Counterpunch - Aug 6, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/quigley08062007.html
A Special Report on Katrina and Education
Experimenting on Someone Else's Children:
Fighting for the Right to Learn in New Orleans
By BILL QUIGLEY
“Of all the civil rights for which the world has struggled and
fought for 5,000 years, the right to learn is undoubtedly the most
fundamental... The freedom to learn... has been bought by bitter
sacrifice. And whatever we may think of the curtailment of other civil
rights, we should fight to the last ditch to keep open the right to
learn.” -W.E.B. DuBois, “The Freedom to Learn.” (1949)
"Education is the property of no one. It belongs to the people as a
whole. And if education is not given to the people, they will have to
take it." -Che Guevara
""We wanted charter schools to open and take the majority of the
students. That didn't happen, and now we have the responsibility of
educating the 'leftover' children." -Louisiana Board of Elementary and
Secondary School Member (2007)
There is a massive experiment being performed on thousands of primarily
African American children in New Orleans. No one asked the permission
of the children. No one asked permission of their parents. This
experiment involves a fight for the education of children.
This is the experiment.
The First Half
Half of the nearly 30,000 children expected to enroll in the fall of
2007 in New Orleans public schools have been enrolled in special public
schools, most called charter schools. These schools have been given
tens of millions of dollars by the federal government in extra money,
over and above their regular state and local money, to set up and
operate. These special public schools are not open to every child and
do not allow every student who wants to attend to enroll. Some charter
schools have special selective academic criteria which allow them to
exclude children in need of special academic help. Other charter
schools have special admission policies and student and parental
requirements which effectively screen out many children.
The children in this half of the experiment are taught by accredited
teachers in manageable sized classes. There are no overcrowded classes
because these charter schools have enrollment caps which allow them to
turn away students. These schools also educate far fewer students with
academic or emotional disabilities. Children in charter schools are in
better facilities than the other half of the children.
These schools are getting special grants from Laura Bush to rebuild
their libraries and grants from other foundations to help them educate.
These schools do educate some white children along with African
American children. These are public schools, but they are not available
to all the public school students.
The Other Half
The other half of public school students, over ten thousand children,
have been assigned to a one year old experiment in public education run
by the State of Louisiana called the “Recovery School District” (RSD)
program. The education these children receive will be compared to the
education received by the first half in the charter schools. These
children are effectively what is called the “control group” of an
experiment – those against whom the others will be evaluated.
The RSD schools have not been given millions of extra federal dollars
to operate. The new RSD has inexperienced leadership. Many critical
vacancies exist in their already insufficient district-wide staff. Many
of the teachers are uncertified. In fact, the RSD schools do not yet
have enough teachers, even counting the uncertified, to start school in
the fall of 2007. Some of the RSD school buildings scheduled to be used
for the fall of 2007 have not yet been built.
In the first year of this experiment, the RSD had one security guard
for every 37 students. Students at John McDonough High said their RSD
school, which employed more guards than teachers, had a “prison
atmosphere.” In some schools, children spent long stretches of their
school days in the gymnasium waiting for teachers to show up to teach
them.
There is little academic or emotional counseling in the RSD schools.
Children with special needs suffer from lack of qualified staff.
College prep math and science classes and language immersion are rarely
offered. Class rooms keep filling up as new children return back to New
Orleans and are assigned to RSD schools.
Many of the RSD schools do not have working kitchens or water
fountains. Bathroom facilities are scandalous – teachers at one school
report there are two bathrooms for the entire school, one for all the
male students, faculty and staff and another for all the females in the
building. Danatus King, of the NAACP in New Orleans, said “What
happened last year was a tragedy. Many of the city’s children were
denied an education last year because of a failure to plan on the part
of the RSD.”
Hardly any white children attend this half of the school experiment.
These are the public schools available to the rest of the public school
students.
Who Started This Experiment
After Katrina, groups in New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Washington DC saw
an opportunity to radically restructure public education in New Orleans
and turn many public schools into publicly funded charter schools.
Charter schools are publicly funded schools that have far more freedom
to select the children they admit, more freedom in the way they
operate, and more freedom in the hiring and firing of teachers.
This experiment has been controversial from the beginning.
Some people are very critical. According to a recent report on this
experiment by New Orleans teachers, right after Katrina “a
well-organized and well-financed national network of charter school
advocates hastened the conversion of public schools by waiving previous
requirements.” Without input from parents or teachers, these folks
engaged in what the teachers called a “massive takeover experiment with
the children of New Orleans at a time when most parents and students
were widely dispersed in other parishes and states.” See NO EXPERIENCE
NECESSARY: How the New Orleans Takeover Experiment Devalues Experienced
Teachers,” June 2007, (hereafter New Orleans Teachers Report).
Supporters like Governor Blanco hailed the experiment as "an
opportunity to do something incredible." Others agreed. "We are using
this as an opportunity to take what was one of the worst school systems
around and create one of the best and most competitive school systems
in America," said Walter Isaacson, vice chairman of the Louisiana
Recovery Authority. "This is an unprecedented opportunity to rebuild
the school system the way it should be," says Scott Cowen, president of
Tulane University. The Tulane Scott Cowen Institute and other
supporters have authored their own report on the experiment, STATE OF
PUBLIC EDUCATION IN NEW ORLEANS, June 2007, (hereafter the Cowen
Report).
How Government Created This Experiment
This experiment was started and approved while students and parents
were not around to participate in the decision. Before Katrina, the
process of creating a charter school was legally required to first have
the approval of parents and teachers. Supporters of this experiment,
many if not most of who do not have children in public schools,
repeatedly argue that this experiment creates “choice” for at least
half the parents and students. The irony is that few parents had any
choice at all in creating the experiment involving their children.
The very first public school converted to a charter was done on
September 15, 2005, while almost all the city remained closed to
residents. The school board did not even hold the meeting in New
Orleans.
While President Bush may have been slow to react in other areas after
the storm, he made a bold push right after Katrina to help convert
public schools to charters.
On September 30, 2005, the U.S. Department of Education pledged $20.9
million to Louisiana for post-Katrina charter schools. The federal
government offered no comparable funding to reestablish traditional
neighborhood or district schools.
In early October 2005, Governor Blanco issued an executive order which
waived state laws which required faculty and parent approval to convert
a regular public school to a charter school. The Orleans School Board
then used this waiver to convert all 13 schools in the less-flooded
Algiers community of New Orleans to charter schools without parent or
teacher approval.
Then all four thousand public school teachers in New Orleans, members
of the largest union in Louisiana, were fired – along with support
staff.
The rest of the takeover was accomplished in November 2005 under new
rules enacted by the Louisiana legislature. All this while most of the
families of public school students remained displaced, many hundreds of
miles away.
The New Orleans Teachers Report complained that “Proponents of the New
Orleans takeover experiment created the false impression that the
hurricane forced the state takeover or that a fair and uniform
accountability system led to the state’s action.
In fact, the state changed the rules and targeted New Orleans schools
in an attempt to convert all schools to charter status, not just the
failing ones. Most charter schools are pre-existing schools that were
converted to charter status. After the mass charter school conversions
in the three months following Katrina, the RSD…authorized only three
more charters….Of the 12 schools, the operation of all but three have
been given to providers who are based out of state.”
Many foundations are contributing large sums of money to the experiment.
For example, the Laura Bush Foundation has generously donated millions
of dollars to rebuild school libraries in schools along the gulf coast.
Her foundation has given tens of thousands of dollars in grants to
rebuild the libraries of 13 schools in New Orleans – 8 of which are
charter schools and 5 are private catholic schools. Not one is a RSD
regular public school.
How the Experiment Actually Operates
With a few exceptions, the state of Louisiana essentially now controls
the public school system in New Orleans. There is little local control.
The state has subcontracted much of the work of education to willing
charter schools.
Of the public schools operating at the end of the 2006-2007 academic
year, educating 57 percent of public school students, were charters.
This makes New Orleans the urban district with by far the highest
proportion of publicly funded charter schools in the nation. Dayton
Ohio has the second highest concentration of charter schools involving
30% of its 17,000 students.
This experiment has resulted in a clearly defined two-tier public
school system.
The top tier is made up of the best public and charter public schools,
which most children cannot get into, and a number of new and promising
charter public schools that are available for the industrious and
determined parents of children who do not have academic or emotional
disabilities.
The second tier is for the rest of the children. Their education is
assigned to the RSD (some are already calling it “The Rest of the
School District”).
The top half of the schools are the point of this experiment in public
charter schools. National charter school advocacy groups are pointing
to New Orleans as the experiment which will demonstrate that publicly
funded charter schools are superior to public schools.
However, the top half could not work without the bottom half. If the
schools in the top half had to accept the students assigned to the
second tier schools, the results of the experiment would obviously turn
out quite differently. As the experiment is structured, students in the
bottom half schools will be very useful to compare with the top half to
see how well this works.
While some sympathize with the children in the bottom half, little has
been done to assist those in the RSD schools.
How the Top Half Operates
Start with the money. Charter schools have more of it than the RSD
schools.
Each charter school is given a share of the federal $20.9 million
dollar grant. None of that money is available to non-charter public
schools.
As the Cowen report notes, charter public schools also have advantages
other than just financial ones over other the rest of the public
schools. Though funded by tax dollars, charters are granted greater
autonomy over staffing budgeting and curriculum than regular public
schools. Charters have better facilities, fewer problems attracting
staff and can keep school class size small.
Charters are allowed to impose enrollment caps. These caps allow them
to turn down additional students who seek to enroll. This keeps pupil
teacher ratios down and class sizes small – a universally recognized
key to academic achievement.
Some of the top tier public schools have explicit selective enrollment
policies which screen out children with academic problems. Most of the
remaining charters are technically supposed to be open enrollment
schools but require pre-application essays, parental-involvement
requirements and specific behavior contracts – allowing these charter
schools the flexibility to “manage” their incoming classes, rather than
having to accept every student who applies. At nine schools,
traditional public school transportation is not even provided, further
limiting the choices.
A look at Algiers charter school association (ACSA) website illustrates
how schools in the top half operate.
Financially, the ACSA budget reports expenditures of $27 million in
2006-2007, leaving an apparent surplus of $11 million. For 2005-2006,
the ACSA was given $2.5 million from Orleans Parish School Board ($500
per student over and above their regular funding), a $6 million federal
charter school grant, plus the state minimum foundation funds.
That is not all the extra money. The ACSA has also received several
major grants. For example, in June of 2007, the ACSA was awarded a
special $999,000 federal grant to help improve learning in American
history. In March, 2007, Baptist Community Ministries announced a $4.2
million grant to create a network among the charter schools.
The ACSA website includes their application process, which specifically
spells out that student applicants will NOT be considered “on a first
come first serve basis.” Decisions on whether an applicant is allowed
to attend will be based on several factors, including scores on state
examinations and whether applicant has ever received any special
education services for a learning disability or emotional disturbance.
Many of the other charter schools also benefit from special funds and
special admissions policies. One of the most selective public charter
schools, Lusher charter school, received millions extra in special
grants from Tulane University, FEMA, the State of Louisiana, a German
Foundation which gave $1.1 million to renovate the gymnasium, and other
foundations.
Wouldn’t every returning student like to enroll in one of these schools?
Students returning to New Orleans who might seek to enroll in one of
the top half schools are likely to be disappointed as the deadline for
enrollment at most of the charter schools has already passed. For
example, applications to enroll in Lusher charter for this fall were
due December 15, 2006.
How the Rest of the School District Operates
By law, the RSD is required to accept any student who shows up and is
prohibited from having any selective admissions policy.
>From the beginning, Louisiana officials charged with making policy and
operating the RSD complained that they were being left with educating
the “leftover children” after the charters and the selective schools
took the children with the best academic scores and best parental
involvement. Damon Hewitt, a civil rights attorney with the NAACP Legal
Defense and Educational Fund, and a New Orleans native, discovered the
reference to “leftovers” in an email sent by one of Louisiana’s top
education policy makers. The email is from Louisiana Board of
Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) member Glenny Lee Buquet. She
wrote in an internal BESE e-mail in January 2007, obtained by Hewitt in
a federal case, “We wanted charter schools to open and take the
majority of the students. That didn't happen, and now we have the
responsibility of educating the 'leftover' children."
Who are the leftover children in the RSD? Hewitt again: “The students
served by the RSD are typically those who could not get into any of the
fancy charter or selective admissions schools. They are the average New
Orleans students - talented, creative and bright, but locked in poverty
and out of opportunity.”
The average New Orleanian child is our child. These children are the
children of our sisters and brothers and cousins and coworkers. Yet
they are categorized as, and treated like, something quite different by
people in charge of public education.
The RSD has not been up to the job of educating New Orleans children
because, from day one and continuing until today, it lacked the
appropriate number and quality of people and the expertise to run a big
urban school system.
One of the best illustrations of the problems of the RSD is their
refusal to admit hundreds of returning New Orleans children to public
schools in January of 2007. Instead, the RSD put these kids on a
“waiting list.” Public outcry and two federal lawsuits forced a quick
reversal and the kids were put into RSD schools.
At the same time as the RSD put kids on a waiting list, “Thousands of
empty seats and dozens of empty classrooms could be found in charter
schools or in the city’s selective or discretionary-admissions public
schools” the New Orleans Teachers Report points out.
So why was there a problem? There was space for these kids in the
charter public schools. But because the public charter schools are
allowed to cap their enrollment they did not have to admit any new
children. In reality, the main reason there was a problem was not
space, but a shortage of teachers willing to work for the RSD.
Is it any surprise that the disorganized and under-staffed RSD was
having problems finding teachers for their schools?
The New Orleans teachers report indicate many veteran teachers remain
furious at the State of Louisiana and its RSD because they were fired
and their right to collective bargaining was terminated. Teachers point
out that veteran teachers hired in adjoining districts continue to
enjoy collective bargaining along with the rest of the teachers. But
not in New Orleans. Uncertified teachers were widespread in RSD schools.
In fact, certified teachers from around the country who wanted to help
by teaching in New Orleans were directed by the Teach for NOLA
recruitment website to charter schools. Uncertified teachers were
directed to the RSD.
The RSD was still 500 teachers short at the time this article was
written. In July of 2007, the RSD ran a $400,000 national campaign to
try to hire an additional 500 teachers to start in the fall. The RSD is
offering up $17,300 in relocation and other incentives to try to get
teachers into the system. If there are any teachers reading this,
please come and help the children in the RSD out – you are desperately
needed!
As of July, the RSD was also working furiously to erect temporary
modular buildings to house children when school starts in the fall.
Meanwhile, neighboring St. Bernard Parish opened school in temporary
school buildings two months after Katrina – nearly two years ago.
An indication of the fragmentation of the system are the many starting
dates for New Orleans public schools. Some charter schools will start
August 6, another on the 8th. Five start August 14, others in mid to
late August. The two dozen or so RSD schools will open September 4 – in
part to give more time to build new schools to open and to recruit
teachers.
During 2006-2007 school security became a top issue. Consider the
experiment of placing thousands of recently traumatized and frequently
displaced children into schools without enough teachers or staff or
facilities. Consider also that those who are charged with supervising
the schools are inexperienced and understaffed as well. The logical
outcome of such an experiment is insecurity.
The RSD spent $20 million on security. They had one security guard for
every 37 students in 2006-2007, a rate nine times higher than the old
public school security system. At one point there were 35 guards at RSD
John McDonough Senior High plus two off-duty police officers. Thirty
two guards started at another school in the fall.
This situation quickly prompted the Fyre Youth Squad, a group of high
school students in New Orleans, to challenge the “prison atmosphere” at
John McDonough High. There were more security guards than teachers at
their school.
What impact does this have on education of children? Research shows
that students feel more tense when they encounter security guards at
every turn in a school, said Monique Dixon, a senior attorney at the
Advancement Project, a Washington, D.C. civil rights organization that
works with community groups on issues such as school discipline. "It
becomes more of a prison on some levels where people feel they are
being watched constantly instead of feeling protected," she said. "It
creates a police state."
The financial implications of spending money this way are also
troubling. While New Orleans spent $20 million on private security for
around 50 schools, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported that the
Philadelphia public school security budget for more than 260 schools
was about $47 million, which included a 450-member independent police
force, 150 auxiliary officers, and partnerships with more than 200
community members. In Detroit, the budget this fiscal year for the
400-member independent police force that protects the public schools,
which has more than 100,000 students and more than 200 schools, was
about $16 million.
Controlling students sometimes appeared to take priority over educating
students.
Damon Hewitt points out that “the line between criminal justice policy
and education got much blurrier over the past year and a half, as local
schools have resorted to increasingly punitive approaches to school
discipline. Relying more on police officers than community engagement,
school officials' harsh responses to challenging behavior mirror public
fear and sentiment about crime in the city. As a result, more children
end up being suspended, expelled and arrested and sent to juvenile
court. This phenomenon, which some call the School-to-Prison Pipeline,
is literally robbing New Orleans of its most valuable asset - people.”
“Some say that children in New Orleans are suffering from
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,” continues Hewitt. “But they are really
suffering from the impact of Continuing Trauma - trauma that plays
itself out every day. To the extent that children do act out present
challenging behavior in schools, a lot of it has to do with both this
continuing trauma and unmet educational needs, especially for those
students in need of special education and related services. We cannot
suspend, expel and arrest our way out of this problem. In fact, those
harsh responses only make things worse by depriving young people of
much-needed educational opportunity.”
The academic results measured by standardized test scores given in
spring 2007 at the RSD schools were predictably low. Nearly half the
students failed in most 4th and 8th grade categories. Two-thirds of
high school students failed in the Louisiana Educational Assessment
Program (LEAP) and Graduate Exit Exam (GEE). The selective public
schools had only an 18 percent failure rate on the GEE. LEAP scores for
individual schools reported during the summer show what most expected,
charter schools test better than RSD schools.
One current public school teacher, name withheld for reasons that will
be obvious, was not hopeful.
“The public schools are totally fragmented. The struggles are still the
same. Students still have difficult situations at home, some are still
in trailers or living with too many people in one small home.”
“Schools still lack books and materials, which I don't understand.
After Katrina there were so many offers of help, both physical and
monetary. I don't think that the people in charge knew what to do to
organize a decent response to the offers.”
“The RSD schools lack enough qualified and experienced teachers. The
state Department of Education is well intentioned but they are barely
dealing with the day to day issues and they still need to open more
schools as people come back to the city.”
“Yes, it sounds dismal. I don't see any big changes for next year. I
think many of the charter schools have promise. The charters usually
have a committed administration and staff and frequently a committed
parent body. That is the secret to success.”
Leigh Dingerson of the Center for Community Change in Washington DC,
who has been researching the New Orleans schools after Katrina, sums up
the problems with the New Orleans experiment.
“In the 18 months since Hurricane Katrina, the infrastructure of the
New Orleans public schools has been systematically dismantled and a new
tangle of independently operated educational experiments has been
erected in its place. This new structure has taken away community
control and community ownership of all but a handful of schools.
Instead, independent charter management organizations - virtually all
from outside the state - are now running 60 percent of New Orleans
schools.”
“There are no more neighborhood boundaries. In a market-based model,
parents are considered ‘customers.’ And they’re supposed to ‘choose’
where to send their kids to school. But since every one of the charter
schools was filled to capacity, hundreds of parents had no choice at
all for their kids.”
“Hundreds of kids with disabilities (who are often turned away from
charter schools) are being placed in the under-resourced and
over-burdened state-run Recovery School District. It’s their only
choice.”
“This Balkanized school system is not closing a gap. It’s opening a
chasm.”
The Cowen Report survey of the community agrees with much of the
Digerson analysis finding that “for many in the community, the
RSD-operated schools are viewed as an unofficial ‘dumping ground’ for
students with behavioral or academic challenges.”
All indicators conclude that the RSD overall has done a poor job
educating all the thousands of children in their half of the
experiment, especially those with disabilities, because of RSD’s own
lack of expertise and experienced staff and because the schools they
supervise lack the necessary teachers, support staff, and resources.
Possible Positive Results of this Experiment
Given the disastrous start to this experiment, at least for half the
children in public schools in New Orleans, are there any positive
results possible?
Supporters of the experiment rightfully point out the dismal state of
public education in New Orleans prior to Katrina. The public school
system had a few elite schools that had some racial mixing in their
student body, while most of the rest of the schools were
underperforming even by Louisiana standards. Outside of the elite
schools, the population of the student body at almost all schools was
nearly one hundred percent African-American.
Teachers valued teaching in the elite public schools because they had
less turnover, students with better test scores, solid parental
involvement and more access to additional resources. There was
widespread corruption resulting in over 20 convictions of school board
officials or employees. While the national average term for a public
school system superintendent was three years, from 1998 to 2005 the New
Orleans average was 11 months.
At this point in the experiment, it is fair to conclude that the New
Orleans public schools are still divided into some racially mixed elite
and charter schools, while the other half of the schools must be
classified as underperforming and nearly one hundred percent
African-American.
On the other hand, supporters hope that this experiment will show the
way to improve public education. It very likely will, at least for the
half of the children fortunate enough to get into the top tier schools.
Politically, the real winners in this experiment are almost guaranteed
to be those who back the idea of charter schools.
The New Orleans experiment offers tremendous opportunities for backers
of charter schools. Up to now, charter schools have not proven superior
to regular public schools. For example, in a 2004 Report “Evaluation of
the Public Charter Schools Program,” the U.S. Department of Education
study of charter schools in five states found “charter schools were
somewhat less likely than traditional public schools” to meet state
performance standards - but cautioned that the study was unable “to
determine whether traditional public schools are more effective than
charters.”
But in New Orleans, where the best public schools have been converted
into charters and the kids most in need of good schools have been
systematically excluded from the top half of the public schools and
placed into a dysfunctional system – the charter schools in the upper
half are guaranteed to demonstrate better educational outcomes than
what education officials call the “leftover” public schools.
If charter schools cannot prove themselves superior with this New
Orleans deck stacked in their favor, they should quit and go home.
Apart from charter school backers are there others who are likely to
see positive outcomes?
A real positive outcome would be if the experiment could translate the
advantages of the top half of the selective schools into success for
the rest of the public school children as well. There is little
evidence of that happening at this time.
The creators of this experiment acknowledge that a large percentage of
the children are being left out. "The bottom line is we are very
hopeful about this system of school models that is emerging, and we are
showing a lot of progress," said Tulane University President Scott S.
Cowen. "But we still have challenges to overcome to fulfill that
vision."
Negative Possibilities of This Experiment
Twice as many people in New Orleans think the public school system is
worse now than those who think it is better, according to the Cowen
Report.
Tracie Washington, civil rights and education attorney and head of the
new Louisiana Justice Institute, points out the differences in the
schools that she has heard about from hundreds of families.
“Think about the fact that we had parents who had the misfortune of
sending their children to schools in two different systems -- RSD and a
charter. Now if your daughter attended Lusher charter or Audubon
charter, they always had hot meals, clean toilets, books, library,
certified teachers, after school activities, AND NO ARMED GUARDS AT THE
SCHOOL SITE. Your son had the misfortune of attending RSD schools like
Raboin High School, or Clark, or John McDonogh. No books, cold food,
essentially an armed encampment. Same family – same mom and dad, same
home environment; but the daughter is treated like a student and the
son is treated like an inmate at the State Penitentiary at Angola.
Actually, they are treated better at Angola because there's a library
and hot food is served!”
While the Cowen Report underscores the importance of saving the RSD,
there has been no determined or comprehensive community or political
attempt to rescue the RSD nor the thousands of children assigned to it.
There is a cruel point in this experiment. Unfortunately, if the RSD
continues to do poorly, that makes the selective charter schools appear
even more successful. Thus the worse the RSD performs, the better the
charters look. Those who have access to the top half will push ahead,
those who do not will fall further behind.
Danatus King of the New Orleans NAACP says many think the public
education system is intentionally designed by those with economic power
to keep other people’s children under-educated. “If you keep them
uneducated, you can control them easier. There is a power structure in
New Orleans that has existed for hundreds of years. They don’t want to
see it changed because if it’s changed then it is going to hit them in
their pockets. It is going to be hard to keep those hotel and
restaurant workers from unionizing and demanding more money and better
working conditions. It is going to be more difficult to attract folks
to that industry when they are well educated and have other
opportunities. If you keep them uneducated, you can control them
easier.”
National critics like the Center for Community Change complain “The
Bush Administration was instrumental in creating this new chasm between
the “haves” and the “have nots” in New Orleans. Rather than create the
world-class public schools that all New Orleans kids have deserved for
so long, the Bush Administration invested in an ideological experiment
to make a pro-privatization, anti-public education statement.”
“In a school system based on free market principles, schools become
individual contestants – for the best teachers, for the best students,
for the most resources, and of course…for the best test scores. They
can only do this because they are not required to provide access to
every student within their community.”
“There must be, backing up every large scale charter system, the
schools for the children…who are “un-chosen” by charter schools.”
“The very existence of charter schools in New Orleans, at this point,
is dependent on the availability of a universal access network of
schools alongside it. And those schools, the schools with the state run
Recovery School District, are struggling with more than their share of
kids with disabilities and less than their share of teachers and
resources. To win, there must be losers.”
Thus, the failures of the RSD will make supporters of charter and other
restrictive admission schools appear even more successful. So where in
this experiment is the incentive to make sure that the half of the kids
left out have a fighting chance for a decent education?
The Future of the Experiment
Where does the experiment go from here? The RSD is supposed to return
control of the public schools to local control after five years.
Charter schools are supposed to only be chartered for five years. What
happens in the next five years? No one knows. Really. No one knows. And
if no one knows, then the likelihood of the left behind continuing to
be left behind is extremely high.
Parents do not need five years. They already know which half of the
experiment they want their children to participate in. Will the powers
who created this experiment dedicate what is left of their five years
to try to create a system where ALL children have choices of quality
education, or will the underserved half of the schools remain as a
control group for the privileged schools?
The Cowen Report, overall supportive and hopeful for the experiment,
admits "There is no system-wide responsibility, accountability, vision
or leadership to guide the transformation of all public schools for all
New Orleans students," and no "unified, widely-endorsed vision or plan"
exists to chart transformation of the entire public school system.
Will race and economic segregation increase or decrease as a result of
this experiment?
Tracie Washington, speaking both as a civil rights attorney and parent,
thinks any future success for all children will only come through
serious struggle.
“What we need - to repair the New Orleans Public Schools systems
(plural) and, indeed, the public hospital, the public housing, the
criminal justice system, and our system of worker rights - is vision,
opportunity, and resolve.
“Our vision must embrace the entire community in the plans to
rebuild a state of the art school system. White folks don't send their
children to public schools, so stop going to them for advice.”
“Our opportunity requires that those in power release the resources
for our community to fulfill its vision for public schools.”
“And we need to demonstrate resolve. Resolve is what the community
must stand together with as we demand the right to an education for all
our children. We have to resolve that we will fight, we will scream, we
will holla, we will call out your family, we will stop the economic
engine of this entire city from running (yes, the entire city), until
our children are given a fighting chance for a decent education.”
The New Orleans Teachers Report insists that the dual and unequal
systems of schools in the city which intensify the educational
disparities that existed before Katrina must cease. They call on
policymakers to provide more physical classroom space and educational
materials for every student, and provide the best qualified teachers
possible for every child. Families must be able to send their children
to a neighborhood school — charter or not — that is staffed by
qualified, mostly experienced teachers. Finally they ask that teachers
and their unions be made full partners in the rebuilding and
revitalization effort.
The Cowen Report’s recommendations seems to start modestly, but perhaps
not. Their first recommendation? Make sure everyone can get into a
public school this year. Other suggestions include: making sure all
students have access to diverse high-quality options; limiting
enrollment barriers and open access schools in every neighborhood; fair
distribution of resources to all schools; strengthen the RSD and create
a process to return public schools to local control; get high quality
principals, teachers and staff; support excellence at all schools; and
create short and long-term plans for action.
Two huge groups of kids are notably missing from all the official and
unofficial plans for the future of the experiment – the newly arrived
children of thousands of Latino workers, and much larger group – the
tens of thousands of those still displaced who want to return. While
there is little current accurate information on either of these groups
of children, they are absolutely at risk in this experiment. And they
are unjustly being left out of public policy debates about the future
of public education in New Orleans.
Signs of Hope
Wherever there is injustice, there are also signs of hope – usually in
those who are standing up despite the injustices and struggling,
despite the odds, for what is fair.
“Education activists and organizers, including youth, have really
gotten busy since Katrina,” Damon Hewitt points out. “Groups ranging
from the Douglass Community Coalition and to the Downtown Neighborhood
Improvement Association's Education Committee and the FYRE Youth Squad
have stepped up their responses to educational inequity, despite having
precious little in the way of resources to do the work. Their demands
for equity and justice have been loud and clearly articulated. And
there are some signs that their efforts are starting to bear fruit in
the creation of after school programs and the like. Community members
who have long advocated for best practices and community-centered
approaches to issues like school discipline may finally be starting to
have a real say in how policies are crafted and implemented.”
Hundreds of NAACP members and supporters marched at the Louisiana
Capitol to protest against injustices in public education. The NAACP is
also considering economic boycotts as a tool to raise awareness of the
problems facing public schools.
Some see hope in the fact that there is a new Louisiana Superintendent
of Education and a new New Orleans School Superintendent. Will either
or both be able to help create some fairness and equality and
competency where little exists? One can hope. Tracie Washington waits.
“I am pleased with the efforts being made by the new administrators.
But really at this time we are still simply repairing damage wrought
over the last two years. To be sure, the new people at the top did not
create this mess. However, there are hundreds of bureaucrats and the
members of the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education
who sat and watched as our children suffered after Katrina. I will not
forgive them for their acts of cowardice.”
One concrete sign of hope is the New Orleans Parents Guide to Public
Schools – a step by step handbook on how to select the right school for
children. Aesha Rasheed of New Orleans Network is the editor of the
handbook. The 95 page book includes a list of all public schools open
in New Orleans as well as a map that shows where they are, followed by
information pages on each school that shows the address, a photograph
of the building, the grades it serves, its mission statement, the size
of the student population, how to register, whether there are special
requirements for enrollment, the type of transportation provided, what
health and child care services are available, any special programs and
extracurricular activities. While one could hope that it would not take
outsiders to create a description of the schools in the system, the
guide is helpful for parents trying to navigate the current maze. See
http://www.nolaparentsguide.org
One of the greatest hopes for change is the students themselves.
Students are speaking out and demanding changes in the fragmented
disorganized public schools. They are telling their stories locally and
across the nation
Jade Fleury, a New Orleans public school student, challenged a group of
educators in Washington DC recently. “Bring us together to make a
change. We should be able to collectively put our ideas together to
help one another. BRING US TOGETHER! Why are we developing more and
more separate schools and not more neighborhood schools that the whole
diversity of young people in the neighborhood can attend?”
The Experiment and the Fight for the Right to Learn Continue
Our community understands there is an experiment going on. Everyone may
not totally understand how this experiment got started, but the results
are obvious and troubling.
The nation is watching. Charter school advocates are working furiously
to make their half of the experiment a success. Those committed to the
education of rest of the children had better be working as hard. What
is happening in New Orleans is an experiment about what people hope
will happen to communities across the nation.
Jim Randels, a 20 year veteran teacher in the N.O. public schools,
posed the challenge to those who seek to remake public education today
– “My need as a teacher is to see someone who will come in and do a
charter that works within the attendance boundaries of an urban
neighborhood. Demonstrate to us that innovation can happen in a school
that’s like the majority of public schools in urban settings. Will you
commit to work in an attendance boundary? Will you commit to working
with the same amount of resources that all of us work with?”
The public school system is a reflection of what is occurring in all
our public systems post-Katrina. Public healthcare and public housing
are going the same way. Those with the economic and political power are
re-making the public systems with public funds the way they want them
to operate. Naomi Klein calls this disaster capitalism. Those with the
money see disaster as opportunity to reshape and profit formerly public
systems.
Those at the top have effectively privatized the best public schools
and erected barriers to keep others out.
But, the people excluded are fighting for a voice in this experiment of
choice.
These fighters recognize that false reformers are always willing to
experiment on someone else’s children.
The truest indication of the fairness of this experiment is that, so
far, not one of the supporters of this experiment have demonstrated a
willingness to send their own children to a RSD school. So, the
experiment, and the fight, continue.
Until the day dawns when the educational rights of all the “leftover”
children will be treated as just as important as the educational rights
of our own children, the fight for the right to learn will continue.
[Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola
University New Orleans. He can be reached at quigley at loyno.edu ]