As Gary Rubinstein writes, Louisiana is one of the most “reformed” states in the nation. It’s superintendent John White is a TFA alum and a graduate of the unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy. It has an all-charter city. It has vouchers. It received a Race to the Top grant. What could possibly go wrong?
Rubinstein writes here about a seeming paradox: Every year, Louisiana State Superintendent John zwhite boasts about an astounding increase in the proportion of students passing AP exams. Yet, Louisiana has pretty awful performance on the AP exams.
Paradox solved!
Louisiana moved from fourth worst to third worst in the nation on AP performance. It was recently overtaken by North Dakota.
Read his post and ask yourself why anyone would boast about such low performance. Is that what they teach at the Broad Academy?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
You really have to read past the cheerleading headline in ed reform.
This is from the privatization-promoting Center for Reinventing Education. They profiled 14 of the reformiest cities to promote more privatization.
But when you read past the declarations of success, you find this:
“In the same time frame, 5 of 14 cities showed statistically significant improvement in reading and math proficiency rates, tentative but good news for urban centers working to overcome the challenges of poverty.”
Only FIVE out of 14 cities showed any improvement at all when they went with the ed reform “choice” agenda? Less than half? Why would other cities adopt these policies?
They also omitted any improvements that might have come in cities that DIDN’T privatize. Are those cities improving doing something else? We’ll never know and no one in ed reform is interested in looking, I guess, but 5 out of 14 is not a good success rate for privatization! It’s not even half.
The only real improvement I’ve seen over 20 years of ed reform in Ohio is high school graduation rates- the problem is those have gone up every year for what looks like the last 50 years anyway, so I’m not clear that it’s in any way attributable to testing and privatization. They went up without testing and privatization. For all I know they would have gone up more if ed reform didn’t exist.
Our local public school was better 20 years ago-it was better-resourced, offered more variety and more options for students, so ed reform has been a net loss in this county.
they sucked a lot of the joy out of ordinary public schools. It’s pretty grim these days, for kids. I feel bad for them. They don’t even know kids used to get field trips and art classes and music lessons. In some cases (like mine) their older brothers and sisters got those things.
Regarding White: Liars lie!
“…ask yourself why anyone would boast about such low performance. Is that what they teach at the Broad Academy?”
Yes it is.
Any update on White’s certification battle that Mercedes brought to light?
White’s lying low for now!
It isn’t just Louisiana.
Advanced Placement itself is a hoax.