I received this letter from a teacher who taught in Louisiana until recently. I am posting anonymously for her sake:
I am not writing you from New Orleans, and I do not know these students, but I taught in this area for 9 years, and after 3 schools that I worked in were taken over by charters with no relationship to the community, I left my state and moved to Atlanta to go to graduate school. Thus, it is so encouraging that students from two high schools have protested fake school reform and the “No Excuses Model.” Both schools have staged walk-outs over the past week. If you have not watched the below videos, please take a minute to do so.
Firstline schools is the Charter Management Organization (CMO) that took over Joseph S. Clark High School three years ago. The principal is a TFA graduate and his name is Alex Hochran. The students were protesting the discipline policies and the lack of diversity in the teaching staff (the school is located in one of the oldest black neighborhoods in the United States, Treme).
Collegiate Academies is another No Excuses CMO, and they are in the process of taking over Carver High School (the school is located in the 9th ward of New Orleans). The students walked out yesterday.
Please share these videos with others, so that people can be inspired by the courageous work of these young people.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
According to the reporter in the first video, the students are not going to accept just “lip service” from school officials. Awesome! Students are using their power.
The reformers don’t believe in democracy. They ignore the public and let politicians pass laws that bully people. The people will probably be ignored. People need to stop sending their kids to these schools!
It’s a huge relief to see the local press taking notice of the situation on the ground in New Orleans. By hearing the protesters, they are holding that CEO accountable to the students whose school he has seized. This shows some of the local cracks appearing in the corporate media ice sheet that’s covered our public education discourse for a decade.
The national media continues to hype their prefabricated line, but the promise of spring is everywhere.
Hang on, all you brave and articulate New Orleans students; help is on the way.
This first link (haven’t seen the second one yet) restores my faith in humanity! Finally, students are protesting in positive ways! I want to see much more of this for the love of our nation’s youth who are being lost from the effects of an increasingly greedy Darwinistic world where hope for those at the “bottom” is increasingly nil. I fear that as more and more of these hideous corporate reforms take effect and destroy youthful lives, more and more youth feeling hopeless and unable to express themselves will vent their building extreme anger in violent ways (thinking of this new game of knocking unsuspecting street passerbys out as just once recent example)! I just read an article in October 26th issue of “The Economist” called, “The Rise of the Distorporation” on page 29. It is outright scary how the one percent keeps manipulating government created safeguards in order to amass even more and more of the aggregate national wealth (via restructuring corporations so as to avoid taxes through new loopholes). And our nation goes from budget crisis to budget crisis while corporations like EXXon Mobile amass more and more wealth. How is it these corporations are allowed to manipulate and entire nation of people??? If the question seems far removed from public education, it is not! How is it that public education which has been a cornerstone of democracy has also been manipulated such that money for public education is being co-opted by the corporate world and public schools are being controlled and starved of funding while “for profit” charter schools are destroying the educational lives of students such that even our nation’s brave students like in this Louisiana charter school feel the need to walk out in protest?
Too late to worry that “more and more youth feeling hopeless and unable to express themselves will vent their building extreme anger in violent ways”
They do it every day and night. Just watch the local news.
@robert tellman.. I do not consider the nations’ youth “too late to worry about. If youth at risk felt they had a chance at life, were given basic necessities and had stable family, lives I do feel their energy would be directed in more positive ways. Optimism can also be pragmatic too. Their happiness is essential for the health of a nation. Long term poverty is an issue that is at the root and needs to be addressed as challenging as it seems.
I clicked before I finished my intended final thought…
Our nation (including public schools) will never be able to recover if the real root of the problem is not addressed… POVERTY. Charter schools can only maintain the charade that “they educate” for so long. Poverty will not be addressed until checks and balances are restored to our government. Wealth needs to be redistributed so a middle class can be restored. Robert Reich mentioned that a mere readjusting of the tax code so that (I think it was the top 3 or 5 % earners) paid a slightly higher tax rate would go a long way toward keeping a balanced national budget. Couple a new tax code with a restoration of checks and balances and there is hope. Now if more public school students across this land begin to voice their concerns and their needs.
I did not say it is too late to worry about today’s youth, I said it is too late to worry about their hopelessness turning into anger and violence. We have failed each and every one of those who feel hopeless and angry.
I hope more students do this across the nation. When teachers speak up, they get dismissed as defenders of the status quo. When students speak up, it’s hard to dismiss them as defenders of the status quo. Time to reform, reformers.
I am so proud of these students. It takes courage to stand up to powerful administrators and boards, who seem to enjoy doling out punishments and consequences. I hope we continue to see more civil disobedience from high school students, as the media seems to suddenly pay attention when students speak. Bravo to these brave students for starting a well needed civil rights movement.
Good for the students at both of these schools! I hope that these videos are on You Tube; students all around the nation need to see them.
This should be national news… shouldn’t it? I noticed they referred to the “CEO of first line schools.” He’s not an educational professional, he’s a Chief Executive Officer. Correct me if I’m wrong (and I know that I’m not) but he’s there to make sure that his shareholders make money. That’s what a C.E.O. does. Yes? Should schools, and students, be used to make money for shareholders?
Did anybody notice how the CEO of First Line managed to NOT ANSWER the students concerns, while faking sincerity? He also managed to lay the blame at teachers’ feet as always. Obviously, to him, some teachers need to build better relationships. What a phony!
Reblogged this on Crazy Crawfish's Blog and commented:
I have been getting folks telling we how wonderful charter schools are, and how beloved they are by the communities they serve. When a charter school doesn’t perform well the kids and parents can simply choose another one, like ones chooses a carton of milk at the store so no oversight is needed. What does one do when all the charter schools are selective or bad like in New Orleans? Many children are kicked out secretly to roam the streets as these children are doing publicly. The charter school movement is a farce, and even they allies of this movement know it. Now they are claiming school isn’t for everyone, some children are just thugs and should be abandoned. While reformer claim poverty is an excuse, its an excuse Leslie Jacobs and many reformers are only too happy to use when they tell people to consider their overall performance against the backdrop of poverty and when they promote their high performing/high poverty schools. Sadly, what New Orleans is doing is not improving the plight of poor children, they getting better at weeding out the poorest and hardest to reach, while disguising this fact with unaudited impossible data and bonus points assigned to their school performance scores. Soon, every district will have their public schools replaced with charter schools. Will Arne Duncan tell us that the only reason people hate charter schools is because some white suburban moms have had their children evicted from the public schools their tax dollars paid for, so wealthy hedge fund managers can get even richer taking in tax dollars meant to educate our children to pad their portfolios?
Sign Petition – Collegiate Academies (NOLA): Students should have a voice in school reform dialogue without threat of punishment.
http://www.change.org/petitions/collegiate-academies-nola-students-should-have-a-voice-in-school-reform-dialogue-without-threat-of-punishment#share
I will share the information, and thank you so much.
Once again, liberals get what they want and hate it when it happens. Teachers being lectists have failed america.
Jay Altman, CEO OF FirstLine Charter School has installed abrasive discipline policies so ‘he can normalize/stabilize’ the school, and the environment of the school. There was one student that was in ‘in school suspension’ for over three weeks, because he didn’t have the appropriate shoes, and the student wore a shoe size that required his mother to special order his shoes. In addition, these high school students had to be escorted throughout the school day by an escort, and if they didn’t have an escort to walk them to the bathroom, library, counselor officer, or to the lunch room, they received an in school suspension. Students lost their ‘Classroom privileges’ for the smallest infraction, and had to spend time in detention for failing to write their name on the homework/test, getting water without asking, even though the students were changing classes ( All of these issues occurred in the 9th and 10th grade classes). Jay Altman has stated numerous times that the school would be innovative, and the students would have access to a quality curriculum, so that they can compete with their counterparts. However, this school did not offer students with an advance curriculum, and the students didn’t have a full range of classes that the CEO claimed would be offered. The school body is predominately African American, but the teachers are White and highly inexperienced graduates, and they don’t understand the cultural background of the students. The students don’t have access to a well-rounded curriculum, and the school is notorious for placing students in online classes with the support of a teacher. Jay Altman speaks highly of this ‘deform’ education model that he’s pushing; however, his children don’t attend ANY of the FirstLine Schools in New Orleans, and the board members children don’t attend the school as well. My child attended this concentration camp, and I assure you this school is NOT the model charter school that is being heralded in the papers. I have so many stories to share about this school, and information about the systemic cheating that goes on at this school, but of course, the voices of truth are always silenced by the reform propaganda.
The link above for the petition does not work, please try this one:
http://www.change.org/petitions/collegiate-academies-nola-students-should-have-a-voice-in-school-reform-dialogue-without-threat-of-punishment
I was in many walkouts…for bad teachers, laws, wars and other things…its the way to convey messages for change since we have many unjust laws. Schools try to brainwash you.
I had a 1st grade teacher insult me in front of class…I got back by taking a piss in her car as the top was down…problem solved.
I was just sent this article and it tells the truth of what happened, but it doesn’t reflect what I felt and what my kids are going through today. Teaching the students of Joseph S. Clark Prep High School in New Orleans was an amazing experience for me. I love those kids as they are my own and I want only the best for them. Ms. Barthelemy known as Ms. B.