NOCS: School choice and student experiences
10th January 2022 · 0 Comments
By C.C. Campbell-Rock
Contributing Writer
Part II
“Despite a number of fiscal and management problems, at the end of the 2004–05 school year, 88 of the more than 120 public schools in Orleans Parish had met or exceeded the state’s requirement for adequate yearly progress, and 93 of the schools showed academic growth. The OPSB (Orleans Parish School Board) was making progress in improving achievement before Hurricane Katrina hit,” according to the authors of Whose Choice? Student Experiences and Outcomes in the New Orleans School Marketplace, a 2015 study written by Frank Adamson, Channa Cook-Harvey & Linda Darling-Hammond and published by the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education at Stanford University.
Frank Adamson is Assistant Professor of Education Leadership and Policy Studies at California State University-Sacramento, Channa Cook-Harvey is the Executive Director of District and School Support for Sacramento County Office of Education, and Linda Darling-Hammond is the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education Emeritus at Stanford University and founding president of the Learning Policy Institute.
Even though data showed Orleans Parish public schools improving based on state-mandated high stakes tests, Hurricane Katrina in 2005 created the perfect storm of opportunity for the state’s hostile takeover of the Orleans Parish public schools.
There were no good reasons for taking over the schools other than the determination of pro-charter school state elected officials determination to create the world’s first all-charter school district.
The Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education’s (BESE) initial reason for taking over the school system was financial mismanagement and fraud claims. Money was allegedly missing.
The subsequent justification was the schools were failing to meet statewide accountability standards based on one high-stakes LEAP test. Never mind that the curriculum didn’t match textbooks. Also, the secret high-stakes test administered to fourth and eighth graders was based on a national curriculum that should have begun in kindergarten.
“The fortuitous events of Hurricane Katrina and the passage of Act 35 placing approximately 102 New Orleans Schools under the control of the State of Louisiana through the Recovery School District drastically impacted the infrastructure and financial standing of the district,” according to the Louisiana Supreme Court Majority Opinion in Eddie OLIVER, Oscarlene Nixon, and Mildred Goodwin v. ORLEANS PARISH SCHOOL BOARD. Oliver, Nixon, and Goodwin were among 7600 educators and para-professionals who sued the school board for being terminated without due process.
However, the effort to privatize the public schools in New Orleans began years before Katrina. In 2003, the Louisiana Legislature passed Act 9 to create the Recovery School District (RSD) to take over the operations of “failing schools,” defined as schools that do not meet the minimum academic standards for at least four consecutive years.
BESE members Leslie Jacobs and Paul Pastorek and State Representative Carl N. Crane, East Baton Rouge Parish, State Representatives Steve Scalise, Karen Carter, and State Senator Ann Duplessis, from Orleans Parish, among others, led the school takeover.
Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco signed Act 35 into law on November 30, 2005, and BESE transferred over 100 Orleans Parish schools to the RSD. As of the 2014–15 school year, the RSD oversees 57 charter schools operating in New Orleans.
WHOSE CHOICE?
The Stanford study pointed out that School Boards initiated charter schools across the U.S. for the express purpose of giving families a choice of schools with different philosophies and programs that fit their preferences and needs.
“In New Orleans each school or network of charter schools functions independently. Each school can develop its own philosophy and practices with little to no support, guidance, or oversight from a central office.,” they observed.
While acknowledging the benefits of schools’ freedom to experiment with a range of teaching methods, the writers said the absence of common standards or a system of oversight doesn’t necessarily lead to best practices or ethical principles.
When the authors visited several Orleans Parish charter schools, they found an unequal educational delivery system, broken down along racial lines.
They found stark differences in student populations and educational practices between the most advantaged schools and those serving less advantaged students. They found that there was no choice for parents and students in reality. The One App Enrollment system was supposed to offer parents and students three schools of their choice. But most seldom gained admission to those schools.
“In a high-performing school (formerly called magnet schools) welcoming signs point to the principal’s office, and students, most of whom are white, chat as they move from class to class, carrying books and computers to support their work. By contrast, it is almost impossible to walk into many RSD charter schools because of the security guards and metal detectors stationed at the entrance. Once inside, lines on the floor show the direction students must walk.”
“Between classes, mostly African-American students walk in silence in a single file along these lines, overseen every 20 feet by young teachers. They usually carry no textbooks because most are given none from which to study. Often, they eat lunches in silence, track teachers with their eyes, respond only when spoken to, and obey other measures at the risk of entering the demerit, detention, suspension, and expulsion cycle,” the authors observed.
“One group of students is being prepared for a world of college and careers in which they will engage in knowledge work demanding critical thinking and problem-solving. The other is being prepared for something very different—in their own words, “the military or jail.”
“Even parents who were sufficiently resourceful and lucky to successfully procure a spot in the selective schools for their child acknowledged the inequity inherent in the process. One parent said, ‘What that tells me is that the admissions policies and practices are favoring certain kinds of kids. To me it’s discriminatory. Yeah, I mean I should be happy my child has been in there, he’s been in there all of these years, but I see the kind of kids who don’t make it at that school.’ Another parent bluntly criticized the existence of selective admission schools: “I thought, “This is crazy.” I’m like, “Look, you’re a public entity, you can’t have more stringent requirements than this public entity to make yourself more selective…. like, this is all public dollars, sorry.”
In addition, most black students are excluded from the selective admissions process of high-performing schools. These schools are exempt from the One App Enrollment system. They use admission tests, student grades, and other admission criteria, the schools are segregated. The majority of white students attend high-performing schools under the jurisdiction of the BESE or the NOLA Public Schools, while the majority of blacks attend failing charter schools.
Student Experiences
The authors spoke with students about their educational experience. Here’s what they learned:
In the fall of 2013, students enrolled in two RSD charter high schools in New Orleans organized a walkout in protest of academic, disciplinary, and interpersonal treatment in their schools; the school’s administration, in response to the students’ protest, subsequently suspended the students. The students then collaborated on a letter to the charter management organization’s school board and administration and submitted a list of “concerns and requests.” What follows are excerpts from their letter:
Academics:
(1) We learned material that we already knew in middle school. The work is below our grade level. We want to learn material that reflects our abilities.
(2) We only study from our “guided notes” – we have no textbooks to review when we study. We want textbooks. We want to be able to bring textbooks home and read them.
(3) We don’t have a library. We are only allowed to check out books that teachers keep in the back of our classroom, and we can only check out books on our grade level, nothing else. We want a school library, and we want to be able to read books that teach us beyond our grade level.
(4) Teachers put a colored sticker on the side of our books to indicate our reading ability. Because these stickers are visible in public, everyone in the school knows your reading grade level. Teachers also post our test grades in the hallway with our names. Everyone knows everyone else’s test scores. We want our reading levels and our test scores to be private.
School Discipline:
(1) We get disciplined for anything and everything. We get detentions or suspensions for not walking on the taped lines in the hallway, for slouching, for not raising our hands in a straight line. The teachers and administrators tell us this is because they are preparing us for college. But walking on tape doesn’t prepare us for college. It trains us for the military, or worse, for jail. If college is going to be like [these schools], we don’t want to go to college.
(2) We spend so much time having to shake everyone’s hands in the morning, and we have to do it firmly, tracking eyes, and with a smile. And then we have to recite our “core values” – which is a pledge we have to memorize and say just to get into the building. If we don’t do it correctly, we have to start all over again. If we are having a rough day because of something we experienced at home or in our neighborhood, and we don’t feel like shaking hands or smiling, the school sends us home. We are not even allowed to have a bad day.
(3) We get suspended for trying to ask why we must do certain things – teachers consider this to be “disrespect” and it is the most common reason we get suspended from school.
(4) Sometimes teachers take things as disrespect when they aren’t meant to be disrespectful. Asking questions about why something is done a certain way shouldn’t be considered disrespectful. We want to know why we have to do these things. We want answers and suspending us for asking questions isn’t an appropriate response.
(5) Instead of giving us discipline that is an appropriate response for our actions, we are given an “early release.” We get handed a bus token and told to leave campus. But 24 because so many kids are given early release and have nowhere to go, we have students hanging out in Joe Brown Park, at the public library, or at Wendy’s, without adult supervision, when they should be in school. We aren’t getting an education when we’re not in school.
(6) We want a discipline policy that doesn’t suspend kids for every little thing. Suspensions should only be used for very serious matters. We want a discipline policy that keeps kids in school, learning.
Respect for Students:
(1) Students don’t have a voice at [the schools]. Students can’t ask questions, and we don’t have any say in school policies. We can’t explain ourselves. We also get talked to like little kids, or sometimes like animals. We want our teachers to treat us with respect, and we want to have a say in the school policies.
(2) The teachers don’t connect with us or where we come from. There are no black teachers. The only black role models we have at the school are janitors, cafeteria workers, secretaries, security guards, and coaches. Some of the teachers are racially insensitive. None of the teachers are from New Orleans. They can’t relate to us, our neighborhoods, or our community. They have no respect for our customs and culture, and simply want to make us more like them without understanding us and our background.
School Meals:
(1) We don’t get hot meals. Breakfast is a stale muffin, old milk, and an unripe pear. Not only is the quality bad, but we don’t get enough food to make it through the day. We can’t bring our own lunch, and sometimes we go home hungry. Some of the kids at the school don’t get fed at home. We are not allowed to share food with other students, so some kids go home hungry and don’t get dinner that night.
(2) We want hot meals and healthy food with taste. We want a good quantity of food. We want to be able to bring our lunch from home. And we want to be able to share food with other students.
Adamson, Cook-Harvey, and Darling-Hammond offered an in-depth look at the various configurations of Orleans Parish’s charter schools in their 72-page study. They presented data, findings, and testimonials of teachers, students, and parents in their assessment of the nation’s first all-charter system.
Whose Choice? Student Experiences and Outcomes in the New Orleans School Marketplace
Conclusions & Findings
“This study sought to better understand students’ school experiences and outcomes in a post-Katrina market-based portfolio district. Based on respondents’ experiences and district data, as well as a review of existing research, policies, and documents, we find that the New Orleans reforms have created a set of schools that are highly stratified by race, class, and educational advantage, operating in a hierarchy that provides very different types of schools serving different “types” of children.
Although the education reform movement post-Katrina was intended to improve the educational options for all New Orleans children, the changes implemented have not benefited student populations evenly.
The most advantaged students—mainly white, non-poor, and/or academically able—have admirable choices of attractive schools. Meanwhile, the least advantaged—those who have special education needs, have suffered traumas, or have challenging home situations—have few, if any, choices they desire and are actively avoided by schools that are able to manage their student enrollments (including many that are designated as open enrollment). These students take what they are given and frequently lose it again when they are pushed out or their school is closed. Some students get lucky in the lottery; others get lost in the shuffle.
While studies using different comparison groups provide different views about whether educational outcomes have improved for students in New Orleans, it is clear that the New Orleans RSD continues to be one of the lowest-performing districts in one of the lowest-performing states in the U.S. It is not obvious what lessons other districts should draw from this experiment at this point.
The greater success of the Orleans Parish School Board, which was not part of the state takeover and was not converted entirely to charters, could be viewed as counter-evidence for the claims that the RSD takeover strategy is a silver bullet for others to emulate. However, OPSB has benefited from the fact that it now serves few of the neediest students in the city and can manage its enrollments to keep many of those students out.
Our research and that of others find that school leaders spend a great deal of time marketing their product and managing the student population to attract the better performing students and avoid those who struggle while focusing instruction on boosting test scores.
Fewer schools describe themselves as taking up the more challenging work of transforming educational quality for the highest-need students as a means to meet their goals. Many confess that they do not know what to do to improve the quality of learning their high-need students’ experience, and there are few opportunities for them to access this knowledge.
Ultimately, a successful system reform will promote high-quality school experiences for all students in non-segregated settings that safeguard children’s rights of access to supportive learning opportunities.
In the context of a school portfolio, such a successful reform will also support school improvement in ways that ultimately create a set of schools worth choosing, in which every child will choose and be chosen by the schools that meet their needs. That system has not yet been created in New Orleans. History will tell whether it can be developed. Likely, acknowledging the realities of the experiences of the most vulnerable children is a necessary first step in that direction.
Editors’ Note: The authors of Whose Choice? Student Experiences and Outcomes in the New Orleans School Marketplace were exceptionally critical of the RSD. Indeed, while charter school operators, pro-charter elected officials, and the LDOE kept changing performance standards to make it appear students were passing, nonetheless, the majority of charter schools were racking up failing school performance scores annually.
On May 12, 2016, Governor John Bel Edwards signed SB 432, sponsored by Senators Peterson, Appel, Barrow, Bishop, Boudreaux, Brown, Carter, Claitor, Colomb, Mills and Morrell and Representatives Bagneris, Gary Carter, Jimmy Harris, Hilferty, Leger, and Moreno into law as Act 91. Act 91 provided for the unification of public schools in Orleans Parish under oversight by the Orleans Parish School Board and its Superintendent in 2018.
Although ACT 91 transferred charter schools from the RSD to the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB—an elected body with little authority over the schools), the law didn’t give control of the schools back to the OPSB or its Superintendent (who leads what is called NOLA-PS. Instead, the law gave returning charter school operators total autonomy over the schools.
“To ensure the appropriate level of autonomy to enable educators to successfully prepare students for success in college and career: (1) Unless mutually agreed to by both the charter school’s governing authority and the local school board pursuant to a duly authorized resolution adopted by each governing entity, the local school board shall not impede the operational autonomy of a charter school under its jurisdiction in the areas of school programming, instruction, curriculum, materials and texts, yearly school calendars and daily schedules, hiring and firing of personnel, employee performance management and evaluation, terms and conditions of employment, teacher or administrator certification, salaries and benefits, retirement, collective bargaining, budgeting, purchasing, procurement, and contracting for services other than capital repairs and facilities construction.” – ACT 91
In 2022, the charter school system in Orleans Parish remains intact. Of 83 schools, NOLA-PS (New Orleans Louisiana Public Schools) claims 76 schools, the BESE operates six schools, and the Louisiana State Legislature runs one school. Charter schools under NOLA-PS can petition the OPSB for independent LEA (Local Education Authority) status.
There’re no standard policies across the school system. The only standardization involved in these schools is standardized tests. Otherwise, every school is doing its own thing without accountability or oversight.
Next Week: New Orleans Charter Schools: Part 3 – The State Auditor’s Charter School Performance Report.
This article originally published in the January 10, 2022 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
