“The science teacher from 2003 who taught you to be proud of your heritage, where are they?” by New Orleans Youth

Note: This article was written by New Orleans young people. See another opinion piece by the students at this link.

Early Friday morning students arrived at their schools only to find that it was no regular morning. Pasted on the walls all around the schools were large black & white posters. But these were not your typical posters. These posters had facts, questions, and statistics regarding New Orleans public charter schools and their inhabitants -- former students, teachers, principals, and CEOs. Some posters had questions on them that referenced the firing of over 7,000 teachers post-Katrina: "The black math teacher from 2004 who lived in your neighborhood, where are they?" And some questioned the salaries of school principals and administrators compared to the quality of the schools they run: “Your principal makes $100,000 a year, but why is your school only a ‘D’ school?” These are only a few of the many posters that were found at several high schools across the New Orleans area, including Lake Area, Sci Academy, Warren Easton, and Landry Walker.

Students at these schools and others had a lot to say about the posters and the questions they posed.  Responding to the question, “Your homie from the class of 2013...where are they now?” one high school student answered, “Most of the people I knew in the class of 2013 are currently in college, or didn’t finish and plan to go back this year. That makes me anxious and worry about if I can finish college when I’m ‘supposed’ to and wonder what happened to throw them off track. It makes me feel sad that people go into college unsure of their main drive and because of being rushed into it, they lose track of what they really want.”

Another student nearby answered as well saying, “Most of them are still in college but a few are struggling to have somewhere to stay and are still trying to get into college. They have no choice but to get a job, and their job is weighing on them and keeping them from going to school.”

At another local high school a student responded by saying, “My friend is currently working at Papa John’s, and it’s sad especially because he is now struggling and on the verge of giving up.” One student candidly said, “I don’t know where they are, and I feel some type of way because of their disappearance.” One final student gave a chilling answer, “Probably dead to be honest.”

Over at a high school on the West Bank students responded to several questions that were on posters around their school. Responding to, “How many teachers live in your neighborhood?” A student answered, “None. I feel disappointed because the teachers come from all over and they don’t know what the people from my neighborhood are going through.”

Other questions centered around how students get exposed to black culture in their schools. Two of them included, “The principal who taught you the black national anthem, what happened to them?” and “The science teacher from 2003 who taught you to be proud of your heritage, where are they?”

The first student answered, “It’s like a crime to teach your truth and your history, because if it wasn’t they wouldn’t have been fired and white people wouldn’t be the main ones teaching in our schools. There’s only a certain time for us to talk about black people in schools — February.”

And the other said, “I don’t even know what the Black National Anthem is, which makes me sad because it shows what type of schools I went to. The fact that I live in Louisiana and don’t know the Black National Anthem puts things into perspective for me.”

While the last student responded, “Well, that school doesn’t even have the same name any more. It’s charter school now, everything has changed — new principal, new teachers, new uniforms, new name. I don’t even know what happened to those teachers. When the school changed and those charter people came, they had to go. And that was the only school that I went to where I learned the Black National Anthem.” (The school was George Washington Carver, now it’s Carver Collegiate.)

One student talked in-depth about how the posters forced them to reflect on their place as youth in New Orleans. “After seeing the different posters at my school, it really made me think about how black youth don't really matter to this city, or that we do matter but only for the use of others. Schools and the entire city really just use us to pass off statistics to the rest of the world to say that the city is doing better. It’s like if we’re getting higher scores on tests than New Orleans must be moving forward...but it's not.”

Maybe the point of these posters is to raise questions about where the city really is 10 years after hurricane Katrina. A high school senior from New Orleans East seems to have summed up the feelings of their peers and families regarding the cruel irony of the anniversary festivities. “Our city's leaders are celebrating the anniversary of Katrina, and saying that if not for a terrible storm that killed so many people and hurt so many families we wouldn't have been able to move forward. Which implies that the way the city was before, and the things that happened before Katrina were wrong. All without acknowledging the damage that some of these ‘positive’ changes have caused our city.”

-written by New Orleans Youth

#k10truth4youth

#whywefight

"All McDonough schools were founded by money made directly from slave labor" by New Orleans Youth

Note: This article was written by New Orleans young people. See another opinion piece by the students at this link.

As the ten year commemoration of Hurricane Katrina approaches, the city of New Orleans is filled with high energy from the life-long residents of the city. The New Orlenians that have seen the good and bad that this city has to offer. There has been plenty of conversation in the city about whether or not the people feel like New Orleans has fully recovered from hurricane Katrina. On this Friday morning as students were arriving to school, they were surprised to see a yard full of signs reading:

All McDonough schools were founded by money made directly from slave labor

Your principal makes over $90,000 a year , but why is your school a “F” school?

How many of your teachers live in your neighborhood?

If you feel like a prisoner in your school, ask your teacher “why”

Your homies from class of 2013. . . where are they now?

The black math teacher from 2004 who lived in your neighborhood, where are they?

The science teacher from 2003 who taught you to be proud of your heritage, where are they?

The principal who taught you the black national anthem, what happened to them?

New Beginnings Schools Foundation runs Lake Area.  Their CEO makes $140,000 a year, but why is your school only a “D” school?

At a time like this when the city is highly anticipating the commemoration of Hurricane Katrina, the youth of New Orleans boldly decided to use artful expression to speak up about how they feel. Directly addressing the farce of better schools and improving education in the city of New Orleans that has been portrayed by the media. This is a method that I agree with completely. The youth has been blatantly ignored by the media and by the city of New Orleans when it comes to listening to their opinion of why the crime rate is so high, why there is a lack of opportunity in the city for youth of color and why the city is not better off now than it was ten years ago. In fact the city is worse off than it was ten years ago especially in terms of education.

Before you believe the hype that surrounds the 10^th Anniversary, try to think of the names of all the teachers who were unjustly fired right after the storm.   And try to think of the names of all the students who’ve been pushed out of schools because of racist and unfair discipline policies.  When you think of what it means to have a real education system that encourages critical thought and self-discovery, try to think of names.  Not data points.   And if the names don’t come to you, maybe you should ask yourselves why they’ve been erased. 

That’s what young people have done with their art.  They’re asking questions and demanding answers.  This reaction from the youth represents a bold statement in the face of anyone who is now saying that the city of New Orleans has recovered from hurricane Katrina and the corruption that followed in the midst of hurricane Katrina.  As the hashtag at the bottom of the posters says, this is #whywefight.

-written by New Orleans Youth

#k10truth4youth

#whywefight

Students at Walter L. Cohen High School Walk Out to Protest Firings of Teachers

From a press release from students and their allies at Walter L. Cohen High School:

See below for the students' demands - written by the students on October 7, and revised by the students on October 10.

See video from protest at Recovery School District offices here.

Students at Walter L. Cohen in New Orleans began a walk out/protest on October 4th, 2012 when their teachers and administrators were dismissed and the announcement was made that Future Is Now Charter (Steven Barr, formerly of Green Dot in California, and Gideon Stein) would be taking over the governance of the school.

This is against the firing of Cohen teachers and administration and the take-over by Future is Now (FIN) charter. Decisions about the governance of the school, including New Orleans College Prep being housed in Cohen's building, must be reversed and remade to include students and parents of Cohen. Cohen students and parents must be made a part of all decisions about Cohen.

Press Conference
Monday, October 8, 3:00pm
Walter L. Cohen High School
3520 Dryades Street, New Orleans, LA
Contact:  Elizabeth Jeffers at 504.237.3741 or Katrena Ndang at 504.701.8783

Official Demands Written by Walter L. Cohen Students on October 7, 2012 (edited to reflect changes made on October 10):

1. Resources and Building repair for Walter L. Cohen High School.
- Photos of building providing evidence of different conditions between NOCPREP and Cohen

2. Graduate Exit Exam (GEE) and End of Course (EOC) waivers given caused by disruption learning.
Students must not be penalized for missing seat time until our demands are met.

3. Students cannot be bought and sold. This situation is very frustrating and opinions should have
been considered, and not done behind closed doors. Walter L. Cohen students and parents
demand real “CHOICE” to determine the governance of the school. Any previous decisions made
determining the governance of Cohen should be reversed and required to go through parent/
student/teacher/administrator committee. If the decision is to return the school to Walter L.
Cohen under Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB), New Orleans College Prep students will be
welcome. All current students graduate from Walter L. Cohen.

4. This type of hostile take-over did not just begin with Cohen; it has been going on since the weeks after Hurricane Katrina.

5. The Recovery School District (RSD), Future is Now Schools (FINS), and New Orleans College Prep Charter School (NOCP) do not have our best interests at heart. These administrators have their
educations, and yet when we are so close to completing high school, they decide to make this
unexpected decision.

6. ALL Teachers, administration and faculty must be retained. Any faculty member from school
year 2012-2013 fired must be reinstated. We need written documentation demonstrating why
any faculty members were dismissed. We need written documentation of any reprimands of
faculty members. In the future, if a faculty member is to be dismissed, written documentation
and a plan must be created and followed.
ALL teachers and administrators must be fully certified by the state of Louisiana (which
must be documented online at TeachLouisiana.net). Out of State Certifications are
acceptable.

7. Data from New Orleans College Prep, Cohen, and Future is Now Schools must be made available concerning the following information:
- Student testing history
- Suspension / expulsion data
- Police reports
- Attrition rates for students and teachers
- Graduation rate data
- Post-secondary data (admission statistics for graduated seniors)

We, the students of Walter L. Cohen Senior High School, need the RSD, FINS, and NOCP to listen to us. This is a crisis, and everyone should listen. This is real, and it is happening to us right now.

New Orleans cannot be a city with all charter schools. Charter schools do not admit or keep all students.

No unnecessary suspensions and expulsions for students in New Orleans. We need official handbook with policies concerning retention of students developed by parents, students and teachers citywide.

Image above: A handwritten list of demands by Cohen students posted to the school wall Monday afternoon. (Robert Morris, UptownMessenger.com)

“Parents’ Guide” Publisher Aesha Rasheed Talks Public Education in New Orleans; Interview by Rosana Cruz

From our friends at Bridge The Gulf:
As the parent of a New Orleans Public School student I can tell you, the reality of sending your child to school has completely changed from when many of us were growing up. When I was a kid, we went to our local neighborhood schools. In New Orleans, since Hurricane Katrina, just sending your child to the closest school is no longer an option. Once a child reaches school age, parents have to walk through a maze, from different registration and application processes; different school calendars; different eligibility requirements for students; to different interventions and services for children with special needs (for schools that have them at all.)

Puzzling through the confusing and very long list of “options” is a frustrating and time consuming process for even the most patient, well equipped and well informed parent. But without one basic tool, I think it would be nearly impossible. That tool is the New Orleans Parents’ Guide to Public Schools, published and distributed by New Orleans Parent Organizing Network. This combination catalogue and guidebook comes out every February, in time for students to review before the application deadlines for many schools.

Download the Parents' Guide here.

Parents: This year the Recovery School District (RSD) has a unified application, due on March 31st. (This is only for RSD schools, for other schools' enrollment information visit NOLAPON.org.)

The 6th edition of the Parents’ Guide just came out, so I sat down with my friend Aesha Rasheed, the publisher of the Parents’ Guide, and the founder and former Executive Director of New Orleans Parent Organizing Network. What was going to be a 20-minute interview turned into a fascinating hour-long conversation about the history and broader landscape of public education in New Orleans. Both of us are outraged about the continuing racial and socio-economic disparities that have persisted in Education and impact the larger community in a myriad of ways, but first I wanted her to explain how we got to where we needed a Parents Guide. Here’s part one of that conversation.

Will you please tell me what Parents’ Guide is?

The New Orleans Parents’ Guide to Public Schools is an annual book to help parents understand the landscape of public schools in New Orleans, get some basic information about what schools are open, where they are, what kind of programming they provide, what kind of student population they serve and what their academic performance is. Parents can use it to inform their choices and compare and contrast what is happening at different schools. It is also meant to be an advocacy tool, to hopefully raise the level of parent dialogue about what quality looks like at schools.

How did the parents guide come to be? This is the sixth edition, right?

This is the sixth edition! I was education reporter in New Orleans before the flood. After Hurricane Katrina and the flood, as people were trying to figure out returning and rebuilding, I got lots of questions from colleagues, friends and neighbors, who knew that I knew something about schools. They were like, "Is this school open? I've heard such and such. I heard Capdau is open. Is that true? But I went by the building and it looked like it was flooded."

By then there'd been such massive change in schools, and most schools were still closed. Even schools that were open weren't necessarily open in the buildings that they used to be in. As I tried to just find one list that had all the school names and addresses and phone numbers, I couldn't find that. There would be a little piece here and a little piece there but everything I found was pretty full of holes and errors.

So I tried to make this chart, which is actually in the Parents Guide now. I call it the spine of the Parents Guide because it's how it began.
And as I made that chart I realized that if it took me this much time and that much energy to try and get it clear, it would be really hard for anybody else. There needed to be some kind of central tool.

Meanwhile our organization at the time, which was called New Orleans Network, was convening people who were doing work to rebuild New Orleans and defend the right to return, especially for the folks who were the most marginalized and the people who were most likely to be pushed out of the city. We were convening people to talk about different areas that we needed to "skill up" around and talk about sharing tools and advocacy and organizing strategies.

I convened an education advocates circle and the thing that came up that was needed to bolster everyone's work was just that, a book, a list, information about what schools were open. New Orleans Network set about trying to do it. I was able to build relationships with other organizations that were also interested in it, and had enough money to print it as a book.

But why were things so different? It wasn’t just the Hurricane, right? A lot of changes had begun before the storm. Can you talk a little bit about the landscape of education before Katrina?

Part of what was happening in New Orleans Public Schools before Katrina is that there were very significant inequities. There were a few high performing schools in New Orleans. In fact, the highest performing schools in the state were here. But they were selective and very few kids could get in to them. They were also the only schools that were ethnically or socio-economically diverse at all.

The vast majority of the schools were incredibly homogenous in terms of race, all black, and in terms of class, quite poor. Most of the folks who could scrape it together to afford to send their kids to non-public schools had done that, if they couldn’t get into these few public schools that were considered decent.

And all of that created an environment where there was general disenfranchisement with public education. The conventional wisdom was that schools in New Orleans sucked. They were bad and they were never going to be any good. And that the kids who went to them were not valuable, this was the undertone of that message.

There was a big piece that the paper did before my time looking at how many kids were graduating and applying for jobs who couldn’t spell New Orleans, for example. New Orleans and Louisiana had one of the lowest adult literacy rates in the country. Real kids were having real problems getting what they need to make it in the world. So there was this rock and hard place situation.

In the 5 years before Katrina, we had a revolving door of superintendents. There were 10 superintendents in a decade, different people leading the district. And what came with that was different policies, new layers of administration. That created a condition where there was mass instability. There were massive levels of corruption, so that by 2005 the F.B.I. had actually established a field headquarters in the Orleans Parish School Board office.

Meanwhile the state had introduced an accountability system. It was actually ahead of No Child Left Behind [George W. Bush’s 2001 education reform bill], which is based somewhat on what was happening in Louisiana. So standardized testing was offered up as the answer.

Schools were being labeled as failing. Already the word on the street is that the schools are bad. But then annually you have the reports coming out, here are the schools that are failing, here is how bad they are. I think it numbed everyone into thinking, “It is just a failed system” Add to that continuing news of this corruption so that no matter your political perspective, what you are hearing is that it’s a mess.

So that when the [state's] intervention was presented, “What if the state came and took over the schools?” I think a lot of people were basically like, “Sure.”

They were not saying, “Oh, the state does such an excellent job of dealing with schools,” or of doing anything. People actually had a deep distrust of Baton Rouge. But this system had become so neglected and so shriveled and so maligned, and actually was quite bad, folks were like, “Even you can’t make it worse.”

So in New Orleans there was a state constitutional amendment to allow the state to have the right to take over the schools, and that passed overwhelmingly. 64% of voters in New Orleans said, “Yes, we want to allow the state to take over our schools.”

All those conditions led to a situation where immediately before Katrina the state had moved to take over 5 failing schools. It was supposed to be a small, controlled experiment: “We’re going to try 5 schools, we’re going to give them to a local university who will intervene and try to make improvements and we’ll see how this works. We’ll incubate them, we’ll take care of them like preemie newborns and give them all the supportive systems that they need. And then when they are ready, we’ll return them to the local district.”

And that was what was being implemented in the 2004-2005 school year?

It was the 2005- 2006 school year.

Ok, so it was actually about to start…

And then Katrina happens. And again, the local school district was essentially bankrupt and under investigation. There was a chaotic situation, it lacked leadership and this law had been passed to allow the state in. And there was massive turnover on the school board too.

And so this led to the situation where, come August 29, 2005 this horrible, man-made disaster happens and by fall, Orleans Parish School Board was saying, “We don’t have any money; we will not be opening any schools this year.” That met with people who were back, especially on the Westbank and especially in Uptown saying, “What do you mean you’re not going to re-open the schools?” So it opened this door politically for people to be like, “Well if Orleans Parish School Board isn’t going to open schools, then let’s do something else.” And so the Recovery School District (RSD), or really, the state legislature, in that political moment, said “Ok, we’re going to change the rules.”

After Katrina they said, “Not only are we going to take over the ones that legally we had the authority to take over, but we’re going to take over any school that is below average,” which swept a whole bunch more schools in.

So that at the end of the day what got moved over to the RSD was about 128 or 130 schools.

The RSD was never designed to run schools. It was supposed to be a holding bin that then farmed schools to a charter school operator, either a university or another non-profit organization. But the mandate post-Katrina was to actually open schools.

There was this moment where lots of kids were put on a really long waitlist because the district was like, “We literally don’t have any more space in a building anywhere.” Which was illegal and is outrageous. It was the wrong answer. And also, physically, there weren’t buildings. There was a ramping up of trying to get staff and open up so many schools really quickly to take in the kids who were returning.

Meanwhile, the OPSB was slowly going about reopening schools and indicated that it would be many months before that happened, possibly one entire school year. The administrators of their schools or some collaboration of administrators and some parents were like, “Well if you aren’t going to open us under your authority now, we're going to open ourselves and we’re going to demand to be a charter school.”

So where as there might have been more dialogue and contention about the decision to become a charter school in a different landscape, this became the only way you were going to have a school. Parents who may have felt that they weren’t sure about charter schools were sort of up against a wall. You need your kid to go to school somewhere and this school is going to reopen only if we push for it to become a charter school.


So that brings us to creating the Parents’ Guide. Most New Orleanians were not aware of the small experiment. They may not have been aware that there were charter schools happening at all, or what the Recovery School District was. Before Katrina it was such a small thing in grand scheme of schools in New Orleans. Then suddenly the RSD is the district, it basically is running all the schools.

Rosana Cruz is Associate Director of VOTE (Voice Of The Ex-offender). Previously Rosana worked with Safe Streets/Strong Communities and the National Immigration Law Center. Prior to joining NILC, she worked with SEIU1991 in Miami, after having been displaced from New Orleans by Katrina. Before the storm, Rosana worked for a diverse range of community organizations, including the Latin American Library, Hispanic Apostolate, the Lesbian and Gay Community Center of New Orleans, and People's Youth Freedom School. Rosana came to New Orleans through her work with the Southern Regional Office of Amnesty International in Atlanta.

Bobby Jindal vs. Public Education, By Diane Ravitch

Below is an excerpt from a post by Diane Ravitch that originally appeared on the Education Week blog:

I went to Lafayette, La., last week to speak to the Louisiana School Boards Association. These men and women, representing their local schools from across the state, are trying to preserve public education in the face of an unprecedented onslaught by Gov. Bobby Jindal and the state's Republican-dominated legislature. Jindal has the backing of the state's corporate leaders, the nation's biggest foundations, and some powerful out-of-state supporters of privatization for his sweeping attack on public education.

Gov. Jindal has submitted a legislative proposal that would offer vouchers to more than half the students in the state; vastly expand the number of privately managed charter schools by giving the state board of education the power to create up to 40 new charter authorizing agencies; introduce academic standards and letter grades for pre-schoolers; and end seniority and tenure for teachers.

Under his plan, the local superintendent could immediately fire any teacher—tenured or not—who was rated "ineffective" by the state evaluation program. If the teacher re-applied to teach, she would have to be rated "highly effective" for five years in a row to regain tenure. Tenure, needless to say, becomes a meaningless term, since due process no longer is required for termination.

The bill is as punitive as possible with respect to public education and teachers. It says nothing about helping to improve or support them. It's all about enabling students to leave public schools and creating the tools to intimidate and fire teachers. This "reform" is not conservative. I would say it is radical and reactionary. But it is in no way unique to Louisiana.

Gov. Jindal is in a race to the bottom with other Republican governors to see who can move fastest to destroy the underpinnings of public education and to instill fear in the hearts of teachers. It's hard to say which of them is worst: Jindal, Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Mitch Daniels of Indiana, Rick Scott of Florida, John Kasich of Ohio, or .... There are so many contenders for the title, it's hard to name them all. They all seem to be working from the same playbook: Remove any professionalism and sense of security from teachers; expand privatization as rapidly as possible, through charters and vouchers; intensify reliance on high-stakes tests to evaluate teachers and schools; tighten the regulations on public schools while deregulating the privately managed charter schools. Keep up the attack on many fronts, to confuse the supporters of public education.

The governors appear to be working from the ALEC playbook, ALEC (or the American Legislative Exchange Council) being an organization that shapes model legislation for very conservative state legislators.

Using the right coded language is a very important part of the assault on public education: Call it "reform." Say that its critics are "defenders of the status quo," even though the status quo is 10 years of federally mandated high-stakes testing and school closings. If possible, throw mud at the defenders of public education and say that they only have "adult interests" at heart, while the pseudo-reformers—the rich and powerful—are acting only in the interests of children.

Soon after I spoke, Jindal's newly selected State Superintendent John White had a conference call with reporters to challenge what I said, which was odd because he was not present and did not hear what I said. He had no substantive response to my research review showing that charters, vouchers, and merit pay don't produce better education. He had no substantive response to my critique of the vagaries of value-added evaluation of teachers. Instead, he pointed to the New Orleans model as a paradigm of "reform," meaning, I suppose, the benefits of closing down public schools, turning the children over to private management, breaking the teachers' union, and hiring inexperienced, uncertified teachers.

John White was selected by Jindal to lead the state after Jindal took control of the state board of education last fall. John White had led the New Orleans Recovery School District for only a few months when he was chosen to run the state. He is a former Teach for America teacher and a graduate of the Broad Superintendents Academy. Much of his time in New York City was spent closing public schools and replacing them with charter schools, the so-called portfolio approach (like the stock market, where you keep the winners and sell the losers). He had nothing to do with academic matters, with curriculum or instruction. So he is well-suited to what Bobby Jindal is trying to accomplish in Louisiana. By the way, it won't surprise you to learn that Arne Duncan applauded Jindal's appointment of White as state superintendent and called White a "visionary leader." I guess, in Duncan's worldview, a "visionary leader" is someone willing to shut down public schools no matter what the parents and local community say.

The New Orleans' "miracle" is supposed to be evidence for the value of handing public education over to private managers and uncertified teachers. But the state's own website contradicts that "miracle" narrative. The state education department rated 79 percent of the charters in the Recovery School District as D or F.

The state also reported that the New Orleans Recovery School District was next to last in academic performance of all 72 districts in the state. It has made gains, but only in comparison to its own low base line in 2007.

All this data was compiled before the Jindal takeover of the state board of education. Currently, researchers are having trouble getting any data from the state education department.

Why are the elites of both parties so eager to hand children and public dollars over to private corporations? Why are both parties complicit in the dismantling of public education? Why do so many Democrats at the top advocate what used to be known as the right-wing agenda for education? Is it all about campaign contributions? Why does the media let them get away with it? Why does anyone think that this will be good for our society in the short term or the long term? Why have the monied interests decided to privatize large swaths of public education? What happens to our democracy when the public sector is effectively whittled away or purchased by big money?

New Orleans Is No Education 'Miracle' By Linda Tran

An article recently posted on the Education Week website offers an important perspective on New Orleans' schools:
As a recent graduate of a New Orleans public high school, I find it very troubling that the national conversation about post-Katrina education amounts to little more than talking points about charter schools and test scores. The most telling indication of how we’re doing in the classroom actually comes from a youth-led research project showing the hard realities students continue to face every day. As New Orleans moves to become the first all-charter district in the country, students here must be heard.

The Vietnamese American Young Leaders Association, or VAYLA, surveyed a cross section of 450 students from six different public high schools among the schools overseen by the Orleans Parish school board and those in the state’s Recovery School District, or RSD, asking students for their opinions on everything from counselor availability and teacher effectiveness to school lunches and safety. Published this September, the surveys and testimony that VAYLA gathered contain more than 25,000 student observations. These student voices echo the feelings of many of us yearning to be heard by policymakers.

Louisiana education officials promised to build a world-class public school system after Katrina. But the survey shows that the historic inequalities faced by students of color and those from low-income communities were not washed away by the floodwaters.

An Orleans Parish charter school with a significant white population received high marks across the board, while the remaining five schools averaged what amounts to a C or D in areas like safety, academic rigor, counselor accessibility, classroom management, physical environment, and affordability. I can personally attest to how much these challenges impact a student’s ability to learn, grow, and earn the right to walk across that stage on graduation day.

Even though math and reading scores have improved in New Orleans, the challenge that traps so many people my age is the lack of a high school diploma or at least one that truly represents the education necessary to succeed in life. According to the Alliance for Excellent Education, one of every six New Orleans high schools fails to graduate at least 40 percent of its students. By 2018, about 3 million US jobs will be available without enough college educated workers to apply, according to the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.

Our economic future demands more from our education system and so should we. A majority of the high school students who responded to the VAYLA survey said they did not feel their school was preparing them for college; over 60 percent of students said they complete less than one hour of homework each night; and 20 percent of students also said they have never visited an academic counselor. Schools must find a way to support students with after-school study halls, Advanced Placement course offerings, accessible counselors, and other services that prepare them for college and careers.

As a student-advocacy organization, VAYLA recognizes that teachers and administrators cannot do it all on their own. Parents need to be engaged in the education process. One of the major barriers is language, with 50 percent of limited-English-proficient parents having never even met their kids’ teachers. Bilingual school staff and translation services would enable limited-English families to get involved and stay involved. Furthermore, an online parent portal would give working parents the chance to monitor their children’s progress.

Like many others, the schools VAYLA studied are in desperate need of new models that support English-language learners. The results indicate that nearly 70 percent of Asian and Latino students responding reported having been placed in an English-as-a-second-language class that did not fit their needs. Each of these students has a different level of proficiency, requiring tailored instruction. We must do more to ensure that every ESL class has a teacher who is certified in this field.

Hopefully, we can also agree to do something about the one in four students who report that they feel “unsafe” at school. We would know so much more about the dangers that exist if schools reported incidents of harassment and bullying. Without spending a penny, students and security-staff members could create a safety commission at each school to develop better solutions that do not rely on punishments and harsh discipline. Providing more counseling options would give students with emotional or social challenges the support they need to prevent dangerous behavior.

Other issues continue to hold students back, but no one looking at New Orleans’ schools seems to see what is actually happening on the ground: Sixty percent of students surveyed don’t use the restrooms at their schools; 70 percent of students say their classes do not have enough textbooks for every student; and half of students do not eat lunch every day. These are basic problems that still exist.

Six years after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans’ public high schools are still plagued by severe inequities. Just talk to the students.

Linda Tran was the Abramson Science and Technology Charter School's class of 2011 salutatorian. She was also a youth lead organizer and researcher for the VAYLA survey. She is now a freshman at the University of New Orleans.

The Broad Foundation's Influence on New Orleans Schools

An interesting feature on the ColorLines website maps out the national influence on the Broad Superintendents Academy, an organization that is not well-known to the general public, but has had a large influence on US education, policy, including here in New Orleans (Current RSD Superintendent John White is among their trainees). Below is an excerpt from the article. Go to this link to see more:

Who’s running your school district? If you live in a big city or urban area, chances are decisions have been influenced by someone who’s been groomed with a specific ideology of education policy. In 2002 the Broad Foundation, one of the largest and most influential philanthropies dedicated to school reform, established the Broad Superintendents Academy, a ten-month program to provide corporate-level management and skills development to folks they hoped would go on to decision makers in school districts across the country.

The Broad philosophy has become mainstream in the school reform landscape. The foundation advocates shutting down schools whose test scores have designated them as “failing;” instituting accountability mechanisms for teachers that tie their job evaluations to their students’ test scores; and advocates for more school choices outside the traditional public school through charter schools and vouchers. Former graduates from the Broad Academy have gone on to do just that in the cities they’ve arrived in, and not without a storm of controversy often following in their wake.

VAYLA Press Conference: Six Public High Schools, Six Years After the Storm, 450 Student Voices from Inside New Orleans Educational Experiment

From the Vietnamese American Young Leaders Association of New Orleans (VAYLA):
About 18 months ago, students began to examine conditions in six public high schools, embarking on the most extensive, youth-led evaluation of New Orleans schools since Hurricane Katrina.

In total, we have gathered 50 hours of testimony and 25,000 survey responses, engaging over 450 students. We will be hosting a press conference to release our report to the public. Come hear what is happening in schools from the students themselves.

Six Public High Schools, Six Years After the Storm
Wednesday, Sept. 7 at 3:30 p.m.
New Orleans Main Library
3rd Floor Auditorium
219 Loyola Ave., New Orleans, LA 70112
For more information:
504.253.6000 or ryhc@vayla-no.org

Katrina Pain Index 2011: Race, Gender, Poverty

By Bill Quigley and Davida Finger
Six years ago, Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf coast. The impact of Katrina and government bungling continue to inflict major pain on the people left behind. It is impossible to understand what happened and what still remains without considering race, gender, and poverty. The following offer some hints of what remains.

$62 million. Amount of money HUD and the State of Louisiana agreed to pay thousands of homeowners because of racial discrimination in Louisiana’s program to disburse federal rebuilding funds following Katrina and Rita. African American homeowners were more likely than whites to have their rebuilding grants based on much lower pre-storm value of their homes rather than the higher estimated cost to rebuild them. Source: Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center.

343,829. The current population of the city of New Orleans, about 110,000 less than when Katrina hit. New Orleans is now whiter, more male and more prosperous. Source: Greater New Orleans Community Data Center.

154,000. FEMA is now reviewing the grants it gave to 154,000 people following hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma. It is now demanding that some return the long ago spent funds! FEMA admits that many of the cases under review stem from mistakes made by its own agency employees. FEMA’s error rate following Katrina was 14.5 per cent. Source: Michael Kunzelman and Ryan Foley, Associated Press.

65,423. In the New Orleans metropolitan area, there are now 65,423 fewer African American women and girls than when Katrina hit. Overall, the number of women and girls decreased since Katrina by 108,116. Source: Institute for Women’s Policy Research.

47,738. Number of vacant houses in New Orleans as of 2010. Source: GNOCDC.

3000. Over three thousand public housing apartments occupied before Katrina plus another thousand under renovation were bulldozed after Katrina. Less than ten percent, 238 families, have made it back into the apartments built on the renovated sites. Only half of the 3000+ families have even made it back to New Orleans at all. All were African American. Source: Katy Reckdahl, Times-Picayune.

75. Nearly seventy five percent of the public schools in New Orleans have become charters since Katrina. Over fifty percent of public school students in New Orleans attend public charter schools. There are now more than thirty different charter school operators in New Orleans alone. The reorganization of the public schools has created a separate but unequal tiered system of schools that steers a minority of students, including virtually all of the city’s white students, into a set of selective, higher-performing schools and most of the city’s students of color into a set of lower-performing schools. Sources: Andrew Vanacore, Times-Picayune; Valerie Strauss, Washington Post; Institute on Race & Poverty of University of Minnesota Law School.

70. Seventy percent more people are homeless in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina. People living with HIV are estimated to be homeless at 10 times the rate of the general population, a condition amplified after Hurricane Katrina. Source: Unity for the Homeless and Times-Picayune.

59. Less than 60 percent of Louisiana’s public school students graduate from high school with their class. Among public school children with disabilities in New Orleans, the high school graduation rate is 6.8%. Source: Education Week and Southern Poverty Law Center.

34. Thirty four percent of the children in New Orleans live in poverty; the national average is 20%. Source: Annie Casey Foundation Kids Count 2011.

12. Twelve New Orleans police officers convicted or plead guilty to federal crimes involving shootings of civilians during Hurricane Katrina aftermath. Source: Times-Picayune and Louisiana Justice Institute.

10. At least ten people were killed by police under questionable circumstances during days after Katrina. Source: Louisiana Justice Institute and Times-Picayune.

3. A three-fold increase in heart attacks was documented in the two years after Katrina. Source: Tulane University Health Study.

Number unknown. The true impact of the BP oil spill in terms of adverse health effects is vast but unknown. Delays by the federal government in studying the spill’s physical and mental health effects hinder any ability to understand these issues with accuracy. A year after the spill, more people are reporting medical and mental health problems. Source: Campell Robertson, New York Times and National Geographic.

Bill Quigley and Davida Finger are professors at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law. Bill is also Associate Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. You can reach Bill at quigley77@gmail.com and Davida at davida.finger@gmail.com.