Lyndsey
Layton of the Washington Post describes the triumph of
the reform movement in New Orleans: The last public school has
closed for good.
A
few observations.
All
schools in New Orleans are now charter schools. .
It’s
hard to compare achievement pre-and post-Katrina because so many students never
returned after the hurricane. Test scores are up, graduation rates are up, but
populations are different. “By most indicators, school quality and academic
progress have improved in Katrina’s aftermath, although it’s difficult to make
direct comparisons because the student population changed drastically after the
hurricane, with thousands of students not returning.
“Before the storm, the city’s high school graduation rate was 54.4 percent. In 2013, the rate for the Recovery School District was 77.6 percent. On average, 57 percent of students performed at grade level in math and reading in 2013, up from 23 percent in 2007, according to the state.”
There
are no more neighborhood schools.
Almost
all the teachers were fired. Almost all the fired teachers were African
American. They were replaced mostly by white Teach for America recruits. The
fired teachers won a lawsuit for wrongful termination and are owed $1 billion.
The
central bureaucracy has been swept away.
“The
city is spending about $2 billion — much of it federal hurricane recovery money
— to refurbish and build schools across the city, which are then leased to
charter operators at no cost.”
A
curious fact: “White students disproportionately attend the best charter
schools, while the worst are almost exclusively populated by African American
students. Activists in New Orleans joined with others in Detroit and Newark
last month to file a federal civil rights complaint, alleging that the city’s
best-performing schools have admissions policies that exclude African American
children. Those schools are overseen by the separate Orleans Parish School
Board, and they don’t participate in OneApp, the city’s centralized school
enrollment lottery.”
Observation
by State Superintendent John White: “The city’s conversion to charters promises
the best outcome for the most students, White said. “These kinds of
interventions are never easy things,” he said. “When you look at overall
outcomes, they’ve been positive. Does it have collateral negative effects? Of
course. But does it work generally for the better? Yes.”
Formula
for success: close public schools. Open charter schools. Fire veteran teachers.
Replace them with TFA. Spend billions to refurbish buildings. This is the same
formula that is being imported to urban districts across the nation. Is it
sustainable? Did it really “work” or is this a manufactured success, bolstered
by billions from the Waltons and other philanthropists who favor privatization?