Archives for category: Louisiana
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NOLA Research Unit Issues Glowing Report, Wins $10 Million from DeVos

By dianeravitch
July 18, 2018 //
21

Which game shall we play: Follow the Money or Connect the Dots?

Only two days ago, the Education Research Alliance at Tulane University released a glowing report about the privatization of public schools in New Orleans.

Only one day later, the U.S. Department of Education awarded the team a grant of $10 Million to continue their work on market-driven school choice.

With $10 Million, maybe they will get around to checking with researchers who don’t agree with their findings, such as those I cited in this post.

And I hope the team at Tulane-ERA will answer this puzzle:

Louisiana is one of the lowest scoring states on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (“The Nation’s Report Card”). Its scores declined significantly from 2015-2017. New Orleans is the largest school district in the state. If its results are amazing, why did the state drop to 48th in the nation in 8th grade reading and 50th in the nation on the 8th grade math on NAEP? This doesn’t add up.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Louisiana, New Orleans, School Choice

LAUSD Chief Picks TFA-Broadie from Nation’s Lowest Performing State as Chief of Staff

By dianeravitch
June 24, 2018 //
21

Los Angeles Superintendent Austin Beutner, new to the education world, has defined himself by his first big hire. He selected Rebecca Kockler, the Louisiana Department of Education’s assistant superintendent for academic content to be his chief of staff. Like her boss, John White, Kockler is both TFA and Broadie. (For the initiated, that means they both got a little bit of teaching experience as recruits for Teach for America and are “graduates” of Eli Broad’s unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy, whose “graduates” are taught top-down management, the value of closing schools and replacing them with private management, and other reformer tricks of the trade. John Thompson recently wrote a series of posts here about the dismal record of Broadies.)

Mercedes Schneider, researcher and high school teacher in Louisiana, reviews Kockler’s TFA career in TFA here, which was mysteriously absent from the LAUSD press release. Also unmentioned in the press release was her Broadie history. Mercedes knows more about the Louisiana Department of Education and its new chief of staff than LAUSD. To be fair to the person who wrote the press release, Mercedes notes that Kockler deleted her Linked In bio that describes her TFA history. But Mercedes has it.

Both the LAUSD press release and the Broad Center agree that Louisiana is one of the “fastest improving” states in the nation.

But is that true? Nope. Its NAEP scores declined significantly from 2015 to 2017.

What is especially irksome about the LAUSD press release linked above is that it refers to Louisiana’s academic standards as “a national model.” Who would look to a state that scrapes the very bottom of NAEP rankings as “a national model”? Maybe it is a model of how to fail while boasting of success. Maybe it is a model of Trumpian rhetoric that turns lemons into lemonade.

Consider this report in the New Orleans Advocate on 2017 NAEP.:

“In the latest snapshot of education achievement, scores for Louisiana public school fourth-graders plunged to or near the bottom of the nation in reading and math.

“In addition, eighth-graders finished 50th among the states and the District of Columbia in math and 48th in reading…

In 2015, fourth-graders finished 43rd in the U. S. in reading and 45th in math….

“But both scores dropped five points – to 212 and 229 out of 500 respectively – during tests administered to 2,700 students last year.

“That means fourth-grade math scores finished 51st while fourth-grade reading scores are 49th.

“The group that oversees the exams, the National Center for Education Statistics, said both drops are statistically significant.”

Why not tell the truth? Beutner hired the academic director of one of the lowest performing states in the nation, where NAEP scores fell in the latest assessment. He was impressed by her credentials in TFA, and she came highly recommended by his friend Eli Broad.

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, Corporate Reformers, Curriculum, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fake, Los Angeles, Louisiana, Teach for America

Louisiana: Charter Leader Enjoys Fine Dining with School Credit Card

By dianeravitch
May 26, 2018 //
14

The head of the board of a charter school in Louisiana treated himself to some good meals using the school’s credit card.

A world away from his Central City school, where 97 percent of students are considered economically disadvantaged, the head of a charter school board racked up $778 over six months at an upscale restaurant on St. Charles Avenue.

The Rev. Charles Southall III bought the meals with a credit card issued to Edgar P. Harney Spirit of Excellence Academy under his name. Monthly statements went not to the school, but to Southall’s church on Carondelet Street.

Southall spent $1,514 at restaurants in New Orleans and Baton Rouge in six months starting in July 2016. That’s $250 a month at establishments such as Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, Cheesecake Bistro by Copeland’s and Le Pavillon hotel — all funded by the school.

Asked about the meals, Southall said, “They were lunches that were related to preparing to get a new school leader in.”

But Eileen Williams had been in charge of Harney since at least 2013 and continued until June 2017. Southall did not respond to follow-up questions.

The small school’s financial practices have drawn scrutiny from the Louisiana Department of Education and the Orleans Parish School Board. Auditors criticized the school’s one-man finance department and said the board should provide more oversight.
Last fall, the state Board of Ethics filed an official complaint against the school’s chief financial officer, Brent Washington Sr. The school paid him $54,500 on the side to do accounting work, which the ethics board contends broke the law.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Louisiana, Privatization, Scandal

Mercedes Schneider: Louisiana Plans to Spend $75 Million on New Tests

By dianeravitch
May 18, 2018 //
24

Louisiana has gone crazy for testing.

Mercedes Schneider reports that the state plans to spend at least $75 million for five years of in PARCC-like tests. Testing will begin in kindergarten.

Louisiana to Spend at Least $75M on Five Years of PARCC-ish LEAP 2025 Testing

The state’s scores were abysmal on the latest NAEP, and apparently State Superintendent John White and the state board believe that if they weigh the pig more often it will get fatter.

This is insane.

Categories Education Industry, Education Reform, Louisiana, Testing

Mercedes Schneider: John White, Hypocrite

By dianeravitch
April 11, 2018 //
3

 

Mercedes Schneider noted that John White, Louisiana’s Commissioner of Eduxation, got an advance copy of the NAEP scores, saw that his state was a disaster, and loudly complained about the switch to computer testing.

She observes that only a year earlier, a friend complained about computer testing to White, and he brushed off the complaint. Get used to it, he said. Hypocrite, she says.

Categories Louisiana, NAEP, Technology, Testing

Louisiana Educator: It’s Time for John White to Pack Up and Go

By dianeravitch
April 11, 2018 //
8

 

Blogger Louisiana Educator has had it with John White, who left Joel Klein’s talent pool and went first to New Orleans, then to be Commissioner of Education for Louisiana. He made some pretty dramatic predictions about the miraculous rise of test scores that the state could expect on his watch. None of his predictions came true, and I am not even including the time he said that all students in the state would be proficient.

White is a TFA alum and a Broadie, so naturally he has high expectations. But eventually even he finds that the bell is tolling…for him.

Louisiana Educator writes:

This article is all you need to know about John White’s effect on Louisiana education.

Superintendent John White, who has no formal training in education, was brought to Louisiana by Governor Jindal and LABI for two reasons: (1) To privatize as many of our public schools to for-profit entrepreneurs as possible and (2) To put as much emphasis as possible on raising test scores by forcing teachers to spend most of their time preparing our students for his lousy Common Core tests. As a bonus, he and Jindal took away almost all of teacher rights and substituted merit pay based on student test scores on invalid tests for legitimate teacher evaluation. Now we have a teacher shortage, and our national comparison test scores are the lowest ever. And the voucher schools and charter schools are the lowest performers in the state.

There should be no excuses for John White. He has failed miserably at all his efforts and our children have suffered while he experimented with untested, unsound theories. He should now be judged by the same crappy standards he has forced on every public school and teacher in the state!

The article he cites in his opening sentence is a newspaper article about the state’s NAEP scores.

It begins like this:

In the latest snapshot of education achievement, scores for Louisiana public school fourth-graders plunged to or near the bottom of the nation in reading and math.

In addition, eighth-graders finished 50th among the states and the District of Columbia in math and 48th in reading….fourth-grade math scores finished 51st while fourth-grade reading scores are 49th.

This explains why White complained so loudly about the switch to computerized testing. How else to explain the catastrophic decline in state scores when White had followed the reformer textbook to a T?

Categories Accountability, Louisiana

Mercedes Schneider: Louisiana’s NAEP Scores Flat or Down

By dianeravitch
April 11, 2018 //
2

 

Remember when Governor Bobby Jindal recruited a John White (TFA, Broadie) to bring true reform to the state of Louisiana?

If there was a New Orleans “miracle,” it did nothing to help the rest of the state. New Orleans should sign up for urban district NAEP, so we have a way of gauging what kind of miracle there was, if any.

Mercedes Schneider posts the Louisiana scores here, starting in 2000-2002.p, ending in 2017.

All that reform, so little change.

Mercedes says:

“So there we have it: John White’s 2017 NAEP problem.

“Let’s watch as he tries to spin it.”

Categories Education Reform, Louisiana, NAEP

Mercedes Schneider: John White Is Nervous about NAEP Scores

By dianeravitch
April 2, 2018 //
14

 

NAEP scores will be released April 18. They have already been released to state Superintendents so they can study their state’s scores and get their press release ready.

The 2015 scores were flat. Some states saw declines. This was widely viewed as a rebuke of the test-obsessed federal policies of the previous 15 years. Intensive test prep produced gains, but they had come to a halt.

Mercedes Schneider writes that Louisiana John White is already worried and has sent out a pre-emptive letter complaining that the scores may have been pushed down by NAEP’s switch to online testing.  This is not a statement by a man who is looking forward to the score release. He is already making excuses.

White, a Broadie who got his start in TFA, has promised dramatic improvements. He has promoted charters and vouchers. He has hailed the New Orleans “miracle.”

We watch for the NAEP release.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Louisiana, NAEP, Testing

Mercedes Schneider: Does Louisiana Superintendent John White Have a Conflict of Interest?

By dianeravitch
December 21, 2017 //
5

Mercedes Schneider reports that Louisiana State Superintendent John White has a problem. He is married to a woman who is Relay “Graduate School of Education” director of policy and government affairs. The state Department of Education does business with Relay, a trusted source of inexperienced leaders.

Does he have a conflict of interest?

What do you think?

See what the Louisiana Board of “Ethics” ruled.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Louisiana

Gary Rubinstein: Louisiana and the Hoax of Growing AP Performance

By dianeravitch
November 28, 2017 //
7

As Gary Rubinstein writes, Louisiana is one of the most “reformed” states in the nation. It’s superintendent John White is a TFA alum and a graduate of the unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy. It has an all-charter city. It has vouchers. It received a Race to the Top grant. What could possibly go wrong?

Rubinstein writes here about a seeming paradox: Every year, Louisiana State Superintendent John zwhite boasts about an astounding increase in the proportion of students passing AP exams. Yet, Louisiana has pretty awful performance on the AP exams.

Paradox solved!

Louisiana moved from fourth worst to third worst in the nation on AP performance. It was recently overtaken by North Dakota.

Read his post and ask yourself why anyone would boast about such low performance. Is that what they teach at the Broad Academy?

Categories Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Louisiana, New Orleans, Privatization, Race to the Top
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