By Raynard Sanders, Ed.D. | Originally Published at EmpathyEducates. June 19, 2014
Public education in New Orleans has been a nightmare for parents since the state took over most of the schools post Hurricane Katrina. The Louisiana Department of Education has gone to great lengths to mislead parents, the community and the nation about the academic achievement since the takeover.
One tactic they have used is the closing and opening of schools which essentially changes the academic rating of schools. When a school closes that is rated “F” they opened the same school with a new school code and operator which removes the school’s failing status. Then state education officials announces that they have “reduced the number of failing schools”. Essentially what they are doing is moving chairs around the deck of the Titanic.
Despite this game for the past nine years, the schools managed by the Louisiana Department of Education in New Orleans have consistently ranked at the bottom academically when compared with other school districts across the state.
Additionally these mass school openings and closing has other negative effects on the community, Dr. Barbara Ferguson does a excellent job in describing the consequences of the constant opening and closing of schools in New Orleans. Please Read…
THE RESEARCH

Closing Schools, Opening Schools and Changing School Codes:
Instability In the New Orleans Recovery School District.

By Dr. Barbara Ferguson, Research on Reforms, Incorporated June 2014 | Originally Published at Research on Reform


Tenure Is Not the Problem
By Richard D. Kahlenberg | Originally Published at Slate. June 13, 2014 On Tuesday, a California court struck down state teacher tenure and seniority protections as a violation of the rights of poor and minority students to an equal education. The decision, which will make it easier […]
Guest Post By Peter Smagorinsky: Response To The New NCTQ Teacher Prep Review
Sandy Coan does paperwork in her Van Asselt Elementary School classroom. Photo: Dan DeLong/Special To The Post-Intelligencer By Guest Post by Peter Smagorinsky, The University of Georgia c/o Paul L. Thomas, Ed.D. | Originally Published at The Becoming Radical. June 17, 2014 National Council on Teacher Quality […]

JUN 16

Fuzzy Math – Fuzzy Math – The Guesstimate that Struck Down California’s Teacher Tenure Laws
This week Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu handed the education reform movement a stunning legal victory, when he struck down California’s teacher tenure laws for discriminating against poor and minority students. The statutes made it so onerous to fire bad teachers, he wrote, that they […]
“Click, Clack, Moo”: Why the 1% Always Wins
By Paul L. Thomas, Ed.D. | Published at The Becoming Radical. June 16, 2014 [Originally posted at Daily Kos and Truthout, "Click, Clack, Moo": Why the 1% Always Wins is a powerful companion to George Saunders's Allegory of Scarcity and Slack.] October 18, 2011 As a high […]

JUN 15

Will California’s Ruling Against Teacher Tenure Change Schools?
Photograph Credit; Steven Depolo/Flickr By Dana Goldstein | Originally Published at The Atlantic. June 11, 2014 On Tuesday, a California superior-court judge ruled that the state’s teacher tenure system discriminates against kids from low-income families. Based on testimony that one to three percent of California teachers are […]