System Failure: Charter Schools in Louisiana
Since 2005, approximately $700 million in public tax dollars have been spent on charter schools that currently have not achieved a C or better on the state’s grading system.
New Orleans was to show the success of the privatization of public schools after the takeover of the system following Hurricane Katrina. See the introduction to the Shock Doctrine titled Blank is Beautiful: Three Decades of Erasing and Remaking the World to find out the root of the corporate takeover of the New Orleans public school system.
The so-called success of charter schools in New Orleans never happened and in fact, it has been a disaster. See The Cruel Hoax of “Choice” With Charter Schools, So much for school choice in New Orleans and elsewhere, and Rethinking Schools interview with Karran Harper Royal titled Colonialism, Not Reform: New Orleans Schools Since Katrina.
To follow is a report issued in May of 2015 by the Center for Popular Democracy and the Coalition for Community Schools that describes some of the details of the failure.
Underinvestment in Oversight Leaves Louisiana’s Charter Schools Vulnerable to Financial Fraud and Academic Failures
Executive Summary
In the ten years since Hurricane Katrina, post-storm changes to the state’s charter school law have dramatically grown the number of charter schools in the state.
Since 2005, charter school enrollment in the state has grown 1,188 percent. Through this growth, the Louisiana Department of Education’s Recovery School District—created to facilitate state takeover of struggling schools—has become the first charter-only school district in the country, with other states lining up to copy its model. Louisiana taxpayers have invested heavily, paying billions of dollars to charters and state takeover schools System Failure: Charter Schools in Louisiana | Seattle Education: