The Recovery School District (RSD) Optical Illusion
The charter-promoting organization, New Schools for New Orleans (NSNO) wants its charters to prosper. Its website proudly advertises a hefty $25 million grant from the Arnold Foundation– as in John Arnold, former Enron trader who made off with $3 billion while most employees lost their pensions.
In order to sell the charter success image, NSNO offers the public “proof” of “New Orleans Schools Success” in the form of these two graphs:
“Success” in the reformer world is all too often about image and not truth. As such, these graphs promote a lie. The bolded information below explains the deception.
It is the Recovery School District (RSD) that is state-run, not Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB). OPSB retained the majority of its handful of schools after the post-Katrina state takeover; the criteria for state takeover was any school scoring