The RSD ACT Disaster

Mercedes Schneider reveals here the latest disastrous ACT scores for the Recovery District. Students graduating from the all charter NO-RSD schools in 2014 averaged only 15.7 on the ACT. That's not enough to get into anything but one of those rip off internet colleges. This average score is down from the 2013 score I reported in my post of December 2013  for the NO-RSD of only 16.3. Where is the miracle progress of the RSD? Unfortunately the progress is backward.

In my report on the ACT scores last year I concluded that only 80% of the New Orleans RSD graduates had taken the test although it had been mandated that all students take the test starting that year. Probably the drop in scores for the NO-RSD is due to more students taking the test this last year.

But that's not all. Last year the graduation rate for the RSD was only 59.5%. So over 40% of the students in the RSD are not getting a diploma at all, and those who do are poorly qualified for anything. But if you go into most of these TFA staffed charter schools you see banners plastered all over asking the question: "Where will you attend college?" Other banners respond:  "Harvard!, Columbia!, Yale!" etc. This is a terrible hoax being perpetrated on the students and their parents and also on the taxpayers of Louisiana.

Some of the teachers in those schools have complained that students in the RSD schools often brag to their teachers who are trying to get them to get serious about their school work: "I don't have to worry. If I flunk your class, I can just take a credit recovery course and get credit for the class in just a few days!"

When these schools were taken over by the RSD and given to various charter operators they were described as dropout factories. Now they can be described as dropout factories and diploma mills at the same time.

Ten years ago the legislature designated these schools as failures and handed them over to the RSD and then to the charter operators. In addition to all the MFP money, many of the schools got millions of dollars in grants from the federal government and many private foundations. At one time it was estimated that the average RSD school was getting about two times the state average in funding per student. They have frittered away all that money and given the students almost nothing.