Lyndsey Layton of the Washington Post describes the triumph of the reform movement in New Orleans: The last public school has closed for good.
A few observations.
All schools in New Orleans are now charter schools. .
It’s hard to compare achievement pre-and post-Katrina because so many students never returned after the hurricane. Test scores are up, graduation rates are up, but populations are different. “By most indicators, school quality and academic progress have improved in Katrina’s aftermath, although it’s difficult to make direct comparisons because the student population changed drastically after the hurricane, with thousands of students not returning.
“Before the storm, the city’s high school graduation rate was 54.4 percent. In 2013, the rate for the Recovery School District was 77.6 percent. On average, 57 percent of students performed at grade level in math and reading in 2013, up from 23 percent in 2007, according to the state.”
There are no more neighborhood schools.
Almost all the teachers were fired. Almost all the fired teachers were African American. They were replaced mostly by white Teach for America recruits. The fired teachers won a lawsuit for wrongful termination and are owed $1 billion.
The central bureaucracy has been swept away.
“The city is spending about $2 billion — much of it federal hurricane recovery money — to refurbish and build schools across the city, which are then leased to charter operators at no cost.”
A curious fact: “White students disproportionately attend the best charter schools, while the worst are almost exclusively populated by African American students. Activists in New Orleans joined with others in Detroit and Newark last month to file a federal civil rights complaint, alleging that the city’s best-performing schools have admissions policies that exclude African American children. Those schools are overseen by the separate Orleans Parish School Board, and they don’t participate in OneApp, the city’s centralized school enrollment lottery.”
Observation by State Superintendent John White: “The city’s conversion to charters promises the best outcome for the most students, White said. “These kinds of interventions are never easy things,” he said. “When you look at overall outcomes, they’ve been positive. Does it have collateral negative effects? Of course. But does it work generally for the better? Yes.”
Formula for success: close public schools. Open charter schools. Fire veteran teachers. Replace them with TFA. Spend billions to refurbish buildings. This is the same formula that is being imported to urban districts across the nation. Is it sustainable? Did it really “work” or is this a manufactured success, bolstered by billions from the Waltons and other philanthropists who favor privatization?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The last traditional public school has not closed in New Orleans, just the last ones directly run by the Recovery School District (the state takeover district). The Orleans Parish School Board (the “original” district) still operates 6 schools that remain open.
Time for Naomi Klein to write a book about this disaster.
Thank you John for shedding truth on what exists.
This is horrifying
I couldn’t have put it better. We should all take this as a HUGE wake up call. This is not another reason to say…oh but that’s so far away…it’s in AMERICA and this should NOT be happening! Public schools are for everyone…this is a travesty and yes it is HORRIFYING!
Students are being used as test rats and this is a monumental test. I guess N.O. will serve as a barometer for this level of ‘reform’. I suggest to keep a very keen eye on the ‘progress’ here and include metrics that take all factors into account…culture, ethnicity, economics and matriculation. It’s not of any real value to use cherry picked stats to measure success (as big money likes to do to rationalize their investments…)
NO is a real horror story. Here’s the comment I posted in the Wash Post online: “This closing of the NO public schools is not only a wholly unnecessary tragedy for the people of the hurricane-battered city but, importantly, another step in the unAmerican, subversive drive to privatize all education in the US. It is a movement being led by a swarm of hucksters, snakeoil salesmen, profiteers and others that can only fragment our student population and society itself, undermine the teaching profession, and severely damage all education, especially for the poor and minorities.”
I then went on to recommend the recent books on this issue by Diane Ravitch, Mercedes Schneider, David Berliner and Gene Glass, John Kuhn, and Chris and Sarah Lubienski. And concluded: “The school privatization movement must be stopped, NOW.”
Edd Doerr (arlinc.org)
Pottery barn rule as applied, “no excuses,” to the charterite/privatization movement—
You now own New Orleans. I insist that you demonstrate in practice, with full and open transparency, the miracles you have been promising.
Now. And if you even think of attempting to deflect, delay and divert—
“I reject that mind-set.” [Michelle Rhee]
Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
😎
What began as a hurricane and was recast as an “opportunity” has taken another life. Condolences to all of NOLA’s hard working public school teachers. You have our support.
As our Democrat guru, Rahm Emanuel, on these matters has taught us, “Never let a crisis go to waste.” But, of course, Jindal agrees.
It will be an interesting phenomenon to watch. Are all those charters ununionized?
And when it fails, will those advocating scorched earth education be held fully accountable?
Nobody wants to hold big government accountable either. Except the tea party movement, and we all know they’re wing nuts.
Republicans backed by the so-called tea party (really the Koch brothers) redrew and gerrymandering the districts in our state so that they answer to no one. Is that what you mean by accountablity? Our GOP tea party, small gubbermint governor funnels tax money into a secret jobs program and constantly denies public records requests. He ensured the public money could not be audited. Guess we just trust him. He did tell us he talks to God so we know he is completely sane and trustworthy, right? Vouchers channel tax money to private schools that avoid any public accountability – taxation without representation if there ever was. But OK in that case?
The Tea Party is more the “get your gubbermint hands off my Medicare!” and “I built that! (… with gubbermint help)”. I see them all the time in the tricorner costumes waving Don’t Tread on Me flags after retiring from gubbermint careers or rich from gubbermint contracts. Wings nuts as you suggest, maybe too harsh. Rubes and hypocrites, ….well….
You are right about the unaccountability in vouchers. I’ll have to think about that some more. We can talk about accountability all we want, but I keep hearing the old saw, “Good enough for government work,” which doesn’t suggest government entities are any more accountable than vouchers would be. Not sure though. The only TRUE accountability would be each school accountable democratically to its entire constituent or a word I hate, stakeholder, body. That is students, faculty, staff, and parents. A school small enough for direct democracy might work.
Such contempt in the phrasing of rubes and hypocrites. We’re not going away. You’re going to have to work with us, willy nilly. And there are more and more of us. Medicare works because each individual can seek out practitioners of their choice. The VA hospitals don’t work because that’s government medicine in reality, much as the ACA is trying to bring in. I don’t think its hypocritical to accept Medicare. I also very much doubt the “Don’t Tread On Me” boys are former government workers.
Nevertheless you raise interesting question. If you believe that anything the Koch brothers fund can be dismissed and rejected because it’s not genuine, you are, in my opinion, much misjudging the political citizen. Unless you deny tea party movement people the vote, we’re going to be here nipping at your heels.
Short answer, no. There is a teacher’s union, but it has no teeth and is unable to demand even the smallest concessions or considerations for teachers. That’s another thing that was done in the wake of Katrina. Teachers are not allowed to organize, collectively bargain, or strike. The unionized teachers with true representation are the ones mentioned in the article who were fired.
MathVale,
No one will be held accountable. All of society’s ills are caused by public school teachers. I know because I am one.
I’d correct that to unionized public school teachers. Most teachers are great. But when public sector unions take over, sanity and self restraint goes out the window. Quite unfortunate, but Scott Walker’s Wisconsin is the way it will be in the future. I really don’t know who would go into teaching under those conditions these days, but that’s what you’ll get. All the teachers will be the second income in the family.
*eyeroll* Turn off the Fox News (sic). (Yeah, yeah, I know, you don’t watch Fox either. That’s what everyone says who parrots their talking points.)
Unionized teachers are just classroom teachers at the grass roots. Not the bogeyman that conservatives claim as some black ops, conspiracy in the classroom. The Republicans like Walker are anti intellectuals and just move their mouths while the Kochs talk. I see the tide turning. The tea party is fading. Republicans may never win another presidential election and only hold power through gerrymandering and voter suppression. Demographics are against them. The GOP fails to offer any new ideas nor govern. People want results, not 60 votes to end ACA or shouts of “Benghazi!” The widening inequality and growing discontent with our failed economic system means change one way or another. Trickle on, supply side conservative ideas have failed.
Public sector unions take over? Be afraid of those unionized school teachers who worked hard for 40 years & had money taken out of their checks each pay so they could have a small pension each month? But the secret, dark money that corporations use to buy Congress? Don’t be afraid of that at all?
I can see what kind of uncompromising ideologues we are up against. Dream on if you think the tea party movement is fading away. It ain’t, say I in my rube dialect. And I guess that means that you are an intellectual. The Adlai Stevenson of your time. Contempt for the rubes is kind of unAmerican, don’t you think, when we grow your food?
“Contempt for the rubes is kind of unAmerican, don’t you think, when we grow your food?”
You mean on one of those government subsidized factory farms that drove most of the small family farms out of business?
Touche.
This part, at least, sounds pretty much the same as regular public schools:
“Stan Smith, acting superintendent of the Orleans Parish schools, said his district’s charter schools have agreed to participate in the OneApp when their contracts are renewed, in two to 10 years from now.”
By agreement. Maybe yes, maybe no. Of course, they’re contractors. They don’t have to do anything they’re not contractually obligated to do as long as they don’t violate the law.
The same thing happened to Cami Anderson. Some charter schools agreed to equal access, others declined. It’s up to the school.
Tell me again how these are “public schools”. I guess if we entirely redefine “public” to mean “publicly-funded” they are but I don’t think that’s the ordinary meaning of “public”.
Where I live, the public schools don’t all have uniform application systems or admissions policies, either. Not saying that’s a good thing, but it’s a feature of the public schools where I live, and I would expect it’s a feature that’s common in very large public school systems.
Exactly. The question is whether “publicly funded” would satisfy the requirements of each state’s constitution. I don’t even know where to start to answer that question. But like gay marriage, it seems to be gaining tacit approval all over the country, regardless of the strict letter of the law, or perhaps we should say the spirit of the law.
I personally think that “publicly funded” does satisfy the spirit of the law, but that has not been the understanding of it for at least 100 years.
Education is a service like any other, and equity, in my opinion, would be satisfied by parental vouchers. There is no INTRINSIC reason why education services MUST be delivered by a government run entity, which like the VA, can include numerous abuses of the public trust.
In any case, the era of trust in government is gone, and ironically enough, it was a so-called progressive administration (Obama’s) that did the most to put the last nail in the coffin. Big Government is the Dracula of the modern age. Let’s get its blood sucking fangs out of our necks and shine some sunlight on him.
The question will be if taxpayers get representation as the vouchers go to private schools. The trend is taxation without representation as public funds avoid public audits and scrutiny under red state governors (do as I say, not as I do). But people don’t like scandals and it takes one to awaken a sleeping populace. The trend is ripe for corruption. As fast as they got in, the GOP will be booted out.
While trust in goverment has waned since WWII, trust in conservatives and corporations is even lower. People are coming to the realization the system is broken and stacked against them. Republicans offer no solutions, just tired old ideas of big gubbermint, unfree markets, unicorns and fairy dust.
FLERP, public schools typically reflect neighborhoods, rich and poor. NOLA has no neighborhood schools so why are the white kids clustered in the “best” charters?
I don’t know, because I don’t know the details of NOLA, but I would not be surprised if it was because of the same reasons why whites are disproportionately clustered at NYC’s best “choice” middle schools and high schools.
How could any of their wonderful, fabulous, rig-rig-rigorous, filled with 5 week trainees from tfa be labeled “the worst?” Aren’t all of their charter schools, and the clerks–er “teachers”–better than anything a public school delivered?
I find it interesting that there are bad CHARTER schools populated by african americans in New Orleans. To listen to the reformers blow their horns, all of their charters are golden and the best of the best.
Funny, it ain’t so tho, is it?
You’re absolutely right: in some cases, it does sound like public schools.
The difference is that in the public schools there is a quaint mechanism, known as “democracy,” that at least retains the possibility of allowing the public to change that.
Charter schools, as opaque private entities, have no obligation, even pro forma, for giving the public any say in their activities.
“Kingsland is leaving the organization to try to export the model to other cities. “If I am unhappy with service I’m getting in a school, I can pull my kid out and go to another school tomorrow. ”
This is refreshing. At least they’re not pretending to be about “supporting and improving existing public schools” anymore. That’s probably an important thing for voters to know. The objective is to REPLACE public schools. How well will public schools fare under this leadership? Not well, I would imagine. They certainly aren’t strong in NO. In fact, they’re gone! Would have been nice to know this at the outset of the “movement”, but better late than never I guess!
Has anyone ever done an age analysis of the mass firings? That might be interesting.
It’s pretty nice to fire everyone over 40 in terms of saving on wages and health care costs, if you don’t care about old-fashioned discredited ideas like “actual experience” and you’re the contract employer.
Just might be worth a look! Since we’re having a “debate” and all 🙂
I suspect many have. I recall just from my own casual reading that a high percentage of the teachers who got fired were veteran teachers. I’d be shocked if NO’s teachers weren’t dramatically younger and less experienced overall today than they were before Katrina.
I sort of love that part of ed reform because it’s so clueless and tone-deaf. If a big part of your method is firing thousands of middle aged women, try not to use the word “fresh”, okay?
They don’t have to hit me over the head! Message received and duly noted! Past my prime. And I have so much energy! 🙂
I worked for the RSD for the entire 8 years as an itinerant teacher including shared services with many Charters. The RSD hired many New Orleans Parish Schools (NOPS) veterans and we were told that once the schools improved they would revert back to NOPS and that our jobs would transfer with it. The reason many of us agreed to work for a District without Union representation or a contract. They lied! They also staffed their schools with many TFAs. I watched and mourned many a school closing until all were gone. The RSD Charters are mostly run by ex TFAs or ex KIPPs who hire heavily from TFA or TEACH NOLA where you cannot apply if you have a previous teaching experience! Yes the average age is about 27 and that includes the principals or Dean of Students ( why not Dean of Scholars?) as they now call them. Employees of color or age over 30 are mostly secretaries, custodians, or cafeteria workers. And in my opinion these schools are really about school to prison pipeline.
Interesting how the reforms didn’t work in the existing system, so the reformers had to change the system in order to validate their reform measures.
FAIT ACCOMPLI for the Rheeformers – now they can turn their attention to demolishing the charters and replacing them with online K-12s. Maybe they’ll even get to close down those pesky private schools–oh, wait.. THOSE are for THEIR children.
This is shameful. They will boast about the strides made in New Orleans, even while the state has been sued and found wrongful in terminating certified, qualified teachers, and replacing them with tfa scabs. I think I cannot even capitalize tfa anymore; they don’t even deserve that recognition.
It is a bitter sweet pill to swallow. The city was devastated by hurricane Katrina. Students, their families, teachers, their families and all of their teaching equipment (no doubt much was bought by the teachers themselves) all of their schools and the infrastructure of the school system (for better or worse) was completely in shambles with no money to rebuild (everything in the city needed to be rebuilt or refurbished). The charter operators came in with lots of money (as well as federal monies) and promises of a complete turn-around of student performance. They deliver on many levels by scraping the teachers from the face of the city and building new, clean, up-to-date (I’m sure) schools. Then if the article is correct they began to do what charters do everywhere (for the most part), they “cherry picked” the students who would shine and apparently threw in a racial component to boot. But this is no guarantee of excellence, and anyway weren’t charter schools suppose to be the labs that showed us the way to success? I guess if we follow their lead, we should only educate those who can do well with no behavior problems, special education issues or ELD issues, yeah that’s the way to teach our kids.
I can only say about the TFA teachers, that they are barely trained, smart young people who probably have no desire to become a teacher, but do want to have their student loans forgiven. They have become the pawns of the charter initiative to take down school districts as well as their teacher unions. This is the result of a mantra (apparently learned at the foot of the education specialist Eli Brode) that anyone who teaches beyond 5 years has a problem. That one should only teach 5 years then go on with one’s life. The most well known teacher might be considered to be Jesus Christ, but apparently he was confused.
I am sad for the credentialed teachers who had to go through the financial trauma of appealing to the legal system to regain some justice, but there is no indication that they also won their jobs back. All of that expertise gone down the drain like Katrina’s waters drying up. I hope they are teachers at clean, modern, happy schools somewhere. Although their trauma is probably much like their students with many stops and starts and many bumps.
Since I believe that public education is the core of a strong democracy, I must say that metaphorically that this closing of the last public school in New Orleans might feel like a death nell for the United States of America. But I will try to focus on the sweet part of this. I do believe that as the effects of Katrina fade, that the people of New Orleans will say, “No more”. “We want our neighborhood schools back and we want public education that will not discriminate against children.
I probably feel this deeper as I am a teacher in LAUSD. We have a deceptive Superintendent who wants nothing more than to give our schools away (even the newly built ones), encourage discrimination in student selection (some charters allow preferential enrollment to children of police, firemen, port police and teachers before they allow others to be considered by lottery), allow co-located schools to slowly be taken over by charter schools, systematically try to terrorize minority teachers, female teacher, over 50s teachers with a toxic ‘teacher jail’ and generally rule without the word collaboration. Yes, we are in a contract negotiation climate, but he actually says things like, “If you want quality, you must pay for it” (this in reference to his hiring of 6 digit consultants), I often think he does not value the largest asset of his school district, his teachers, we have not had a raise in 7 going on 8 years (last year he got 15.8% and got his chauffer reinstated, poor dear).
Stand tall New Orleans, you will again rise from the sadness of Katrina and the charter gloom. ________________________________
“The most well known teacher might be considered to be Jesus Christ, but apparently he was confused. ”
No, he wasn’t confused. He was crucified. (His public ministry/teaching probably didn’t last as long as five years.)
Perhaps the Buddah, The Enlightened One, might contend for most well known teacher.
Jesus was a total TFA-type. No formal training, no resume to speak of, but somehow he’s qualified to go around teaching the Word of God?
“Well, Jeshua, we’d really like to hire you. We need someone like you at Nazareth Middle School for our manual training program where the boys are a little unruly in woodworking class, but your resume isn’t very strong. You didn’t graduate from an accredited teacher preparation program, and you haven’t done any practice teaching under a certified professional. That fellow John isn’t certified. We aren’t permitted to consider your family, the line of David, noble and kingly though it is. You’re not a very snappy dresser either, and we like our teachers to set a good professional example for the children. And I do have to mention that incident of violence where you were seen over turning the money changer’s tables in the temple. Perhaps we could get you a little substitute work, but it would be in the low class part of town, you know among fishermen, tax collectors, riff raft like that. Those hot-shot TFI kids will work for practically nothing. I’d recommend that you go back to school, maybe Jerusalem Teachers College, or in a pinch Jerico and Dead Sea community college, and you can transfer later to Northern Judea State College. Thank you for coming in. If we can use you as a lunch room supervisor or a custodian, we’ll be in touch, but you’ll have to join the union in either case. We’re an equal opportunity meritocracy.”
What are the chances that a carpenter’s son was even literate?
Seriously? He quotes OT passages all the time. He disputes with the Rabbis when he’s only twelve. He was not only literate, but learned.
An awful lot of learning was oral and depended on memorization. I am not familiar with Jewish tradition at the time, but literacy with his station in life would have been highly unusual in most cultures. My guess is that literacy was restricted to the priestly tribe. I am totally ignorant as to whether there were scribes from another. We need the expertize of someone more schooled in Jewish history and traditions.
Ugh, Jennie Duggan. Your last paragraph makes me want to cry. The Super should at least make a show of standing with the teachers by not taking a raise. But at least everything is out on the table with him!
I think you are too kind to the TFA teachers. Given that TFA has been in existence for a long time, these young people ought to know what they’re signing up for. I suspect that many of them just want to burnish their resume for grad school or going on to a charter system. Frankly, they’re no better than scabs or parasites.
The bump in “graduation rate” is a clever bit of folderol. Remember that the Department of Education changed the rules about how graduation rate is calculated between Katrina and now, and graduation rates are generally higher as a result of this (and technology allowing mobile kids to be more easily tracked).
No stat (that favors privatization) left unused!
Teachers unemployed
Just what we need
Students lose
Country loses
Well, so much for the canard from the Joe Nathan’s of the world, that charters will help public schools improve, rather than replace them.
“We’ve had a clear plan in place…” said Patrick Dobard, head of the RSD. Indeed they did, and it has sadly come to pass.
This is the stupidest thing I’ve heard in a while. If this is how schools are teaching the scientific method and analysis, we are in trouble. You just can’t compare pre and post Katrina New Orleans. Two completely different populations. Lucky for my great nieces, their parents are leaving NOLA in a few weeks before the kids become school age. But who knows what they will find in the Northeast state that they are moving to? I am so glad I only have 6 more years with my kids in public schools, assuming all goes according to plan.
And did you notice that the State Superintendent didn’t actually answer the question about OneApp?
Horrid…Jim Crow schools.