In the second installment of a two-part ABPTL series, we continue to look at the reasons why New Orlean schools improved and why those schools still have a long way to go to achieve equity between all K-12 learners:
“From 60th to 6th.”
“In 2005, New Orleans schools ranked 60th among Louisiana’s 68 districts in terms of college entry rates. By 2023, it had surged to sixth. As academic outcomes grew, so did graduates’ college readiness – and their ability to take advantage of an unusually strong state scholarship program for those who choose to attend a Louisiana college or university.”
“But school leaders quickly learned that winning admission to college often does not mean a student will actually show up on campus – much less graduate – in an unfamiliar environment sometimes far from home.”
“As one of the city’s most successful charter school networks, Collegiate Academies has been repeatedly tapped by school system’s supporters to develop strategies for addressing gaps in meeting students’ needs. Collegiate’s teachers have been remarkably successful in rolling up their sleeves and solving problems as they come up.”
“Early college persistence rates were terrible, however. Collegiate’s first school, Sci Academy, opened its doors to a founding class of ninth graders in 2008. At graduation, 97% of the class had been accepted to a four-year college or university. But between 2012 and 2018, just 15% of network graduates had earned a degree in six years or less.”
…
“Over the years, the network’s educators have figured out how to get students to prep for entrance tests, burnish their application materials – often convening in the evening at coffeehouses – and put together full-ride scholarship packages.”
“As they looked at internal data, though, Collegiate staff realized alumni were too often enrolling in poor-performing community colleges and other programs where they did not get help making the transition to a four-year institution. The school network established a formal college persistence program and began enrolling alums in groups at the most receptive colleges.”
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“Collegiate’s overall six-year college graduation rate is still low at 18% – but better than the national rate of 11% for the lowest-income students, according to the school’s analysis of U.S. Census data. More promising, the number of alums who return for a second year at college is 78%.”
…
“Fewer pre-K seats.”
“The creation of the all-charter school system reduced the availability of early childhood education. In 2005, Orleans Parish public elementary schools offered nearly 70 pre-K seats for every 100 kindergartners. Today, there are fewer than 50 per 100.”
“Charter operators were not required to offer preschool, and state funding subsidized only a small number of seats at each school. To fill a preschool classroom with enough students to justify the cost, a school – in a deeply impoverished system – would need to find families able to pay tuition themselves.”
“On top of this, the district’s accountability system focuses on performance in grades 3 through 8, so charter school leaders do not have incentive to offer pre-K programs.”
“With the backing of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and a number of other philanthropic, governmental and civic organizations, the New Orleans Early Education Network has worked to increase the number of pre-K seats.”
“Closing underperforming schools drove most of the system’s improvement – but remains deeply unpopular.”
“One of the most important datasets showing the continued academic improvement of New Orleans education landscape is also the most enduringly controversial. Under Act 91, persistent underperformers’ charters are revoked and given to new, high-performing operators.”
“’This process, the Tulane researchers tracking the system’s progress declare definitively, ‘has driven all of the post-Katrina improvement.’”
“In large part, this is because, unlike in other districts, state laws and local policies are supposed to ensure students end up in higher-performing classrooms than the ones they’re forced to leave.”
“Yet closing a school – even one that has left successive generations ill-equipped to break out of poverty – is supremely unpopular. Nowhere is this more true than in Orleans Parish, where school communities are closely tied to the city’s history, their legacies celebrated at every opportunity by alumni networks.”
…
“As Louisiana’s superintendent of education from 2012 to 2020, John White was one of the architects of the autonomy-for-accountability bargain that is at the heart of the school system’s novel structure. A willingness to engage in tough conversations, he says, ‘is in the DNA of the system.’”
“’Acknowledging areas of struggle is part of the deal,’ he says.”
“But so, too, is recognizing what’s possible when a community is willing to engage in tough conversations.”
“New Orleans’s education system has been on a protracted march toward achieving a basic civil right, which is the guarantee that, given reasonable effort, all children will learn to read, write, do math and make friends in the schools of our city,’ says White. ‘By most measures, New Orleans is doing better at that today than it was 20 years ago. New Orleans will be a lot closer to that promise in 20 years.’”
Such a hopeful beginning. Such impressive improvements over the span of 10 years – 2005 to 2015. But now New Orleans system of schools continues to struggle, especially with those young learners most difficult to master reading, writing, and problem-solving outcomes. Everyone wants to believe John White when he says New Orlean schools will be even stronger by 2045, but the data, and the history, may suggest otherwise.
Here’s another question from “F in Exams: The Very Best Totally Wrong Test Answers”:
What is the process for separating a mixture of chalk and sand?
It is a process called flirtation.
Til tomorrow. SVB
A Better Path to Learning 
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