An Important New Book About New Orleans and Its Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

An Important New Book About New Orleans and Its Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

An Important New Book About New Orleans and Its Schools

Three scholars have recently published a very informative book about the history of education in New Orleans. The authors tell this story by scrutinizing one very important elementary school in the city, the one that was first to be desegregated with one black student in 1960. The book is titled William Frantz Public School: A Story of Race, Resistance, Resiliency, and Recovery in New Orleans (Peter Lang). The authors are Connie L. Schaffer, Meg White, and Martha Graham Viator.

This is the school that enrolled 6-year-old Ruby Bridges in November 1960. Her entry to the school each day, a tiny little girl accompanied by federal agents, was met with howling, angry white parents. Her admission to an all-white school in New Orleans was a landmark in the fight to implement the Brown v. Board decision of 1954. It was immortalized by Norman Rockwell in a famous painting called The Problem We All Live With.

The authors set the stage for their history by pointing out that the Reconstruction-era constitution of Louisiana forbade racially segregated schools. In the early 1870s, about one-third of the public schools in New Orleans were racially integrated. Some schools had racially CONTINUE READING: An Important New Book About New Orleans and Its Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

CURMUDGUCATION: What Happens To Students That Charters Don't Want? (The Chester Upland Saga Continues)

CURMUDGUCATION: What Happens To Students That Charters Don't Want? (The Chester Upland Saga Continues)

What Happens To Students That Charters Don't Want? (The Chester Upland Saga Continues)

In Chester Upland School District, the process of selling off the district schools to charter operators has continued (for a deeper dive into CUSD's troubled history, read here). Three charter operators have made their bids, and we'll take a closer look at that another day. It's all pretty sad and ugly.

But there's another troubling aspect to the dismantling of Chester Upland schools. The three charter companies have placed their bids to take over CUSD elementary schools. As has been hinted at all along, nobody wants to take over either of the two high schools.

The debates about charters and choice have often centered on the question of the students left behind in a school. when other students leave for a charter. How do the financial resources balance out? How does a district financially support ten schools when it was having trouble supporting two? 

But this is a whole other scenario. The charter operators are taking over elementary operations, but leaving the high school untouched, meaning that the high school can find itself drained of resources with absolutely no reduction in cost at all. Theoretically it would not be a problem because the charters would be inheriting the same student body and therefor the same funding. Except that in Pennsylvania's screwy funding system, a special; education student is funded at a far higher level for charters than in a public school. In public schools, special ed students are arranged in tiers are according to how expensive it is to meet their needs; in charter CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: What Happens To Students That Charters Don't Want? (The Chester Upland Saga Continues)

NOLA’s James Singleton Charter School: Academically Unacceptable, Riddled with Scandal, Still Open. | deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog

NOLA’s James Singleton Charter School: Academically Unacceptable, Riddled with Scandal, Still Open. | deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog

NOLA’s James Singleton Charter School: Academically Unacceptable, Riddled with Scandal, Still Open

New Orleans-based James Singleton Charter School has been allowed to operate for almost two decades despite its established record as academically unacceptable and being riddled with scandal.

Here we go again, compliments of WWLTV on March 26, 2021:

NEW ORLEANS — The Dryades YMCA board of directors held a tense meeting Friday and had to scramble to deal with the retirement of its longtime president and chief executive officer as state and local police looked into allegations of employees’ falsified background checks.

It was the first time the board had met since a scathing letter earlier this month from New Orleans Public Schools alleged fake employee background checks at James Singleton Charter School, a public K-8 school run by and housed in the historic Y in Central City.

The board members gave the Y’s departing president and CEO, Doug Evans, a standing ovation after he made brief comments. He spent 45 years working for one of the few formerly segregated Black YMCA’s left in the country. Evans touted his team’s work supporting and educating the Central City community, providing youth programs and teaching water safety.

But there was no avoiding the fact that his resignation comes amid scandal.

The organization’s chief financial officer, Catrina Reed, resigned Friday.

It’s unclear what led to her departure, but federal court records show she CONTINUE REAING: NOLA’s James Singleton Charter School: Academically Unacceptable, Riddled with Scandal, Still Open. | deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog

My Complete, Unedited Review of Doug Harris’ Book, Charter School City | deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog

My Complete, Unedited Review of Doug Harris’ Book, Charter School City | deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog

My Complete, Unedited Review of Doug Harris’ Book, Charter School City

In January 2020, Commonweal Magazine asked me to review Doug Harris’ book about New Orleans charter schools, Charter School City.

I completed my review in February 2020, but with the pandemic, my review was not published until November 2020.

As so often happens in publication, the review I submitted was pared down considerably, which editors reserve the right to do though the result might make the review seem shallow or incomplete. In this case (and to my dismay), the edits in one section involved a splicing that altered the meaning of my words. (For the backstory on that error, see this email exchange.)

According to the terms of my contract with Commonweal, I needed to wait 90 days before publicizing my originally-submitted, unedited review. And so, since those 90 days have passed, I offer below my complete review of Harris’ book.

Book Review: Douglas N. Harris, Charter School City: What the End of Traditional Public Schools in New Orleans Means for American Education, University of Chicago Press, April 2020.

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My family is from New Orleans. My father and his siblings grew up in a white neighborhood, intentionally zoned, and attended all-white schools in the 1920s and 30s, also intentionally zoned. In the 1950s, my family relocated to neighboring St. Bernard Parish, as did many former white residents of New Orleans. My mother also grew up in New Orleans and relocated to St. Bernard, where she attended an all-white high school in the early to mid-1960s. Around the time my mother was a freshman in high school (1960), just as Ruby Bridges became the first black child to attend New Orleans’ all-white William Franz Elementary school,St. Bernard opened a school on the St. Bernard-Orleans Parish line expressly to allow white residents of New Orleans to use school vouchers to escape federally-mandated integration of New Orleans public schools. Though the voucher school was forced to close a year later, the virulent anti-black CONTINUE READING: My Complete, Unedited Review of Doug Harris’ Book, Charter School City | deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog