Converting Public Schools into Charters

Is the privatized “business” approach producing better results?

School reform supporters for years have promoted the conversion of public schools into charter schools as a way of improving efficiency and installing more businesslike management of public schools. Legislatures in most states have been pressured to authorize more and more charter schools as the way of producing better academic results for children. Sixteen years ago there seemed to be no better place to experiment with charter schools as the ultimate school reform model than the New Orleans public school system.  That school system was thought to be failing in providing students with the kind of education they needed to prepare for college and careers. 

 

In 2005, as hurricane Katrina physically destroyed much of the Orleans public school system, the Louisiana legislature passed a law allowing the State Department of Education to take over approximately three-fourths of New Orleans public schools. According to the new state law, school takeover (only in New Orleans) became automatic for any school producing less than the state average score on state tests. Any such school was arbitrarily declared to be a failing school in need of takeover. The Department of Education was authorized to turn such schools over to charter school management organizations in an agreement that removed many state requirements and standards in exchange for greatly improved academic results. Over the term of the charter, if the schools improved average test performance significantly, the managers could continue running the school. But if they failed to produce academic results, their charters would be revoked.

 

The majority of charter management organizations came into the Orleans system starting with the 2006-07 school year. State officials had fired almost 7,000 experienced teachers and staff as a way of cleaning house and allowing the new managers a fresh start, unhampered by previous teacher contracts. Most charter groups began by hiring new, mostly younger teachers with no education credentials. Most new teachers were provided by Teach for America. Also, many of the charter school managers had no education credentials. The New Orleans business community and the state authorities believed that a strictly business approach focused primarily on academic results was the medicine that the New Orleans public schools needed. Now, over the last 16 years almost all public schools in New Orleans have been converted into charter schools. It is now basically the only all-charter school system in the United States.

 

This recently released report by the Louisiana Pelican Policy Institute, a business funded “good government” group has produced a dashboard that compares the most recent data on all public-school systems in Louisiana. It provides a way for us to compare expenditures and results in public schools.  We can now get a good idea about whether the school reforms in New Orleans have lived up to their promises.

 

It is important to note that not all public schools in New Orleans at the time of takeover had been deemed to be failures. Even though the Orleans public school system, as a whole, fell into the bottom quartile of public school systems in the state based on academic achievement, there was a group of public schools in New Orleans that were performing well, even before 2006. Several highly selective schools had been producing high academic achievement and great college prep results. So approximately one-fourth of the Orleans schools were left intact because of acceptable results. Those schools, even though now converted into charters, continue to be selective in the students they serve and continue to produce exemplary results. But there is still a major problem with the state test scores of the other three-fourths - the reformed takeover schools.

 

The recent study shows that taken as a whole, the New Orleans all charter system is still ranking in the bottom quartile of all public-school systems in the state. This is in a state that performs near the bottom of all states on national testing and college preparedness. For example, the new dashboard reveals that for the four academic subjects of math, reading, science and social studies, only 18% of all New Orleans public school students are now rated proficient or better. (I averaged the results of the 4 academic subjects) 

 In the key subjects of math and reading, Orleans performs at the 24^th percentile compared to all other state school systems. This is approximately the same as the Orleans school system performed before Katrina!   

 

What about efficiency in the use of per pupil dollars? Has the new business-oriented model resulted in more efficient use of tax and grant dollars?

 

One thing that the all-charter system has been successful in doing is attracting a generous flow of charitable foundation money to these new experimental schools. A sizable portion of per pupil dollars in the reformed Orleans public system come from charitable and foundation grants. So the reformed all charter school system is certainly well funded. 

 

The Pelican Policy Institute study has provided a rough measure of how the school money in Orleans is now allocated. Total per pupil funding of the New Orleans system now adds up to $24,434 per student. For Louisiana, this is lavish funding by any measure. The state average per pupil funding is now $11,755, less than half the per pupil amount for New Orleans. How do the New Orleans schools allocate their per pupil funding compared to all other public schools? According to the Pelican Policy dashboard, New Orleans now spends 23% of all its funding on administration and 36% on classroom instruction. (Salaries of the Charter managers are not published as far as I know) The state average for other systems in Louisiana is 8% for administration and 56% for the classrooms. (All non-charter public-school administrators and teacher salary schedules are public records) 

 

Did the increased funding allow the reformed Orleans school system to hire a better quality of teachers? The state auditor recently found that more than half of the Orleans teachers are not certified as teachers. In addition, most of the teachers now employed in Orleans are Caucasian while 90% of the students are African American. This ignores studies that show that children learn better from real role models of their own ethnic type. So much for the new business approach. 

 

Finally, on average, the other school systems in the state have 31% of students achieving proficiency in the 4 basic subjects tested. This compares to 18% achieving proficiency in the new reformed Orleans system. 

 

The standard for school failure and state takeover in Louisiana has changed drastically in the last 16 years since the great charter school experiment was launched in New Orleans. Now there are practically no schools being taken over by the state based on academic performance. Now, few charters are revoked even when they continue to produce extremely low performance, but there is still a major movement to add even more charters statewide. Charter organizations have found it to be more advantageous to start new charters where the managers can attempt to attract mostly higher performing students instead of being expected to actually improve the performance of low achievers. My question: Is this happening because charters are deemed to be more efficient in producing better results, or is it because charter school operators see to it that generous contributions go to state politicians?

Comment: The statistics cited above, I believe, make a very convincing case that the school takeovers and conversion to mostly unregulated charters have not improved the overall academic performance of New Orleans students. In addition, there have been many cases of fraud and abuse by some unsupervised managers. There have been numerous cases of data manipulation, and corruption to ensure that charter managers could keep their jobs where they often determined their own high salaries. The very young, inexperienced TFA corps members were not in a position to blow the whistle on abuses because they needed positive recommendations as they went on to pursue their real careers outside the teaching profession. 

 

Unfortunately, I believe there has been serious damage done to the futures of many New Orleans children. Students have often lost their neighborhood schools and been forced to bus to unfamiliar environments. The scramble for higher test scores among charter managers has often caused the loss of resources and neglect of students with disabilities who could not be used to improve test scores. Also, the push to teach only college prep subject matter to all students has resulted in the neglect of vital vocational and technical training that could have prepared many students for productive and rewarding careers that do not require college training. True college prep students have received less rigorous college prep because teachers were also trying to tend to the needs of lower performing students. 

 

Finally, the greatest loss to New Orleans students, in my opinion, was the removal of thousands of excellent role models when experienced African American teachers were fired and often forced to leave the communities at the beginning of the reform effort. It is my belief that fewer students in the Orleans system are now inspired to attain college degrees than before the reforms because students have lost many role models in their communities of their own ethnic group who were college graduates and wonderful teachers.

 

 

 Important notice to all teachers

 

I am pleased to announce that my new book on parenting titled Parenting According to Nature will be available from Amazon as a Countdown Deal in the Kindle or eBook format for 77 hours for only 99 cents starting at 4:00 PM Central time May 19, then at $3.99 for the next 77 hours! The regular price is $6.99 for the eBook format and $14.95 for the paperback version. I am hoping that many teachers will take advantage of this great discount to study this new approach to parenting and teaching and provide me with comments and suggestions. You can make these at my blog at The Louisiana Educator.  I would also really appreciate any positive reviews readers may want to post to the Amazon book description. Any such positive reviews would help promote sales of the book, but more importantly, could help parents to learn more effective methods of parenting. The book also describes the growing threats to children’s health and welfare arising from the internet, social media, and many bad nutrition and pharmaceutical choices. The book is based on exciting recent findings about the natural drive for learning in all children discovered by evolutionary scientists. Understanding this special drive for learning should help all of us to utilize better approaches to parenting and teaching based on our genetic programming. Please help me spread the word.
 
See the previous posts on this blog for excerpts.
 
Also, Amazon allows you to read the preface and the first two chapters for free on their website by checking the arrow above the cover photo titled "Look inside".

 

 Hidden Threats to Our Children

Parenting Excerpt #3

 

Many American parents today are losing control of the social lives of their children. Children today are being exposed to serious dangers coming from the internet and social media.

 

The following excerpt shows how children are distracted from family life and the proper influence of their parents in acquiring social values. Many children today are vulnerable to peer groups, deadly drug sources and even child molesters posing as children. Facebook recently did a study indicating that teen girls may have higher incidences of suicide caused by Instagram.

 

(Excerpt from Parenting According to Nature)

 

“Take another candid photo or a short video of a typical family sitting at the dinner table, if you can ever catch them all there. When you examine the photo or video, you will probably not see an image of a happy family enjoying dinner together and conversing with each other. What you are likely to see instead is about half the family looking at and furiously texting on their smartphones—while sitting together at the dinner table! They seem to be totally uninterested in members of their own family. I will return to this mismatch between our brains and our technologically distracted culture in the how-to section.

For all the above reasons that threaten our happy lives and the very existence of our nation, we must prioritize education for survival in rearing our children, very much like what prehistoric hunter-gatherers did for their children. We are not so special or better than early humans we sometimes disparage as “cavemen.”

 

Harmful peer groups can have an impact on our children

Millions of young people are attracted to social groups that often have their own cultural norms that are contrary to a healthy culture. Some peer groups dabble in crime, form dangerous gangs and are destructive to society. Many parents and school authorities seem to be unaware of the powerful influence of peer groups on our children until bad things happen that can be lethal or that can seriously damage a young person’s chance for a healthy and prosperous life. The epidemic of street crime in many major cities is produced by a subculture of young people that have created their own dysfunctional culture right under the noses of parents and public officials. In addition to the damage caused to young people from high poverty communities, there are many young people from economically advantaged families that can easily get influenced and have their lives threatened by the drugs and violence and even sexual predation generated in these dysfunctional sub-cultures.

 

 As I was writing this, there was a news report that during the same time that 700,000 Americans died of Covid-19, 100,000 mostly young people died of drug overdoses. It seems that many of the victims had no idea that lethal amounts of fentanyl had been added to recreational pills they were taking. Why would young people today trust the word of drug dealers that these drugs are safe? Parents and school health programs should provide intensive training programs to teach our children the dangers of taking any unnatural substances into their bodies. These unnatural substances include opioids, methamphetamine drugs, unnecessary pharmaceuticals, and even highly processed fast foods. These issues that are critical to good health should be addressed in a redesigned health and physical education part of the school curriculum.

 

The only time we should allow our children to be actively involved in peer groups is when we as parents are monitoring these contacts and are certain that these groups do not pose dangers to our children. Some peer groups that are beneficial for instilling positive cultural norms are those organized by religious communities as a way of providing valuable cultural training outside of the formal school setting. Church groups of teenagers and preteens are often effective in providing children with values that include generosity, social good works, healthy group exercise, and creative expression such as choirs, sports, and values education. One of my grandchildren participated in a church group that spent a couple of weeks each summer working in a Habitat for Humanity project. Both valuable social skills and work skills were learned.”

 

My book: Parenting According to Nature accessible here on Amazon does a lot more than sound an alarm to modern parents about losing control of the social lives of their children. It gives parents a practical how-to guide for building strong bonds with their children and guiding them to appropriate religious and social development. It includes suggestions for the development of healthy cultural values that will ensure that children develop productive careers and healthy bodies and minds. Please consider this new approach to rearing healthy, happy children.