The parents of a student in New Orleans were dismayed when they realized that their daughter would graduate from high school even though she could neither count nor read. She was surely entitled under federal law to extra help but she never got it. Now she is a statistic: a graduate. A victory for the all-charter system that failed her.
Dennis Lewis remembers the moment clearly. It was the beginning of the school year, and he was trying to convince his wife that their 18-year-old wasn’t getting the services she needed from her public high school in New Orleans.
He pulled out a handful of coins from his pocket, and asked his daughter how much money he was holding.
“Sure enough, she couldn’t count it,” he recalled.
The look on his wife’s face — who would die from an aneurysm just three days later — was devastating.
Denesha Gray had just started the 12th grade. A few months later, still unable to perform basic addition, she beamed as she walked across the stage and received her diploma from McDonogh 35 Senior High School.
Gray, who struggles with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and bipolar disorder, had been allowed to progress to this point despite several red flags. She couldn’t count money, and she read only as well as a second grader. The system also failed to provide her with the type of tailored education program that her diagnoses mandated until the very end of her high school career.
Gray’s story recalls a sad episode that was once held up as Exhibit A in the failure of New Orleans’ public schools — the story of Bridget Green, who, despite being her school’s valedictorian in 2003, could not pass the state’s graduate exit exam of basic skills.
But Gray graduated in 2018, after being educated almost exclusively in a school system that was held up after Hurricane Katrina as a laboratory for education reform.
Louisiana teacher and activist Lee Barrios posted this online comment in response to the article:
Just a sampling of not only how disastrous education reform has been for our public schools in general, but of the damage that continues to be done to the SPED children through pure neglect and, unfortunately, purposeful denial of every child’s right to a public education that meets their needs!
Although this story thoroughly covers WHAT happened, as good journalistic reporting should, the public must now ask and demand the answer to WHY it is happening.
Many of us (properly trained and experienced education experts) have been monitoring the progression of the educational experiment dubbed “reform.” Our children have been used as the guinea pigs for the experiment. There is no doubt as to WHY the experiment failed.
As is true of all failed experiments, the hypothesis was flawed (an understatement). It’s like an experiment based on the idea that if supplementing a cow’s feed with apple cider vinegar will result in increased milk production (true) that adding vinegar when watering our flowering plants will increase bloom. An adept scientist will know or learn enough about the components of the experiment FIRST to tell him from the start that the hypothesis is incorrect – worse than incorrect – it will kill the plant.
Those who devised the various hypotheses of the educational experiment called reform include Presidents on down through the past few U.S. Secretaries of Education (Duncan, King, DeVos) to our State Superintendent John White. And finally, placed in many of our classrooms are unqualified instructors (like Teach for America recruits) who are NOT qualified, properly trained or experienced educators. It’s a fact. Add to that lack of expertise along with the power and money of the backers of these experiments like Bill Gates, the Waltons, and Jeb Bush bent on pushing their false theories. Then quickly followed a long list of investors, politicians and charlatans and you have what we see today – our children, our public schools and our teachers “dying” – and many of us would say death by design.
Many educators (and now parents) locally, nationally and even internationally have sounded the death knell for years. Our protests were particularly loud after Hurricane Katrina when the orchestrated takeover of New Orleans schools took place.
The volume increased in 2010 with the Race to the Top scheme pushed by Bobby Jindal. We have been flailing our hands treading water ever since as John White was appointed State Superintendent via a waiver of qualifications by a corrupt or at least blind majority of BESE members whose campaigns were funded by millionaires and billionaires who succeeded in fooling the voting public that Might is Right!
The single most important weapon used to facilitate the destruction of our public school system has been the use of our HIGH STAKES standardized test. Imagine that. One single test that combined with the disastrous Common Core Standards to which the test is aligned and the bogus unresearched and unproven curriculum (that which is being taught in the classroom) has captured total control over our local school districts.
And to make sure that the use of these three components of the experiment produce the desired results (privatization through school failure) an invalid accountability system was devised that has fooled the public into “believing” the results of John White’s manipulated and complicated formula of School Performance Scores.
ALL FACTS folks. We have the evidence. We have the proof which many of us allege to be fraud, malfeasance, and coercion. But no one with the authority to conduct a full investigation has listened or taken action. NO ONE! It has been like standing at the bottom of the mountain warning that an avalanche is imminent but nobody in the restaurants and expensive homes below want to believe that the status quo is about to be disastrously broken! Questioning if it could be possible that their lives are in danger of being changed forever.
It too bad that the greatest victims have been our innocent children. Let’s Stop! This experiment is a failure!
Lee P. Barrios, M.Ed., NBCTCandidate – BESE District 1La. Board of Elementary & Secondary Education
In LA, Lenny Isenberg spoke endlessly about how social promotion wrecked education. Here is part of what he wrote at Perdaily.com in 2014 http://www.perdaily.com/2014/07/between-dishonest-social-promotion-of.html
“Given the lingering context of still vibrant institutional racism which continues to create disproportional poverty and undervaluation of predominantly poor minority students … pretending that these students are capable of being promoted without mastery of prior grade-level standards is a far worse trauma in the long run than would be the early identification and appropriate educational interventions necessary to get these students caught up to their peer groups as soon as possible. For clearly, all evidence shows- and there’s plenty of it- that the longer schools wait to identify and deal with a student’s subjective baseline of academic ability and knowledge, the less chance the student ever has of getting caught up”.
…”It is easier for entrenched public education bureaucrats to B.S. parents with the pipe dream that their children are going to be doctors and lawyers, even though the objective reality is that they have been socially promoted to the 9th grade and beyond without the ability to read or do basic math, than to actually set the public education system right.”
This raises the interesting question of high school graduation requirements. Should there be minimum literacy and numeracy standards for awarding a high school diploma? If so, what should those requirements be and who should decide?
We should trash the whole concept of a one-size-fits-all diploma. Many states currently have at least two levels of diplomas. I think we need separate academic and vocational tracks. We now put this off, for most of the non-college-bound kids until after high school, and that’s wasteful and costly. You are an economist TE–I suspect that there is a great paper there, in a study of the cost of NOT identifying kids who should be in voc ed early on.
Bob,
I have defended the qualified admission high schools in the past, so I certainly agree that tracking students has merit. Yet, there has often been ferocious opposition to tracking students expressed by people here through the years. I think it will be a hard sell.
My concern, and perhaps others, would be that students end up being tracked based on gender/race/social class rather then academic ability. The Atlantic had a short article about this recently: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/04/gifted-and-talented-programs-separate-students-race/587614/
There might be a significant cost to misidentifying kids who should be in vocational education early on. Do you have some ways to address these concerns?
Well, this would have to be closely watched, certainly. I think that these decisions should be made by a team, like an IEP team, consisting of the student, his or her parents and guardians, a teacher advocate, a guidance counselor, and an administrator.
It’s a confused notion of democracy that considers separate vocational and academic tracks to be undemocratic, one that confuses equality with identity. People differ. Equality means providing people with equal protection under the law and making sure that their basic needs are met. The whole notion that one kind of high school can provide everyone with what he or she needs on the cusp of adult life by teaching “college and career skills” in general is wholly ridiculous. Proof of this? The millions of kids whom the current system fails, at enormous cost to those kids, to their parents, and to the society as a whole.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education and commented:
The truth is that it is all about statistics. Let walk across that stage at all cost. It doesn’t matter if they can read or write. We may have the highest HS graduation rate in history, but we also have the most uneducated graduates of all time. Teachers are forced to pass students to make the principal look good. The principal is being pressured from above to increase graduation rate so he pressures the teachers. The Superintendent is being pressured by the state and feds to improve, so everyone just manipulates the numbers and passes students along until they cross that stage.
yes. Very
Graduation rates have become meaningless because of Campbell’s Law.
Many districts are using “credit recovery” via online courses to get kids through with fake diplomas.
Absolutely. Not worth the paper they are printed on. Here in Texas we have thrown around the phrase “College and Career Ready” 90% of our students are not ready for either.
I can vouch for the truth of this statement. Schools feel they are in a catch 22 situation. Certain children are very difficult to teach, so you have little choice but to try to get something out of them, if you do not have the money for extra personnel, on-line seems the only option. Students who are disaffected with the process gravitate toward on-line as well. Students feel caught, unable to really succeed in many of the required courses, they prefer to take it in the on-line format.
A much greater concern is teachers who are so tired of students who do not want to learn that they prefer on-line teaching.
I think we need to re-think the whole idea of graduation and what it means. I realize that in this case the issue is educational neglect, but there are plenty of SPED students who simply will not learn to read or do math. What do we do with them? Not let them graduate, which basically makes them unemployable? Give them some kind of separate diploma? Have some kind of graduated diploma system for super-stellar students down through “failure” students?
I don’t think there are easy answers, especially when people can’t even agree on the purpose of education. This is the problem we’re going to run into as long as the educational system is tasked with preparing students for “college and career” and allowing (mandating) schools to decide who is in fact “college and career ready”. If, instead, education were simply for the purpose of developing each individual into his or her best self in order to help him/her find the niche in life best suited for him/her, we’d avoid a lot of this problem.
Some states allow special education students to get a certificate of attendance, or they can get a special education diploma.
As usual, you raise the thorny issues. Thanks.
What do you think of making a diploma more informational? For example, a vocational student might show a number of technical certifications on a diploma. A traditional student might show particular classes taken and passed or some aspect of that type of information.
There clearly aren’t easy answers, but I can remember graduating with some SPED kids and a fair amount of lower level learners back in 1982. There were classes provided for them geared toward life skills…..how to write a check, how to count change, calculate a tip, how to fill out bank slips, typing, steno, cooking/sewing, auto mechanics etc. Of course admin/teachers never gave up on trying to teach them to read or write, but none were denied the diploma if they put in the work. Times were different and people were kinder. It’s a dog eat dog world out there now and those at the bottom are deemed losers and not worthy of a decent life….no matter how hard they try.
One solution is to stop privatization and deregulation. There should not be charter schools that scrimp on hiring qualified, experienced teachers and support personnel in order to increase administrative and executive salaries, and to kick back more money to their management companies. Charter schools are not regulated enough, not forced to provide enough special needs services, and then additionally they drain funds from public schools trying to pay for those services. The most vulnerable students suffer the most harm from the privatization invasion. With charters around, we’re not doing the best we can to educate children with special needs and circumstances.
“If, instead, education were simply for the purpose of developing each individual into his or her best self in order to help him/her find the niche in life best suited for him/her, we’d avoid a lot of this problem.”
Exactly!
Well almost exactly. I’d say “for the purpose of allowing/having each individual develop into his or her best self. . . “
Any system we devise must begin with the recognition that a) students differ enormously and b) it is the school’s job to do its best to prepare these differing students for differing paths in life that will be fruitful for them, given their proclivities, interests, abilities, etc. Any one-size-fits-all system will be cruel and wasteful. I do not know this particular student, put I suspect that there are things is this world that she could do well. Perhaps she might become a very good cosmetologist or bicycle repair person. Who knows? But the point should NOT BE to try to prepare students for “college and career in general.” There is no general career.
This former student found employment as a home healthcare worker.
And wouldn’t it have been better if the school system had seen that as an option for her and helped train her to do it well?
I’ve spent altogether too much of my time, in recent years, counseling kids who have failed in (and been failed by) our current system on how to a) prepare for and pass the GED and b) get into a community college or subsidized voc ed AA or AS program that will lead to a job. The waste in money and time of our system, and its emotional toll, are enormous. Kids need to be learning about what people in various careers do in K-7 and then to go off into a vocational or college track. And the vocational track needs to have initial exploratory courses in which kids can identify their proclivities and learn about/identify career paths that match.
My touchstone for all this is one particular student I had–a very talented and popular cheerleader who was, well, not a scholar, to put it kindly, but was bubbly and a natural leader and had lots of friends and enthusiasm for life generally, even as she was failing all of her classes. This kid was NOT going to be writing papers on Milton or Fourier Analysis. But aide from on the cheerleading squad (the kid lead a state champion team), the system recognized NONE of the considerable skill that she did have. In our system, a kid can have perfect pitch and yet go through 13 years of schooling and have no one ever recognize that.
“Wouldn’t it have been better if the school system had seen as an option for her and helped train her to do it well?” – you talk like a progressivist from 1920s.
I just want to see separate college and vocational tracks become the norm. Right now, a lot of kids spend a lot of years in turmoil, spinning their wheels, and it’s very taxing for them, and a lot never figure out how to make a life that is livable. We have millions of kids with no prospects living in their parents’ basements. The cost of all this–the personal and societal costs–are enormous.
“I just want to see separate college and vocational tracks become the norm.” – this is exactly what progressivists preached: benefit the society, not individual. No point teaching academics and great books and history and logic to someone who is going to flip burgers or take out a bedpan.
My concern, BA, emphatically, is for the kids–the ones that are being shoved into a Procrustean bed right now. Every kid has basically been put on an academic track, and for many, this is an utter disaster. They hate it. They don’t do well. They are devastated emotionally. It takes them years, after failing in high school, to figure out what the heck to do with themselves. The cost of the one-size-fits-all stuff for these MILLIONS of kids is horrific. These are kids who, in addition to getting some humanities and civics classes, could be learning welding, cosmetology, auto repair, medical records, pharmacy tech, computer infrastructure installation, finish carpentry, horticulture, culinary arts, and hundreds of other areas of study that are a far cry from flipping burgers and emptying bedpans. KIDS DIFFER!!!! We give lip service to honoring labor in this country, but we treat learning for it as though it were something that only failures and second-class people do. It’s sickening, and the emotional and financial costs for these kids are devastating. But we go on, heedless, treating every child as though he or she should grow up to be an English professor or lawyer or engineer. It’s ridiculous.
There are always hidden curricula. What the current system teaches non-academically-inclined kids is, “You are not valued. You are not worthwhile. You are a failure.” This is what it does instead of finding what the kid is good at and cares about and nurturing and building upon that. KIDS DIFFER. In the same family, one kid might become a lawyer, another an airplane mechanic, and both love their jobs. We should not treat trades, as we do in the US, as what one does if he or she fails. We should treat them as a way that one can choose to succeed.
In Finland, 47 percent of kids, at age 16, go into a vocational track. In the United States, those kids just fail in the academic track and then flounder around for years trying to figure something out. That’s horrible.
Finland borrowed its system from Russia, which borrowed it from early 20-century Germany. The way the system works, there is only one track until very last years of high school. Then, before the last two-three years of high school kick in, the students are given an option to continue academic track or switch to vocational track. The vocational track still gives most of the stuff from the academic track, although watered down, like fewer theorems and no proofs. And in addition to that vocational students get a professional worker’s diploma or rank whatever you call it, to be able to immediately start working as a qualified worker.
This is different from what you are proposing, which is, if I understand it correctly, is to separate tracks earlier in the middle or even in elementary school. Finnish and Russian systems blend pure academics and progressivism, while you are suggesting unbridled 1920s progressivist ideas.
I am suggesting that we implement a system of academic high schools and vocational high schools and that the vocational high schools teach some civics and humanities and general science, in addition to a trade.
Which is considerably better than having a system that simply doesn’t serve nearly half our kids. That kid who graduates now, from our high schools, with a 2.0 average has few prospects and little guidance and eventually becomes one of those folks whose best options in life are wearing a name tag at Walmart or emptying bedpans.
At what point should this kick in? Well, a vocational high school can do its job in three years. So, sophomore year.
We have rampant discipline problems in American high schools. Why? Well, a lot of kids who should not be in academic high schools are in them. These kids are bored and frustrated and unmotivated, and they drag down instruction for the kids for whom the academic high school is a fit.
And it’s not just Finland. This distinction between academic and vocational high school is found in most European countries, who are way ahead of us on this. “Although there are some differences among them, Austria, Germany, and Switzerland all have a primary school (Grundschule or Volksschule) that begins at age six and lasts four years (five or six in some places), a secondary level that generally starts at age 11 (grade 5) and is divided into a less academic Hauptschule (to grade 10) leading to vocational education, an intermediate Realschule (not in Austria) leading to a technical or business school, and the academically oriented Gymnasium that leads to the Abitur or Matura diploma and a university education.’ (https://www.german-way.com/history-and-culture/education/)
About 68 percent of American high-school graduates attend college. That leaves 32 percent who graduate with neither a record of academic success (that’s why they don’t go to college) nor trade skills. That’s 32 percent of our kids who HAVE BEEN FAILED BY OUR SYSTEM.
I never said that we should have vocational elementary or middle schools. I did say that instruction in elementary schools should include information about what people do for a living. This is done a bit already, in the standard US elementary school social studies curricular progression (myself and my friends, families and schools, communities, etc).
TE: https://www.theroot.com/black-women-now-the-most-educated-group-in-us-1790855540
“I am suggesting that we implement a system of academic high schools and vocational high schools and that the vocational high schools teach some civics and humanities and general science, in addition to a trade.” — This would be a great idea if existing middle and high schools did not teach “some civics and humanities and general science” already, this is what they do, they do not teach proper history and philosophy and world literature, they teach “social studies”. They do not teach proper physics, chemistry, biology, geography, they teach “science”, which has as much to science as autotuned hip-hop has with music. Physics and chemistry are not mandatory even in the existing, “academic”, setting. And even someone takes physics, it is just a one year course, not a three, or four of five year course like in other countries. The fact is, the existing public schools already teach as little as any vocational school would teach, you cannot water it down further.
At the same time, I agree that those 16-18 year-old “kids” should not spend six hours a day in a de-facto prison if they don’t want to. So, what should be done in my opinion, is moving the basics of algebra, geometry, physics and geography to 7th-8th grades, and allow students to get out of school with “basic” diploma good enough for a community college (yes, this would be enough prep for a community college), or for a vocational school. Those, who want to continue academic track, would go into high school and take extra four years of physics and math including calculus, extra one year of geography, biology, extra foreign language (a first foreign language should be mandatory in middle school), music, arts, etc. Maybe re-hash middle-high school grades, making 9th grade middle school.
Foreign language instruction needs to begin early–in elementary school–and to be immersive. With regard to the rest, we do desperately need a knowledge orientation in our curricula, and we could certainly make our high-school curricula more demanding if we had separate vocational high schools for non-academically-oriented children. And yes, in high school, they are still “kids.” They don’t think so, but they are.
Charters are BAD!
The problem with a patchwork of charter schools is that they are all operated by business people that are amateurs. They have no expertise in teaching those that require special services. Ms. Gray was able to get the remedial help she requires when she attended a public school in Houston. Privatization is failing those that are different or a challenge to educate.
The article mentions that the “public schools” in New Orleans are not meeting the needs of struggling students. The biggest problem is that New Orleans no longer has a public system. It has a patchwork of providers operated by corporations. These private companies have few educational experts to guide them, and students are falling through the cracks. These corporations do not want to pay for expensive remedial services as it will cut into their profits. That is why students are better served in a well funded public school system that can consolidate services to increase efficiency and effectiveness while they address the needs of diverse students.
We could pose the question to Kira Orange Jones… if she could be found-
best place to look- a billionaire fundraising event.
Help us take our schools back in New Orleans. Our state board of education election is coming up. Our pro-public education candidate is Dr. Ashonta Wyatt: https://electdrwyatt.com/?fbclid=IwAR13r1OoXRyqCaSzxYKLrTRcPUiUy5lDejmsaSTppxxhk6OS3cPeh8l8vEA
This sad event has nothing to do with charters vs non-charters, it is endemic to American education in general. Nowhere else in the world — besides, maybe, Australia and the U.K., both anglophone countries — reading is an issue after the first grade. Thank sight words / whole language for this.
After posting my other message I read what others have said, and none mentioned the family. Well, if for twelve years you haven’t seen your child with a book, you haven’t once asked your child to read to you, then you reap what you have sowed. Blame school all you want, but her parents, who only by the senior year figured out their daughter cannot read or count, are beyond reprehensible.
There are a lot of families in the US in which the parents or guardians themselves have very low literacy and numeracy and other problems (chronic unemployment, drug or alcohol dependence). Public schools have to take kids as they find them.
Now stop and think about it: the parents went to public school themselves several decades ago, why they cannot read? Is it because their public school “took them as it found them”, but taught them nothing?
And when I go to these lengths to help the academically challenged students to find a path in their lives that will actually work for them where high-school, as currently structured in the US, didn’t, I am doing this on my own–it’s not my job–but I feel compelled to do this for the benefit of the child because the freaking system isn’t doing it.
And this has nothing to do with race and everything to do with poverty. There are plenty of poor white kids in the US with an opioid-addicted single parent at home providing no guidance whatsoever to a kid who is on a school-to-prison pipeline because there is no fitting alternative for that kid to learn a useful, respectable trade within the standard K-12 system.
The public schools take such kids as they find them (they cannot exclude students, as some charter schools do), and then must battle against enormous odds (poor funding for the school, lack of wraparound services for the kid, an unstable and unsupportive home environment for the kid due to poverty, drug addition, and other ills) to do something for kids from the poorest families.
“The public schools take such kids as they find them and then must battle against enormous odds” — so the school was battling for 13 years and could not even teach this girl to read and count? I do not believe that she is so retarded that cannot learn how to read. To me, this is a prime example that the system is completely broken.
BA, you have chronic dyspepsia. You hate American public education.
You blame this child’s inability to read or count on the public education system, but she did not attend a public school. She attended charter schools in New Orleans, which are notorious for failing to provide services for students with disabilities.
The system we have now fails the 32 percent of kids who aren’t going to go on to college. This is what I have been arguing throughout this thread. The wasted years in our current system, for that third of our kids, are extraordinarily costly, emotionally for the kids, financially for the country.
But our idiot Education Deformers continue to insist one one “college and career” track for all–utterly ridiculous.
Careful, Bob, or the Disrupters will
accuse you of having low expectations.
I have often, in my life, noticed that people blame people for problems that are systemic. I believe that we have a systemic problem in US education of forcing non-academically-oriented kids through an academic track in high school. Kids differ. We should honor that and them and build on their STRENGTHS.
BA, you are in moderation for a reason. You insult me and I don’t post those comments. You are contemptuous of teachers and public schools, and I won’t post your snide slurs.
Go away. It’s my blog and I don’t like your tone.
Diane
First of all, if your child is about to graduate from high school and you discover she has second grade skills, where have you been for the last ten years? On the other hand, whatever propaganda these people use, or maybe it’s an evil spell, they seem able to convince parents, rich investors, and even the untrained teachers that they will do a great job and everything will be great. After 29 years at my school, I was set up for failure and bullied out by my “principal.” The Teach for America person who replaced me struggled through the next year with the help of my former co-workers. I was told she said that it would be easier in two years when she became an administrator as she was promised. I don’t know where she is now, but the principal was promoted after a few more of my friends retired. This is my sixth year working as a teaching assistant for little pay. A principal in my neighborhood school system told me her school board won’t let her hire a teacher with a master’s degree. They pay assistants $11.18 an hour, but would give me $1 for my bachelor’s but nothing for my master’s. I get a couple dollars more an hour still working in the system that destroyed my career.
It is all too easy for administrators to do this. Did you have union representation?