Archives for category: New Orleans
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A New Orleans Parent Warns Houstonians to Beware the Elite “Saviors”

By dianeravitch
September 2, 2017 //
19

Ashana Bigard is a native of New Orleans and a parent. This is her warning to the parents and other citizens of Houston.

She writes:

“My prayers are with you, Texas. My memories are with you too. The day after Katrina hit New Orleans, my family and I made the 17 hour car ride to Houston. The people of Texas welcomed us, opening their homes and helping us out with clothing, even financial assistance. As a native New Orleanian, I wish that I could do the same for you now. But what’s happened in my city and to its schools serves as a cautionary tale to residents of Houston. Reeling from the disaster, our communities were scattered like the four winds. I returned from Houston, many of us did, but the New Orleans we left doesn’t belong to us anymore.

“Rents have quadrupled as gentrification remakes whole neighborhoods, pushing out long-time residents. Nearly half of the children here now live in poverty, and job security is worse, salaries lower. The sense that we’re doing worse than before Katrina is borne out in the data: Black New Orleanians have 18% less wealththan we did in 2005.

“My prayers are with you, Texas. But my warnings are too.

“1. Be wary of elites with big plans. Even as Katrina’s waters were receding, a handful of local elites were making plans for taking over the city’s schools. In the years following the storm, more than $76 billion came to the city of New Orleans. Yet the native population is poorer than we were before Katrina; we have 18% less wealth than we did in 2005. It became obvious early on that the money for New Orleans wasn’t making it into the hands of native New Orleanians. Huge sums of money demand oversight, accountability, and, most importantly, a vision for how exactly investment will help the people who need it most. All parts of your community must be allowed to participate fully in the rebuilding of their own city.

“2. Trauma can’t be “disciplined” out of kids A hurricane is a deeply traumatic experience for children and trauma cannot simply be “disciplined” out of kids. New Orleans is now full of schools with “college prep” in their names, but their strict rules, harsh discipline and fixation on a culture of compliance have more in common with prison than with college. The “new” and “innovative” approach to educating kids that swept through our city after Katrina seems to start from the assumption that what children need to be successful is to be treated like adult criminals. We’ve had multiple incidents of children as young as five being handcuffed in schools, even arrested. Students who can’t afford the uniforms that are now mandatory at virtually every school in New Orleans are suspended, often for long periods of time. As an advocate for children in the schools, I’m regularly reminded that our post-Katrina schools in New Orleans intersect with the criminal justice system starting in the earliest grades, and ensnaring parents too. Louisiana, after all, that incarcerates a higher percentage of its residents than any other state. I wonder why that is?

“3. Don’t let your teachers get swept away Three months after Katrina, 7,500 school employees, including 4,000 teachers, were fired. Many of them had lost their homes to the hurricane. New Orleans lost the core of its Black middle class, and our schools lost adults who were connected to the city and its culture. What happens when all of your teachers are fired? You have a teacher shortage. New Orleans now imports its teachers: recent college grads from programs like Teach for America, who are entrusted with our kids’ development after receiving less training than what we require from workers at a nail salon.

“4. Your culture isn’t a liability to be overcome Beware of people who see your culture as a liability. The culture and soul of our city is music, arts and drama. Yet the people who came to “fix” New Orleans viewed the city and its culture as the source of our problems that they had to help us overcome. That mean schools without art, music or drama, in a city whose culture draws people from all over the world. Think about that. Without arts in the schools where will the next generation of performers come from? The arts are also an important way for kids to deal with trauma in a city that’s seen so much of it. Our kids desperately needed art, music and drama—yours will too.”

But that’s not all she writes. Read it all. Share the wisdom.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democracy, Education Industry, New Orleans, Privatization

Mercedes Schneider: Stagnation in ACT Scores of New Orleans Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
August 18, 2017 //
4

Mercedes Schneider calculated the ACT scores for the charter schools of New Orleans.

This is a statistic that State Superintendent John White doesn’t want you to know.

It blows away the myth of the New Orleans miracle.

The NOLA recovery School District has been stuck with an average hovering in the 16s. Not at all impressive. Not at all “college and career ready.”

She writes:

“Guaranteed admission to the University of Louisiana at Lafayette (ULL) requires an ACT composite of 23. For Louisiana State University (LSU), it’s a 22. For both the University of Louisiana at Monroe (ULM) and Southeastern Louisiana University (SLU), an ACT composite of 21 is preferred, but either an ACT English score of 18 or an ACT math score of 19 is required.

“The average Xavier University undergraduate has an ACT composite ranging from 23 to 28, with Xavier advertising an ACT composite of 24 necessary for admission to its nursing and occupational health programs. Nursing students must also score at least a 21 on the ACT math exam.

“For Southern University (SU), an ACT composite of 20 is preferred, but again, either an ACT English score of 18 or an ACT math score of 19 is required. And for the University of New Orleans (UNO), both an ACT English score of 18 and an ACT math score of 19 are required, and if the student’s high school GPA is at least 2.0 but not 2.5, an ACT composite of 23 is required.

“Thus, for all of its charter-portfolio fanfare, it is difficult to conceive of the state-run RSD-NO as anything but a flop based upon years of its sub-17 average ACT composites.

The first step to addressing the issue is admitting that there is an issue. However, completely ghosting out the RSD-NO high school average ACT composite calculation even years before RSD-NO is formally dissolved certainly dodges any such responsible admission.”

Categories Charter Schools, New Orleans

Mercedes Schneider: No Miracle in New Orleans

By dianeravitch
August 16, 2017 //
6

The ACT scores for Louisiana are in, and Mercedes Schneider reports that the news for the New Orleans charter district is not good.

We continue to hear reformers boast about the New Orleans “miracle,” but the evidence is non-existent. It is just recycling of stale propaganda for privatization. It has been 12 years since Hurricane Katrina wiped out large swaths of the city, along with the public school system. Had there been a dramatic improvement as a result of the switch to private charter schools, there wouldn’t be any controversy about it.

The new ACT scores show how unimpressive the charter district is.

Schneider says that, “In order for a high school graduate to gain unconditional admission to Louisiana State University (LSU), she/he must have an ACT composite score of 22.”

As you will see in her post, there are 13 high schools in the Recovery School District. None reached a score of 19. Only three cracked 18.

Schneider says that Dtate Superintebdent John White masked the low ACT scores by combining the high schools of the RSD with those of the higher-performing Orleans Parish School Board.

Don’t expect to read about this in any of the media that have invested in the miracle narrative.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Louisiana, New Orleans, Privatization, Testing

New Orleans: Students Punished for Being Poor

By dianeravitch
July 22, 2017 //
35

Astana Bigard, parent activist in New Orleans, reports that poor children are regularly suspended and expelled from charter schools because they can’t afford to pay for a uniform.

“When a New Orleans charter school made headlines recently for kicking out two homeless students because they didn’t have the right uniforms, people were shocked. They shouldn’t have been. Suspending poor students for “non-compliance” when they can’t afford to buy the right shoes, pants or sweaters is standard operating procedure in our all-charter-school education system. More than a decade after Hurricane Katrina, poverty in the city is worse than ever, even as rents have doubled during the past decade. Yet students and their parents are routinely punished—even criminalized—just for being poor.”

Categories Charter Schools, Discipline and Suspensions, New Orleans, Poverty, Students

New Orleans: Charter School Principal Filmed in Nazi Regalia

By dianeravitch
May 26, 2017 //
19

The principal of the Crescent Leadership Academy, a charter school in New Orleans, was fired after he was filmed wearing Nazi rings and participating in a “white genocide” tape. The students in the school are almost all African-American. It is a second-chance school for students who have been expelled.

Nicholas Dean, the principal of Crescent Leadership Academy, a charter school in New Orleans that has a predominantly black student body, appeared in a YouTube video wearing rings “associated with white nationalism and the Nazi movement,” the New Orleans Times-Picayune’s Danielle Dreilinger reports.

Dean was also photographed at the statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee next to a Confederate flag.

According to the Times-Picayune, Dean claimed that he only went as a “student of history” to witness the long-overdue removal of the Confederate monuments.

“I didn’t go to protest for either side. I went because I am a historian, educator and New Orleans resident who wanted to observe this monumental event,” Dean said. “People who know me know that I am a crusader for children and I fight tirelessly on their behalf.”

The video of Dean wearing Nazi rings—posted on YouTube on Thursday by photographer Abdul Aziz—tells a different story, as does his appearance on a “white genocide” podcast where he said some people know him as a white supremacist.

Say what you will about cumbersome bureaucracy. There is something to be said for background checks and experience in a school system, where you are known to your peers.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, New Orleans

Andrea Gabor: Why Are the Few Veteran Teachers of New Orleans Demoralized?

By dianeravitch
May 12, 2017 //
9

Andrea Gabor reviews research produced by the Education Research Alliance of New Orleans about veteran teachers, those who taught before Hurricane Katrina and returned.

“ERA’s analysis provides an important before-and-after-the-storm glimpse of the city’s schools from a unique perspective—the small group of pre-Katrina teachers who returned to teaching following the storm, and who have remained in the classroom for over a decade. As New Orleans looks forward, the views of these returning pre-Katrina teachers are key; they are the survivors.

“In the wake of the mass firings following the storm, the teachers who returned to New Orleans and were still teaching at the time of the study, in the 2013/2014 school year, almost surely represent the city’s most experienced educators—and those with the closest community ties. While teachers with greater than 20 years of experience made up nearly 40 percent of the teaching force before the storm, that number has dropped to about 15 percent, according to another ERA study. Conversely, the number of inexperienced teacher with less than 5 years experienced now make up the majority of teachers, up from about 30 percent before the storm….

“Indeed, important characteristics of New Orleans reforms, including a high-rate of school closings and at-risk students cycling through multiple schools, are more likely to adversely impact high school students who, unlike their younger peers, are more likely to resist no-excuses culture of the non-selective New Orleans charters, and eventually to drop out. New Orleans also has done a terrible job of keeping track of kids who “fall between the cracks.”

“Education reformers like to say that “teachers are the single most important” school variable in a child’s education. As with so much else in the ed-reform debates, this is misleading. For surely, school stability and culture, which is controlled by school leaders—in the best cases, by cadres of teacher leaders—is as important as the role of individual teachers. School culture also helps determine just how much influence teachers have over curriculum, discipline and other policies. In my research, both quality education and teacher job satisfaction are highly correlated with schools that include teachers in such key decisions.

“In New Orleans, with a teacher cadre plagued by high turnover and sparse classroom experience, veteran teachers should be treasured. That so many say they have less job satisfaction than during the pre-Katrina years, suggests that they are not, which is surely a failing with implications far beyond just teacher morale.”

Categories Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, New Orleans, Privatization, Teachers

Adam Bessie and EriK Thurman: A Graphic Essay on School Choice, DeVos, and Segregation

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2017 //
4

Adam Bessie (writer) and Erik Thurman (artist) have created a graphic essay that explains in a series of drawings the consequences of school choice and how it affected students with disabilities in New Orleans. Their graphic essay is especially pertinent at a time when the U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is an evangelist for school choice and indifferent to the consequences.

I recommend that you see it. It illustrates the adage that a picture is worth 1,000 words.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, New Orleans, Privatization, School Choice, Special Education

Will Birmingham Be the Next New Orleans?

By dianeravitch
May 1, 2017 //
12

Public education activists in Birmingham are afraid that their school board is getting ready to appoint a Broadie–or worse–to be the next superintendent of schools. They fear that the plan is to deliberate this crucial decision in complete secrecy, then spring someone on the schools who wants to demolish them and turn them over to profit-driven, unaccountable charter schools. They are aware of what has happened in New Orleans, where academic gains–if any–are limited, segregation remains intact, and communities and are disempowered and silenced.

Read here to see the lengths the board will go to so as to shield their superintendent search from public view.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Alabama, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, New Orleans, Privatization

Bill Quigley: Outraged Students and Parents in New Orleans Blast Charter School System

By dianeravitch
April 28, 2017 //
18

Bill Quigley, associate director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and a law professor at Loyola University at New Orleans, reports on a hearing held by the NAACP where students and parents in the New Orleans charter school system expressed their anger at the segregated and unequal education provided to black students.

As he puts it, everything that is wrong with the New Orleans charter schools was on full display.

He writes:

“We really wanted to share what happens in our schools” writes 18 year old Big Sister Love Rush in an article on the challenges the students face. “How the few permanent teachers we have work so hard for us, how so many classes are ran by short term substitutes, how food runs out at meal times, and how we worry if our school’s reputation is good enough to support us in getting into the college or careers we want. We shared how we face two hour commutes to and from school, are forced to experiment with digital learning with systems like Odyssey, are punished for having the wrong color sweater, or how we worry about being able to attend a school that will give us the education we need.”

In summary, the NAACP heard that they charter system remains highly segregated by race and economic status. Students have significantly longer commutes to and from school. The percentage of African American teachers has declined dramatically leaving less experienced teachers who are less likely to be accredited and less likely to remain in the system. The costs of administration have gone up while resources for teaching have declined. Several special select schools have their own admission process which results in racially and economically different student bodies. The top administrator of one K-12 system of three schools is paid over a quarter of a million dollars. Students with disabilities have been ill served. Fraud and mismanagement, which certainly predated the conversion to charter schools, continue to occur. Thousands of students are in below average schools. Students and parents feel disempowered and ignored by the system.

The changeover from public schools to charter schools began with the mass firing of every teacher and the elimination of their union. The experienced teachers were replaced by Teach for America. The proportion of black teachers in the classroom fell from 3/4 to 1/2.

New Orleans now spends more on administration and less on teaching than they did before Katrina. One charter school executive, who oversees one K-12 school on three campuses, was paid $262,000 in 2014. At least 62 other charter execs made more than $100,000. This compares with the salary of $138,915 for the superintendent of all the public schools in Baton Rouge.

Admissions have been dramatically changed. In the new system, there is no longer any right to attend the neighborhood school. 86% no longer attend the school closest to their homes. Siblings do not automatically go to the same school, and no one is guaranteed a spot at their local school. Many families are frustrated by the admission process.

Seven select high performing schools do not use the system wide application process, called ONE APP. The “lotteries” run by these super select schools are not transparent but complex screening devices. The most selective, highest performing, and well-funded charter schools have many more white children attending them than the system as a whole as a result of special non-transparent admission processes. This is so well known that a local newspaper article headlined its article about some of the schools as “How 3 top New Orleans public schools keep students out.”

This special admission process has significant racial impact. Most white students in public schools attend selective public schools that administer special tests that students must pass to be enrolled. Tulane University reported the charter system in New Orleans remains highly segregated in much the same way as before Katrina. This seems to be reflective in schools across the country where the charter school movement has been charged with re-segregating public schools. One select New Orleans charter school, Lusher, reported its student body was 53% white, 21% economically disadvantaged and 4% special education in comparison to the overall system which is 7% white, 85% economically disadvantaged and 11% special education.

Another result of eliminating neighborhood schools is New Orleans students now have nearly double the commute and the system is paying $30 million to bus students compared to $18 million before Katrina. Dr. Raynard Sanders notes the elimination of neighborhood schools can be observed in the early morning hours. “We now have thousands of children beginning their school day travel at 6:15 and ending at 5:15 PM, with many students spending hours or more traveling to and from school. This insane strategy puts kids in harms way daily as students cross major thoroughfares in the early morning hours, which resulted in one five year old’s death to date. Despite numerous complaints from parents stating they want neighborhood schools state education officials have ignored their cries and continue this dangerous daily student migration.”

What was unusual about this hearing was that it featured the voices of students and parents, not experts and foundation executives.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, New Orleans, Privatization, Segregation, Special Education, Teach for America

Research Report: New Orleans Schools Remain as Segregated as Before Hurricane Katrina

By dianeravitch
April 4, 2017 //
12

The Education Research Alliance for New Orleans issued a report today:

Study: New Orleans schools remain as segregated as before Katrina

New Orleans – A new study from the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans at Tulane University examines how the post-Katrina school reforms affected segregation in New Orleans publicly funded schools. Researchers analyzed changes in segregation across a number of student demographics, including race, income, special education participation, English Language Learner status, and achievement.

New Orleans schools were highly segregated prior to the reforms, especially in terms of race and income, and the study finds that segregation levels remain high post-Katrina. The authors find little evidence that the reforms affected segregation for elementary school students, but most groups of high school students they examined were affected.

The authors, Lindsay Bell Weixler, Nathan Barrett, Douglas Harris, and Jennifer Jennings, also find no consistent trends in racial segregation, as some student groups became more segregated and others less so. Among high school students, segregation has increased for low-income students and English language learners but decreased for special education students. The study also finds that segregation by achievement levels has generally declined since Katrina.

“Integrating schools has been a long-standing challenge for districts,” Weixler said. “Our results for New Orleans confirm the broader national pattern that very few school systems—whether traditional or those with choice-based reforms—have had much success in integrating schools.”

This spring, the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans is also releasing a series of papers that focus on New Orleans teachers. The first study in this series, which explored the effects of Louisiana’s teacher tenure reform, was released in February. Forthcoming studies will examine the implementation of the statewide teacher evaluation system known as Compass, as well as changes in teachers’ perceptions of New Orleans schools from those who taught before and after Hurricane Katrina.

This full report is available at educationresearchalliancenola.org.

Categories Charter Schools, New Orleans, Segregation
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