…and inevitably bar collective bargaining from any compensation process, as they dumb down curricula and exclude more challenging and poor performing students from an impoverished neighborhood, opting to recruit from more opulent surrounding areas to barely populate a campus intended to serve 2,000 kids with a current enrollment of less than 600…
I believe, as you have pointed out in your new book, that those seeking charters doth protest too much, and their ruing is based on lies…
I look forward to your book tour, and wish you safe travels, for you and Valerie Strauss and Linda Darling Hammond, and the lot of bloggers who you commune with, have shed light on a vastness of corruption that is ruining public education in America, and I hope it isn’t too late to fix….
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Alex, Though I agree with your sentiments… completely… there are inaccuracies in your portrayal of Sac High. Not the KJ and MR matters, but what was happening at the ground level. The curriculum was not being “dumbed down.” I have first hand knowledge of curriculum, instruction, and assessment practices school-wide, and can assure you that while questions of true college readiness levels of rigor might not have been obtained, student learning improved dramatically by 2011-12. The work I participated in on-site at Sac High, was credible, honest, and directed at putting students first.
I am no longer associated with St Hope. I strongly agree with arguments made by Howard Adelman regarding the barriers that exist to education. In my current work, poverty is a huge driver for student struggles and must be addressed through a more comprehensive approach to student services. Of significant note, and in my opinion, the decision by parents to send their children to Sac High was the major contributor to relative student success. There is much to drill down on in that comment, some of which has been address by current research.
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Logic alone tells you there is no such thing as a “failing school”. Schools don’t have hands with which to fill in those little bubbles. If anything is “failing” it would be the students within the schools, so they should be our focus. Why exactly are they “failing”? Might it be because they lack adequate food or medical/dental care, a safe/secure place to stay or because they’ve witnessed/experienced trauma? Might it be because their school lacks proper resources and facilities? Might it be because the “educational” materials they’re being asked to swallow and regurgitate are utterly irrelevant to their lives?
And, sure, I suppose it’s at least theoretically possible that the students are failing because they have lousy teachers. To whatever extent that may be the case, why might that be? Might it be because their teachers are not only unsupported, but demonized for everything they do? Because they’re punished for trying to work with the most needy and demanding students? Might it be because they too suffer from the lack of resources and facilities? Maybe they too are utterly deadened by the canned curricula they are being asked to recite? Just how inspiring or even “effective” do we expect teachers to be when we treat them like children and expect them to perform like seals?
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Dienne, it’s true that a school does not have hands to fill in the “those little bubbles” (assuming you are referring to bubble sheets for tests). It’s also true that there can be some strong teachers and weak school leaders. Weak leaders can frustrate fine teachers, along with families and students.
Public reporting systems unquestionably need to be designed that recognize who the student body is, and whether there is progress based on where students start. Progress should not just be about test scores.
I’m really impressed with the portfolio approach to assessment that some NYC (district) teachers and schools have developed. One of their leaders in Anne Cook, at Urban Academy.
Perhaps you, Noel and others will find their work useful.
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The correct link for my article is http://exploringeducation.blogspot.com/2013/06/v-behaviorurldefaultvmlo.html and thank you Diane, for all you do!
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