If failure is not an option, why do we continue to fail our students
18th December 2023 · 0 Comments
The rash of state takeovers of public schools washed across the nation in the late 1990s, backed by the big lie that urban schools were failing students and not sufficiently educating youth. State leaders, from the generosity of their paternalistic/maternalistic little hearts, just had to do something to rescue those poor Black and brown children from the miseducation they were receiving.
That was the propaganda emanating from overt calls for accountability and educational excellence. It was Louisiana’s excuse for a takeover of Orleans Parish Public Schools and its $800 million budget.
The Louisiana Department of Education and its Board of Elementary and Secondary Education pushed legislation that allowed one test, LEAP, and its failing scores, to justify the hostile takeover of a system run by a majority-Black elected school board in a 70 percent Black population in Orleans Parish and a city council that was predominantly African American.
Aside from keeping back 4th and 8th graders who failed the one-size-fits-all test, the state would later use test scores to fire experienced OPPS teachers after Hurricane Katrina and replace them with less educated, non-specialty and often uncertified teachers.
It’s been 23 years since the first LEAP test was given, and 80,000 students failed it. If you ask the Department of Education, progress has been made since then, which is just more propaganda. For example, when is a letter grade of “C,” not a “C?” Answer: A “C” is not a “C” when it is a “D.”
One generally accepted measurement defines a “C” between 70 -79 percent and a “D” letter grade between 59-69. A 2.0 GPA requires a “C” between 73 and 76 percent. However, according to the Louisiana Department of Education, a “C” is 65 to 79.9 percent, and a “D” is 50.0 to 64.9 percent.
While test scores were the main assessment tools, in later years, seeing massive test failures continue, the LDOE decided to expand the grading rubric to include school performance scores (based on student assessments, graduation rates, college and career readiness and progress points) and other ethereal measures for determining whether schools are meeting the education goals set by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, dubbed the nation’s report card, which compares students’ academic progress across the nation.
But schools are still failing in the nation’s first all-charter school district. When the LDOE released school performance scores last November, five New Orleans charters received an “F.” In December, Public Schools Superintendent Avis Williams announced the closing of one school, and two others had their charters revoked.
For more than two decades, certain politicians have used New Orleans students as guinea pigs on a plantation whose crop – educational excellence – dies on the vine, along with students’ aspirations for a better educational outcome.
If failure is not an option, why do elected officials continue to fail our children? If charter schools are not subject to intense oversight, correction or accountability, then the Orleans Parish School Board is useless, and there’s no need for a central office and superintendent.
As a matter of fact, why do the Louisiana Department of Education and the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education exist if charter schools are so great?
The Orleans Parish School Board passed a $555 million budget in 2022. Much of that money flows through the NOLA Public Schools district to charter schools on a per-pupil basis. The central office has a $35 million general operating fund, The Lens reported. The LDOE’s budget is about $5 billion. Who would spend that money if the Department and BESE didn’t exist?
And who would be in charge of closing school facilities in neighborhoods where students need schools, taking the names of Black achievers off of some schools, selling others for profit, and allowing developers to create condos and senior citizen apartments if the Orleans Parish School Board and superintendent weren’t in the mix.
Corporatists in government masking as elected officials, it turns out, are only interested in taking tax dollars from Black-run institutions and putting them in the hands of autonomous charter schools, which are allowed to operate without oversight or accountability until their contracts are up for renewal, which can be up to five- and 10-year stretches.
If failure is not an option, why do state and local education leaders continue to fail New Orleans students?
This article originally published in the December 18, 2023 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
