Tom Ultican, retired teacher of physics and mathematics, writes here about the recent decision by local officials to open a PUBLIC SCHOOL in New Orleans. This is a symptom of the failure of the “all-charter” idea.
He writes:
New Orleans Public Schools, aka Orleans Parish School District (OPSD), became America’s first and only all charter school district in 2017. After hurricane Katrina, the state took over all but five schools in the city. When management was transferred to charter organizations in 2017, OPSD officially became an all charter district. This August, the city will open district-operated Leah Chase K-8 School, ending the all charter legacy.
According to Superintendent Avis Williams, the infrastructure required for the district to run Leah Chase will make it easier to open future district-run schools. OPSD will become both a charter school authorizer and regular school district. There is hope that New Orleans, Louisiana (NOLA) is pulling out of an abyss and tending towards a healthy public school system….
All-Charter NOLA Doomed from the Beginning
Public investment in education is widely viewed as the key to America’s success. Since the 19thcentury, communities have developed around local public schools. This opportunity was taken from NOLA neighborhoods…
Louisiana’s state takeover law required schools scoring below average to be closed. If this were real, half of the schools in the state would be closed every year. Instead, arbitrary state performance scores based on testing data, attendance, dropout rates and graduation rates were established. Similar ratings are used to evaluate NOLA charter schools. The nature of privatized schools and testing results led to almost half of the charter schools created being closed.
The NOLA school enrollment system allows parents to research the 100 schools and apply for up to eight of them. The algorithm selects the school from one of the eight if space is available. It is not uncommon for students to ride a bus past schools within walking distance of their homes. This complicated system is driving segregation.
For many education professionals, this system looked like a sure failure from the beginning. Communities could not develop around their schools and the schools would not be stable; important aspects of quality public education….
The All Charter District is a Failure
In 2021, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona visited OPSD. He heard first-hand the growing disillusionment with the all charter system. Four of the six parents told him they wanted to go back to neighborhood schools. Parents complained about Teach for America, placing unqualified teachers in schools and the One App process for not offering school choice.
Senator Bouie wrote a two-page paper, “A Moral Imperative and Case For Action”, stating: “After spending 6 Billion dollars of tax payers’ money to become the only all-Charter system in the State, a staggering 73% of our children are not functioning at grade level, compared to 63% in 2005, when the State took control of over 100 of our schools.”
He also shared:
“In other words, fellow citizens, this 15-year flawed experiment has yielded no best practices identified to improve student and school performance, no State protocol for Charter Law Compliance, and no student performance improvement. It has, however, yielded other devastating consequences for our children and our community.”
He mentioned the 26,000 students between the ages of 16 and 24 who went missing. The privatized charter school system was unable to account for them which is expected and natural for a public school district.
Bouieu “They are transported past a neighborhood school to attend a failing school across town” and eliminating the ineffective One App central enrollment system claiming, “It has created inequities by Race and Class and admissions by chance (lottery) and not choice.”
Raynard Sanders who has over forty years of experience in teaching, education administration and community development, said the charter experiment has “been a total disaster in every area.”He asserted NOLA had “the worst test scores since 2006, the lowest ACT scores, and the lowest NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) scores.”
Based on a 2015 study by the Center for Popular Democracy, Sanders declared, “Charter schools have no accountability and, fiscally, charter schools in New Orleans have more fraud than existed in the OPSD (Orleans Parish School District).” The fraud claim was used by the state in 2003 against OPSD to begin taking schools.
Loyola University Law Professor Bill Quigley stated, “NOLA reforms have created a set of schools that are highly stratified by race, class, and educational advantage; this impacts the assignment to schools and discipline in the schools to which students are assigned.”
He contended, “There is also growing evidence that the reforms have come at the expense of the city’s most disadvantaged children, who often disappear from school entirely and, thus, are no longer included in the data.”
Professor of Economics, Doug Harris, and his team at Tulane University are contracted to study school performance in New Orleans. Harris claims schools have improved since Hurricane Katrina. However Professor Bruce Baker of Rutgers University disagrees. He noted that the school system is not only smaller but less impoverished. Many of the poorest families left and never returned. So the slightly improved testing results are not real evidence of school improvement.
The latest testing data from 2023 saw NOLA public schools receive failing grades but based on Louisiana’s new progress indicator, the district received a C, meaning an F for assessments and an A in growth.
In a letter to the editor, former OPSD superintendent, Barbara Ferguson, stated:
“The state took over 107 of New Orleans’ 120 public schools and turned them into charter schools. Last year, 56 of New Orleans’ 68 public schools had scores below the state average. Thus, after nearly 20 years, over 80% of New Orleans schools remain below the state average. This charter school experiment has been a failure.”
Final Words
In 2006, with the school board out of the road and RSD in charge, philanthropists Bill Gates, Eli Broad and others were ready to help.
Naomi Klein’s 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine, labeled these school reforms, a prime example of “disaster capitalism”, which she described as “orchestrated raids on the public sphere in the wake of catastrophic events, combined with the treatment of disasters as exciting market opportunities.” She also observed, “In sharp contrast to the glacial pace with which the levees were repaired and the electricity grid brought back online, the auctioning-off of New Orleans’ school system took place with military speed and precision.”
Desires of New Orleans residents were ignored. Neoliberal billionaires were in charge. In all the excitement, few noticed that these oligarchs had no understanding of how public education functions. They threw away 200 years of public school development and replaced it with an experiment. The mostly black residents in the city were stripped of their rights.
Thousands of experienced black educators were fired and replaced by mostly white Teach For America teachers with 5 weeks of training. Instead of stable public schools, people were forced into unstable charter schools. Instead of professional administration, market forces drove the bus!
Clearly, the all charter school system is a failure.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The State Abyss 101…
The arbitrary state titles (degrees) are as good as the arbitrary state defining scores. The “agency” of either title or score is controlled by the state. The state isn’t hobbled by the arbitrary degrees that it oversees and controls, anymore than it yields to the “expertise” of degree holders.
“The dispossessed of the nation must organize a revolution, that would require more than a statement (words) to the larger society, more than street marches…” MLK
(Privatization) “It has created inequities by Race and Class and admissions by chance (lottery) and not choice.”
Various charter and voucher schemes in which the schools do the choosing produce an inequitable approach to education by sorting students by race and class. Inequity is a feature of school privatization where students lose civil rights protections, and profit becomes more important than education. In privatization plans Black and brown students are more likely to be placed in a separate and unequal schools, and some students simply fall off the data map as this post shows. Private schools that use public dollars are not held to the same standards as public schools. They may not have certified teachers or be required to take standardized tests. Unlike public schools that are frequently audited, nobody knows what happens to public money when it is transferred behind the opaque wall of private ownership. These reasons should make the public suspicious of the motives in charter and voucher schools.
Frankly, I doubt New Orleans is establishing a public school to better serve disadvantaged students. They may be looking for a way to move the most expensive and neediest students off their rolls so they can blame a public school for the so-called failure. Southern politicians often want to destroy, not improve public education. If they establish a school of last resort without the services and necessary resources required, they will be creating another separate and unequal school with a better staff. If they truly want to help the chronically under served, New Orleans should establish a local community school and stop evaluating it by test scores. Test scores are meaningless in the big picture, but a high school diploma is real currency to those seeking employment. The school should use other benchmarks like school attendance and graduation rates as measurement of accountability, and they should limit the size of classes.
I disagree. There has been a long time effort by a growing minority in New Orleans fighting the all charter system. The school opening is taking over a building used by two previous charter school failures. I believe this new school is a sincere effort to improve their public schools by people who finally broke through.
I hope you are correct, and the power groups in the city have genuine positive motives behind establishing this public school and that it becomes a trend. This city has long violent history of racism and corruption so time will tell if they are sincere about turning over a new leaf. If it is a real grassroots community effort to change failed privatization, it will make a big difference if they can get the funds to do it right.
I nominate Ultican for the Laura Chapman award for good, thoughtful research that is clearly explained
I also commend Peter Greene for his ability to sort through a lot of the political garbage and resultant bad education policies that result from all the politicking. He does it in a clear and often entertaining way.
true
Peter is a great treasure. So are Tom and Nancy and Meredith. And interestingly, they all write well. Peter is exceptionally witty, and that gives his writing charm in addition to its heft.
I agree. Peter Greene is in a class of his own. He manages to find humor in every awful new thing.
The Laura Chapman Award!!!!
Lord, I miss that woman. She was awesome, inspiring.
We can also count on Mercedes Schneider and Nancy Bailey to take a critical look at some of the so-called claims from the charter lobby crowd.
agreed
Anyone who believes charter school companies care about education instead of providing the cheapest possible product for the greatest possible profit must also believe that Budweiser cares about people who drink beer. Jon Stewart knows it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TWVbZ0WQ3s8