R.I.P New Orleans public school system

[Lonestar]

Washington post article

<snip>
With the start of the next school year, the Recovery School District will be the first in the country made up completely of public charter schools, a milestone for New Orleans and a grand experiment in urban education for the nation....

The long and short of it is that instead of a unifying school district with rules and hiring/firing authorities, all the NO Public Schools are going to be Charter Schools. It should be interesting to see how this plays out long term regarding education quality.

[Thanas]

Based on my own experiences I am almost tempted to say that public education in Lousiana cannot get any worse, but I fear to be proven wrong.

Also, does this smack of a race to the bottom to anybody else?

An all-charter district signals the dismantling of the central school bureaucracy and a shift of power to dozens of independent school operators, who will assume all the corresponding functions: the authority to hire and fire teachers and administrators, maintain buildings, run buses and provide services to special-needs students.

Of the Recovery School District’s 600 employees, 510 will be out of a job by week’s end. All 33,000 students in the district must apply for a seat at one of the 58 public charter schools, relying on a computerized lottery to determine placement.

Yeah.....doesn't sound good.

[Ralin]

Based on my own experiences I am almost tempted to say that public education in Lousiana cannot get any worse, but I fear to be proven wrong.

A classmate of mine once told me that "if the New Orleans school district was blasted off the face of the earth we would instantly jump half a dozen spots in the national rankings."

I don't think this turned out to be true, but still.

[bilateralrope]

That sounds like there is going to be a big problem with students having to travel long distances to the school the lottery picked. But it gets worse. The highest performing schools are racist and the law is protecting that racism.

White students disproportionately attend the best charter schools, while the worst are almost exclusively populated by African American students. Activists in New Orleans joined with others in Detroit and Newark last month to file a federal civil rights complaint, alleging that the city’s best-performing schools have admissions policies that exclude African American children. Those schools are overseen by the separate Orleans Parish School Board, and they don’t participate in OneApp, the city’s centralized school enrollment lottery.

John White, the state’s superintendent of education, agreed that access to the best schools is not equal in New Orleans, but he said the state is prevented by law from interfering with the Orleans Parish School Board’s operations.

“The claim that there’s an imbalance is right on the money,” White said. “The idea that it’s associated with privilege and high outcomes is right on the money.”

I suspect that the racism and travel distance (keeping poor students out) are seen as features by some of the charter school supporters.

[Grumman]

White students disproportionately attend the best charter schools, while the worst are almost exclusively populated by African American students.

The Kansas City experiment suggests you might have that backwards.

[Mr Bean]

White students disproportionately attend the best charter schools, while the worst are almost exclusively populated by African American students.

The Kansas City experiment suggests you might have that backwards.

The Kansas experiment was to pour a lot of money into the facilities and the administration and much less into new staff. Also something Freakanomics likes to bring up, if you start reform at the High School level you've already failed. There has already been 8 years of shitty education to ingrain all the wrong attitudes and impressions into the students.

If you want reform you have to start at pre-k, fund that, then take those same students and fund elementary and middles schools before investing in high schools.
We could do that but the idea of writing of a generation of students is to say the least unpopular.

[Grumman]

White students disproportionately attend the best charter schools, while the worst are almost exclusively populated by African American students.

The Kansas City experiment suggests you might have that backwards.

The Kansas experiment was to pour a lot of money into the facilities and the administration and much less into new staff.

Is the claim I have seen elsewhere that the student:teacher ratio was reduced to below 13:1 as part of this experiment incorrect?

Also something Freakanomics likes to bring up, if you start reform at the High School level you've already failed. There has already been 8 years of shitty education to ingrain all the wrong attitudes and impressions into the students.

That article suggests that the reform was not only at the High School level - "All the high schools and middle schools, as well as half the elementary schools, have been turned into magnet schools."

[Simon_Jester]

One of the things about this that might conceivably make it work is that it reduces the level of bureaucratic overhead involved in a few basic decisions schools should be able to make at the local level:

1) Is this student such a behavioral problem that they no longer belong at this school?
2) Are the teachers in my building doing their jobs properly, in good faith?
3) By what means do we assess success or failure?

Having a complicated, intrusive bureaucracy attempting to impose answers to those questions on principals and teachers can make the job a lot harder to do.

The problem, by contrast, is that the teachers are more subject to the whims of whoever runs their schools, because there's no accountability. Also that schools may end up run on for-profit models, and that the incentive to cut costs will result in cut-rate instruction.

[Wicked Pilot]

I suspect that the racism and travel distance (keeping poor students out) are seen as features by some of the charter school supporters.

Maybe I read it wrong but you're referring to the old district that had it's schools seized by the state, not the new district that's going all charter, which this article is mostly about.

[Terralthra]

Is the claim I have seen elsewhere that the student:teacher ratio was reduced to below 13:1 as part of this experiment incorrect.

Hiring more teachers and paying them the same rate is a great way of guaranteeing that you will continue to see the same outcome from public schools. If you want a quality education, you have to pay people commensurate with the level of skill you want. To put it in perspective, primary and secondary school teachers earn significantly less than the aggregate of the babysitters/daycare providers their parents would hire instead, and are expected - on top of babysitting - to provide a superior education.

[Ahriman238]

White students disproportionately attend the best charter schools, while the worst are almost exclusively populated by African American students.

The Kansas City experiment suggests you might have that backwards.

The Kansas experiment was to pour a lot of money into the facilities and the administration and much less into new staff. Also something Freakanomics likes to bring up, if you start reform at the High School level you've already failed. There has already been 8 years of shitty education to ingrain all the wrong attitudes and impressions into the students.

If you want reform you have to start at pre-k, fund that, then take those same students and fund elementary and middles schools before investing in high schools.
We could do that but the idea of writing of a generation of students is to say the least unpopular.

I'd rather like to know more about this experiment. What specifically was done with the money? Was it used to upgrade facilities, or hire new teachers, did it go into better classroom materials, create incentives? Or was it funneled into sports and administration?

[Simon_Jester]

Is the claim I have seen elsewhere that the student:teacher ratio was reduced to below 13:1 as part of this experiment incorrect.

Hiring more teachers and paying them the same rate is a great way of guaranteeing that you will continue to see the same outcome from public schools. If you want a quality education, you have to pay people commensurate with the level of skill you want. To put it in perspective, primary and secondary school teachers earn significantly less than the aggregate of the babysitters/daycare providers their parents would hire instead, and are expected - on top of babysitting - to provide a superior education.

If we were just being asked to educate it wouldn't be a problem. It becomes a problem when the students act enough like babies that our job becomes predominantly a "keep them disciplined" issue, or when their indiscipline is such that teaching and learning cannot take place.