HumidCity

My daughter goes to a charter school. I got an email the other day about tomorrow’s rally in Baton Rouge in celebration of Charter Schools Week (I’ve never heard of this one and wonder why it is the same damn week as Teacher Appreciation Week):

Louisiana Celebrates National Charter Schools Week
Wednesday, May 7, 11:30 a.m.
Steps of State Capitol, Baton Rouge

With:
State Senator Cheryl Gray
House Speaker Pro Tem Karen Carter
Algiers Charter School Association
Citizens for 1 Greater New Orleans
Eastbank Collaborative of Charter Schools
Louisiana Association of Public Charter Schools
Louisiana Charter School Association
New Schools New Orleans
and others!

Open to the public

And then at the end, the email says:

We intend to:

• Increase awareness that charter schools are public schools;
• Advocate for more favorable policy environment for charter schools in Louisiana; and
• Show how the quality and accountability of charter schools is transforming public education in Louisiana.

Even if I could be there, I wouldn’t. Why? Because charter schools here are NOT public schools. More than a handful of charters, regardless of the supervising agency, have selective admissions and even those that don’t get to cap their enrollment where they choose. They are not obligated to provide for special needs students (at either end of the spectrum) and a fractured “system” makes providing that extra care harder or impractical–how can one single school afford a full-time special education teacher paid out of its current budget for 3 or even 10 students? How can that expense be justified to the 99+% of parents whose children do not need these services? Also, where’s the accountability if no research has been done and is only going to be started at some point in the future AND when schools can provide whatever data they want however they want? There is no standard system for comparing current charter schools or comparing schools now to schools before (and I get this from the Cowen Institute report, not my ass)? A public school takes every child who walks in and educates every child that stays, regardless of need. That’s what public schools are supposed to be about and for. And do we need a “more favorable policy environment” for charters in LA? There are bills in the state legislature now which aim to make our charter school “system” permanent regardless of results, flaws or failures. And no transformation of public education has occurred yet. From my vantage point, we have a few innovators but mostly we have new themes for schools–social justice, college prep (whatever that means), math and science, math and business, art and technology. A theme is not a reform.

There is a place for charters in a public school system. But that doesn’t mean that charters should become a school system. How can we be sure all our children are educated if they are divided into fiefdoms or placed on their own islands? And it will take years, at least one generation, for charter schools to change NO public schools from being schools of last resort (a Cowen Institute phrase) to just plain schools.

You will not see this black mother at that rally.

pic cropped from SanFranAnnie

Saturday’s good news–the plan to streamline a fucked-up process to make the selection of a charter school “easier”:

The new application process moves up registration by five months for the Recovery School District, which assigned students to schools in the summer, and enables students to find out in March what school they will attend in the 2008-2009 year. The protocol intends to streamline an oft-confusing application ritual by establishing a uniform timeline and application for schools, including most of the city’s charters, which typically have separate applications and registration deadlines.

Officials with the Recovery School District, Orleans Parish School Board and education nonprofits such as New Schools for New Orleans, said they crafted the process to give parents opportunities to enroll children in a school of their choice, and more access to schools citywide. [This is not about enrollment but applying to charter schools which do not have to take students they do not want or do not have the staff, services, money or desire to teach.]

Applications will be available Monday.

“We’re making this hybrid system more navigable for parents,” said Deirdre Burel, programs director at the Urban League of Greater New Orleans, one of the partner agencies. [emphasis added]

Parents are encouraged to apply to more than one school, but they would have to deliver separate applications either to the individual schools, both charter and noncharter, or to central repositories at the Recovery District’s Welcome School or the School Board central office.

Does this last paragraph seem to re-complicate the process?

What I can’t let go of is the opening paragraph:

Much like applying to college, parents can now apply to most New Orleans public schools by submitting a one-page application by Feb. 27. Students would learn of their acceptance three weeks later but have to register by the end of March — or lose the spot.

College is a one-page application for clusters of colleges? Where? When?

And this analogy covers up that this is not college, is not meant to be college and should be PUBLIC education, a civic duty to our children whether we have any of our own or not; that we have a multi-tiered, confusing and user-unfriendly “system”; that children are competing to get in and stay in schools instead of learning the skills and basic they need to contribute to society or–gasp!–learning; that this whole “system” is an experiment imposed upon New Orleanians and the children in our care with no supervising committee, no ethics inquiry, and no peer review by scientists ready to pull the plug when the subjects suffer too much or needlessly; and that this experiment is called a system so that we see it as permanent, the only possible way or solution, and a done deal that we cannot challenge, alter or outright reject.

G Bitch

NOLA