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Harold Meyerson: Shame on Andrew Cuomo!

By dianeravitch
August 8, 2018 //
7

Harold Meyerson, editor of The American Prospect, sent out this commentary on New York’s gubernatorial race. Control of New York’s State Senate hangs in the balance in this election, as well as several seats in Congress. By putting his name on the Independence Party line. Cuomo aids former members of the so-called IDC (the independent Democratic Conference), legislators who were elected as Democrats but caucus with and vote with the Republicans. The members of the IDC collect huge donations from hedge fund managers and charter school advocates, including Daniel Loeb, who until recently was chair of the board of Eva’s Success Academy.

Campaign cash is rolling in for the turncoat Democrats, who vote with the Republicans and support charters. Look at this eye-popping graph. The average contribution to former IDC members was $1,093. The average contribution to their challenger was $80.


Meyerson on TAP

Andrew’s Ego, Amok Again. In recent weeks, the three published polls of New York voters have shown that Governor Andrew Cuomo leads his primary challenger, Cynthia Nixon, by at least 30 percentage points, and his may-as-well-be-nameless Republican opponent in the November runoff, once he dispatches Nixon, by a similar margin. In other words, Cuomo doesn’t need to boost his totals by a few thousand votes more through a maneuver that might just cost the Democrats one or more of the state’s closely fought U.S. House or state Senate seats. Why would he do something as cynical as that?

Because he’s Andrew Cuomo, that’s why.

Yesterday, The New York Times reported that Cuomo has agreed to appear not just on the Democrats’ ballot line in November (assuming he beats Nixon in the party’s September primary), but also on the ballot line of something called the Independence Party. New York, you may recall, allows for fusion voting, in which a candidate can appear on the November ballot as the nominee of more than one party, provided, of course, that the party and the candidate agree to that. The candidate’s final vote total tallies his or her votes on every party line where his or her name appears.

Since the American Labor Party first began co-endorsing the Democrats it liked in the mid-1930s, New York’s many and varied third (and fourth) parties have each had a distinct ideology. In the past couple decades, the state has seen the social democratic Working Families Party run lefties on its line, most of whom are also Democratic nominees, while the Conservative Party has done the same with right-wingers, most of whom are also Republican nominees.

What the Independence Party is independent of, by contrast, is a coherent ideology. Its candidates in past elections have included conservative Republicans and such certain-to-win-anyway Democrats as the state’s U.S. senators, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand. At least some of the party’s finances have been known to come from politicians who’ve mysteriously ended up as the party’s designated candidates.

Whatever the motivations of Democrats who’ve also been on the Independence line in elections past, November’s upcoming election is unlike any other New York election in recent decades. Half a dozen U.S. House seats and a like number of state Senate seats are up for grabs, which is to say that Democrats’ prospects for taking the House and winning New York’s Senate (where Republicans have clung to a very narrow majority, thanks to gerrymandering and assorted other mischief, for many years) very much depend on the outcome of a number of closely fought New York races. And though the Independence Party has placed Cuomo atop its slate, it has also decided to endorse the Republicans in almost every one of those House and state Senate contests.

In the opinion of New York electionologists, the fact that Cuomo will head the Independence ticket will likely mean that the party’s down-ticket nominees will win anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand votes more than they otherwise would. In most years, this wouldn’t make that much difference. This year, with so much at stake, it could make a world of difference—most importantly, on the question of whether the Democrats will capture the House and at last be able to thwart some of the policies, impulses, and outright crimes (if crimes they be) of President Trump.

And yet, in full knowledge of that possibility, and for no apparent reason save the demands of his vote-getting ego, Cuomo has consented to head the Independence ticket. If Republicans still control the Congress next January, and still are in position to doom progressive initiatives in Albany through their control of the Senate, Cuomo will have some ‘splainin to do. Indeed, he has some ‘splainin to do right now. ~ HAROLD MEYERSON

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Categories Charter Schools, Cuomo, Andrew, Education Industry, New York, Privatization

Ohio: A Great New Organization Has Been Launched to Fight Privatization, Theft, and Greed

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2018 //
19

I learned from Bill Phillis’s posts about a great new organization that has just been launched in Ohio.

If you live in Ohio, join it.

The organization, called Public Education Partners, was inspired by Jan Resseger’s post: https://janresseger.wordpress.com/2016/07/05/my-public-education-platform/

Every candidate running for public office, whether school board, state legislature, the governorship, or Congress should be asked to take a stand: Do you support this platform?

Preamble to PEP’s Public Education Platform

The Ohio Constitution (Article VI, sections 2 and 3) requires the state to secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools and provide for the organization, administration and control of the system. School district boards of education have the constitutional and statutory responsibility to administer the educational program. Boards of education have the fiduciary duty to ensure the educational needs of all resident students are met in an equitable and adequate manner.

The state’s first obligation is to ensure that a thorough and efficient system is established and maintained. The state has no right under the Ohio constitution to fund alternative educational programs that diminish moral and financial support from the common school system. Ohio’s system of school was declared unconstitutional more than two decades ago, yet since that time $11 billion have been drained from the public school system for publicly- funded, privately-operated charter schools. This egregious flaw in state policy must be addressed.

Jan Resseger of Cleveland Heights has aptly defined state and local responsibility for education as follows:

A comprehensive system of public education that serves all children and is democratically governed, publicly funded, universally accessible, and accountable to the public is central to the common good.

The education platform premised on the constitutional responsibility of the state of Ohio as stated in the preamble is:

A comprehensive system of public education that serves all children and is democratically governed, publicly funded, universally accessible, and accountable to the public, is central to the common good.
~Jan Resseger

Ohio Public Education Platform

This education platform is premised on the constitutional responsibility of the state of Ohio:

 Provide adequate and equitable funding to Ohio school districts to guarantee a comparable opportunity to learn for ALL children. This includes a quality early childhood education, qualified teachers, a rich curriculum that will prepare students for college, work and community, and equitable instructional resources. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WLdVez25ZjDzzd2irSUwUggj-GflNQuO/view?usp=sharing

 Respect local control of public schools run by elected school boards. There are different needs for different schools of different sizes, and each local school board knows what its students, families, and community values. http://www.nvasb.org/assets/why_school_boards.pdf

 Reject the school privatization agenda, which includes state takeovers, charter schools, voucher schemes, and high-stakes testing. The school privatization agenda has proven to be ineffective at bringing efficiency and cost savings to our schools. https://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/Privatizing_Public_Education,_Higher_Ed_Policy,_and_T eachers

 Do away with the state takeovers of school districts imposed in House Bill 70. State takeovers of school districts (HB 70), followed by the appointment of CEOs with power to override the decisions of elected school boards and nullify union contracts, is undemocratic, unaccountable, and without checks and balances. http://www.reclaimourschools.org/sites/default/files/state-takeover-factsheet-3.pdf

 Promote a moratorium on the authorization of new charter schools while gradually removing existing charters, which take funding and other valuable resources from public school districts. Charter schools remove funds and other resources from public school districts and need to be phased out. For-profit charter schools should be eliminated – tax dollars should never be transferred into private profits. https://knowyourcharter.com/

 Eliminate vouchers and tuition tax credit programs. Voucher schemes take desperately needed dollars out of education budgets and undermine the protection of religious liberty as defined by the First Amendment. https://educationvotes.nea.org/2017/02/08/5-names- politicians-use-sell-private-school-voucher-schemes-parents/

 Encourage wraparound community learning centers that bring social and health services into Ohio school buildings. These wraparound services ensure that the public schools are the center of the neighborhood, and they include health, dental, and mental health clinics, after school programs, and parent support programs. Cincinnati Public Schools has a very successful program: https://www.cps-k12.org/community/clc

 End the test-and-punish philosophy, and replace it with an ideology of school investment and improvement. The tests have narrowed the curriculum to the tested subjects. If national standardized testing is to continue, testing should be limited to the federal minimum guidelines, and there should be no state standardized tests beyond those mandated by ESSA. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer- sheet/wp/2017/01/06/how-testing-practices-have-to-change-in-u-s-public- schools/?utm_term=.45d28f77dcb0

 Remove high stakes mandates from schools, and abolish the practice of punishing schools, teachers, families, and students for arbitrary test scores. Do away with mandatory retention attached to the 3rd Grade Reading Guarantee and high school end-of-course state tests. If parents choose to opt their children out of testing, no one should be penalized. http://www.fairtest.org/sites/default/files/Dangerous-Consequences-of-high-stakes- tests.pdf

 Restore respect for well-trained, certified teachers, and return educator evaluation systems to locally elected school boards. Dismiss Teach for America, which is funded by the Eli Broad Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation. https://progressive.org/public-school-shakedown/went-wrong-teach-america/

Eliminate the practice of judging teachers by their students’ scores – research has proven it unreliable. http://www.fairtest.org/sites/default/files/TeacherEvaluationFactSheetRevisionJanuary201 6.pdf

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Ohio, Privatization, School Choice, Supporting public schools, Testing, VAM (value-added modeling), Virtual Charter Schools, Vouchers

DFER Will Spend Millions to Support Pro-Charter, Pro-High-Stakes Testing Candidates

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2018 //
25

If you like high-stakes testing and charter schools, you will love “Democrats for Education Reform.”

DFER, as it is known, was condemned by resolution by the Democratic party conferences in Colorado and California for using the word “Democrat” to promote a corporate agenda that is hostile to public schools. DFER is also hostile to public school teachers and unions, but loves TFA and merit pay. All the usual Corporate Reform failures. Real Democrats, like the parties in Colorado and California think that DFERs are Republicans pretending to be Democrats.

Democrats for Education Reform is a group funded by Wall Street hedge fund managers who despise public schools. They never support candidates who are opposed to privatization or those who are fully committed to public schools. They only support candidates who want to siphon money away from public schools to support charter schools. They support candidates who love high-stakes testing. They never look at evidence that shows the damage that charters do to public schools or the evidence that shows the total failure of high-stakes testing to make any difference other than demoralizing students and teachers. They don’t care that a decade of their policies driven by the U.S. Department of Education has led to stagnation of NAEP scores.

In New York State, hedge funders supporting charter schools are pouring millions of dollars into races for the State Senate, both to support the charter school industry and to make sure that Republicans retain control of the State Senate, thus fending off higher taxes and protecting charter schools. Another DFERite dumping big money into New York State campaigns is Paul Tudor Jones, who gave $150,000 to something called “Parents Vote,” which seems to be controlled by StudentsFirst (hard to tell the Astroturf organizations apart). The treasurer of “Parents Vote” is the attorney for StudentsFirst. Jones may be a parent, but he lives in Connecticut, not New York, and you can bet your bottom dollar that he does not send his own children to public schools or charter schools. This outpouring of money is meant to keep the State Senate firmly under GOP management, to make sure that charters continue to operate without oversight and do their own thing.

You may or may not remember that Paul Tudor Jones is one of the nine billionaires who determined that it was up to them to remake the public schools of New York, although no one elected them to do so.

Just five years ago, Forbes ran a big article about Paul Tudor Jones and his plan to “save American education.” While busy saving American education, Jones also served on the board of Harvey Weinstein’s company and fought to save Harvey’s battered reputation.

Please note that the following story misidentifies DFER and treats them as a legitimate “reform” group when DFER acts only in the interest of Corporate Reform, high-stakes testing and privatization. The story also errs in not acknowledging that many DFER members are not Democrats.

From Politico:


FIRST LOOK: EDUCATION REFORM GROUP BETS BIG ON GOVERNOR’S RACES: Democrats for Education Reform plans to spend $4 million on campaign contributions and advertising this election cycle, boosting Democratic candidates who want to support public schools but are open to reform-minded ways of improving them.

— The organization — which advocates for a host of school reform policies nationwide like strong test-based accountability and high-quality public charter schools — through its political action committee is prioritizing gubernatorial races in Colorado, Connecticut and New York, in addition to the California state superintendent’s race and some state legislative races. DFER exclusively detailed its spending and campaign plans with Morning Education in an interview late last month. Asked the source of the $4 million, a spokeswoman the figure comes from their “supporters” and “contributors.”

— In Colorado’s battle for governor, DFER is backing Rep. Jared Polis, a House education committee Democrat who’s running against state Treasurer Walker Stapleton, a Republican.

— The race to replace term-limited Gov. John Hickenlooper has proven divisive for Colorado Democrats — the state teachers union backed another Democrat, Cary Kennedy, during the primary. Allies of Kennedy sought to tie Polis to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and her support for private school vouchers. Polis founded two charter schools, but hasn’t shown support for vouchers or federally funded private schools in Congress. When Kennedy lost to Polis, the state teachers union released a statement that didn’t even mention Polis’ name.

— In Connecticut, DFER is supporting Ned Lamont, the Democratic hopeful looking to replace Gov. Dannel Malloy, who’s not seeking reelection. And the organization is pushing for Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s reelection in New York.

— In California, DFER wants to lift Marshall Tuck to victory as state schools superintendent. Tuck is an education reform advocate who has run both charter schools and district schools in Los Angeles. In 2014, he narrowly lost a bid for state schools chief to Tom Torlakson, the current superintendent, who had the support of teachers unions. Tuck will face another Democrat, state Assemblyman Tony Thurmond, in the general election this fall.

— DFER in addition is launching a social media campaignon what it means to be an “education progressive.” The group defines that term as fighting to spend more money on public education while embracing “new ideas” to bring about faster improvement. Some of those ideas, like stronger test-based accountability measures, have faced staunch opposition from progressive groups like teachers unions. But DFER is pushing new polling results that President Shavar Jeffries says illustrate strong support. More on that polling here.

— Jeffries, who recently sat down with Morning Education, stressed that more than half of Democratic primary voters, African American voters and Hispanic voters don’t think public schools are changing or improving fast enough. The poll also found broad support for public school choice — a divisive issue for the Democratic Party — and more equitable funding for public schools, particularly disadvantaged ones. The results stem from two nationwide phone polls of more than 1,000 voters each between May and July of this year. The poll was conducted by consulting firms Benenson Strategy Group and 270 Strategies.

Would it be asking too much to hope that Caitlin Emma and the crack reporters on the Politico team might consider interviewing a critic of billionaire “Reformers.” Maybe a teacher? Say, someone like Steven Singer or Peter Greene or Mark Weber, or other well-informed critics of the intrusion of billionaire know-nothings into education policymaking? Maybe Carol Burris of the Network for Public Education?

Categories Charter Schools, Colorado, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Industry, New York, Privatization, School Choice, Teacher Evaluations, Testing, Unions

Mitchell Robinson: What We Need to Do Instead of Opening Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2018 //
13

Mitchell Robinson of Michigan State University has been debating charter advocates lately. Given the abundant evidence of charter failure in Michigan, they have a lot to defend, but their chief debating point is: Well, what would you do?

Here is his answer.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Failure, Michigan, Privatization

Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider: Fear-Based “Reform” Doesn’t Work

By dianeravitch
August 5, 2018 //
46

In this podcast, Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider interview business journalist Andrea Gabor about the lessons of her new book, “After the Culture Wars: How Smart Schools Upend the Business of Reform.”

“Gabor argues that business DOES offer lessons for schools – but that the education reform industry has learned all of the wrong ones.”

This is the book to read this summer.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Testing

Puerto Rico: Secretary of Education Is Grateful for the Hurricane That Allows Her to Wipe Out Public Schools

By dianeravitch
August 4, 2018 //
21

Remember that Arne Duncan said that Hurricane Katrina was “the best thing that ever happened to New Orleans” because it made it possible to wipe out public schools, fire all the teachers, eliminate the union, and replace them all with charter school?

Well, the Secretary of Education Julia Kelleher in Puerto Rico is grateful for the opportunity that Hurricane Maria has given her to do the same to the public schools there.

Forget the deaths of at least 4,000 people. Think of charter schools and vouchers!

Here she is in an interview.

She’s in the middle of closing 264 schools and working with Betsy Devos on vouchers.

Video of her here: https://twitter.com/GoHedgeClippers/status/1024336534965825536

Full text from full video: https://www.facebook.com/David-Begnaud-108679513654/

David Begnaud 24:07
And I’ll preface the question with this. When I first met Miss Keleher, her at the convention center we were sitting off in a cornerdidn’t actually know who she was, until about 10 minutes before I found out and I thought, Oh, well, she’d be a good person to talk to how are the schools to doing and this was in like, the first few days after the storm. And we sat down and you said to me, I’ll never forget “hurricane Maria Maybe the best thing that’s happened to this island” Do you still feel that way

Julia Keleher 24:37
I think the fact that I have $500 million to improve the quality of a kids academic experience and learning environment, I think that I have four times as much money as I would have to be able to fix the physical plant in which they go to school plus, plus the option to access more, I think that’s a tremendous opportunity that no one wanted the storm, but I’m I’m not going to miss spend, pardon the pun, the the opportunity that I have to, to to redirect these things that would have never been available to Puerto Rico, I would have been short $300 million, I wouldn’t be able to do the things that we’re going to be able to do for teachers and for kids.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, Puerto Rico, Vouchers

Jan Resseger on “A Decade of Neglect”

By dianeravitch
August 3, 2018 //
28

Jan Resseger reviews the AFT report on “A Decade of Neglect,“ a decade in which states cut funding for public schools and diverted the shrinking pie to charters and vouchers. This state-by-state attack on public schools is the match that ignited the teachers’ strikes and may ignite even more in the future. Teachers will be silent no more. They will vote in massive numbers in November for those who support public schools. Many teachers are running for state legislative offices. Good luck to them!

The new report from the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), A Decade of Neglect, is one of the most lucid explanations I’ve read about the deplorable fiscal conditions for public schools across the states. It explains the precipitous drop in school funding caused by the Great Recession, temporarily ameliorated in 2009 by an infusion of funds from the federal stimulus (a financial boost that disappeared after a couple of years), compounded by tax cutting and austerity budgeting across many states, and further compounded by schemes to drain education dollars to privatized charter and voucher programs all out of the same budget.

The report delineates the conditions tangled together over the decade: “While some states are better off than most, in states where spending on education was less in 2016 than it was before the recession, our public schools remain nearly $19 billion short of the annual funding they received in 2008, after adjusting for changes in the consumer price index… The recession ran from December 2007 through June 2009 and prompted a crisis setting off a chain of actions that resulted in significant budget cutting by our state governments. When the recession hit, it devastated state budgets. Job losses, lower wages, the crash in housing prices and the panic in the financial markets all worked to lower state tax revenues, while the demand for government services in the form of unemployment benefits, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and housing and Medicaid assistance drove up expenditures. The Brookings Institution estimated that by the second quarter of 2009, income tax collections were 27 percent below their prior-year levels, and total state taxes were 17 percent lower… The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s annual report of education indicators recently found that U.S. spending on elementary and high school education declined more than 4 percent from 2010-2014…. Over this same period, education spending on average, rose 5 percent per student across the 35 countries in the OECD.”

Many states also adopted an ideology promising that tax cuts would bring the economy back. Sam Brownback’s Kansas experiment in supply side economics, however, exemplifies the failure to confirm these hopes. In Kansas the economy didn’t improve and state revenues collapsed. Only in the past two years has the legislature there raised taxes—beginning an effort to undo the damage. Overall, according to AFT’s report: “In 2016, 25 states were still providing less funding for K-12 schools than before the recession, after adjusting for inflation… Eighteen of the 25 states that provided less funding for k-12 education reduced their tax effort between 2008 and 2015.” The eight states that cut taxes most deeply were: Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Virginia. And, “In 38 states, the average teacher salary in 2018 is lower than it was in 2009 in real terms… According to the Economic Policy Institute, teacher pay fell by $30 per week from 1996-2015, while pay for other college graduates increased by $124. The gap between teachers and other college graduates has continued to widen and deep cuts in school funding leave states unable to invest in their state’s teacher workforce… In 35 states, between 2008 and 2016, the ratio of students to teachers grew.”

Here is an example of the result: “(W)hile some states are doing better than others, no state is really doing well enough. California is a leader on many of the measures used in this report. But there are less than one tenth the number of school librarians as is recommended. Most school districts don’t have a nurse and there are only about a quarter of the recommended number of school counselors.”

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

New Group Created by Rightwing Foundations to Promote More Charters in Cities

By dianeravitch
August 2, 2018 //
29

Chalkbeat reporter Matt Barnum reports the formation of a new group to push additional charters and the “portfolio model” in cities.

The City Fund is funded largely by the rightwing John and Laura Arnold Foundation; Arnold is the former Enron trader who bailed out before the collapse of Enron.

The group was announced Tuesday morning on the blog of Neerav Kingsland, who leads education giving at The Laura and John Arnold Foundation. According to a separate presentation created by the group and viewed by Chalkbeat, the Arnold Foundation and the Hastings Fund have already given the group over $200 million. It’s unclear if the organization has raised additional funds.

Although the group is likely to start in a small number of cities, that presentation also made its ambitions clear: it aspires to eventually be in “every city in America.”

Others involved include Chris Barbic of the Arnold Foundation; Kevin Huffman, the former Tennessee education chief; David Harris, who previously led the Mind Trust, an Indianapolis-based group; and Ethan Gray, the president of the nonprofit Education Cities.

Kingsland previously ran New Schools for New Orleans, which kept the money flowing to the Recovery School District in New Orleans, where 40% of the charters are rated D or F and almost completely segregated (black).

Barbic was in charge of the failed Achievement School District in Tennessee, and Kevin Huffman (Michelle Rhee’s ex-husband) was the Commissioner of Education in Tennessee who hired Barbic. Harris is the pseudo-Democrat who is responsible for a swath of destruction in the Indianapolis School District.

What is the “portfolio” model? It is a concept that urges districts to treat their schools like a stock portfolio. Sell the losers, keep the winners.

Has it worked?

Bonafide Reformer Jay P. Greene of the University of Arkansas has written several posts arguing that the portfolio model is a failure and that it is no different from a school district (although it is privately controlled). Read here. and here. The latter post is advice written to the Arnold Foundation about why it should not invest in the portfolio model. Sad. They didn’t listen.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Tennessee: Achievement School District is a Colossal Failure

By dianeravitch
August 1, 2018 //
24

Arne Duncan was very proud of Tennessee, which was one of the first states to win Race to the Top funding. $100 million of its $500 million prize was devoted to creating an all-charter Achievement School District, made up of the state’s lowest scoring schools. The leader of ASD, Chris Barbic (ex-TFA) promised that these schools would be catapulted to the top 20% in the state within five years. Barbic bailed after four years. None of the ASD schools improved.

A series of leaders replaced Barbic.

Now we know: ASD made no progress.

Test scores in the ASD high school are a disaster.

“This year’s batch of scores, which were released early in July, revealed that test scores for state-run schools remain far below the statewide average and dropped in high school. School-level data is not yet available.

“Education Commissioner Candice McQueen called the new state test data for the turnaround district “sobering…”

“The Achievement School District — now made up of 30 schools, mostly in Memphis — was launched to transform the state’s bottom 5 percent of schools by converting them to charter schools.

“In English II, only 4 percent of high schoolers were on or exceeding grade-level, down from 9.8 percent last year. Three years ago, 10.2 percent of students were on grade level.

“In geometry, the drop was smaller, with 0.9 percent of high schoolers on or exceeding grade level, compared to 1.3 percent last year. The percentage of students on grade level has hovered around 1 percent in geometry for the last three years.”

Nevada and North Carolina rushed to create their own ASDs, modeled on Tennessee.

Way to go, Reformers!

I hope the new National Center on Research on School Choice at Tulane studies the ASD, which was modeled on New Orleans’ Recovery School District.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Privatization, Race to the Top, Tennessee

Douglas Harris: A Response to Critics of the 2015 New Orleans Study

By dianeravitch
August 1, 2018 //
16

Douglas Harris of the Education Research Alliance at Tulane University responds here to critics of the 2015 study of New Orleans in which he was the lead researcher. Its findings were the same as his 2018 study.

He summarizes and links to the divergent views about the New Orleans’ adoption of market-driven reforms.

The school system before Katrina was corrupt and dysfunctional. After the hurricane in 2005, the state stepped in to turn most schools into privately managed charters.

He writes:

“In a study I conducted with Matthew Larsen, we found that the city’s test scores rose dramatically because of the post-Katrina reforms. Even the most pessimistic estimates suggest that the reforms significantly increased scores (and probably high school graduation rates and college entry) and more than alternative policies and programs would have. These achievement gains also occurred across the board. In this respect, low-income students were not hurt. They benefited academically.

“That being said, some of the rhetoric of reform supporters has gone overboard. There are some real issues and questions, just not the ones that these critics have set their sights on.

“For example, though disadvantaged students benefited, they seem to have benefited less than other groups. Early on, as this entirely new type of system was being put in place, there were real horror stories about how special education students and others were suspended and expelled at high rates. Under pressure from community groups, state and local leaders took several steps to address the problem, yet it remains unclear whether the problems are solved.

“Critics are concerned that schools under the reforms are too focused on test scores. This is a national concern as well, but the intensity of test-based accountability in New Orleans is even stronger and may reduce focus on other important educational goals like creativity and local cultural knowledge. In the coming years, we’ll get a better sense of the real results by looking at college and beyond.

“One potential weakness of a system of autonomous schools like the New Orleans model is that disadvantaged students can more easily fall between the cracks. With neighborhood attendance zones, a specific school is responsible for each student. With school choice, tens of thousands of students are in the hands of one or two district staff people. And there are signs that high school dropouts are being under-reported.

“Finally, whatever lessons we might draw from New Orleans may be exclusive to New Orleans. Our student outcomes had nowhere to go but up. New Orleans also saw a massive influx of federal and philanthropic funding and skilled people from across the country that other cities are unlikely to experience. Other districts should look to New Orleans, but tread carefully.“

If only the professional Reformers heeded Harris’ words of caution. You can be sure they will use his New Orleans study to tout the advantages of privatization.

For example, David Leonhardt did not write two columns in the New York Times to report the findings and cautions that Harris here reports, but to tout the wonders of charters.

Now that Harris has won $10 million from the DeVos’ Department of Education to establish a National Center for Research on School Choice, perhaps he can help shine a light on how School Choice has worked in Detroit and Milwaukee. Perhaps he can persuade the professional Reformers that the neediest kids are the ones least likely to benefit and most likely, as he put it, to “fall between the cracks.” Then, they might drop their false narrative about “saving poor kids from failing schools.” But that may be too much to hope for.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, New Orleans, Privatization
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