Miracle Results of School Takeovers . . . .Not in Louisiana!

The education reformers in Michigan and Ohio were told that Louisiana had achieved almost a miracle in student achievement by taking over low achieving schools using a State Recovery School District (RSD) and converting these schools into semi-autonomous charter schools. The news out of Louisiana was so good according to reform activists, that other states should hurry to copy this plan and also produce stunning results for their students. So I understand that Ohio and Michigan have now formed Recovery Districts patterned after the Louisiana model.

There is only one problem with the Louisiana Recovery District model. It does not work! In fact when Louisiana tried to expand its own Recovery District beyond the New Orleans school system, the result can only be described as a clear failure.
After 4 years, out of the twelve schools taken over by the state RSD and converted to charters outside of New Orleans, all of them are still rated “F”, and on average have declined slightly instead of improving. But not only have the schools declined academically, enrollment has dropped by an average of 39%. See the linked spreadsheet. So when Governor Jindal touts the success of parental choice, it must be recognized that many parents are “choosing” to pull their children out of the State sponsored choice charter schools!

So how could the news out of Louisiana have been so wrong? How could an entire nationwide model for school reform be based on a failing program? How could Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst organization have rated Louisiana as number one in the nation in providing the best education reforms for the benefit of children? How could the highly touted “Chiefs for Change” have chosen the Louisiana Recovery School District as a model for reform across the nation? How could former State Superintendent Pastorek under whose watch the RSD was developed be headlined around the country along with Rhee as one of the heroes of successful school reform?

It's actually hard to believe that in a country that prides itself in having a news media that provides for fact checking of bogus claims by both government and private business that so much misinformation could continue to influence public policy. The fact is that the corporate reform advocates have put out a story about Louisiana's Recovery District that is 100% spin and and most of the media have swallowed it. I guess everyone is hoping so much for a miracle solution to low achievement by our at-risk schools that we are willing to believe a totally bogus story of success. It is the classic rainmaker scam, where the people wish so hard for a miracle that we can be easily taken in by the charlatans.

Maybe the scam of the privatizers worked because the New Orleans Recovery District experienced such great success with its charters. Actually based on the facts, I don't see how the New Orleans charters can be portrayed as a success of any kind. See this recent analysis of the New Orleans Recovery District by Charles Hatfield of Research on Reforms. 

When the New Orleans Recovery District was formed by a special law right before Hurricane Katrina, it was allowed to take over any school in New Orleans that was rated as below the state average. This means that from the beginning the RSD already contained a fair number of "non-failing" schools. Following Katrina, there was a mad scramble by the various charter operators to attract the best students. Also some of the better connected charter operators such as KIPP were able to get huge grants from both government and private foundations and therefore were able to pick the most motivated students and supportive parents by offering an enriched program. As a result, out of 70 charters (mostly charters) now operating in the N. O. RSD, 5 are rated as “B” schools, 5 are rated as “C” schools and all the rest are D's and F's. Some of the well connected spin doctors supporting this movement were able to tout the accomplishments of the few successful schools and ignore all the unsuccessful ones. The fact is that the New Orleans RSD is rated above only the poverty stricken St Helena district which is mostly run by the RSD anyway. Taken as a whole, the RSD is dead last in the state! The New Orleans Recovery District is one of the lowest performing large school systems in the country. Ranking better than only Washington DC which was “reformed” by none other than Michelle Rhee. I am simply amazed at the ignorance of our policy makers and news media when it comes to analyzing the performance of Louisiana's RSD!

 

Note to my Readers: I and many other educators in Louisiana believe that the school rating system used here to compare schools is seriously flawed and should not be used to rate schools. I only use it here because the school ratings and letter grades are used to justify school takeover and conversion to charters by the state. The takeover advocates deserve to be judged by their own system.

I keep expecting the truth to come out. The miracle results of school reform have not happened in Louisiana!

Jindal War on Public Education Will Continue

Members of the Coalition For Louisiana Public Education meeting in Baton Rouge Monday predicted that Governor Jindal will continue his deliberate dismantling of public education in the coming legislative session. Key members of the Coalition representing the LSBA (Louisiana School Boards Association), LAE, LFT, parent groups, and other organizations of public educators expect that the Governor and his big business allies will find new ways of getting around three recent court decisions opposing their plans to privatize our education system.

Number one on the Coalition's list of concerns will be a continued attack by Jindal on funding for public education in the coming fiscal session. Some members of the Coalition predict that Jindal and White will demand that BESE reduce funding for public schools even as they continue to increase unfunded mandates on local school systems.  Coalition members fear that Jindal will create a new line item for funding of vouchers in the state budget and at the same time induce a compliant BESE to reduce MFP funding for public schools. This tactic which may or may not be allowed by the courts would allow Jindal to continue to support many dubious private schools at the expense of public schools.

The attack on teacher unions will continue. There is a proposal by LABI, the big business ally of Jindal to prohibit the use of payroll deduction as a benefit to teachers to pay their union dues. At the same time the LABI legislation would exempt the A+PEL organization from such a rule because in the opinion of big business, this group is more "progressive" and does not support political candidates. What an insult to the teaching profession! Jindal and LABI would do every thing possible to discourage teachers from joining the very organizations that would protect teacher rights and benefits and encourage their own version of a company union that just goes along with actions that hurt teachers and the profession. The legislation passed last year that allows any college graduate to become a teacher in a charter school without formal training is just the beginning of attacks on the profession. Another front in the battle is an attack on teacher benefits such as our defined benefit retirement system. Most charter schools do not allow their teachers to participate in the teacher retirement system and refuse to pay into the system for the legacy costs of our retired teachers. A decline in teacher union memebership in LAE and LFT would make it much easier to strip teachers of benefits and all the trappings of a profession!

There are many other insidious and hidden attacks on our public schools promoted by the ALEC inspired legislation passed last year. For example, the parent trigger legislation in Act 2 (which has not been nullified by the court rulings) allows charter school hired guns to run parent petitions in schools with D or F ratings by the state requiring that they be taken over by the RSD and then converted into charters. Yet there is no provision for a school to be converted back to a school board run school even if the parents find that they don't want to be run by the RSD. Many parents in the New Orleans area are frustrated now because some charter schools that are eligible to return to New Orleans school board management are refusing to do so.  Previous State Superintendent Pastorek convinced BESE to leave it up to the local charter board to decide to go back to local school board governance. So the parent trigger system only works one way to encourage dismantlement of public schools!

All I can say to educators, parents, and school board members is wake up! If you care about keeping democratic control of your public schools and if you care about keeping teaching a profession instead of a disorganized bunch of test teachers, do the following:

1. Join your teacher union or administrator organization in efforts to support our public school system against these attacks. Yes, and that means pay your dues! Because every dollar you save by not being a member, you will pay back ten times over in lost benefits and respect as a profession. I keep my membership in LAE active even though I am not actively employed. I am also encouraging parents to join or form parent orgtanizations to help fight aganist this threat to our neighborhood schools.
2. Sign up today for my Defenders of Public Education data base so I can keep you informed by email when important issues come up in the legislature that require you to talk to or send an email to your legislator. All you have to do is send me an email to louisianaeducator@gmail.com and either tell me the name of your Senator and Representative or give me your address so I can look the information up on the Louisiana Legislature web site. Be sure to include your preferred email address so I can reach you more efficiently. 

Our public education system is worth fighting for. But we have to be willing to make our case early and often to our local legislators!

Researchers Discredit LA School Rating System

The linked study here by Herb Bassett, is the most recent study that discredits the school performance and grading system used by Our Louisiana Department of Education. That study cites specific (BESE Bulletin 111) rule changes - made as late as June 2012 - and shows their effects on the SPS scores. Mr Bassett's study is related to the analysis by Dr Mercedes Schneider reported on this blog on November 27th that showed a major disparity in 2012 between SPS scores for high schools and combination schools compared to the SPS scores for elementary and middle schools. These studies taken together show that school performance and therefore letter grades for our public schools are constantly being manipulated by our DOE in ways that make them invalid for rating the performance of our public schools. Yet the general public has been led to believe that such school performance scores and letter grades really tell us something about the quality of instruction taking place in each of our public schools.

These studies explain how most of the apparent gains in school performance in 2012 by high schools across the state were really caused by a change in the calculation of SPS.  Mr Bassett's study demonstrates that approximately 11.6 points of baseline growth for our high schools were caused purely by rule and calculation changes in the SPS and had nothing to do with real student performance increases. Yet based upon this flawed system, the public is subjected to press releases from our overpaid DOE public relations specialists crowing about these imaginary "gains" by some of our public schools. (35% of high schools in 2012 were rated as "A" schools compared to only 8% of elementary schools and only 18% of middle schools.) Next I suppose based on this manipulated rating system, the DOE is bound to proclaim that our middle school and elementary school teachers are just not rising to the challenge as much as our high school teachers! But if you think these developments are ridiculous, just wait until our schools are rated using the results of testing based on the common core standards. I believe there is no way to transition from the present school rating system to the new common core system that will have any validity whatsoever.

All of the above inconsistencies and false gains occur because the entire school rating system is invalid to begin with. A valid school rating system would be based upon the positive educational environment and quality of instruction actually being provided in a school, not just on the performance of students on standardized tests. As the excellent analysis provided by Educators for All explains, our present school rating system simply tells us the average level of poverty of students attending a school. It tells us absolutely nothing about the quality of instruction. Yet the public is led to condemn and encouraged to shun some of our public schools based upon the demographics of the students attending.

It is ironic that the same system gives most schools in the Louisiana Recovery District "F" or "D" grades even though the DOE touts them as "most improved". Eventually some of the media are bound to notice that the RSD schools have the second to lowest performance in the state using the present rating system. Superintendent John White and his SPS manipulators have a "fix" for that too. Starting with the 2013 report, White will award bonus points for schools that show improvement in low performing sub groups. The Bassett study shows how some schools will be favored because of high numbers of low performers.  But you can only fool some of the people some of the time. Unbiased media are bound to notice eventually that the ACT scores of RSD graduates are so low that almost none of them qualify for even community college success.

The sad thing is that even if a school is actually doing a good job of addressing the needs of at-risk students, the system condemns its teachers and administrators. That's because in comparison to schools serving more privileged students, these schools will be classified as failures. Even if the public school scores a "C",  parents will be encouraged by the Governor and White to send their children to voucher schools that have no accountability measurements at all!