Study: New Orleans Principals Admit to Manipulating Student Selection
I have written several posts to date on the Educational Research Alliance of New Orleans (ERA) and its founder, Doug Harris.
ERA is conducting a number of studies on the privatization of most of New Orleans’ schools following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and which has culminated in a 100-percent-charter Recovery School District (RSD) in New Orleans by 2014.
In 2014-15, the remaining Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) consists of six direct-run schools and 14 charter schools, with with four of the 14 charters being “selective admission” schools– which means these school are (by definition) not open to the public.
Thus, the term “school choice” could well mean that it is the school that exercises greater leverage when it comes to choosing, not the parents.
ERA is studying this “choice”– with results that sometimes are not pretty for the “choice” advocates.
On January 15, 2015, Harris released his first report on the Walton-funded OneApp. (My commentary on the report can be read here, and my observations regarding the community meeting in which the first report was presented is available here.)
My post dated March 18, 2015, concerns ERA’s opening its June 2015 conference to the public yet charging $275 entrance fee, which will undoubtedly serve to exclude those whose children attend the very schools Harris and his ERA are researching.
But let us focus on the previously-introduced idea that “choice” belongs to the schools and can be utilized for schools to benefit themselves.
On March 26, 2015 ERA released its second study, entitled, How Do School Leaders Respond to Competition? Evidence from New Orleans, written by Huriya Jabbar. Here is Jabbar’s opening paragraph:
Understanding how schools respond to competition is vital to understanding the effects of the market-based school reforms implemented in New Orleans since 2005. Advocates of market-based reform suggest that, when parents and students can freely choose schools, schools will improve education in order to attract and retain students. But, for market-based school-choice policies to work, school leaders have to believe they are competing for students, and they have to choose to compete in ways that improve education.
Jabbar’s study was qualitative, based upon administrative interviews that included those of 30 New Orleans school principals:
The data for the study were obtained from 72 interviews with district leaders, charter-school board members, charter network leaders, and principals of 30 randomly selected schools in 2012–2013. This sample of schools represents the schools in New Orleans, including charter schools, direct-run OPSB and RSD schools, and schools at all grade levels. The interviews were transcribed and items systematically coded to identify categories of responses.
One of Jabbar’s findings: “Kids mean money,” so to speak:
School leaders defined competition as competition for students and the government funding that comes with them. Their comments in this regardStudy: New Orleans Principals Admit to Manipulating Student Selection | deutsch29:
