Fighting
For The Right To Learn
By Bill Quigley
07 August, 2007
Countercurrents.org
“Of all the civil rights for which the world has struggled
and fought for 5,000 years, the right to learn is undoubtedly the most
fundamental…The freedom to learn…has been bought by bitter
sacrifice. And whatever we may think of the curtailment of other civil
rights, we should fight to the last ditch to keep open the right to
learn.”
W.E. B. DuBois, “The
Freedom to Learn.” (1949).
"Education is the
property of no one. It belongs to the people as a whole. And if education
is not given to the people, they will have to take it."
Che Guevara
""We wanted
charter schools to open and take the majority of the students. That
didn't happen, and now we have the responsibility of educating the 'leftover'
children."
Louisiana Board
of Elementary and Secondary School Member (2007)
There is a massive experiment
being performed on thousands of primarily African American children
in New Orleans. No one asked the permission of the children. No one
asked permission of their parents. This experiment involves a fight
for the education of children.
This is the experiment.
The First Half
Half of the nearly 30,000
children expected to enroll in the fall of 2007 in New Orleans public
schools have been enrolled in special public schools, most called charter
schools. These schools have been given tens of millions of dollars by
the federal government in extra money, over and above their regular
state and local money, to set up and operate. These special public schools
are not open to every child and do not allow every student who wants
to attend to enroll. Some charter schools have special selective academic
criteria which allow them to exclude children in need of special academic
help. Other charter schools have special admission policies and student
and parental requirements which effectively screen out many children.
The children in this half of the experiment are taught by accredited
teachers in manageable sized classes. There are no overcrowded classes
because these charter schools have enrollment caps which allow them
to turn awaystudents. These schools also educate far fewer students
with academic or emotional disabilities. Children in charter schools
are in better facilities than the other half of the children. These
schools are getting special grants from Laura Bush to rebuild their
libraries and grants from other foundations to help them educate. These
schools do educate some white children along with African American children.
These are public schools, but they are not available to all the public
school students.
The Other Half
The other half of public
school students, over ten thousand children, have been assigned to a
one year old experiment in public education run by the State of Louisiana
called the “Recovery School District” (RSD) program. The
education these children receive will be compared to the education received
by the first half in the charter schools. These children are effectively
what is called the “control group” of an experiment –
those against whom the others will be evaluated.
The RSD schools have not been given millions of extra federal dollars
to operate. The new RSD has inexperienced leadership. Many critical
vacancies exist in their already insufficient district-wide staff. Many
of the teachers are uncertified. In fact, the RSD schools do not yet
have enough teachers, even counting the uncertified, to start school
in the fall of 2007. Some of the RSD school buildings scheduled to be
used for the fall of 2007 have not yet been built.
In the first year of this experiment, the RSD had one security guard
for every 37 students. Students at John McDonough High said their RSD
school, which employed more guards than teachers, had a “prison
atmosphere.” In some schools, children spent long stretches of
their school days in the gymnasium waiting for teachers to show up to
teach them.
There is little academic
or emotional counseling in the RSD schools. Children with special needs
suffer from lack of qualified staff. College prep math and science classes
and language immersion are rarely offered. Class rooms keep filling
up as new children return back to New Orleans and are assigned to RSD
schools.
Many of the RSD schools do
not have working kitchens or water fountains. Bathroom facilities are
scandalous – teachers at one school report there are two bathrooms
for the entire school, one for all the male students, faculty and staff
and another for all the females in the building.
Danatus King, of the NAACP in New Orleans, said “What happened
last year was a tragedy. Many of the city’s children were denied
an education last year because of a failure to plan on the part of the
RSD.”
Hardly any white children
attend this half of the school experiment.
These are the public schools
available to the rest of the public school students.
Who Started This
Experiment
After Katrina, groups in New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Washington DC
saw an opportunity to radically restructure public education in New
Orleans and turn many public schools into publicly funded charter schools.
Charter schools are publicly funded schools that have far more freedom
to select the children they admit, more freedom in the way they operate,
and more freedom in the hiring and firing of teachers.
This experiment has been
controversial from the beginning.
Some people are very critical.
According to a recent report on this experiment by New Orleans teachers,
right after Katrina “a well-organized and well-financed national
network of charter school advocates hastened the conversion of public
schools by waiving previous requirements.” Without input from
parents or teachers, these folks engaged in what the teachers called
a “massive takeover experiment with the children of New Orleans
at a time when most parents and students were widely dispersed in other
parishes and states.” See NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY: How the New
Orleans Takeover Experiment Devalues Experienced Teachers,” June
2007, (hereafter New Orleans Teachers Report) available at:
http://www.aft.org/presscenter/
releases/downloads/NoExperReport_07.pdf
Supporters like Governor
Blanco hailed the experiment as "an opportunity to do something
incredible." Others agreed. "We are using this as an opportunity
to take what was one of the worst school systems around and create one
of the best and most competitive school systems in America," said
Walter Isaacson, vice chairman of the Louisiana Recovery Authority.
"This is an unprecedented opportunity to rebuild the school system
the way it should be," says Scott Cowen, president of Tulane University.
The Tulane Scott Cowen Institute and other supporters have authored
their own report on the experiment, STATE OF PUBLIC EDUCATION IN NEW
ORLEANS, June 2007, (hereafter the Cowen Report) available at: http://www.stateofnolaschools.org/NO_FINAL.pdf
How Government Created This Experiment
This experiment was started
and approved while students and parents were not around to participate
in the decision. Before Katrina, the process of creating a charter school
was legally required to first have the approval of parents and teachers.
Supporters of this experiment, many if not most of who do not have children
in public schools, repeatedly argue that this experiment creates “choice”
for at least half the parents and students. The irony is that few parents
had any choice at all in creating the experiment involving their children.
The very first public school converted to a charter was done on September
15, 2005, while almost all the city remained closed to residents. The
school board did not even hold the meeting in New Orleans.
While President Bush may
have been slow to react in other areas after the storm, he made a bold
push right after Katrina to help convert public schools to charters.
On September 30, 2005, the
U.S. Department of Education pledged $20.9 million to Louisiana for
post-Katrina charter schools. The federal government offered no comparable
funding to reestablish traditional neighborhood or district schools.
In early October 2005, Governor
Blanco issued an executive order which waived state laws which required
faculty and parent approval to convert a regular public school to a
charter school. The Orleans School Board then used this waiver to convert
all 13 schools in the less-flooded Algiers community of New Orleans
to charter schools without parent or teacher approval.
Then all four thousand public
school teachers in New Orleans, members of the largest union in Louisiana,
were fired – along with support staff.
The rest of the takeover
was accomplished in November 2005 under new rules enacted by the Louisiana
legislature. All this while most of the families of public school students
remained displaced, many hundreds of miles away.
The New Orleans Teachers
Report complained that “Proponents of the New Orleans takeover
experiment created the false impression that the hurricane forced the
state takeover or that a fair and uniform accountability system led
to the state’s action. In fact, the state changed the rules and
targeted New Orleans schools in an attempt to convert all schools to
charter status, not just the failing ones. Most charter schools are
pre-existing schools that were converted to charter status. After the
mass charter school conversions in the three months following Katrina,
the RSD…authorized only three more charters….Of the 12 schools,
the operation of all but three have been given to providers who are
based out of state.”
Many foundations are contributing
large sums of money to the experiment.
For example, the Laura Bush
Foundation has generously donated millions of dollars to rebuild school
libraries in schools along the gulf coast. Her foundation has given
tens of thousands of dollars in grants to rebuild the libraries of 13
schools in New Orleans – 8 of which are charter schools and 5
are private catholic schools. Not one is a RSD regular public school.
How the Experiment
Actually Operates
With a few exceptions, the
state of Louisiana essentially now controls the public school system
in New Orleans. There is little local control. The state has subcontracted
much of the work of education to willing charter schools.
Of the public schools operating
at the end of the 2006-2007 academic year, educating 57 percent of public
school students, were charters.
This makes New Orleans the
urban district with by far the highest proportion of publicly funded
charter schools in the nation. Dayton Ohio has the second highest concentration
of charter schools involving 30% of its 17,000 students.
This experiment has resulted
in a clearly defined two-tier public school system.
The top tier is made up of the best public and charter public schools,
which most children cannot get into, and a number of new and promising
charter public schools that are available for the industrious and determined
parents of children who do not have academic or emotional disabilities.
The second tier is for the
rest of the children. Their education is assigned to the RSD (some are
already calling it “The Rest of the School District”).
The top half of the schools
are the point of this experiment in public charter schools. National
charter school advocacy groups are pointing to New Orleans as the experiment
which will demonstrate that publicly funded charter schools are superior
to public schools.
However, the top half could
not work without the bottom half. If the schools in the top half had
to accept the students assigned to the second tier schools, the results
of the experiment would obviously turn out quite differently. As the
experiment is structured, students in the bottom half schools will be
very useful to compare with the top half to see how well this works.
While some sympathize with the children in the bottom half, little has
been done to assist those in the RSD schools.
How the Top Half
Operates
Start with the money. Charter
schools have more of it than the RSD schools. Each charter school is
given a share of the federal $20.9 million dollar grant. None of that
money is available to non-charter public schools.
As the Cowen report notes,
charter public schools also have advantages other than just financial
ones over other the rest of the public schools. Though funded by tax
dollars, charters are granted greater autonomy over staffing budgeting
and curriculum than regular public schools. Charters have better facilities,
fewer problems attracting staff and can keep school class size small.
Charters are allowed to impose
enrollment caps. These caps allow them to turn down additional students
who seek to enroll. This keeps pupil teacher ratios down and class sizes
small – a universally recognized key to academic achievement.
Some of the top tier public schools have explicit selective enrollment
policies which screen out children with academic problems. Most of the
remaining charters are technically supposed to be open enrollment schools
but require pre-application essays, parental-involvement requirements
and specific behavior contracts – allowing these charter schools
the flexibility to “manage” their incoming classes, rather
than having to accept every student who applies. At nine schools, traditional
public school transportation is not even provided, further limiting
the choices.
A look at Algiers charter school association (ACSA) website illustrates
how schools in the top half operate.
Financially, the ACSA budget
reports expenditures of $27 million in 2006-2007, leaving an apparent
surplus of $11 million. For 2005-2006, the ACSA was given $2.5 million
from Orleans Parish School Board ($500 per student over and above their
regular funding), a $6 million federal charter school grant, plus the
state minimum foundation funds.
That is not all the extra
money. The ACSA has also received several major grants. For example,
in June of 2007, the ACSA was awarded a special $999,000 federal grant
to help improve learning in American history. In March, 2007, Baptist
Community Ministries announced a $4.2 million grant to create a network
among the charter schools.
The ACSA website includes
their application process, which specifically spells out that student
applicants will NOT be considered “on a first come first serve
basis.” Decisions on whether an applicant is allowed to attend
will be based on several factors, including scores on state examinations
and whether applicant has ever received any special education services
for a learning disability or emotional disturbance.
Many of the other charter
schools also benefit from special funds and special admissions policies.
One of the most selective public charter schools, Lusher charter school,
received millions extra in special grants from Tulane University, FEMA,
the State of Louisiana, a German Foundation which gave $1.1 million
to renovate the gymnasium, and other foundations.
Wouldn’t every returning student like to enroll in one of these
schools?
Students returning to New
Orleans who might seek to enroll in one of the top half schools are
likely to be disappointed as the deadline for enrollment at most of
the charter schools has already passed. For example, applications to
enroll in Lusher charter for this fall were due December 15, 2006.
How the Rest of the School District Operates
By law, the RSD is required
to accept any student who shows up and is prohibited from having any
selective admissions policy.
From the beginning, Louisiana
officials charged with making policy and operating the RSD complained
that they were being left with educating the “leftover children”
after the charters and the selective schools took the children with
the best academic scores and best parental involvement.
Damon Hewitt, a civil rights
attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and a New
Orleans native, discovered the reference to “leftovers”
in an email sent by one of Louisiana’s top education policy makers.
The email is from Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education
(BESE) member Glenny Lee Buquet. She wrote in an internal BESE e-mail
in January 2007, obtained by Hewitt in a federal case, “We wanted
charter schools to open and take the majority of the students. That
didn't happen, and now we have the responsibility of educating the 'leftover'
children."
Who are the leftover children
in the RSD? Hewitt again: “The students served by the RSD are
typically those who could not get into any of the fancy charter or selective
admissions schools. They are the average New Orleans students - talented,
creative and bright, but locked in poverty and out of opportunity.”
The average New Orleanian
child is our child. These children are the children of our sisters and
brothers and cousins and coworkers. Yet they are categorized as, and
treated like, something quite different by people in charge of public
education.
The RSD has not been up to
the job of educating New Orleans children because, from day one and
continuing until today, it lacked the appropriate number and quality
of people and the expertise to run a big urban school system.
One of the best illustrations
of the problems of the RSD is their refusal to admit hundreds of returning
New Orleans children to public schools in January of 2007. Instead,
the RSD put these kids on a “waiting list.” Public outcry
and two federal lawsuits forced a quick reversal and the kids were put
into RSD schools.
At the same time as the RSD
put kids on a waiting list, “Thousands of empty seats and dozens
of empty classrooms could be found in charter schools or in the city’s
selective or discretionary-admissions public schools” the New
Orleans Teachers Report points out.
So why was there a problem? There was space for these kids in the charter
public schools. But because the public charter schools are allowed to
cap their enrollment they did not have to admit any new children. In
reality, the main reason there was a problem was not space, but a shortage
of teachers willing to work for the RSD.
Is it any surprise that
the disorganized and under-staffed RSD was having problems finding teachers
for their schools?
The New Orleans teachers
report indicate many veteran teachers remain furious at the State of
Louisiana and its RSD because they were fired and their right to collective
bargaining was terminated. Teachers point out that veteran teachers
hired in adjoining districts continue to enjoy collective bargaining
along with the rest of the teachers. But not in New Orleans.
Uncertified teachers were widespread in RSD schools.
In fact, certified teachers
from around the country who wanted to help by teaching in New Orleans
were directed by the Teach for NOLA recruitment website to charter schools.
Uncertified teachers were directed to the RSD.
The RSD was still 500 teachers
short at the time this article was written. In July of 2007, the RSD
ran a $400,000 national campaign to try to hire an additional 500 teachers
to start in the fall. The RSD is offering up $17,300 in relocation and
other incentives to try to get teachers into the system. If there are
any teachers reading this, please come and help the children in the
RSD out – you are desperately needed!
As of July, the RSD was also
working furiously to erect temporary modular buildings to house children
when school starts in the fall. Meanwhile, neighboring St. Bernard Parish
opened school in temporary school buildings two months after Katrina
– nearly two years ago.
An indication of the fragmentation of the system are the many starting
dates for New Orleans public schools. Some charter schools will start
August 6, another on the 8th. Five start August 14, others in mid to
late August. The two dozen or so RSD schools will open September 4 –
in part to give more time to build new schools to open and to recruit
teachers.
During 2006-2007 school security
became a top issue. Consider the experiment of placing thousands of
recently traumatized and frequently displaced children into schools
without enough teachers or staff or facilities. Consider also that those
who are charged with supervising the schools are inexperienced and understaffed
as well. The logical outcome of such an experiment is insecurity.
The RSD spent $20 million on security. They had one security guard for
every 37 students in 2006-2007, a rate nine times higher than the old
public school security system. At one point there were 35 guards at
RSD John McDonough Senior High plus two off-duty police officers. Thirty
two guards started at another school in the fall.
This situation quickly prompted
the Fyre Youth Squad, a group of high school students in New Orleans,
to challenge the “prison atmosphere” at John McDonough High.
There were more security guards than teachers at their school.
What impact does this have
on education of children? Research shows that students feel more tense
when they encounter security guards at every turn in a school, said
Monique Dixon, a senior attorney at the Advancement Project, a Washington,
D.C. civil rights organization that works with community groups on issues
such as school discipline. "It becomes more of a prison on some
levels where people feel they are being watched constantly instead of
feeling protected," she said. "It creates a police state."
The financial implications
of spending money this way are also troubling. While New Orleans spent
$20 million on private security for around 50 schools, the New Orleans
Times-Picayune reported that the Philadelphia public school security
budget for more than 260 schools was about $47 million, which included
a 450-member independent police force, 150 auxiliary officers, and partnerships
with more than 200 community members. In Detroit, the budget this fiscal
year for the 400-member independent police force that protects the public
schools, which has more than 100,000 students and more than 200 schools,
was about $16 million.
Controlling students sometimes
appeared to take priority over educating students.
Damon Hewitt points out that “the line between criminal justice
policy and education got much blurrier over the past year and a half,
as local schools have resorted to increasingly punitive approaches to
school discipline. Relying more on police officers than community engagement,
school officials' harsh responses to challenging behavior mirror public
fear and sentiment about crime in the city. As a result, more children
end up being suspended, expelled and arrested and sent to juvenile court.
This phenomenon, which some call the School-to-Prison Pipeline, is literally
robbing New Orleans of its most valuable asset - people.”
“Some say that children
in New Orleans are suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,”
continues Hewitt. “But they are really suffering from the impact
of Continuing Trauma - trauma that plays itself out every day. To the
extent that children do act out present challenging behavior in schools,
a lot of it has to do with both this continuing trauma and unmet educational
needs, especially for those students in need of special education and
related services. We cannot suspend, expel and arrest our way out of
this problem. In fact, those harsh responses only make things worse
by depriving young people of much-needed educational opportunity.”
The academic results measured by standardized test scores given in spring
2007 at the RSD schools were predictably low. Nearly half the students
failed in most 4th and 8th grade categories. Two-thirds of high school
students failed in the Louisiana Educational Assessment Program (LEAP)
and Graduate Exit Exam (GEE). The selective public schools had only
an 18 percent failure rate on the GEE. LEAP scores for individual schools
reported during the summer show what most expected, charter schools
test better than RSD schools.
One current public school
teacher, name withheld for reasons that will be obvious, was not hopeful.
“The public schools
are totally fragmented. The struggles are still the same. Students still
have difficult situations at home, some are still in trailers or living
with too many people in one small home.”
“Schools still lack
books and materials, which I don't understand. After Katrina there were
so many offers of help, both physical and monetary. I don't think that
the people in charge knew what to do to organize a decent response to
the offers.”
“The RSD schools lack
enough qualified and experienced teachers. The state Department of Education
is well intentioned but they are barely dealing with the day to day
issues and they still need to open more schools as people come back
to the city.”
“Yes, it sounds dismal.
I don't see any big changes for next year. I think many of the charter
schools have promise. The charters usually have a committed administration
and staff and frequently a committed parent body. That is the secret
to success.”
Leigh Dingerson of the Center
for Community Change in Washington DC, who has been researching the
New Orleans schools after Katrina, sums up the problems with the New
Orleans experiment.
“In the 18 months since Hurricane Katrina, the infrastructure
of the New Orleans public schools has been systematically dismantled
and a new tangle of independently operated educational experiments has
been erected in its place. This new structure has taken away community
control and community ownership of all but a handful of schools. Instead,
independent charter management organizations - virtually all from outside
the state - are now running 60 percent of New Orleans schools.”
“There are no more
neighborhood boundaries. In a market-based model, parents are considered
‘customers.’ And they’re supposed to ‘choose’
where to send their kids to school. But since every one of the charter
schools was filled to capacity, hundreds of parents had no choice at
all for their kids.”
“Hundreds of kids with
disabilities (who are often turned away from charter schools) are being
placed in the under-resourced and over-burdened state-run Recovery School
District. It’s their only choice.”
“This Balkanized school
system is not closing a gap. It’s opening a chasm.”
The Cowen Report survey of the community agrees with much of the Digerson
analysis finding that “for many in the community, the RSD-operated
schools are viewed as an unofficial ‘dumping ground’ for
students with behavioral or academic challenges.”
All indicators conclude that
the RSD overall has done a poor job educating all the thousands of children
in their half of the experiment, especially those with disabilities,
because of RSD’s own lack of expertise and experienced staff and
because the schools they supervise lack the necessary teachers, support
staff, and resources.
Possible Positive
Results of this Experiment
Given the disastrous start
to this experiment, at least for half the children in public schools
in New Orleans, are there any positive results possible?
Supporters of the experiment
rightfully point out the dismal state of public education in New Orleans
prior to Katrina. The public school system had a few elite schools that
had some racial mixing in their student body, while most of the rest
of the schools were underperforming even by Louisiana standards. Outside
of the elite schools, the population of the student body at almost all
schools was nearly one hundred percent African-American. Teachers valued
teaching in the elite public schools because they had less turnover,
students with better test scores, solid parental involvement and more
access to additional resources. There was widespread corruption resulting
in over 20 convictions of school board officials or employees. While
the national average term for a public school system superintendent
was three years, from 1998 to 2005 the New Orleans average was 11 months.
At this point in the experiment,
it is fair to conclude that the New Orleans public schools are still
divided into some racially mixed elite and charter schools, while the
other half of the schools must be classified as underperforming and
nearly one hundred percent African-American.
On the other hand, supporters hope that this experiment will show the
way to improve public education. It very likely will, at least for the
half of the children fortunate enough to get into the top tier schools.
Politically, the real winners
in this experiment are almost guaranteed to be those who back the idea
of charter schools.
The New Orleans experiment
offers tremendous opportunities for backers of charter schools. Up to
now, charter schools have not proven superior to regular public schools.
For example, in a 2004 Report “Evaluation of the Public Charter
Schools Program,” the U.S. Department of Education study of charter
schools in five states found “charter schools were somewhat less
likely than traditional public schools” to meet state performance
standards - but cautioned that the study was unable “to determine
whether traditional public schools are more effective than charters.”
See full study at:
http://www.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/
choice/pcsp-final/execsum.html
But in New Orleans, where
the best public schools have been converted into charters and the kids
most in need of good schools have been systematically excluded from
the top half of the public schools and placed into a dysfunctional system
– the charter schools in the upper half are guaranteed to demonstrate
better educational outcomes than what education officials call the “leftover”
public schools.
If charter schools cannot
prove themselves superior with this New Orleans deck stacked in their
favor, they should quit and go home.
Apart from charter school
backers are there others who are likely to see positive outcomes?
A real positive outcome would be if the experiment could translate the
advantages of the top half of the selective schools into success for
the rest of the public school children as well. There is little evidence
of that happening at this time.
The creators of this experiment
acknowledge that a large percentage of the children are being left out.
"The bottom line is we are very hopeful about this system of school
models that is emerging, and we are showing a lot of progress,"
said Tulane University President Scott S. Cowen. "But we still
have challenges to overcome to fulfill that vision."
Negative Possibilities of This Experiment
Twice as many people in
New Orleans think the public school system is worse now than those who
think it is better, according to the Cowen Report.
Tracie Washington, civil rights and education attorney and head of the
new Louisiana Justice Institute, points out the differences in the schools
that she has heard about from hundreds of families.
“Think about the fact
that we had parents who had the misfortune of sending their children
to schools in two different systems -- RSD and a charter. Now if your
daughter attended Lusher charter or Audubon charter, they always had
hot meals, clean toilets, books, library, certified teachers, after
school activities, AND NO ARMED GUARDS AT THE SCHOOL SITE. Your son
had the misfortune of attending RSD schools like Raboin High School,
or Clark, or John McDonogh. No books, cold food, essentially an armed
encampment. Same family – same mom and dad, same home environment;
but the daughter is treated like a student and the son is treated like
an inmate at the State Penitentiary at Angola. Actually, they are treated
better at Angola because there's a library and hot food is served!”
While the Cowen Report underscores
the importance of saving the RSD, there has been no determined or comprehensive
community or political attempt to rescue the RSD nor the thousands of
children assigned to it.
There is a cruel point in
this experiment. Unfortunately, if the RSD continues to do poorly, that
makes the selective charter schools appear even more successful. Thus
the worse the RSD performs, the better the charters look. Those who
have access to the top half will push ahead, those who do not will fall
further behind.
Danatus King of the New Orleans
NAACP says many think the public education system is intentionally designed
by those with economic power to keep other people’s children under-educated.
“If you keep them uneducated, you can control them easier. There
is a power structure in New Orleans that has existed for hundreds of
years. They don’t want to see it changed because if it’s
changed then it is going to hit them in their pockets. It is going to
be hard to keep those hotel and restaurant workers from unionizing and
demanding more money and better working conditions. It is going to be
more difficult to attract folks to that industry when they are well
educated and have other opportunities. If you keep them uneducated,
you can control them easier.”
National critics like the
Center for Community Change complain “The Bush Administration
was instrumental in creating this new chasm between the “haves”
and the “have nots” in New Orleans. Rather than create the
world-class public schools that all New Orleans kids have deserved for
so long, the Bush Administration invested in an ideological experiment
to make a pro-privatization, anti-public education statement.”
“In a school system
based on free market principles, schools become individual contestants
– for the best teachers, for the best students, for the most resources,
and of course…for the best test scores. They can only do this
because they are not required to provide access to every student within
their community.”
“There must be, backing
up every large scale charter system, the schools for the children…who
are “un-chosen” by charter schools.”
“The very existence
of charter schools in New Orleans, at this point, is dependent on the
availability of a universal access network of schools alongside it.
And those schools, the schools with the state run Recovery School District,
are struggling with more than their share of kids with disabilities
and less than their share of teachers and resources. To win, there must
be losers.”
Thus, the failures of the
RSD will make supporters of charter and other restrictive admission
schools appear even more successful. So where in this experiment is
the incentive to make sure that the half of the kids left out have a
fighting chance for a decent education?
The Future of the
Experiment
Where does the experiment
go from here? The RSD is supposed to return control of the public schools
to local control after five years. Charter schools are supposed to only
be chartered for five years. What happens in the next five years? No
one knows. Really. No one knows. And if no one knows, then the likelihood
of the left behind continuing to be left behind is extremely high.
Parents do not need five
years. They already know which half of the experiment they want their
children to participate in. Will the powers who created this experiment
dedicate what is left of their five years to try to create a system
where ALL children have choices of quality education, or will the underserved
half of the schools remain as a control group for the privileged schools?
The Cowen Report, overall
supportive and hopeful for the experiment, admits "There is no
system-wide responsibility, accountability, vision or leadership to
guide the transformation of all public schools for all New Orleans students,"
and no "unified, widely-endorsed vision or plan" exists to
chart transformation of the entire public school system.
Will race and economic segregation
increase or decrease as a result of this experiment?
Tracie Washington, speaking both as a civil rights attorney and parent,
thinks any future success for all children will only come through serious
struggle.
“What we need - to
repair the New Orleans Public Schools systems (plural) and, indeed,
the public hospital, the public housing, the criminal justice system,
and our system of worker rights - is vision, opportunity, and resolve.
“Our vision must embrace
the entire community in the plans to rebuild a state of the art school
system. White folks don't send their children to public schools, so
stop going to them for advice.”
“Our opportunity requires
that those in power release the resources for our community to fulfill
its vision for public schools.”
“And we need to demonstrate
resolve. Resolve is what the community must stand together with as we
demand the right to an education for all our children. We have to resolve
that we will fight, we will scream, we will holla, we will call out
your family, we will stop the economic engine of this entire city from
running (yes, the entire city), until our children are given a fighting
chance for a decent education.”
The New Orleans Teachers
Report insists that the dual and unequal systems of schools in the city
which intensify the educational disparities that existed before Katrina
must cease. They call on policymakers to provide more physical classroom
space and educational materials for every student, and provide the best
qualified teachers possible for every child. Families must be able to
send their children to a neighborhood school — charter or not
— that is staffed by qualified, mostly experienced teachers. Finally
they ask that teachers and their unions be made full partners in the
rebuilding and revitalization effort.
The Cowen Report’s
recommendations seems to start modestly, but perhaps not. Their first
recommendation? Make sure everyone can get into a public school this
year. Other suggestions include: making sure all students have access
to diverse high-quality options; limiting enrollment barriers and open
access schools in every neighborhood; fiar distribution of resources
to all schools; strengthen the RSD and create a process to return public
schools to local control; get high quality principals, teachers and
staff; support excellence at all schools; and create short and long-term
plans for action.
Two huge groups of kids are
notably missing from all the official and unofficial plans for the future
of the experiment – the newly arrived children of thousands of
Latino workers, and much larger group – the tens of thousands
of those still displaced who want to return. While there is little current
accurate information on either of these groups of children, they are
absolutely at risk in this experiment. And they are unjustly being left
out of public policy debates about the future of public education in
New Orleans.
Signs of Hope
Wherever there is injustice,
there are also signs of hope – usually in those who are standing
up despite the injustices and struggling, despite the odds, for what
is fair.
“Education activists
and organizers, including youth, have really gotten busy since Katrina,”
Damon Hewitt points out. “Groups ranging from the Douglass Community
Coalition and to the Downtown Neighborhood Improvement Association's
Education Committee and the FYRE Youth Squad have stepped up their responses
to educational inequity, despite having precious little in the way of
resources to do the work. Their demands for equity and justice have
been loud and clearly articulated. And there are some signs that their
efforts are starting to bear fruit in the creation of after school programs
and the like. Community members who have long advocated for best practices
and community-centered approaches to issues like school discipline may
finally be starting to have a real say in how policies are crafted and
implemented.”
Hundreds of NAACP members
and supporters marched at the Louisiana Capitol to protest against injustices
in public education. The NAACP is also considering economic boycotts
as a tool to raise awareness of the problems facing public schools.
Some see hope in the fact
that there is a new Louisiana Superintendent of Education and a new
New Orleans School Superintendent. Will either or both be able to help
create some fairness and equality and competency where little exists?
One can hope. Tracie Washington waits. “I am pleased with the
efforts being made by the new administrators. But really at this time
we are still simply repairing damage wrought over the last two years.
To be sure, the new people at the top did not create this mess. However,
there are hundreds of bureaucrats and the members of the Louisiana Board
of Elementary and Secondary Education who sat and watched as our children
suffered after Katrina. I will not forgive them for their acts of cowardice.”
One concrete sign of hope
is the New Orleans Parents Guide to Public Schools – a step by
step handbook on how to select the right school for children. Aesha
Rasheed of New Orleans Network is the editor of the handbook. The 95
page book includes a list of all public schools open in New Orleans
as well as a map that shows where they are, followed by information
pages on each school that shows the address, a photograph of the building,
the grades it serves, its mission statement, the size of the student
population, how to register, whether there are special requirements
for enrollment, the type of transportation provided, what health and
child care services are available, any special programs and extracurricular
activities. While one could hope that it would not take outsiders to
create a description of the schools in the system, the guide is helpful
for parents trying to navigate the current maze. See
http://www.nolaparentsguide.org
One of the greatest hopes
for change is the students themselves. Students are speaking out and
demanding changes in the fragmented disorganized public schools. They
are telling their stories locally and across the nation Jade Fleury,
a New Orleans public school student, challenged a group of educators
in Washington DC recently. “Bring us together to make a change.
We should be able to collectively put our ideas together to help one
another. BRING US TOGETHER! Why are we developing more and more separate
schools and not more neighborhood schools that the whole diversity of
young people in the neighborhood can attend?”
Conclusion –
The Experiment and The Fight for the Right to Learn Continue
Our community understands
there is an experiment going on. Everyone may not totally understand
how this experiment got started, but the results are obvious and troubling.
The nation is watching. Charter
school advocates are working furiously to make their half of the experiment
a success. Those committed to the education of rest of the children
had better be working as hard. What is happening in New Orleans is an
experiment about what people hope will happen to communities across
the nation.
Jim Randels, a 20 year veteran
teacher in the N.O. public schools, posed the challenge to those who
seek to remake public education today – “My need as a teacher
is to see someone who will come in and do a charter that works within
the attendance boundaries of an urban neighborhood. Demonstrate to us
that innovation can happen in a school that’s like the majority
of public schools in urban settings. Will you commit to work in an attendance
boundary? Will you commit to working with the same amount of resources
that all of us work with?”
The public school system
is a reflection of what is occurring in all our public systems post-Katrina.
Public healthcare and public housing are going the same way. Those with
the economic and political power are re-making the public systems with
public funds the way they want them to operate. Naomi Klein calls this
disaster capitalism. Those with the money see disaster as opportunity
to reshape and profit formerly public systems. Those at the top have
effectively privatized the best public schools and erected barriers
to keep others out.
But, the people excluded
are fighting for a voice in this experiment of choice.
These fighters recognize
that false reformers are always willing to experiment on someone else’s
children.
The truest indication of
the fairness of this experiment is that, so far, not one of the supporters
of this experiment have demonstrated a willingness to send their own
children to a RSD school. So, the experiment, and the fight, continue.
Until the day dawns when
the educational rights of all the “leftover” children will
be treated as just as important as the educational rights of our own
children, the fight for the right to learn will continue.
Bill Quigley is
a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans.
He can be reached at [email protected]
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