Congratulations Dr. Williams
11th April 2022 · 0 Comments
Dr. Avis Williams is the first African American woman to lead the NOLA Public District in its more than 180-year history. Williams, the former Selma, Alabama, school superintendent, brings a depth of classroom, managerial, and community outreach skills to the job.
Orleans Parish School Board President Olin Parker lauded Williams’ breadth of experience as a sergeant in U.S. Army, a teacher, principal, assistant principal, principal, and Superintendent, and Dr. Williams’ commitment to working to increase academic achievement, expand access to mental health services for students, and engage deeply with all community members.
Dr. Williams’ bio shows her lengthy, award-winning education career. She is eminently qualified, and we welcome this credentialed educator to New Orleans. Simultaneously, we offer Dr. Williams our thoughts and prayers because she needs tons of support to navigate the disjointed Orleans Parish charter school system.
If Williams enjoys taking on challenges and winning, she’s the right person at the right time to deal with the nation’s first all-charter school system financed by public tax dollars.
Among the challenges lurking in the shadows is a Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) that twists and turns and concocts all kinds of grading and student measurement schemes to gradually make the nation’s all-charter district succeed.
Take, for instance, the LDOE’s letter grade system for the district and schools’ performance scores.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) waived all of its policies related to the production of School Performance Scores (SPS) and letter grades for the 2020-2021 school year. In their place, the Department released simulated School Performance Scores, which are unofficial results that show what performance scores would have been in 2020-2021.
Orleans Parish earned a letter grade of C based on a 63.8 SPS. In 2019 the district also got a C letter grade, but that year’s total SPS score was higher at 67.8.
NOLA.com reported in 2019 that although NOLA Public Schools District received a C grade, “A whopping 35 of the 72 schools in the all-charter district scored a D or F, meaning nearly half of the local public schools were considered failing, or close to it, in the school year ending in 2019. Since then, six of the 35 have closed.”
What’s disingenuous about the BESE and the LDOE scoring matrix is that in Louisiana, a 63.8 or 67.8 letter grade is a C, but the College Board defines a C letter grade as a 73-76 score, C+ 77-79, and C- 70-72. On that same matrix, a letter grade D is defined as a 65-66 score, D+ is a 67-69, and an F below 65.
Still, failing grades are the least of Williams’ worries. According to the job description, “The next Superintendent will be expected to build a robust, sustainable education system that can endure and provide a quality education through challenging times and regional natural disasters. Additionally, the unique portfolio of the NOLA-PS system of one-hundred percent charter schools will require an understanding of a charter system’s organization and cultural structure.”
“The Superintendent serves as the executive officer of the school district and secretary to the Board. Together, the seven-member Board, the Superintendent, and the district office, are responsible for setting standards for student, program, and operational performance, while respecting the local School-Based Decision-Making autonomy of each school.”
In other words, despite the charter schools being brought back under the jurisdiction of the NOLA Public Schools, the charter schools are “autonomous,” and still an experimental process as the state law dictates. The charter schools are not accountable to the so-called “NOLA Public Schools,” nor parents or the general public.
The only thing public about the NOLA Public Schools is its funding sources, local, state, and federal tax dollars. Otherwise, the schools are independently run like corporations.
A school’s charter can be revoked, however, usually during its renewal period. The Superintendent can recommend revocation, but even then, a super-majority vote by the Orleans Parish School Board is necessary.
Williams, a Delta Sigma Theta soro, must also figure out how to desegregate the school district. The Cowen Institute published demographic info in its 2019-2020 report, “The State of Public Education in New Orleans”:
• The city’s schools serve students of color (89.6%) primarily and/or students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds (83.4%). While most of the city’s public school students are Black (76.4%), there has been an increase in the number of White and Latinx students in New Orleans public schools in recent years.
• Enrollment in New Orleans public schools remains primarily segregated along racial and socioeconomic lines. The relatively small percentage of White students in New Orleans public schools is concentrated mainly in A and B schools and selective admissions schools (75% of White students attend an A or B school). Meanwhile, fewer than five percent of White students attend a D or F school.
• Conversely, almost half of Black and Latinx students (45% and 46%, respectively) attend C schools, while 30 percent of Black students and 20 percent of Latinx students attend D/F schools. Less than a quarter (24%) of Black students and roughly one-third (33%) of Latinx students attend A/B schools.
There’s also the fact that some schools are still named for segregationists and confederate members in a city that is 59 percent black with a predominately black student body in its school district.
One of those schools made national news in a January 2022 Time Magazine article: “Public Schools Are Struggling to Retain Black Teachers. These Ex-Teachers Explain Why.”
In the expose, Christa Talbott, a 20-year black veteran of New Orleans schools, began to push for change at Robert Mills Lusher. This A school bears the last name of a Confederate official and dedicated proponent of school segregation. At Lusher, in 2020, 13 percent of teachers were Black compared with 22 percent of the students.
“I was tired of being quiet,” she says. “I was tired of sitting back so that white people could feel comfortable.” Her efforts didn’t go well.
Research shows that schools struggle less with recruiting diverse educators than retaining them: between 1988 and 2018, the number of teachers of color hired by the country’s schools increased at a faster rate than the number of white teachers, yet those diverse educators also left their positions much more quickly, on average.
Research also shows that students of color perform better academically and are more likely to stay in school when exposed to teachers of their race or ethnicity. White students benefit too.
The brain drain may also be attributed to the $43.929 average teacher salary.
Families and children are defined as poor if family income is below the federal poverty threshold. The federal poverty threshold for a family of four with two children was $25,926 in 2019. Research suggests that, on average, families need an income of about twice the federal poverty threshold to meet their most basic needs. Children living in families with incomes below this level—$51,852 for a family of four with two children in 2019—are referred to as low income.
The new Superintendent may have to consider raising entry-level salaries to retain teachers.
Williams brings to the job a plan to focus on every student every day. She is committed to ensuring students learn in a trauma-informed school setting and that mental health services are available for students and staff.
The award-winning educator is noted to increase student achievement in high-poverty schools and improve community support. In Selma, she increased district scores, the graduation rate, reading schools, and math scores. Williams also achieved the distinction as the only district in Alabama to earn the Pathway Tier I and Tier II Performance Excellence Awards through the Alabama Performance Excellence Program.
We wish Dr. Williams much success and hope she is the right person at the right time to turn this failing charter school system around. Our children’s futures depend on her leadership.
This article originally published in the April 11, 2022 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
