In a bizarre decision, the Louisiana Department of Education honored some highly selective charter schools in New Orleans for Equity.
“Lusher Charter School is selective admission and, on top of that, has a notoriously complex application process. Lake Forest Elementary Charter School’s application process is also hard by design. Benjamin Franklin High School is highly selective. Neither do those schools provide bus transportation, opting instead to offer bus tokens that can be used to take RTA.”
Andre Perry, former charter leader in NOLA, now at the Brookings Institution, said:
“There is no way,” he said, “that a school that has a history of not accepting everyone should get an equity award. C’mon, it makes no sense.”
“Based on the criteria for the award,” Perry said, “schools with a sordid history of exclusionary practices can qualify for an equity award. That’s just backwards.” He said that, instead, the selective admissions schools should be praised based on “how rapidly their populations are moving to look like the number of school-age children in the city.”
Maybe the state meant to commend these selective schools for high test scores and mistakenly put them on the Equity list.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The More Education Republicans Have, the Less They Tend to Believe in Climate Change – The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/14/upshot/climate-change-by-education.html
It seems to me that truly independent critical thinking is not a result of more education. That says a lot about education in the U.S. as well as the power of partisan politics and partisan media.
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Common Corpse & Desiccation via testing, being DUMBED down by SCREEN TIME … HELP!
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Ranking schools by test scores provides a skewed profile of a school. When the “best” schools list appears, generally selective private and public schools appear at the top of the lists. While I am certain, these schools offer a quality education, there are many comprehensive schools doing outstanding work in diverse communities that never get any local, state or national attention. I taught in such a diverse district that got positive results from students of all colors and socioeconomic levels. We did not lead the county in scores, and we probably never will. But it is OK….. because most of our students make it in the real world. High scores do not necessarily equal a great education. A selective school is not a model of equity as it is exclusionary by definition. Maybe people in Louisiana need to look up equity in the dictionary. When my school won a national “Blue Ribbon,” we were cited by the DOE for providing equity for our diverse students. We were not the highest scoring school in the county, and this school is still not the highest scoring school in the county today.
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All that means is “they” (the Trump think-alike types that worship at the altar of avarice and want to hold ruthless power over every other living thing on earth) have gained control of that award process.
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The charter movement is rooted in a glaring hypocrisy, embodied in the person and unnatural disaster of John White. Outwardly he presents himself as the ultimate champion of equity. His actions suggest the opposite, a very subtle and yet thoroughly deluded, or impeccably calculating, con artist, who cons the most vulnerable and takes advantage wherever and whenever he can.
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**Based on the criteria for the award,” Perry said, “schools with a sordid history of exclusionary practices can qualify for an equity award. That’s just backwards.” **
It makes perfect sense if the goal is to increase the number of charters.
It’s the very same approach as claiming charters are the civil Rights issue of our time.
It effects effectively immunizes charters against criticism. After all, who wants to be seen as against equity or in opposition to civil rights?
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