Mercedes Schneider calculated the ACT scores for the charter schools of New Orleans.
This is a statistic that State Superintendent John White doesn’t want you to know.
It blows away the myth of the New Orleans miracle.
The NOLA recovery School District has been stuck with an average hovering in the 16s. Not at all impressive. Not at all “college and career ready.”
She writes:
“Guaranteed admission to the University of Louisiana at Lafayette (ULL) requires an ACT composite of 23. For Louisiana State University (LSU), it’s a 22. For both the University of Louisiana at Monroe (ULM) and Southeastern Louisiana University (SLU), an ACT composite of 21 is preferred, but either an ACT English score of 18 or an ACT math score of 19 is required.
“The average Xavier University undergraduate has an ACT composite ranging from 23 to 28, with Xavier advertising an ACT composite of 24 necessary for admission to its nursing and occupational health programs. Nursing students must also score at least a 21 on the ACT math exam.
“For Southern University (SU), an ACT composite of 20 is preferred, but again, either an ACT English score of 18 or an ACT math score of 19 is required. And for the University of New Orleans (UNO), both an ACT English score of 18 and an ACT math score of 19 are required, and if the student’s high school GPA is at least 2.0 but not 2.5, an ACT composite of 23 is required.
“Thus, for all of its charter-portfolio fanfare, it is difficult to conceive of the state-run RSD-NO as anything but a flop based upon years of its sub-17 average ACT composites.
The first step to addressing the issue is admitting that there is an issue. However, completely ghosting out the RSD-NO high school average ACT composite calculation even years before RSD-NO is formally dissolved certainly dodges any such responsible admission.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Niagara University, a private college in Niagara Falls, New York, has just dropped the ACT and SAT admission requirements.
We are entering a new era as colleges and universities across the country realize that these scores are bogus (or that not enough students are reaching the minimum admission standards to fill their Freshman Class).
Too bad College Board! You’ll have to find a new way of cheating people out of their money and mining their data to sell for profit.
What goes around comes around.
Diane Besides the instant overreach of inpatient and unsavory charter owners, the joker (the myth that charters can fix the fundamental problems of education–the same problems that public schools deal with)–that joker is already emerging in the relative poor performance of charters and, later, with the (de)personalized instruction via technology. Neither vouchers nor charters, privatization, nor technology will fix the problems that public education has been dealing with for a very long time.
Until we understand the problems of education in the fullness of their cultural context, the joker will remain awake and keep coming back. (The above is from my earlier note on technology in the classroom.)
YES.
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Mercedes Schneider calculated the ACT scores for the charter schools of anew Orleans.
This is a statistic that State Superintendent John White doesn’t want you to know.
It blows away the myth of the New Orleans miracle.
The NOLA recovery Svhool District has been stuck with an average hovering in the 16s. Not at all impressive. Not at all “college and career ready.” …
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