Educating New Orleans youth who are at risk
6th July 2015 · 0 Comments
A high—quality school can look like many different things, said Elizabeth Ostberg, principal at The Net charter high school.
Over the past four years, The Net, along with the city’s two other alternative schools, ReNEW Accelerated and Crescent Leadership Academy, were created to take on the responsibility of educating the kids most at risk of falling through the cracks of New Orleans’ fragmented public education system.
While most high schools prioritize standardized test scores, graduation rates, and rigid discipline standards, the alternative schools focus more on meeting the kids where they are, academically, socially, and emotionally.
For a variety of different reasons, the kids who attend the alternative schools did not thrive at the “regular” schools in the nearly all-charter landscape.
Most were expelled or dropped out, some have been incarcerated, many are homeless, and others face unique challenges, whether that is mental illness, substance abuse problems, being a parent themselves, or being over-aged or many years behind academically.
And while the city’s elite selective admission high schools continually top the ranks by admitting only the most academically inclined and stable children, it is the education of the hardest to reach children that will truly measure the success of public education reform in New Orleans.
Just last year, the state introduced a new accountability and charter contract renewal system tailored specifically to the alternative schools.
The new framework was approved by the Board of Secondary and Elementary Education (BESE) in March 2014.
According to the Louisiana Department of Education: “Louisiana’s charter schools are held to high academic performance standards and face closure if they do not meet those standards. However, those academic standards may not accurately reflect the challenging work our alternative charter schools are doing. The Department worked in concert with our alternative charter schools to develop a renewal framework that holds alternative charter schools to rigorous academic and performance standards that best reflect their mission to serve our most at-risk students. In order to be eligible for alternative evaluation, a school must have a stated mission to serve an alternative population and must be approved as an alternative school by BESE. Schools are evaluated using a variety of state assessment data and graduation outcomes in a rubric approved by the Department.”
The alternative schools want rigorous accountability and to be held to high standards, but the standards have to look different.
And each of the three alternative schools look different from each other – though all serve students considered “at-risk.”
The Net is small, with a very flexible schedule and a lot of independent learning, trips outside the classroom and internships, and is located on the burgeoning Oretha Castle Haley Blvd. The Net has both kids assigned by the expulsion court, as well as “by choice” students.
Having recently moved to their new West Bank location, Crescent Leadership Academy’s (CLA) campus is tucked away amid leafy trees and green space. CLA runs on a standard school schedule, and offers kids more of the things found at traditional high schools – sports, clubs, and prom. Currently with about 200 students and space to grow, CLA starts in 7th grade, which is the lowest grade of alternative education offered in the city. All of the students at CLA have been expelled from other schools.
ReNEW Accelerated is located Uptown just off Magazine Street, offers a lot of computer-based learning supplemented with one-on-one tutoring, and has about 350 kids. ReNEW has fewer kids assigned through the expulsion process (only about 25), and focuses on accelerating kids who are behind several grade levels. Most of the students at ReNEW are 17-21. After 22, the schools no longer receive per-pupil funding from the state, but School Leader Vasy McCoy said they continue to work with older students who still need credits.
All three are continually adding services and evolving to better meet their students’ needs, and utilize every community partnership and resource available. And all three schools work to open many doors and options for their kids’ future – including, but not limited a four-year college degree.
There is a strong emphasis at all to graduate either college or career ready.
McCoy said he sees it as a disservice to students that the city’s charter schools only focus on four-year colleges, and send the message to their kids that anything else means lowering expectations.
College should be an option, but not the only one, McCoy said. Given the dismal college graduation rates, crippling debt, and a changing job market, college is not the best option for everyone, he said.
The support offered by all three schools does not culminate with a diploma – all three schools focus heavily on the transition into the next phase, whether that is into a two or four-year college, the military, or an apprenticeship program or directly into the workforce.
As they face their first charter renewals, the alternative schools by nature will never meet the same benchmarks for school performance scores or graduation rates. Their mission and their goals are different.
At The Net, Ostberg described an entirely different set of priorities – one not focused on increasing ACT scores. Ostberg said she works to create an environment that is responsive to the individual needs of her students.
Based on extensive national research, Ostberg said The Net operates around four tenants: keeping the school and class size small, building strong relationships between students and staff, an individualized focus and plan for each student, and connecting the student to real-world work experience through their internship program.
At The Net, students develop a daily and weekly schedule that works for them, and pick a graduation date that is realistic, and can be adjusted if needed. The Net operates year-round.
Restorative practices play a big role at The Net, explains Ostberg. While a traditional system of rewards and consequences works in many schools, her students often don’t respond to either. Her staff works with her students to walk through every step of a conflict – why it happened, who was affected, and how it can be resolved. The work can be “a very slow and messy process,” but ultimately they are helping their students to prevent conflicts from escalating, problem-solve on their own, take responsibility, and make better choices.
A large traditional high school setting doesn’t necessarily allow for that kind of work, Ostberg noted.
McCoy said that at ReNEW, they also work heavily on social skills, such as how to respectfully lodge a complaint, how to de-escalate a conflict, how to deal with frustrations, and how to respectfully disagree.
Alternative education in the city has not always been so compassionate.
As the New Orleans experiment nears its 10-year mark, it has only been in the past few years that focus has shifted to the kids who are not being reached, and the kids that carry additional burdens.
A number of recent efforts reflect a response to a school culture where far too many kids were being expelled, counseled out, pushed out, or otherwise excluded from the ubiquitous “zero tolerance” school model.
Prior to the creation of the three alternative schools that exist today, there was Schwarz, a school in eastern New Orleans run directly by the RSD.
A 2009 article in The Times-Picayune by Sarah Carr describes an environment at Schwarz in which discipline was outsourced to Camelot, a private company that encouraged its staff to be aggressive with the kids. A for-profit company, Camelot’s contract with the RSD was worth more than $4 million for operations on three sites including Schwarz.
“Slamming” kids (pinning their arms behind their backs and throwing them against a wall or onto the floor) was a common occurrence, the article details.
One account describes a 17-year-old girl being grabbed by the shoulder by a Camelot employee for wearing a sweater, which was against the dress code. The girl, who was pregnant at the time, then started “getting smart with him,” after which she was thrown against the wall and then body slammed on the ground. The student left and never returned.
And while the kids at Schwarz needed the most, they were given the least, and given up on.
According to Carr’s article, more than three-quarters of Schwarz’s teachers started the school year with less than two years of teaching experience, and the leader had never before been a principal.
The school was packed with Camelot security staff, but lacked teachers and support staff including social workers and mental health experts. They were not given the same supplies and resources as the other schools, such as books, computers, and P.E. supplies.
The building was in dismal condition, describes Carr’s article, with peeling paint, termite damage, broken air conditioning and cracked and decaying walls.
CLA leader Tracy Bennett-Joseph said that when they started their school, they wanted to disassociate from Schwarz as much as possible. The RSD reached out to CLA leaders to take over Schwarz, but CLA wanted an entirely new setting and different approach to serving the kids who had been at Schwarz.
Initially, CLA was the only place serving expelled students.
The three alternative schools of today, though facing the same challenges, are indeed much different environments from the neglect, chaos and abuse described in Carr’s article.
Ostberg noted that the mindset from a place like Schwarz needed to be entirely changed. Instead of treating the kids as the leftovers that no one else wants, “Let’s build an environment that works for them instead of an environment that’s trying to control or punish them.”
Yes, some of these kids have made bad choices, Ostberg said, but they are still kids, and others simply “don’t fit into a traditional environment.”
All three alternative school leaders cited mental health problems as significant among their students, with many suffering from trauma never resolved from Hurricane Katrina, or trauma related to the violence pervasive in their lives.
Many of her students are “living in trauma,” Ostberg said, and are “in the midst of crisis all the time.”
Thus her staff is trained to understand PTSD, and she knows all too well how ongoing trauma can impede a student’s ability to show up at school, much less concentrate on Algebra.
In the approximate three to four years that the three schools have existed, The Net has lost seven students to violence. CLA has lost 14 kids, and ReNEW has lost 13 to gun violence. McCoy said that trauma among his students is “so ubiquitous,” that it’s simply an accepted part of life.
The job for the staff at the alternative schools is not for the faint of heart – all three leaders acknowledge it can be very trying, emotional, stressful, and discouraging. But they also acknowledge the rewards—like the graduation celebrations that attract hundreds in the audience for the dozen or two walking across the stage.
And just as at any school, Ostberg knows the importance of the quality of her staff. “Ultimately everything comes down to the people in the building,” she said.
McCoy said his staff clings to idealism, and the belief that they can change the world.
Many of the students at the alternative schools have been told it’s too late for them, that they are failures and have no futures, or that they will end up dead or in jail.
“A lot of these kids have been written off,” Bennett-Joseph said.
The exact number of kids not in school on any given day is elusive, but the numbers that do exist are troubling.
In a recent report from the Cowen Institute on Public Education Initiatives, it was documented that in the New Orleans Metro Area, between 12,195 and 15,781 low-income youth aged 16-24 are considered “Opportunity Youth” – not working and not in school.
In 2012-13, RSD officials said that 6,500 New Orleans public school students were “chronically absent,” missing more than 10 percent of the school year.
Efforts to reach the hardest to reach have increased, but only in the past few years.
The RSD and OPSB signed a Cooperative Endeavor Agreement largely aimed at better meeting the needs of kids who are chronically absent and lack mental health care and other social services.
The RSD centralized the expulsion process, and standardized the offenses that were expellable. Bennett-Joseph noted that this reduced expulsions, and forced “regular” schools to reexamine their discipline practices and work to keep more of their students in place.
McCoy said that some schools are still worse than others in “coaching out” kids they don’t want, but that overall it is getting better – helped in part by OneApp, which makes it harder to shuffle unwanted kids.
While many schools spend big money on billboards and radio ads, the alternative schools don’t need to advertise.
Ostberg said that she wishes she needed to recruit.
“The city definitely has more kids than the three of us can handle,” Ostberg said.
McCoy said that he doesn’t have to worry about marketing.
The problems that the kids attending the three alternative schools face reflect more larger societal ills.
Ostberg said that she does not see stability in housing situations improving for young people in the city, nor are mental health services, or affordable child care services – the three biggest impediments she sees to her students success.
“Our kids are living with a level of insecurity that is mind-boggling,” she said.
Almost 70 of the 150 kids at The Net fit the state definition of “homeless.” The other schools also have a significant number of kids considered homeless.
By nature, young people want to succeed, Ostberg said, and it isn’t true that her kids are any less motivated. Quite the opposite, she noted, in that many of her students make difficult sacrifices just to be able to attend school.
McCoy said that his kids aren’t different in their ability to learn, or to behave, but often have a myriad of other responsibilities that make simply attending school much more difficult.
They’ve often come in carrying heavy weights, or have experienced significant tragedy, McCoy said.
Bennett-Joseph said she focuses not on why the kids come to CLA, but how they can best address their social, emotional, and academic needs going forward.
“When you realize how hard they fight to come to school, and how hard they fight to do well – it’s not an easy thing, and we really need to respect that,” Ostberg said.
Bennett-Joseph has many plans for growth. Located at a former Catholic Church, she wants to turn the old rectory into a residential facility for students, and the chapel into a gym. She wants to open an on-site childcare center, offer parenting classes, and is exploring the possibility of adding a 6th grade.
McCoy said that his focus is on ensuring that his students are both getting the content, as well as learning to be critical thinkers. The critical thinking part is key, he said, and with that the content tends to come automatically. It’s a different job market and different world today, he noted –“Mechanizing the instruction model is great when you are mechanizing jobs.”
Ostberg identifies the most important part of the conversation moving forward in acknowledging that, “Even in the best system, you still have kids that need something totally different.”
From an economic standpoint, Ostberg calls the investment she and her staff – and the taxpayers – put in, a “Comparatively cheap fix.” Society will pay more for the kids who don’t get their diplomas, and don’t have doors opened for work and higher education opportunities.
Bennett-Joseph said her goal is to give her kids the opportunity to start to write their own story. They may have made bad decisions, but they need patience, consistency, and understanding, she said.
“If we can get alternative education right in New Orleans,” McCoy said, “we can get alternative education right anywhere.”
Schools can be high quality and look very different, Ostberg stressed. What may work for many kids will never work for all kids, she said. “We need to give up the idea of a silver bullet.”
This article originally published in the July 6, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
