new orleans public schools

The Return Model for School Governance

Posted on by Leslie Jacobs

In 2010, Educate Now! convened a Task Force to consider long-term governance alternatives for New Orleans public schools.  In a series of meetings over several months, the members of the Task Force worked on how best to restore local control of public education without imperiling the considerable academic progress since 2005.

The Task Force determined that New Orleans requires a unique governance structure to manage the new “system of schools” that has evolved since Katrina. The structure that the Task Force recommended is called the Return Model.

The Return Model:  A New Approach to Governance for Schools in Orleans Parish

Interviews:  Leslie Jacobs Explains the Return Model

Comment on the Return Model

The Return Model report lays out the governance system that the Task Force recommended.  Not every detail is attended to, and Educate Now! expects and invites community debate that will further refine the model.

 

News Alert: The Final Vote

Posted on by Leslie Jacobs

BESE held its full Board meeting today. The final votes are as follows:

1.  Pastorek’s Revised Plan for Return of Schools was approved.

2.   BESE approved a new letter grading system for schools, which will go into effect in 2011. The letter grades will replace the current star ratings. The Department of Education estimates over 500 schools will have D rating. Continue reading →

News Alert: BESE Votes Are In

Posted on by Leslie Jacobs

After a 13-hour, marathon day of meetings, the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) has approved the following items in committee. While these votes are preliminary – each committee recommendation will be considered by the full Board on Thursday – items recommended by committees are almost always approved by the full Board.

1.  Pastorek’s Return of School Proposal:  Approved

The Recovery School District Committee approved Superintendent Pastorek’s Revised Plan for Return of Schools by a vote of 4 to 2. Continue reading →

News Alert: School Performance Scores are Out

Posted on by Leslie Jacobs

New Orleans Schools Show Great Improvement

The Louisiana Department of Education has just released the 2010 School Performance Scores (SPS) and District Performance Scores (DPS).

So, how did New Orleans schools do in 2010?

 1.  The percentage of failing schools continues to decline. Continue reading →

Myth 5: RSD Charters are not serving students with disabilities

Posted on by Leslie Jacobs

Fact:  RSD charters are serving lots of students with disabilities and working to improve these services.

In the 2009-10 school year, the 36 RSD charters enrolled 1,228 students with disabilities, falling just short of enrolling their “fair share” of special needs children by 76 students. Continue reading →

Myth 4: If a school kept its name, it must be the same.

Posted on by Leslie Jacobs

Fact:  For many schools, only the name is the same.

Comparing the performance of individual New Orleans public schools with the same name pre- and post-Katrina is not a valid analysis.

Why? We shuffled the deck.

Schools with the same name may:

  • be in a different location
  • have different grade configurations
  • no longer serve the surrounding neighborhood
  • have different admission requirements Continue reading →

Myth 3: Student test scores were improving before the storm at the same rate they are now.

Posted on by Leslie Jacobs

Fact:  Since the state takeover, student improvement has more than doubled!

Educate Now! compared the percent of students Basic or above in math and English on the 4th and 8th grade LEAP and the 10th grade GEE tests for 2000, 2005 and 2010.* (For other grades the state changed the tests, so we can’t compare pre- and post-storm numbers.)

  • From 2000 to 2005, the percent of students scoring Basic or above increased from 30% to 37%, a gain of 7 points.

  • From 2005 to 2010, the percent of students scoring Basic or above increased from 37% to 53%, a gain of 16 points! Continue reading →

After the Deluge, A New Education System

Posted on by Leslie Jacobs

Five years ago yesterday, the levees broke. Hurricane Katrina flooded roughly 80% of this city, causing nearly $100 billion in damage. The storm forced us to rebuild our homes, workplaces, and many of our institutions – including our failing public education system.

But from the flood waters, the most market-driven public school system in the country has emerged. Education reformers across America should take notice: The model is working.

Citywide, the number of fourth-grade students who pass the state’s standardized tests has jumped by almost a third – to 65% in 2010 from 49% in 2007. The passage rate among eighth-graders during the same period has improved at a similar clip, to 58% from 44%.

Continue reading →

Bold Gamble Transforming Schools

Posted on by Leslie Jacobs

After Hurricane Katrina, state officials faced a choice: Take control of the schools in New Orleans or leave them in the care of the city’s notoriously troubled School Board.  A takeover was risky.  New Orleans Public Schools were among the worst in the nation. Most New Orleans legislators opposed state action. More daunting, any reasonable analysis would have put the state’s chance of success extremely low and of political embarrassment correspondingly high.  Nowhere else in the nation had a state department of education ever assumed direct responsibility for operating local schools.

Yet state leaders, led by Gov. Kathleen Blanco and then-Superintendent Cecil Picard, had the courage to take the gamble. With legislative blessing, they moved decisively to expand the state-run Recovery School District – initially created to handle just a handful of failing schools – to include all but 16 schools in the city.

Five years later, it’s clear that gamble has paid off in ways unimaginable even to the most ardent supporters of the takeover. Continue reading →