Performance Analysis of RSD Schools
Student Performance in RSD Not What We Have Been Led to Believe
Our State Department of Education keeps telling us (and the rest of the country) what a fabulous success Louisiana has achieved with the Louisiana Recovery District. The RSD was created by the legislature in 2003 for the purpose of taking over and converting so called "failing" schools into successful schools and then returning them to their local school boards. The plan for success was to turn these takeover schools over to charter school operators who would use innovation and lots of enrichment funding to convert them into schools where all students would achieve at a high level.
Somehow the Louisiana Recovery District captured the imagination of the media and elitist education reformers such as Bill Gates, Arne Duncan, and most of the wealthy foundations that have appointed themselves as experts in eduction reform. Education philanthropies and the Federal Government have pumped countless millions of dollars into the RSD charter schools since Hurricane Katrina. Very soon after the school takeovers by the state, glowing reports about the amazing success of the new charter schools were accepted at face value by the media and education philanthropists. The message was that the Louisiana Recovery District had finally cracked the formula for turning around failing schools. The alleged success formula was simple. Just fire all the administrators and most of the teachers and replace them
