Same Shitstorm, Better Wipers

Jan 27, 2008 by

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

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