Lack of quality schools will doom common enrollment in New Orleans: Andre Perry
Students aren't randomly assigned to schools that all operate under the same set of rules and that means we can't think of schools as stock cars in the same race. But it's still how public school parents capitulate to Louisiana's system of assigning letter grades to schools.
School letter grades draw significantly from school test scores — numbers that often say more about how much money parents make than the quality of instruction students receive. Other factors that make it difficult to see exactly what a grade says about a school include: Biased and opaque entrance examinations, a lack of transportation, excessive school discipline, disservices to special-needs students and inequitable funding.
Louisiana Department of Education releases 2015 school grades
There were no "A" graded schools out of the 54 in the Recovery School District, which has a higher percentage of low-income and special needs students than its Orleans Parish School Board counterparts. Orleans Parish schools, which has three selective admissions schools out of 19 total, has no "F" schools.
In New Orleans, school letter grades are also stand-ins for how much liberty we give wealthy people to curate their own school populations.
For instance, New Orleans' "A" rated Lusher Charter School includes an achievement test, attendance zone and a separate application for those who don't live within their catchment zone to enroll students. Really, what does an "A" really mean?
The Louisiana attorney general forced Lusher executives to reveal the name of the test (Wechsler Individual Achievement Test) they use as the basis for their weeding processes.
The equity problem is bigger than the 26 "A" or "B" schools including Lusher. Some advocates claim that schools' impending participation in the common enrollment system, known as OneApp, will eliminate discriminatory weed-out procedures by having a computer reduce human error and bias (non-participating Orleans Parish schools like Lusher will have to join OneApp when their charters are renewed). Like the grading system, OneApp is neither a solution for a mindset of exclusivity nor higher order equity problems in New Orleans.
The Louisiana Department of Education's equity efforts should focus on making sure there is a quality school in every neighborhood. A common-enrollment program without quality schools efficiently shuffles kids between mediocre ones. That's not equity. Too many advocates prioritize choice before quality in both sequence and effort — this is wrong headed. Common enrollment is needed, but it's another limited step in the goal of providing quality choices in every neighborhood.
Let's be real. Lusher is not doing everything it can do to prove its "A" status and provide access to students who need great schools. However, there are those who seek to make Lusher and other schools that do not currently participate in Lack of quality schools will doom common enrollment in New Orleans: Andre Perry | NOLA.com:
