HumidCity

cross-posted at The G Bitch Spot

From the latest T-P articles on the voucher program and RSD schools, it seems that Jindal, Pastorek, and others (Vallas? I don’t know) see the RSD as the school system of last resort and don’t see that changing. I get this from the “assumption” that any school in the RSD or chartered by it must be a failing/failed school. I thought the changes occurred to improve the schools, not warehouse failures. Is this surrender? Resignation? Pragmatism? Is it that the children in those schools can’t be “educated”? That their test scores will never really rise even though lots of adults patted themselves on the back over the teeny rise in scores last school year? Or perhaps the goal of the vouchers is oddly altruistic, aimed at taking some of the burden off RSD schools and charters to help them enact new methods, pedagogies, etc.

Ha.

And this touches on a point that has burned my ass, and other parts, about the schools systems—there’s been no overall reform, just fracturing. The breaking up of the Orleans public schools was fueled by frustration and not a desire to enact specific reforms for specific problems. Yes, there were some really bad schools in this town, and there are some poor schools all across the state, but breaking up the system so the worst schools are over there, middling schools here, and former-magnet-now-charter schools are up here—that’s not reform. It’s the same system we had before with many of the same problems. There was and still is little public talk about what happens in the schools, in classrooms, with teachers, with students, between teachers and students and support staff that is different, that creates improvements in outcomes. And what changes are discussed are hampered by being geared toward raising test scores. Test scores make ADULTS think that something is happening and being done. What about the children? Teachers? Parents?

Choice is a double-edged sword and generally has proven itself to be, especially the more “choice” there is, the more the system adopts universal choice with multiple ways to opt out of the public schools. The parents with the most education, drive or ambition, and access to resources (whether that’s money, time, a computer, family members, whatever) are most likely to benefit. Though choice, including universal choice, is promoted as a way to improve low-performing schools, in practice, it often takes the most capable, directed, and supported kids out of the public school system, leaving behind children who pose the most educational, emotional, behavioral and social challenges, who need the most time, patience, and resources, a recipe for failure no matter how dedicated the school’s staff may be. It helps some of the kids, those who opt out and actually stay out (there’s a high turnover rate with most voucher programs, with families using it one year and not the next for various reasons), but does little to help the whole system, little to ameliorate the challenges urban public schools face. (These are also not problems that only occur in cities with black and Latino children.) Choice and vouchers can also undermine the good going on in a public school system, as people absorb and accept without question that “private” schools are “better” than “public” schools and drain their children and the money and auxiliaries attached to those children out of the public schools. Privatization/choice alone is not a solution. And can add to the problems.

It’s not now we should be praising ourselves over. We should be planning, analyzing, fretting, debating and preparing for the future, what happens in 2, 5, 10 years. Will we have served students, families and our community?

None of this is new, people. Look at who says what and why. And how often they mention “students,” “teachers” or the future.

G Bitch
NOLA

>>>>

photo courtesy of angela7dreams, used under this Creative Commons license

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

I got there 30 minutes late so I cannot tell you anything about Scott Cowen’s opening remarks or Paul Pastorek’s keynote address. I can tell you that nothing is clearer about the future of schools to me. Like many meetings, many hopes were voiced, many opinions told and held, and questions not answered and I can’t say that I have any new understanding of what’s happening. Here are some of my scattered notes, direct words in quotation marks, others paraphrased, my comments in italics:

• The earlier you hold a school meeting, the whiter the audience seems to be. This audience was about 80+% white. Not a complaint but an observation, an interesting one for a school system that is overwhelmingly black. And, Karen pointed out, the meeting was on a college campus with limited parking and no way of knowing where exactly to go unless you are familiar with the Tulane, or any, college campus.

• Barbara MacPhee, former principal of NO Science and Math HS: in the past, kids were not first, teachers were not developed, we now have “gap kids” (those who are 1+ years below grade level), we had an “adults problem” not a student/child problem. She got lots of applause for that one.

• about accountability–Matt Candler, CEO of New Schools for New Orleans: “open a great school where a failed school has been.” So what’s the difference between a struggling school and a developing school? Who decides? How?
  

• Tony Recasner, principal of Green Charter School: if schools are better but still economically and racially segregated, we’ve still failed. Amen.

• Charlotte Matthew, principal of Ben Franklin Elementary: find what’s working in schools and communicate that to other schools, teachers, etc.; do a better job of dividing the education funding that there is and coordinate resources. Great idea. But we have to realize that not all good ideas work with all kids and that we have some populations, not just at the bottom but in the middle and the top, who need attention, best practices, and facilities.

• Flozell Daniels, chair, Urban League of NO: we as a community need to understand what “quality education” means and have community-wide expectations, need to define “success” and “achievement,” and have the discussion on “how much does it take to educate a child in NO?” and need fiscal reform to sustain the potential changes. We also need to define “accountability.” Who’s accountable for what and when and what are the consequences? And does that “accountablitly” come with support, financial, professional and otherwise?

• The panel consensus seemed to be that the biggest worry or fear is returning all the schools to the Orleans Parish School Board. That got lots of applause. Remember the demographics of the crowd. And as Karen pointed out, there is a blanket condemnation of everything and everyone associated with Orleans schools. That fosters a lot of tension and hostility. And more racial misunderstanding. And dismisses and washes away the good that was being done, the ones who were working hard. I’ve complained before and will again about the distinctly racial tenor of condemnations of Orleans parish schools, children and, especially, teachers. And not from people whose kids went to any public school.

• When Charlotte Matthew said that NOPS got its first clean audit this year, as a sign that NOPS/OPSB is making changes, there was a lot of grumbling and some polite applause.

• Matt Candler: the shift or change to charter schools is about governance, not student achievement; if you have enough good schools, the city will change; historically, people have bought their way out of the public schools in NO and if middle class people “don’t make bets with their children” by enrolling them in the public schools, the reforms will fail and “for far too long we have been okay” with crappy public schools being about “other people’s kids.” That was the most pointed statement on the socioeconomic and racial problems that made the old system what it was, exacerbated the weaknesses and that make the majority of public schools now still in need of a lot of help.

• Did you know the state department of education never had a research division or researchers? You do now. And now there are 2–either 2 research groups or 2 researchers, I didn’t hear the whole answer. Now that the experiment has gone on for 2 years, there will be research.

• What’s the solution for segregation here in our schools? Tony Recasner said high-quality schools. And hoped that would be enough.

I’ve read the report. I am not encouraged. More on that soon. There has been progress but it is hard to measure and, for the RSD, the bar was abysmally low to begin with.

Also see Liprap’s first impressions.
G Bitch

NOLA

cross-posted

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