Uncertainties abound in unification process
5th December 2016 · 0 Comments
By Kari Dequine Harden
Contributing Writer
As the first urban privatized public school district enters a new phase dubbed “Unification,” the process will be guided by Act 91 and a plan put forth by the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) and the Recovery School District (RSD).
The Cowen Institute for Education Initiatives recently published a guide for families to navigate the “Unification Plan,” which offers pathway, albeit fairly ambiguous, with the goal of all schools returning to the auspices of the OPSB by July of 2018.
While the schools are slated to transfer from the RSD to the OPSB over the next few years, Act 91 keeps virtually every single power in the hands of private charter operators, without any specific mechanisms for oversight.
The Cowen Institute promises to “monitor the process of unification over the next two years,” and “aim to provide accessible, applicable information about the process and any new developments for parents, students, teachers, and the general public.” The Cowen unification report will be the first in a multi-part series.
On the whole, the Cowen guide assures families their children should not experience much change in the day to day operations of their schools as they go through the process of returning to the OPSB.
But, the guide also notes at this point, the Unification Guide lacks specifics in many areas, and “many of the most important decisions about unification have yet to be settled.”
Initially, schools in New Orleans taken in a rash of Disaster Capitalism after Hurricane Katrina, were only supposed to be under the governance of the RSD for five years, or until they were no longer deemed failing.
Nearly 12 years later, the RSD remains firmly entrenched in the city, and in control of 52 schools, 33 of which are eligible for return to OPSB.
Now forced by law to return the schools to local jurisdiction, the Cowen guide includes a chart outlining when “key questions” will be answered of over the next two years.
There are more questions than answers at this point, and on issues such as “Accountability,” the report states, “the unification plan only outlines what decisions need to be made, not what those policies require.”
Some of the questions covering all topics include: “What policies are needed to allow RSD employees to transition to the OPSB smoothly?” and “How will facility and enrollment policies align to allow families access to high quality schools?” To be answered in June, 2017, one question asks, “What is the OPSB’s role in helping schools to serve students with special needs?”
The special needs component of the privatization experiment has been one with the most tragic consequences, as many schools resisted accepting children with special needs (costs more) and if they did, did not provide them with legally required services (no oversight). This travesty resulted in a class action lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Lawsuit.
The final questions the Unification Plan asks, in March 2018, is a big one: “What is the plan for transferring oversight of all facilities from the RSD to OPSB?” Given $1.8 billion for facilities after Katrina, this question comes with a tremendous amount of assets and ongoing construction contracts, all of which are owned by the OPSB but much of which is currently being managed and maintained by the RSD.
The Cowen guide gives definitions to commonly used terms in the new reform era, and answers some “basic questions,” for families, also discussing how things work now, and what will change under unification in terms of curriculum, accountability, staffing, enrollment, and facilities.
On Curriculum, the report notes the unification plan says “very little,” as the charters will maintain their autonomy on programming decisions.
Through a series of community meetings, parents identified curriculum as a vital concern, and the unification plan “highlights that the OPSB received over 100 pieces of feedback related to curriculum,” and “over 40 comments about discipline and culture,” the Cowen report notes. “Yet, it is not within the scope of the plan, or the legislation guiding unification.”
On Accountability, “the most visible change is that the OPSB will now be solely responsible for authorizing new charter schools in Orleans parish. This will allow parents to communicate with their locally elected school board member . . . instead of driving to Baton Rouge to discuss concerns.” Also of note, according to the report, “the board may relocate schools to different buildings if insufficient students are enrolled.”
On Staffing, the report notes the OPSB’s role remains “extremely limited.” This goes for determining salaries, and how much school rely on uncertified teachers trained through programs like Teach for America.
On Enrollment, the EnrollNOLA (or OneApp) system will still be used, with eventually all OPSB schools being required to participate. Management of EnrollNOLA will transfer to the OPSB.
It remains unclear what will happen to the top-heavy, well paid staff of the RSD and their Poydras Street offices. The RSD did not respond to a request for a current staff list and salaries. RSD Superintendent Patrick Dobard always said his success would be measured by working himself out of a job.
But in spite of all the guides and plans and outlines for decision making as detailed in both the unification plan and the Cowen report, there is a fundamental question missing: Is the privatization experiment working? What is entirely left out is a doorway to still allow for questioning of whether or not the great disaster capitalism/privatization New Orleans experiment is a better approach than instead investing the billions of dollars into improving the existing traditional neighborhood public schools.
The Cowen guide defines “Neighborhood School” as a “colloquial expression.”
While parents want the best education for their children, there also exists permanent and painful citywide heartbreak over the loss of neighborhood schools that were much more than schools – they were community centers and support systems. They were the strong and personal connectors between the child’s teacher and the parent, and they were intrinsic to the very core of the identity of the New Orleanian.
Regardless of the destruction of the neighborhood school as a beloved institution, there are serious problems with the data being used to claim victory of charter schools over traditional schools.
While the pro-charter organizations and their think tanks tour the nation with claims of resounding success out of New Orleans, outside independent researchers are finding the claims dubious, and the data less than convincing.
In an analysis by the National Education Policy Center (NEPC) of a report published earlier this year by Public Impact and New Schools for New Orleans touting the charter experiment as a success, the NEPC review found considerable bias:
“The political rationale for this report is evidenced by the omission of research that is critical of the reforms and instead bases its claims of success on newspaper articles and reports from foundations and think-tanks. The report relies on only three research reports that have not been peer-reviewed. Most troubling is that the report relies on information and data to which researchers, community members and in many instances the press, have limited access. This makes it difficult if not impossible to verify the claims put forward in the report.”
The NEPC also notes “the local organization, Research on Reforms debunked many of the test score increases and graduation rates made by the reformers and the RSD.” It also states the report “has utilized virtually no data that examines the qualitative impact of the reforms on families, teachers and communities.”
For State Rep. Joseph Bouie, who sponsored a bill for the return of schools that ultimately failed in favor of the much more prescriptive Act 91, there are serious concerns going ahead.
Bouie points to Louisiana law (SS 17:3972) under which the state sanctioned human experimentation in the form of charter schools.
There’s the question of whether it is ethical to experiment on children, but there are also legal problems. Bouie points out the New Orleans charter experiment has not adhered to this law, which requires the experiment be analyzed and measured as with any scientific experiment, and positive results replicated. According to the state law:
“It is the intention of the legislature in enacting this Chapter to authorize experimentation by city and parish school boards by authorizing the creation of innovative kinds of independent public schools for pupils. Further, it is the intention of the legislature to provide a framework for such experimentation by the creation of such schools, a means for all persons with valid ideas and motivation to participate in the experiment, and a mechanism by which experiment results can be analyzed, the positive results repeated or replicated, if appropriate, and the negative results identified and eliminated.”
The state auditor’s office agreed with some of Bouie’s concerns in a 2013 audit, finding the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) “did not perform all required academic monitoring activities and did not verify that the school-reported data used to calculate School Performance Score (SPS) and make charter school operating decisions is reliable. In addition, we found that LDOE could not provide evidence that it comprehensively monitored the legal/contractual performance of these charter schools.”
Act 91 returns the schools, Bouie said, but many are still failing, and there is nothing to say if what those schools are doing works. “We’ve allowed a state-sanctioned research experiment,” without following up with the requirements for data collection, Bouie said, to show whether or not they are in fact working. Today, more than 90 percent of kids are attending charters schools, with “no results of research.”
Bouie also has serious concerns about whether parents knew their children were part of a state sanctioned experiment, as the law requires both them to be aware of the experiment, and written consent. The parents Bouie has asked were not aware, nor were some of the top administrators.
Another legal concern for Bouie is why Act 91 applies only to New Orleans schools. “How come only our schools go back this way?,” Bouie questions, especially when the original 1995 law creating the RSD states schools return to local jurisdiction once they are no longer failing.
In addition, Louisiana charter school experimentation law states: “Finally, it is the intention of the legislature that the best interests of at-risk pupils shall be the overriding consideration in implementing the provisions of this Chapter.”
This is not what happened in New Orleans. While there have been more efforts in recent years to address the needs of at-risk pupils, for the first eight or so years of the experiment, it was the most at-risk children who were mistreated and pushed out of schools because those schools now operating as business did not want to deal with students who required them to expend additional resources and energy. And they did not want students who would not help to boost their all too precious School Performance Scores, largely based on the obsessive overuse of standardized tests to measure a child’s worth. Countless students have fallen through the cracks over the past decade, especially those with the highest needs.
More concerning than anything, Act 91 may “institutionalize the experimental process,” thus making it permanent, Bouie said.
And the harm to children by experimenting without requiring the data and proof that the reforms are working puts nothing less than their lives and future at stake. Bouie pointed to children from a failed school not being able to succeed in college because they graduated without a decent education, and some ending up in the criminal justice system.
Instead of using scientific methods, and starting case by case with a few charter schools, figuring out what works and then duplicating that, “We went hog wild” with now a nearly all-charter system.
“The experiment was flawed from the beginning,” Bouie said, and now with Act 91, “We are attempting to institutionalize it.”
This article originally published in the December 5, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
