Corporate reformers have touted the New Orleans “transformation” as proof that privatization works. The recipe is simple: First, get a natural disaster to wipe out all the public schools. Then, fire all the unionized teachers and replace them with inexperienced, low-wage teachers willing to work long hours. At the same time, replace the public schools with privately managed charter schools. Let everyone choose. And, eventually, great things happen: test scores go up, graduation rates go up, college admission rates rise, college persistence goes up. All these great things happen by the miracle of privatization.
As Carol Burris explains in this important article, the narrative is all wrong.
Before Hurricane Katrina, there were 65,000 students in the schools of New Orleans. Today, there are about 45,000. The hurricane did the most damage to the low-lying areas where very poor people lived, and some of them never returned.
In mid-July, Douglas Harris and Matthew Larsen wrote a paper about the great success of the reforms in New Orleans. There are many caveats, mostly having to do with the causes of improvements. And, as Valerie Strauss points out in her introduction to Burris’s article, the New Orleans school district is still significantly below the state average on the state tests.
Burris notes that even Douglas Harris is cautious about whether the New Orleans reforms are “scalable.” Funding increased by almost $1,400 per pupil. That mattered, though Harris doesn’t know how much it mattered. Second, Harris warns that the situation in New Orleans was unique and that its reforms cannot be extrapolated to other districts that might want to adopt the portfolio model or otherwise expand charters. “New Orleans,” he said, “was uniquely situated for these reforms to work. The district was extremely low-performing, and pretty much everyone agreed that some type of major change was in order. It’s easier to improve from such a low starting point. … I don’t think we can extrapolate New Orleans to most of the country. It’s more like a best-case scenario.”
Burris reports that the Network for Public Education commissioned Bruce Baker of Rutgers University to review the Harris-Larsen report on NOLA.
Baker faults Harris and Larsen for downplaying the role of extra funding and the importance of demographic change.
Baker reviews the effects of adding substantial new resources to a struggling district. He points out that in the case of New Orleans, a disproportionate share of the new funding went to administration and transportation. Because the teaching staff was young and inexperienced, the cost of instruction was unusually low and is probably not sustainable in the long run.
He also points out the dramatic decline of concentrated poverty in New Orleans. This in itself was an important “reform” which helped to boost outcomes.
As usual, things are more complicated than they seem. Any reformer who blithely suggests applying the New Orleans model to a city without a hurricane, without a huge boost in funding, and without positive demographic changes to reduce poverty, is likely to be disappointed.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
New Orleans Public Schools got raped by the oligarchs.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
Since Katrina the city has undergone a great deal of gentrification. Areas that did not flood have become majority white parts of the city with much higher real estate values. If the city had public schools, this demographic shift would be a great boon to integration. The current privatized network promotes segregation instead of integration, and the schools remain extremely segregated..
They’re all pushing “the portfolio model” now which supposedly has a few public schools scattered here and there in it.
It’s same old, same old privatization. The public schools will be gradually defunded and closed instead of all at once.
It’s like when they assured us they needed charters or they would go to vouchers. Then they got charters and all immediately started promoting vouchers.
Those “portfolio” districts are just a cynical mechanism to eradicate all the public schools without tipping off the public.
I don’t know why they don’t just run on privatization. It’s ALL they care about.
I was reading one of the Obama-era ed reformers on the new LeBron James school in Ohio.
He attributes that school to- you guessed it- charter schools.
They are incapable of supporting a public school. Any success a public school has must be attributed to 1. ed reformers or 2. charter and private schools.
They do it all the time. If a public school’s scores go up there’s no discussion of that school. Instead ed reformers point to the “influence” of charter and private schools.
It is an anti-public school movement and that comes clear as day when you read them. The only reason they don’t see it is they exist in an echo chamber.
Douglas Harris’s Education Research Alliance at Tulane is funded by Arnold. Harris was awarded the DeVos Dept. of Ed. grant this summer to develop products and marketing plans for charter schools i.e. private education taking a page from big Pharma, who gets the government to pay for research, then takes money from what the taxpayer paid to develop. Crony capitalism.
Other recipients of Arnold money who share in the grant money from DeVos- Michigan State University’s Education Policy Innovation Collaborative.
It’s so embarrassing that the federal government is pushing this bogus stat:
“So students must be prepared to anticipate and adapt. They need to acquire and master broadly transferrable and versatile educational competencies like critical thinking, collaboration, communication, creativity and cultural intelligence. These are essential – but often unaddressed – skills for students regardless of their chosen careers.
Students also need to be better prepared to pursue professions not yet imagined. Forecasting experts for Dell Computers recently estimated that “around 85 percent of the jobs that today’s learners will be doing in 2030 haven’t been invented yet.”
I mean, come on. Are we paying a bunch of parrots? Can’t they do some reading and learning on their own?
We’re ruled by dopes who don’t do their own thinking. They will say ANYTHING if it comes from some private sector actor they admire. Dell Computer could tell DeVos the moon was made of green cheese and she’s recite it in every speech.
Can’t we hire better people? People who read and think for themselves?
Please contact Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley at her website and Findlay’s Mayor at her site They are hosting Bill Gates’s Ohio Educational Attainment Summit on Sept 10. The mayors apparently didn’t get the memo (Hanushek and Impatient Optimist, Johnathan Friedman, are speakers) that the Hoover Institute works to privatize public schools. The promise of more money for the tech industry and the richest 0.1% overshadows the obvious failure of virtual and bricks and mortar charter schools. Gates has the best propaganda machine money can buy.
Hanushek has predicted that if test scores go up by X, the GDP will soar by trillions.
By design, research validity and reliability are absent from the wealthy’s education deform. The richest, with experience in monopoly businesses (Gates and Waltons), failed businesses (Arnold) or, with no experience at all (DeVos and the widow (Steve) Jobs, steer studies even at institutions where the faculty researchers cash paychecks funded by taxpayers (public universities). In that steering, they bias outcomes.
Intellectual prostitutes with sizable egos and no lack of imagination plot to construct bogus correlations to sell privatization. They ignore the obvious failures of charter schools because there’s no money in that research.
American injustice. I hope they pay a price.
Hanushek is a BS artist. If he cared about GDP he would work on lessening Wall Street’s drag on GDP.
American labor has to overcome the financial sector’s 2% drag and then make more gains so that the hedge funders can pocket all of labor’s reward for working.
“The City of New Orleans” (Apologies to Steve Goodman, RIP)
Ridin’ on the City Of New Orleans
Recovery District, charter Holy Grail
Fifty-eight schools and 33 thousand students
Superintendent; Fifty-eight principals
All along the dollar-bound odyssey – the charter pulls out a city key
And rolls along o’er teachers, staff, and parents
Closing schools where public rules, and PTA’s for neighborhoods
And the school yards of the rusted teacher mobile
Good morning, America, how are you?
Say, don’t you know me? I’m your charter son
I’m the charter called the City Of New Orleans
I’ll be gone with 500 mill$ when the decade’s done
Playing shell games with the CEO’s in the charters
Opening tests – ain’t no one watching store
Pass the paper bag with school-assignments
Seal the deals in backrooms ‘hind the door
And the grads of online programs, and the grads of TFA
Start their magic miracle charters for a steal
Hedge-funds with their pockets deep, flocking to the charter beat
And the rhythm of the jails they’ll never feel
Good morning, America, how are you?
Say, don’t you know me? I’m your charter son
I’m the charter called the City Of New Orleans
I’ll be gone with 500 mill$ when the decade’s done
Charter-time in the City Of New Orleans
Closing schools is easy as can be
Halfway done – we’ll be there by morning
Through Louisiana darkness, rolling down to the sea
And all the towns and people seem to fade into a charter dream
And the parents still ain’t heard the news
The CEO sings his songs again – the local folks will please refrain
This place got the disappearing public-school blues
Good night, America, how are ya?
Said, don’t you know me? I’m your charter son
I’m the charter called the City Of New Orleans
I’ll be gone with 500 mill$ when the decade’s done
Sing along with Arlo Guthrie
That’s a good one SDP! Gracias.
Not many know of or remember who Steve Goodman was. Another brilliant artist who died (leukemia) way too young.
Here’s another of his originals:
& the Cubs honored his memory throughout the 2016 World Series season (sigh…such a happy day exactly one week before the horror that was 11/9) by repeatedly plying his classic “Go, Cubs, Go!” & let’s win this year, Cubbies!
TARGO!
😎
“I recently met a 70-year-old man who was in his fourth career. His first was as a helicopter pilot. He then went on to work in the defense contracting industry, followed by another career in banking. He then found retirement to be quite boring, so he learned the necessary skills to drive big 18 wheeler trucks across America. And he said his fourth career is his best one yet!”
Says the multi-billionaire who got no training past a 50 year old bachelor’s degree and never worked for anyone outside her family before Trump appointed her.
Next up- Ivanka Trump on careers in welding!
We have absolutely nothing in common with the people who run our government. They live in a different country.
This disconnect will continue if people keep voting for billionaires and multi-millionaires to represent us.
New York City is working on “reforms” that are certain to raise test scores (which are the only things that matter, right?): it’s zoning the poor right out of the city, while simultaneously peddling the fiction that luxury real estate development, with a few units of (un) “affordable” (for the poor, working or middle class) housing thrown in, will shove the problem.
Gates-funded Chalkbeat reports that Arnold (Enron) and Reed Hastings (self-identified as stunted as a human being, by privilege) are behind a push for the portfolio model. Not surprising that Arnold Foundation grantee, Prof. Strunck, is studying teacher labor market responses to portfolio management reforms in L.A., Denver and N.O.
Arnold has spent a big on Inc. school organizations in Baton Rouge and N.O.
Tulane’s Education Research Alliance is funded by Arnold. Its director is Douglas Harris who shares receipt of this summer’s $10 mil. grant from DeVos’ Dept. of Ed. to design products and marketing for the charter school market with Strunck.
Meanwhile, Michigan, where Strunck is a professor has 80% of its charters as for-profits and 1/4 of the 101,000 students enrolled in virtual schools fail to complete even one class.
Enron? Tell me more. Arnold is hiring the refugees from the New Orleans charter crash to work out of Arnold Foundation.
Kipp schools in New Orleans paid their students $50 a week for good behavior. How can that be scaled up? Another charter school gave five of their 8th grade graduates a $60,000 a year scholarship to attend local private high schools–and then hid it from the public. Why are these two facts not on the table.
“Funding increased by almost $1,400 per pupil.”
Where did that increase go? To administration and not to the classroom.
“Charter Schools Spend More On Administration, Less On Instruction Than Traditional Public Schools: Study” …
“Controlling for factors that determine school resource allocation like student enrollment and school location, Michigan State University’s David Arsen and the University of Utah’s Yongmei Ni found that charter schools spend on average $774 more per student on administration and $1,140 less on instruction than do traditional public schools.
“Breaking down the $774 administrative surplus, about one third — $268 — went toward school administration while the remaining two-thirds — $506 — was paid to general administration and business services, like the costs of charter school boards and fees charged by charter management organizations.”
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/10/charter-schools-spend-mor_n_1415995.html
Then there is this cost cutting measure in charter schools:
“High turnover among charter school teachers sheds light on value of teacher pensions …
“Comparing the experiences of charter school teachers, who are less likely to have DB pensions, and traditional public school teachers, who are more likely to be unionized and have DB pensions, provides indirect evidence that traditional pensions do, in fact, reduce turnover. This comparison is complicated by other differences between teachers at traditional public schools and at charter schools.
“Teacher turnover may be higher in charter schools because charter school teachers are unhappy or because they can be dismissed more easily—both factors likely play a role. However, the fact that turnover is lower among unionized public school teachers suggests that pensions also play a role in reducing turnover at traditional public schools because unions prioritize pension benefits in negotiations.”
https://www.epi.org/publication/teachers-and-schools-are-well-served-by-teacher-pensions/
I recently read a profile of vulture capitalist Paul Singer “The Doomsday Investor” by Sheelah Kolhatkar in the New Yorker. It struck me that the NCLB algorithm of turning over “failing schools” to privatizers mirrors that used by Mr. Singer and his colleagues… and given Mr. Singer’s “investments” in GOP candidates and causes it is not at all surprising. https://wp.me/p25b7q-2fd
& who started this in NOLA? Why, Paul Vallas, running for mayor of Chicago. (He was recently polled among the top 3, although that was counting Rahm, & their %age points were all in the teens: Rahm, Garry McCarthy, Paul & Lori Lightfoot 4th.)
Now that an “outsider” (otherwise read as “the chosen one” here) will be running–& supposedly will get some big money & Dem endorsements from people such as Obama–the game will change drastically. Yet, the majority of Chicago voters do NOT know what Vallas had done to NOLA, Philadelphia &, almost, Bridgeport, CT. (& after getting tossed out there he….returns to Chicago & is asked to run for Lt. Gov. (which is part of the reason the Dem, Quinn, lost to Rauner). Then, when he loses that, he gets himself “appointed” (by the GOP governor, no less) to “help” the very financially troubled Chicago State University (a non-paid position, but that “non-paid” part didn’t last long). He got a contract, a nice salary & then, he up & quit…to run for mayor. Not a few of the faculty & C.S.U. community were upset/angered over this.
Just in case, I’ll ask again: those of you who have experienced “the Vallas touch” PLEASE write a letter to the editor or a guest essay to one of the Chicago papers.