New Orleans Plan: Charter Schools, With a Return to Local Control

When they say "Education Reform" what they MEAN is "Education Privatization"; don't be fooled, people.

The outside, largely white, billionaire-backed interests that shamelessly swooped in to seize control of this city's schools, taking full advantage of a very corrupt mayor and other compliant local and state politicians, NEVER do anything because "it's the right thing to do." They ONLY do something when it's in their self-interest; they're either making big bucks from this "school disruption" or they are paid functionaries of those who are doing so.

The REAL story of what was done to the students at the public schools of New Orleans is a tragic one. It didn't have to be this way. But now tax dollars that should be going to help children learn are being slipped into the pockets of private interests.

Why is this story important beyond the obvious harm that it did to the people of New Orleans? It's important for ALL parents, taxpayers, students and citizens who live ANYWHERE in the United States: They've ruined New Orleans and other places and they'll be coming for OUR schools next---as soon as they can.

We parents, taxpayers, students and citizens are the last line of defense against education privatization. We must and we WILL stop these privatization pirates and plutocrats, roll them back, and remove them from our local, public temples of learning.

It's disappointing that there is no mention of the 7,500, mostly African American, teachers who were fired after Katrina to make way for the white elites to take over.

To compare the pre-Katrina Orleans Parish School Board to the Jerry Springer show is actually an insult to Mr. Springer. As someone who has lived here and been involved in this community for most of my life, I cannot overstate how dysfunctional the public school system in New Orleans was before the state took it over. I do not claim to be an expert on public education, but I do know with certainty that what we have now is far superior to what we had then. So there is a great deal of trepidation about restoring control to a local elected school board, and a fear that this is the first step in dismantling the charter school system. I, for one, hope that this is not the case.

It is truly baffling to me how anyone can be against more local control. I understand completely the automatic opposition from those who stand to lose such as the corrupt unions, but when their Mafioso-like tactics are broken and the people actually see the benefit kids get from this kind of education system and STILL argue against it...it's just amazing.

Underperforming charter schools get closed. Why do people support failing public schools for decades then wonder why the students don't learn anything? Why is there such overwhelming support to continue horribly run public schools? Once teachers and principals throw up their hands and say "we can't expect anything out of these impoverished inner city kids" they're in a protected tenured job to show up and babysit the asylum. No wonder unions are fearful of a system that has expectations.

For profit education, and medical care, for that matter, seem very contradictory. When a company has to make a profit, then the student at school, or the patient will pay the price. No doubt about it. If you have ever worked for company you understand that. Reduce labor costs by laying off your best (i.e. highest paid) people, then reduce service to your customers to maintain (or increase) profit margins. When will we learn?

This article appeared positive - school performance improved. But after reading the comments, I'm depressed. It appears that many here hate charter schools and don't feel that outcomes are accurate.

But if the whole district was run as charter schools, then where did those schools send the low performers that commenters insist were booted out of the data/schools.

New Orleans requires the ability to hold two contradicting thoughts at the same time. The overhaul of the public education began before Katrina. But there was significant opposition at the time to expand charters for legitimate reasons. However, state and city officials used the hurricane to advance charter education billing the model as a necessary response to the failing pre-Katrina schools. There was little accountability at the time, which we should reflect on when considering what entity should run the local schools. However, the troubling origins of the charter schools can be understood along with its successes. From the perspective of someone invested in Francophone Louisiana, I think the number of charter schools teaching French is a move that could never have happened pre-Katrina. I think several more years will be required to understand where the system stands given that the model took years to develop after Katrina. But local control seems to be an appropriate move. Given the deplorable finances of the state, local control may ultimately bring accountability and safeguard resources moving forward.

Privatizing schools, whether they are under state or "local" control", is just another way to reallocate our education dollars away from the students and the teachers. Republicans love charters because they don't have to hire Union teachers, and they don't have to educate every student, just those that are "admitted" to the charter school. The only families that get "choice" are the wealthy, motivated parents of kids with no learning issues. The majority can "choose" the one nearby school that has taken over the public school facility (with taxpayer-funded renovations) that now has underpaid, first-year, Teach for America teachers (a worthy initiative if they were supporting experienced teachers) in every class who will leave after their year and have no lasting ties to the community or to the school. Also, the tone of the New Orleans education "reformers" is certainly condescending and to my mind pretty racist.

I am extremely skeptical of any claims of New Orleans charter school success after reading these 2 articles a few days ago:

http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2016/05/jindals_voucher_program_i...

https://cenlamar.com/2012/08/07/shocking-bobby-jindals-vouchers-will-pro...

Killing the charter-school model condemns children to poverty. Some charters don't work, but it's also true beyond doubt that many others do work. Over time they have tested, proven and codified teaching techniques and curricula that demonstrably close the knowledge gap--and quickly. Willfully to ignore these improvements is nothing less than child abuse. Parents are right to demand best practices. There is no professionalism in any workplace without creation and adoption of best practices. Name a field where best practices can be set aside without disastrous consequences.

Defenders of charter schools say they are about poor education in the public school system. Critics of charter schools say they're about profits. Some say they are a way to privatize profits and socialize costs (receipt of public educational funds.) Still others say that charter schools are inherently advantaged because they can cherry pick students, taking those who are best equipped to succeed, while discarding those who are disadvantaged economically or educationally.

Others point out that statistically measured educational success hardly distinguishes charter school--with all of their advantages--from still existing public schools.

So why has all this become so politicized? Why, more specifically, has the campaign in behalf of charter schools and against public education so often come from the political right?

Well, privatization and profits explain part of that.

But a bigger reason is the political right's disillusionment with what is taught in public education and how it is taught. Even where public education is not achieving at the highest level, it is still projecting the values of inclusiveness and tolerance (i.e., multicultural integration in the broadest sense.) It teaches evidence-based science and rational analysis, and it perpetuates the broadly secularist foundation of the American political tradition.

Quite simply: the hard right dislikes public education as the source of "liberal book larnin'." It's too often about politics, not education.

Given that this very paper published hard data less than a year ago that undercut the claims of success for this experimental system in New Orleans, I find it surprising that this story assumes that this experiment has been a successful one. Since the truth on the results of these charter schools is questionable at best, it's worth asking if the veneer of local control is intended not to ensure local control, but to give outsiders like Mr. White a chance to cut and run.

New Orleans is on the right track. It is a myth that charter schools take money from the school system. It costs $nnn to educate each student whether that money is spent in a public school or a charter school. The charter school often provides an advantage to children having difficulties in the public school environment. What the skeptics hate the most is that the success rate for most charter schools exceeds the public schools. Same skeptics ignore the reasons why this is so. Perhaps the public school system should more closely model the charter schools.

This article mentions Eli Broad.
Let me tell you about the Broad Foundation.

The Broad Foundation trained some guy named Mike Miles from CO.
He showed up in Dallas to be superintendent.
He got his TX driver's license and at one point said he was staying in Texas.

When he arrived, one of his first orders of business was to hire a "cabinet" and pay them incredible 6-figure salaries. He hired a former TFA guy to head up HR and renamed it Human Capital Management. Even defenders of Miles couldn't believe he put the TFA guy in charge of such a huge department. He also opened a training center for administrators (cost was around $5 million I think). The bus system was disrupted; many accused him of using bus money to fund his training center.

It went on and on. Over 5,000 experienced and effective teachers fled DISD because they were so good they could easily be hired by the suburbs. Test scores sank all over the district--which was great because Miles managed to tie teacher pay to test scores.

And the TX driver's license/staying in Dallas? It lasted 3 years. THIS is the face of Ed Reform: destroy existing districts while to create fertile ground for charters. Broad, TFA, charters...money goes to them instead of to fixing and funding the public schools.

another round of shifting the deck chairs on a sinking ship...educational reform is not the same as administrative restructuring.

education involves some concern for the sciences of learning and cognition, subjects woefully under- served in teacher training and, essentially, off the radar of the educractic controllers of schools...
no matter how many superintendent training programs money allows, none of them will matter as long as they continue to feed an overstuffed, top-heavy (and costly!) management scheme that rather impedes than facilitates the processes of teaching and learning.

in a proper overhaul of the k-12 disaster, a keener recognition/determination and development of the potential of each student (see elsewhere in today's nyt for an article on poor preparation and remediation of same) will be created by a cadre of master educators who will set the standards and practices of schools, and a subordinate level of managers will execute the mechanical aspects of same, (from ordering supplies to maintaining schedules and data), much like a management staff supports the vision of an artistic directorate.

teacher training, (in addition to more learning science and deeper subject preparation), and school reform can benefit from some attention to the reggio, steiner and montessori thinkers.

separating the apples of education from the oranges of management would be a good start.

Three cheers for New Orleans. At long last they are pushing back against the abuse of (non) authority by the Federal Government.

There is no portion of the Consitution that authorizes the federal take over of any local governmental action.

Despite the liberal media lies almost without exception Charter Schools have put performed, out produced and done it cheaper than schools hamstrung by underfunded abusive federal mandates.

No Child Left Behind created a monster of excessive testing and wasteful diversion of time and money.

The Race to the Bottom, my error Top, poured more limited resources down a Federal Rat Hole of waste, fraud, and criminal abuse.

Common Core started out as a teacher driven effort to create a single, nation wide, uniform instruction goal. I worked on the original effort. It morphed into a federally mandated, daily set of required instructional curriculum. The new concepts taught in math are so useless and horridly done the Common Core books sit locked up in the book room and I teach out of the 1998 version of the HF book.

Bottom line. Federal control has resulted in an inferior education. Time to revert to what worked before the DOE was created.

My personal experience with education came as an undergraduate volunteer teacher's assistant in a poor community. Grading papers was shocking. Most of the 5th graders couldn't construct a single correct sentence.

There were bright, motivated kids in the class, but every lesson on every subject was lost to disruptions. The teacher couldn't get through one lesson. Parents were no help, they were more of a problem. The administration wouldn't let the teacher get rid of the troublemakers. It was pretty hopeless where education was concerned.

The lesson for me was that interruptions are intolerable if education is the goal, and a mechanism for permanently removing disruptive students from classes is an act of mercy for the children who want to learn.

If it takes sending all the learners to some schools and disruptive children to others, so be it. Maybe schools can't get everyone to reach their potential, but they can provide a safe, calm, interruption free environment for those who are willing to try while providing remediation and behavioral support to the others. Those goals are mutually supportive but physically incompatible. They need to take place in different classes or schools, with educators with different skills.

93% in charter schools! If the root issue is what is best for the children, it is Stunning that even the NYTimes does not provide any context by comparing test results or other quantifiable data such as graduation rates or college admissions. The Times also fails to note the subsidization of these school by hundreds of millions of dollars in FEMA funds that the citizens of New Orleans were unwilling to invest in their own schools for capital reconstruction over the previous half century. In that regard Katrina was a boon to the city. The issue is presented in an informational vacuum.

The reporter neglects to mention another factor driving charters around the country: conservatives' drive to undermine teachers' unions and replace certified teachers with young adults who are not in unions and who are worked to death until they burn out and leave the kids behind.

No one does well in college if they didn't really "attend" high school. Attendance is the key word here.

Go to school every day
Do your homework every night
Arrive prepared...ready to learn and with questions for work not learned.

The schools must provide the support to meet the needs in this environment....but there is no way to help a student that is not consistent.

I understand there are many children with homeless chaotic lives but there are millions that are simply inconsistent attenders that fall behind early and never catch up.

All of the after school and summer tutoring and enrichment programs can't close the gap when the folks that need to learn the most don't attend frequently enough to learn the basics.

I'd like to make this as clear as I can to the pro-union posters here. I would much rather trust the "privatizers" and "profiteers" trying to make a few cents off of the kids, as opposed to the unions that have rung up $1 trillion in unfunded teachers' pensions and plan to ring up more billions in pension and health benefits costs, which will be billed to taxpayers and "the kids".

The Ed Reform movement is deceptive and takes advantage of our most vulnerable communities. Education "reform" is all part of the 30 year privatization push supported by the Right in an attempt to disrupt and privatize all government services--- including the public education system.

It has absolutely NOTHING to do with helping poor children or addressing the underlying problem of poverty. Charter companies go into poor underperforming school districts and promise the moon, sun and stars and and perform more poorly than the prior public schools.
Charter companies come in and cherry pick students, hire very poorly trained teachers, buy expensive, poor curriculums --all with no financial oversight. Its appalling--some even close in the middle of the year leaving parents and students stranded.
The Right as usual is all about the money and the neoliberal non profits are pawns just as much as the poor, vulnerable communities they infiltrate with their promises.
Bring back the public schools, fund them appropriately, elect honest school boards, admit that schools with poor children WILL ALWAYS perform worse and provide wrap around services to aid the families and the kids. Then and only then does real learning have a chance.

I live in New York. New Orleans is not driving any debate about schools here. All we have are a bunch of whining parents who can't accept the fact that their children aren't geniuses and blame the testing instead of admitting that truth

Before responding to this article I need to clarify some facts about the performance of most of the charter schools in New Orleans that been under state control since Hurricane Katrina. All external analysis of the academic performance of the charter schools under the state control have consistently found that these charter schools have under-performed every school district in the state of Louisiana (state test and ACT average). Additionally the state has been citied annually by the Louisiana Legislative Audit for poor fiscal management and not being able to account for millions of dollars of equipment for nine consecutive years.

While the schools need to return this legislation has some inherent problems; it creates the same unaccountable system that has allowed the dismal academic performance stated earlier. The charter schools boards in New Orleans have been allowed to operated with "unquestionable authority"and perform miserably academically and remain open without any accountability. The legislation headed to Governor's office ties the hands of the local school board in that it cannot intervene when charter schools run afoul, they can only intercede when the charter schools contract is up for renewal or revocation of its contract upon the recommendation of the superintendent. Every school district in Louisiana have the authority to intercede when a school runs afoul, this legislation does not allow that to happen.

The article raises some interesting questions, but it is inherently shallow. Why not assess whether the charter schools are successful against like student populations before the hurricane? As others have noted, it is easy to manipulate your population and push 7% of the most incorrigible or low-functioning out, but that is not comparing like with like.

This issue warrants an exhaustive, multi-part series that focuses on whether there are successes, whether there are lessons that public schools could use, and whether they have just baked their numbers with better student selection.

I suspect much of the progress is illusory, but there are likely to be some useful nuggets of success that could be emulated by others. In any case, the charter school argument is mostly between two uninformed groups that do not have a common, objective base of information to make their case or answer for shortcomings.

Retired teacher here. Yes, I'm a biased observer. In a long article almost not one word on or about teachers except the old ones were cast out in a destructive move for the Black middle class. Oh, and I missed the description of the 'new and modern curriculum' and its implementation. Are we to guess that teachers who dedicate their lives to educating our most important asset are a disposable commodity with no input on a host of important educational decisions a teaching staff makes daily to the charges in front of them?
Just what is a Charter School? Reading the article I found it hard to figure out. But I did discover that parents and staff are lower than the serfs of feudal Europe. The Lord of the manor knows best.
Their is no supportive three legged stool here looking out for the interests of the children. Without the collective wisdom of staff and concern of parents eventually the operations described here will collapse. Administrators, no matter how motivated, educated, need the other two legs to produce healthy, educated young people. Stakeholders need to know they are a valued part of the equation.
Is there a place for Mister Chips in New Orleans? Doubt it.

I think there were probably better ways of reforming the dysfunctional New Orleans Schools, but it criminal to have let things get that bad in the first place.

Every child in this nation should as a right have a quality public school to attend that will meet their educational needs and prepare them for success. What others think or desire should be secondary to that statement.

New Orleans's student population is about two-thirds as large as it was pre-Katrina, and charters are notorious for pushing low-scoring students out the door. The "gains" from the charter system in N.O. are almost certainly illusory; the kids who were dragging the scores down before the hurricane aren't there anymore, or aren't being tested because the charters bounce them out of school.

Charters enrich investors but very rarely do as good a job educating students as public schools. The best thing for New Orleans would be to close the charters and return the schools to local control under an elected school board. Charters are an experiment that's been failing for more than two decades, and if they weren't profitable for well-connected people, we'd have admitted that by now.

Charters take public money and harass non-compliant kids until they leave and go back to their "real" school.

Of course, the hassling doesn't begin until the check from the public school system to the charter school for that child has cleared the bank. And even if the child leaves, the charter keeps the money.

Charter schools do to education what the Flint emergency manager did to the water--privatize profits, socialize the costs.

Sure--Mr. St. Albans and UVA cares deeply about poor kids. That's why he's in classroom...WAIT! He's not! He's there for the profits.