Two NOLA scandals show why the public must hold public schools accountable
Beloved city principal goes on leave as an investigation continues
Where there is smoke there is fire, and the evidence that suggests cheating occurred at Landry-Walker High School in New Orleans is suffocating.
After the school’s charter management organization, Algiers Charter School Association, conducted an internal investigation that included test monitoring, Landry-Walker saw a dramatic decline in academic performance from the year before. The scores literally didn’t hold up to the scrutiny.
The management organization did not tell Landry-Walker Principal Mary Laurie about the investigation.
Laurie (who was featured in “Hope Against Hope,” by Hechinger Report contributing editor Sarah Carr) rode a dangerous wave of applause and skepticism when her school cracked the upper echelon of school performers citywide with 78 percent of her students scoring “excellent” on the end-of-course geometry exam for the 2013-14 school year. Those inflated numbers were made apparent given that only 27 percent scored excellent when tightly monitored the next year.
Superintendent John White says the state inspector general’s office is conducting “an investigation of compliance with criminal laws.” Laurie and three of her colleagues were placed on paid administrative leave this week. Neither Laurie nor her colleagues have been charged with anything.
Related: Leading by example: Black male teachers make students feel “proud”
From year to year, students who take annual year-end tests are different, so some oscillation is expected. But for the kind of drop-off experienced by Landry-Walker to be legitimate, students would have had to progress through different lessons, teachers and/or even schools. Or, what’s more plausible, the preceding scores they dropped from were illegitimate.Two NOLA scandals show why the public must hold public schools accountable - The Hechinger Report: