Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Louisiana Educator: OWN Reality Show Reveals Charter Secrets

Louisiana Educator: OWN Reality Show Reveals Charter Secrets:


OWN Reality Show Reveals Charter Secrets

The Oprah Winfrey Network reality show, Blackboard Wars, filmed at John McDonogh Hi School in New Orleans this school year reveals some rather shocking details about how charter schools operate in Louisiana. State Board president, Chas Roemer has often bragged that charter operators have the freedom to operate their schools without the usual bothersome red tape required of traditional schools. But we were always told that charters must comply with basic accountability and school reporting rules. Apparently they are exempt from much more than we were led to believe.

John White and his Recovery School District administrators are always quite anxious to attract “quality” charter school operators to take over any low performing school that has been designated as 'failing" by the state accountability system. This low achieving category includes all of the direct run RSD (Recovery School District) schools. So John White and Patrick Dobard (Superintendent of RSD) were just thrilled when Steve Barr who runs the highly touted Green Dot charter system in Los Angeles agreed to take over John McDonogh High