Educating for Democracy:What if all schools were charter | Joel Shatzky

Educating for Democracy:What if all schools were charter | Joel Shatzky:

Educating for Democracy:What if all schools were charter

 There's a comment attributed to Einstein: "The sign of insanity is when you do the same thing over and over again and expect different results." I wonder what this eminent thinker would have to say about someone who not only repeats the same flawed procedure but then expands on it. That is what Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana is doing by increasing the number of charter schools state-wide after turning over all the district schools in New Orleans to charter managers. Jindal obviously thinks it's a good thing as he declared last year in a speech in the Capitol:

"Louisiana Governor and likely presidential candidate Bobby Jindal (R) released his new "road map" for reforming K-12 education focusing on the importance of deregulating and privatizing public schools and holding up New Orleans' all-charter Recovery School District as a model for the nation. "I'm proud we've increased the number of charter schools, nearly doubling them," Jindal told an audience on Capitol Hill. "I get so frustrated when people tell us to wait for incremental gains. We have seen remarkable gains."

This is the "message" Jindal delivers in light of his opportunity to privatize all the schools in New Orleans as an example of what can happen when a school system is being "reformed" from the top down.
First of all " new data calls the supposed gains into question. Most of the class of 2014 graduating from the 100%-charter New Orleans Recovery School District scored so low on the national ACT test that they didn't meet the minimum requirements for Louisiana's colleges. According to numbers crunched by Louisiana public school teacher and doctor of statistics Mercedes Schneider, just over 6 percent of high school seniors in the Recovery School District scored high enough in English and Math to qualify for admission into a Louisiana four-year college or university straight out of high school. Five of the district's 16 high schools produced not a single student who met these requirements. The district's test scores were extremely low prior to Hurricane Katrina and the charter school conversion, but despite Jindal's claims of "remarkable gains," there has been no improvement in New Orleans' Recovery School District ACT scores since 2005. The class average is now 16.4, one of the lowest in Louisiana. There was a 0.6 decline statewide. "

Reality notwithstanding, let us explore Jindal's suggestion and try to anticipate the results of this "transformation" of education in the United States: 1.Since most charter schools "counsel out" ["Expel" in plain English] students who don't fit the profile for a successful education, that is, ones that are disruptive, poor learners and generally behave in ways that would have a negative effect on standardized test scores, if there were no more non-charters in which to dump them, where, besides the street, would they go during school hours?

"There are a huge number of young people in New Orleans between the ages of 16 and 24 who are neither in school or working. The recent Measure of America study, conducted by the Social Science Research Council, found that the greater New Orleans/Metarie region is home to more than 26,000 so-called "opportunity youth." The youngest would have been just six when the overhaul of the school system began.
"But even this number fails to convey the sheer number of young people here who have left the city's schools, and are in one of the fast-expanding alternative programs, or are in work-training programs to prepare them for jobs in the tourism and hospitality industry. Added together, the number of students who've dropped out of the New Orleans' schools begins to creep up uncomfortably close to the 43,000 students who are still in them."http://dianeravitch.net/category/new-orleans/

Among the Governor's other accomplishments were: 1

. An increase in segregation in the city schools through his voucher program so egregious that "In 2013, the Justice Department took Jindal's voucher program to court, arguing that it was making racial segregation worse in the state's 

Educating for Democracy:What if all schools were charter | Joel Shatzky: