Mercedes Schneider has been trying to get Louisiana’s ACT scores, but the State Education Department would not release them. Mercedes would not be deterred, and she explains here how she finally got them. She always sssumed State Superintendent John White didn’t want the scores made public. Now she knows why.
“There is a reason Louisiana Superintendent John White has refused to release these scores to the public:
“The Class of 2014 ACT composite scores for RSD do nothing to support the now-ten-year-old sales pitch that The Reforms Are Working in New Orleans.
“The Class of 2013 ACT composite for RSD was 16.3.
“The Class of 2014 ACT composite for all RSD high schools was 15.6. For RSD-New Orleans high schools, it was 15.7.”
It turns out that the Néw Orleans-Recivery School District ranks 66 out of 70 districts in the state.
After a decade of “reform,” this is very sad.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
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Spread the bad news for the charter cronies–their system fails again and again, even if they lie again and again. Only their big money, big media allies, and big govt. officials keep them floating. Many thanks to Mercedes. No one can hide from Mercedes.
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After the DEFORMS, which benefit the RICH.
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They want to bring this brand of reform to Nevada, but the tea party legislature just can’t stomach passing the same tax the voters voted down. The political creatures have a keen sense of self preservation, so I’m sure they’ll plunge onward and just siphon of more funds from the public schools to fund their achievement district.
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So self-styled “education reform” is a RaceToTheBottom? Of a piece with NoChild’sBehindLeft? Hoisted by their metrics?
Really!
😱
And it can’t be explained away, even when the leaders of the “new civil rights movement of our time” try Rheeally Rheally hard, even employing every last ounce of spin and deflection in the most Johnsonally sort of ways…
So it turns out that the “data-driven decision-making” charterite/privatizer crowd hasn’t found even a fig leaf of a number or stat to hide the fact that they have no moral center or ethical core.
But they do have $tudent $ucce$$ aplenty, and that’s what makes ₵ent¢ to them…
What a sad and sorry bunch.
😎
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I am so glad that there are people like Mercedes to get to the bottom of things. If you have not already read her excellent 2014 book, A Chronicle of Echoes: Who-s Who in the Implosion of American Public Education, you should. — Edd Doerr (arlinc.org)
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From what I’ve been reading over the months, what John White did to hide the truth is playing out across the country because the facts don’t support the corporate reform movement to destroy the public schools.
I think we are going to see many more court cases over the fake reformers attempt to destroy democratic public education in the United States—in the unspoken name of profit.
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@Lloyd Lofthouse I hope the same, and too bad there isn’t a group of activists and lawyers who can speed up the process.
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I wonder if Bill Gates and the other oligarchs have donated huge sums of money to the American Civil Liberties Union (the ACLU).
The oligarchs seem to be buying up most of America to achieve their agenda so why wouldn’t they also—or at last attempt—to also buy up the ACLU?
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@Lloyd Lofthouse RE: Bill Gates and others. Never thought of that. If they were really that clever they’d cover all bases.
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If Bill Gates or one of the other reformer oligarch vampires bought off the ACLU, there will be a paper trail for someone who knows how to follow it. After all, someone caught one of the oligarchs buying off National Public Radio or was it PBS or both with a few million.
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Lloyd, David Sirota caught PBS accepting funding from the Arnold Foundation to run a “documentary” on pensions. Mr. Arnold is not a fan of public sector defined benefit pensions. PBS returned his money.
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Thank you, but I don’t think PBS has run an honest, well researched piece on education reform yet covering both sides of the issue fairly. Until they do that, they are still suspect.
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Up here in DC and my former homes in NY/NJ, well…we call that fraud. Is it just business as usual in NOLA?
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In America, as long as it’s under the guise of education reform, business men can pocket our taxes, promise an outcome, fail to deliver and, keep going back to the trough, without repercussion.
We need more whistleblower action, protection and reward.
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The only “reform” that has happened in the RSD is that someone gets to take the people’s tax money as “profit.”
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This should be enough to keep the reform movement off college campuses, shouldn’t it?
Combined with the complete discreditation of VAM by the American Statistical Association, the reform movement can now be dismissed as a failed experiment with no scientific basis and merit. “Not even wrong”, as Wolfgang Pauli would say. It would have as much utility on a public college campus as a program for Intelligent Design.
The general public, business people, politicians can argue over the reform movement, as they do it over Evolution vs Intelligent Design, but trying to bring the reform movement to any college campus can now be called incompetence.
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