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
Diane Ravitch's blog 