One day, perhaps, the nationaledia might admit that they were taken in by the purveyors of the Néw Orleans story. Or maybe they will keep saying the same things again and again, without regard to facts.
Mike Deshotels, veteran educator, blows up the carefully manufactured tale of success by privatization. What a lesson for the nation: close down every public school; turn every school into a privately managed charter school; fire every experienced teacher and replace with a fresh college graduate with give weeks of training. Is this the formula for success in any other nation? No.
Deshotels writes that:
“The Louisiana Department of education has just released the results of the state accountability testing called LEAP and ILEAP. The report includes a percentile ranking of each of the public school systems in the state according to the performance of their students in math, and english language arts. The latest student testing results and these percentile rankings demonstrate the appalling academic performance of the Louisiana Recovery District (The RSD results are given near the bottom of the chart). After more than eight years of state takeover and conversion of public schools in Louisiana into privately run charter schools, even the most ardent promoters of this radical privatization experiment can no longer hide its spectacular failure.”
“The latest state testing results in this official LDOE report now ranks the New Orleans Recovery District at the 17th percentile among all Louisiana public school districts in student performance. By the state’s own calculations, this means that 83 percent of the state’s school districts provide their students a better opportunity for learning than do the schools in New Orleans that were taken over and converted into charter schools. Considering the fact that a special law was passed for New Orleans that allowed the state to take over, not just failing schools, but any school performing below the state average at that time, this 17th percentile ranking places the New Orleans takeover schools just about where they were before the takeover. But in addition, the schools taken over by the Recovery District in Baton Rouge and other areas are now ranked at the 2 percentile and 0 percentile levels respectively, after 6 years of state and charter school control. That means that these two portions of the Louisiana Recovery District are absolutely the poorest performers on the state accountability testing. In two of the schools run by the RSD, the academic results and the enrollments had deteriorated so much that the Recovery District has recently given them back to the local school school board systems. This latest move apparently violates the whole premise behind the RSD.”
Despite these facts, why does the media continue to praise this failed experiment?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It’s not a failed experiment. The goal was to privatize, not increase test scores. They did that. So by their standards, New Orleans is wildly successful. They. Don’t. Care. About. You.
Totally agree.
When any politician says, “This is the BEST thing that has happened to New Orleans Public Schools.” ALWAYS FOLLOW the $$$$$. It’s a SCAM.
No Public School Left Behind!
Money talks, results don’t. Plantation mentality strikes again? Is it any wonder that the leaders in this effort to create privately run charter (plantation) schools are the former slave states?
Interesting point.
If only that were true: what about DC, Philadelphia, Newark?
The public schools there have not yet been completely privatized, but that’s the aim, and are very close to, if not past the tipping point.
If it was only the primitive heirs of the plantation economy we had to worry about, this would just be a regional problem, but it’s a national (indeed, an international) one, because there is a clear ruling class consensus that public education must be re-configured to adapt to and replicate neoliberal realities.
To what extent do you think this is natural fallout of a digital age?
Kind of like the repercussions of the interstate highway system or interstate banking. We all have computers and gadgets. Naturally, Gates will be king. Right?
I don’t know about tipping points, but it’s not difficult to imagine what the near-term growth of charter schools will look like in NYC. Under current conditions, the only meaningful constraint on charter school growth is the cap set by the state legislature. Whatever the cap is, that’s how many charter schools there will be, unless the cap gets raised, and so on. The original cap was 100, and it only took a few years to reach it. Then the cap went to 200. Now it’s at 460, and I don’t think that number could be dialed back even if the legislative will existed, because that cap was set for RTTT purposes.
So we know that there will be at least 460 charter schools in NY, probably mostly in NYC. More than a doubling of the number of charter schools. The only question is how quickly it happens. If anything, the barriers to entry now are lower than they’ve ever been, given this year’s budget law. So it could happen real fast.
Flerp, New York State has 233 charter schools, 183 of which are in New York City. The state-wide cap is 460; the NYC cap is 214. There will be a lot of growth in charter school enrollment in the city as the 183 schools “age” and add grades, but I’m not sure it’s a given that the NYC cap will be raised, at least not in the foreseeable future. I know that Meryl Tisch, at least, believes strongly in having caps and is comfortable with where they are now.
Despite the fact that they’ve been completely asleep at the switch when it comes to issues like backfill and co-locations in NYC, for the most part New York’s two charter school authorizers have done a solid job of making sure charter operators are qualified to operate schools. The same can’t be said in many other states, including Louisiana, it would seem.
Well, then I take it all back. I should do that routinely.
Joanna,
I think digitalization is integral to this entire project: it enables it, by turning children into monetized data sets, and glosses over its dangers by bombarding people with consumer gadgets and pseudo-scientific rationales for what in reality are political and economic questions.
Flerp,
You are right: people have no idea how fast charter schools are going to metastasize in NYC, since our reptilian governor is indebted to their patrons.
Look for another expansion, perhaps even the elimination, of the charter cap when Cuomo is re-elected, along with a new breed of “charter lite” public schools that will come into existence as a result of the new teacher’s contract, known as PROSE schools.
People are deluding themselves if they think De Blasio and Farina will not close or reorganize more schools in the coming years. The changes at City Hall and Tweed are much more about tone than substance, and we should expect to see schools in danger of closing being offered “help” from charter funders, as long as the teachers in those schools are willing to work under a “thin” (read non-existent) contract. The message to teachers in those schools will be, “PROSE of close!” The teachers will desperately vote to turn into charter-lite schools, lest they become ATRs and subject to the non-existent “protections” the new contract offers them.
It’s win-win for the so-called reformers and their UFT enablers: the privateers get further reductions in schools with legitimate union representation, and the UFT (mis)leadership keeps the dues machine going.
Michael–
I mean even just within our place in history? That because of the prevalence of computers as a way of doing things, we will lose something else. Right now it looks like that something else is public school as we have always known it. Like we are experiencing an unanticipated side effect of our own reliance on digital conveniences (not to sound like a Luddite—-just thinking about how things change over time). Interstate highways caused change. Interstate banking caused change. Internet living is causing change.
(btw, those are the very words I used to help children remember what an interlude is. . .the music between other bits of music).
My take, Joanna, is that the people bringing digital serfdom to us are extremely intelligent, and know exactly what they are doing. While there will be many unintended consequences, most of what we are seeing in the schools, particularly the nastiness and destabilization, are consciously intended.
The problem is that our new digital aristocracy has open contempt for democracy and humanity at large – just take at look at Peter Thiel, a founder of PayPal, with his deranged Ayn Rand-ite fantasies of creating floating cities that will allow the Overclass to leave the riff raff behind forever – contempt that is being structurally embedded in a society of neoliberal policies amped-up by unregulated digitalization.
Ignorance, that’s why the media continues to praise this district in addition to political and monetary support from those privateers who basically don’t care about the students in this recovery district. This speaks to the effect that privatizing has on equity, they could give a damn. Government has always had to step in an ensure equal treatment and fairness in areas that private interests ignored. This is no different.
“Government has always had to step in an ensure equal treatment and fairness…”
Unfortunately, government is also owned by the privateers.
“Despite these facts, why does the media continue to praise this failed experiment?”
Because it’s paid to!
Some of it is that a public school district just doggedly working really hard and slowly improving over time just isn’t an exciting story or a compelling narrative.
Who wants to interview some 55 year old, middle class, veteran superintendent or principal when they can interview “rock stars”?
“We’re very proud of our parent participation element. It took ten years” Snoooze! 🙂
I don’t have any problem with them all flocking to New Orleans and covering the same thing, but it is really skewed towards “new!” and that’s disturbing to me. For one thing it doesn’t give credit where credit is due in terms of what’s NOT covered, and it also feeds the national narrative where solid, incremental long-term commitment and growth is either ignored or actually devalued. Public schools will inevitably suffer in comparison if “new” is the bias, for obvious reasons.
The business press does the same thing and I don’t think it’s been good for the economy, as a whole.
But this analysis is easily countered because it is yet another stack-ranking system (by definition what any percentile system is). So New Orleans isn’t moving up the ranks against other schools in Louisiana – is that because New Orleans isn’t improving, or because other districts are improving more? And what do we mean by “improving” when the only metric we have is, once again, test scores?
My kingdom for a study that attempts to look at qualitative factors – student and parent satisfaction, genuine college and career readiness (not the Common Core version), lifetime “success” (defined by living a satisfying life, not necessarily by income or job status), etc. Yes, that sort of study is a lot harder to do, but it’s the only kind of study that means anything.
Furthermore, if we use test scores to prove that the RSD is a failure, the rephormers can turn that right back around on us: “You can’t compare New Orleans against the rest of the state, you have to compare New Orleans against itself. Look how much test scores have improved since the RSD took over.” The fact that the poorest of the poor kids didn’t come back, so the student population is not comparable routinely gets overlooked by the rephormers who happen to have the media in their back pockets.
Anyway, bottom line is that when we start playing the test score game, we’re going to lose because the rephormers can make test scores look like whatever they need them to look like, and the media report what the rephormers say because they have the influence.
We need to play our own game and keep talking about individuality, humanity and the worth of all students.
I agree Dienne. Well stated.
There is absolutely no reason not to crow. these test scores are their chosen assessment tool. They are not succeeding by the tools they choose to support. They have used such tools to declare schools failures. Their own efforts should be measured by their own magic bullets. Have they improved the schools? No!
Money from the billionaire boys is the bastion that deflects criticism from the public. Ergo, “success” through privatization.
I’m understanding more and more each day what is meant by the “mighty dollar”.
Test Scores, We don’t need no stinking test scores…. We need Consciousness!
A “Consciousness” immune to marketing, rhetoric, or propaganda…
In short, WHAT part of Educated, Objectivity, Consciousness, is claimed (Trumped)
by marketing, rhetoric, or propaganda?
IF, and this is a BIG if..If Public Education was established to “Turn on the Light”
for the masses, WHY do so many people seem to be in the DARK
(swayed by marketing, rhetoric, or propaganda)???
Charter Schools couldn’t stay in “Business” for too long, if they didn’t have “Customers”.
“We’ve reinvented how schools run,” said Neerav Kingsland of New Schools for New Orleans, which promotes and supports charter schools. 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. ”
I think it’s productive they’re finally announcing this is the ed reform model. The plan is to export this everywhere.
Anyone who thinks public schools are going to do well under ed reform leadership that seeks only to replace public schools is kidding themselves. Also, “scaleability” means standardization. They can’t ramp this privatization movement up as quickly as they plan without standardizing.
I also love how “the schools have gotten really good at fundraising” is considered a plus.
Is that really what we want for “public education”? Make a pitch to donors and adopt only those policies and schools wealthy donors support? Boy, we better hope our billionaires are completely without self-interest, now that we’ve gone from “citizens” to “supplicants vying for a donation”!
Remember when we used to collect taxes from everyone and then have an elected and accountable state actor fund public entities? That was probably TOO HARD. This way we cut out the politician middleman and just have citizens petition wealthy people directly. Efficiency!
Chiara,
In reference to your post about Kingsland saying “he can pull his kids out tomorrow.” No, he can’t. After October 1, schools are not required to backfill or add students. OneApp is clear on that.
Second, fundraising will stop from the big donors. Sure, they’ll have their pet schools (KIPP will never have a problem) but they’ll lose interest in others. Then the fundraising is much like we’re used to. Bake sales and golf scrambles and other items we get bombarded with by friends and family. But in impoverished neighborhoods, where will these funds come from?
My neighbors sent their kids to a charter for two years. They returned to public schools. Their two biggest complaints: teacher churn at the charter and the requirement to do fundraising. Yes, they were contractually obligated upon getting their kids into a charter to do fundraising events.
Additionally, Kingsland is so ridiculously wrong, so out-in-left-field with that “pull his kids out tomorrow” statement, as if it were SO beneficial to children to start a “put-in-&-pull-out” method of educating them! And, Kingsland, how about all those charter schools that will FAIL? You know, such as the ones that have closed their doors–many suddenly–leaving NO school for the “other people’s children” who went there? It’ll be like the chaos of an extremely large number of Haitian refugees washing ashore at 4 AM, being picked up by INS & dumped in Miami, with only a small, church-run social service agency with one 10-seat-capacity van available, to pick them up and attempt to house them (this was an actual event)!
But, of course, we are speaking of refugees & children of the extremely not 1%.
Parents who have had their children in such aforementioned (as well as any you know of about to be closed), please join in this blog conversation–it’s a post we haven’t yet seen (& you know these families are never going to be interviewed by the mainstream press). We need to hear your stories for further ammunition to put a STOP to all of this because, indeed, it must be stopped.
Together we can–there is strength in numbers!
DR: Despite these facts, why does the media continue to praise this failed experiment?
I think there’s a popular narrative that the public wants to hear that folks in N.O. pull themselves up by their bootstraps, rebuild, and live happily ever after. It’s unsettling to hear of lingering failure following a major natural disaster, and to report such failure would probably not attract as many readers.
I don’t justify it, just explaining what might be going on.
If you don’t like our McSchool, you are free to send your child to another identical Mcschool in another county!