New Orleans nearing a ‘privatized’ public school system
2nd June 2014 · 0 CommentsBy Kari Dequine Harden
Contributing Writer
Contributing Writer
Editor’s Note: This story has been updated with additional comments and reporting that does not appear in the print edition.
As the Recovery School District (RSD) shuts the doors on its remaining handful of traditional public schools, the start of the 2014 school year will usher in the nation’s first completely privatized public school district.
Every school the RSD took over following Hurricane Katrina and the passage of Act 35 — with the stated intent of “turning around,” was either closed or will be turned over—into the hands of private charter operators, creating the first all-charter district in the history of the United States.
For nearly nine years it has been on the backs of New Orleans’ children and communities that the “reformers” have conducted this grand experiment, the majority of whom have come from other parts of the country.
Now, as the “reform” train, (fueled by billionaire philanthropists and Wall Street investors), plows across the land, the nation looks to the New Orleans test site. Anyone and everyone concerned about the education of American children and the future of the country must ask: Did it work?
The grandiose public relations campaign put forth by the Louisiana Department of Education and the RSD suggests a resounding “Yes!” But lawsuits alleging the wrongful termination of teachers and the discrimination against children with special needs, civil rights complaints alleging prison-like conditions and racial discrimination, and disenfranchised communities full of devastated and angry alumni who have watched neighborhood schools ripped away – schools that were at the core of their identity for generations – all suggest otherwise.
And while the local mainstream media seems all too happy to gobble up and regurgitate the state’s academic achievement data as truth, the blogosphere is abounding with carefully documented details of the state’s systemic and persistent manipulation – and illegal withholding – of public data.
Even by the state’s own haphazard standards, the now all-charter RSD New Orleans continues to remain at the bottom of state rankings. In 2012, the RSD was given a “D” letter grade.” In 2013, the RSD was given a “C” – still within the state’s own definition as failing in terms of voucher eligibility.
However the “C” also must include the following footnote: By changing the formula and scale from 2012 to 2013, the state essentially changed the standards and, in what public school teacher and blogger Mercedes Schneider calls “charter churn,” artificially inflated the scores.
Upon a painstaking examination of the state’s data, Schneider, who also authored the whistle blower book “A Chronicle of Echoes,” wrote that “Of the 37 RSD-NO schools with complete 2012 and 2013 SPS/letter grade New Orleans nearing a ‘privatized’ public school system | New Orleans' Multicultural News Source | The Louisiana Weekly: