Louisiana Educator: New RSD Propaganda Machine Whitewashes Dismal Performance

Louisiana Educator: New RSD Propaganda Machine Whitewashes Dismal Performance:

New RSD Propaganda Machine Whitewashes Dismal Performance

The latest Recovery District propaganda machine is called theResearch Alliance for New Orleans. It was founded by Tulane University professor of economics, Douglas Harris. In this articleprinted in Education Next, Harris makes an attempt to paint the struggling Louisiana Recovery School District in New Orleans as a big success despite the dismal facts about student performance.

This faux research technique is used primarily to prevent us from noticing the extremely low performance of the New Orleans RSD in the ten years since Katrina

Harris uses a very dense and confusing array of research strategies to convince us to disregard the most basic data on the actual performance of the New Orleans charter schools comprising the RSD. He attempts instead to make obscure comparisons of growth in performance by matched groups that show that the RSD is succeeding in greatly improving student performance in New Orleans. Based on these obscure caparisons he concludes that the New Orleans "portfolio model" should be a model for turning around struggling schools across the nation. Harris utilizes a comparison of the RSD schools using a "difference between the two differences between the treatment and comparison groups" that supposedly "yields a credible estimate of the policy effect." This stuff is just gobbledegook! This faux research technique is used primarily to prevent us from noticing the extremely low RSD performance in the ten years since Katrina.

Don't believe your lying eyes! Harris wants to distract us from the actual performance of the charter schools administered by the RSD and have us focus only on his complex growth comparison analysis

Harris produces almost no actual data about the real performance of the New Orleans RSD. He does not tell us how the RSD now ranks in student performance (after ten years of reform) compared to all other school systems in the state, he does not tell us what the RSD graduation rate is, he does not discuss the average ACT scores, and he never mentions the RSD dropout rate. For most researchers (And for the parents of RSD students) these actual facts are very important as they paint a very sad picture of the real performance of the RSD. But Harris wants us to disbelieve our lying eyes and instead take his word for it that the RSD is a tremendous success and a model for reform across the Nation.

Here are the indisputable facts as verified by Louisiana Department of Education Data:

• The latest performance of the N.O. RSD schools as a Louisiana Educator: New RSD Propaganda Machine Whitewashes Dismal Performance: