The miseducation of Louisiana children continues!
29th April 2024 · 0 Comments
Kenny Rogers’ song, “The Gambler,” offers excellent advice to supporters of charter schools. Unfortunately, like lemmings over a cliff, charter school proponents blindly refuse to fold their hands and walk away from the failed education experiment they’ve created.
When the state’s vacuous school standards are added to autonomous charter schools, a recipe for disaster emerges that is equivalent to the miseducation of Louisiana’s public school students, especially Black children who comprise the majority of charter school students in New Orleans, which became the first city in the state to foster an all-charter school experiment.
In addition to charter schools operating without oversight, timely correction of any problems isn’t possible.
Still, the most damaging factor aside from rudderless schools is the absurd state curriculum, which is neither age-appropriate nor college-driven. The curriculum does not prepare all children for future careers that do not require college but are lucrative nonetheless.
Who doesn’t need a plumber, electrician, HVAC specialist, or appliance service person? Who doesn’t require physical therapists, occupational therapists, or computer repair people? Who doesn’t need barbers, cosmetologists, cooks, chefs, or salespeople?
Everyone who graduates is not going to college for various reasons: colleges are expensive, some people don’t want to attend college, and, worst of all, some can’t meet the entrance requirements…. that’s if they can graduate given the state’s challenging curriculum standards.
Recently, a student named James dropped his classwork or homework on the ground. The seventh grader’s schoolwork was recovered by a member of this newspaper’s editorial team who had a jaw-drop moment. That reporter learned that in science class, James is learning about genotypes and phenotypes. He understands that depending on inherited genes, an organism can be heterozygous or homozygous and possess dominant or recessive traits. By knowing the genotype, James can determine the phenotype (how an organism looks).
By the time James answered three questions and got to a table expressing “Mendel’s Traits and Symbols for Pea Plants,” he hadn’t answered 15 questions identifying the genotype of the pea plants based on its phenotype.
James’ math exercise document was copied from a workbook with two panels of color with equations in them. Only, one can barely see the equation because when a page with color on it is photocopied in black ink only, the boxes turn a very dark gray.
He must still answer the math word problem about Michaela’s scuba diving excursion.
James’ paperwork was found in a predominantly Black neighborhood, so it’s more than likely that he is a young Black boy. Has he ever been scuba diving? Does he know about meters below the ocean’s surface and its depths?
We don’t know if James is Black or another ethnicity. But if he is, the scuba diving question could be culturally biased if he has never been exposed to that activity.
Other culturally biased questions on James’ classwork may disadvantage a Black student who may not have had such experiences:
“Alliyah was hiking and climbing a mountain. This math question involves the mountain’s base at sea level, Alliyah’s descent below that, and her hiking up a summit to reach 1,340 feet. Or the question about Ryan’s banking and spending habits? And how much Ryan charges his bank card for tickets for him and three friends.”
And the question about a marine biologist in a submarine? James answered none of those questions.
Those questions are interesting, at the very least, but confusing for students unaware of those activities. It’s like asking a child who has never sailed where the bow and the stern are.
The state legislature passed a bill in 2023 that states if a third grader fails the LEAP ELA (English Language Arts) test, the child will repeat third grade. Governor John Bel Edwards signed the bill into law, effective in the 2024-2025 school year.
It’s only common sense that the bill is aimed at children who can’t read in third grade. Still, Louisiana’s curriculum standards suggest an ELA education far beyond reading that can lead to a child failing the LEAP ELA, being held back, and possibly graduating at age 19 or 20.
Here’s a snapshot of Louisiana’s Third-Grade ELA Reading Standards: “Determine the meaning of words and phrases in a text, distinguishing literal from nonliteral language. When writing or speaking about a text, refer to parts of stories, dramas, and poems, using terms such as chapter, scene, and stanza; describe how each successive part builds on earlier sections. Distinguish the student’s point of view from that of the narrator or the characters.”
But don’t take our word for Louisiana’s curriculum standards being over the heads of students. Check out the K-12 Standards at www.louisianabelieves.com/docs/default-source/teacher-toolbox-resources/k-12-ela-standards.pdf.
Meanwhile, as the curriculum becomes more complex with each grade level, rather than having one cohesive school system with an elected school board in New Orleans, the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing regarding charter schools. However, the principals are making more now than principals who worked in the consolidated school district before the “no choice” Recovery School District state takeover occurred.
The Recovery School District is defunct, but the independent charter school districts it created are still trying to educate children. And there is still no choice in a system sold exclusively to parents to choose where their children are educated.
You’d think brighter minds would prevail after two decades of consistent failures in the nearly all-charter school district in New Orleans.
For a minute, sanity appeared to have returned to legislators and BESE (Board of Elementary and Secondary Education) last year when a bill passed that mandated children be taught cursive writing.
After all, if one doesn’t know cursive writing, how will that person develop a signature? This is one of the most defining aspects of an individual’s unique traits.
Instead, Republican state legislators are all involved in the education process, giving extra benefits to homeschooled children, pushing bills to further codify charter schools’ autonomous nature, and using public education dollars to pay for private school education.
Senate Bill 350 by the right Reverend Rick Edmonds, a Republican who represents the gerrymandered District 6, aims to take all controls off charter schools and take what little power the Orleans Parish School Board has to authorize charters and cancel contracts and put the state Department of Education in a decision-making capacity over all charters. In the past, the DOE was only over the type of charters under the control of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BEDE).
Edmonds’ bill reasserts charter schools’ operational autonomy. The sleight of hand 2017 law, which claimed to have returned the schools to the elected Orleans Parish School Board, was a total sham. That law allowed the charter schools to continue to operate autonomously.
SB 350 confirms the charters’ autonomy over everything: school programming, instruction, curriculum, materials, texts, calendars and schedules; personnel, employment, salaries and benefits; educator certification and evaluation; performance management; participation in retirement planning and collective bargaining; and budgeting, purchasing, procurement, contracts, food service and transportation management.
This begs the question, why is there a need for an elected school board? The Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) is over the Orleans Parish Public Schools, which oversees six schools. The architects of the failed school choice experiment didn’t want to make former “magnet” school students guinea pigs.
Not only were those six schools the highest-performing schools, but most had predominantly white student bodies. As such, it was not good to fix what wasn’t broken.
It was OK to make Black students into guinea pigs. Hence, the architects of the charters further broke what was already broken and paid the schools’ overseers a lot of money for very few accomplishments.
It comes down to this: The school choice fallacy was a way to take millions out of the public school system, control the predominantly Black school board, and give the money to corporatists who are still making bank on the backs of Black families.
The charter school system in New Orleans is the new plantation.
This article originally published in the April 29, 2024 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
