What a clever distraction fighting about teacher pensions, while stealing the whole public school

[CK_John]

Louisiana is the first to go completely private. Wonder how many states will follow before school starts in the fall?

No teachers needed, Louisania just ok'ed a 315 student charter school that will only use DVD's and self study guides. No teachers.


.

[Zalatix]

1. No worry. The system will utterly collapse.

Louisiana will fail so quickly and so spectacularly that even the mass hypnosis will be broken and the Independent voters will quickly turn.

[proud2BlibKansan]

2. I don't know about that.

New Orleans was totally charterized and has been a complete failure yet Arne Duncan said just recently that Katrina was the best thing to happen to the children in NO.

[Zalatix]

3. The first graduates of this DVD-based education system will be the killing blow.

Anything Arne Duncan says now won't mean shit when this bunch hits the workforce. Or attempts to hit it.

[Historic NY]

4. Actually it was back in 2010..

Martin: I was talking to you on James Carville and Mary Matalin. They’re of course very involved in what’s happening in New Orleans. What’s amazing is New Orleans, is that everything was devastated because of Hurricane Katrina. But because everything was wiped out, in essence, you are building from ground zero to change the dynamic of education in that city.

Duncan: That’s a fascinating one. I’ve spent a lot of time in New Orleans and this is a tough thing to say but I’m going to be really honest. The best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans was Hurricane Katrina. That education system was a disaster. And it took Hurricane Katrina to wake up the community to say that we have to do better. And the progress that it made in four years since the hurricane, is unbelievable. They have a chance to create a phenomenal school district. Long way to go, but that city was not serious about its education. Those children were being desperately underserved prior. And the amount of progress and the amount of reform we’re seeing in a short amount of time has been absolutely amazing. I have so much respect for the adults, the teachers, the principals that are working hard. I’ve spent a lot of time talking to students at John Mack high school there. Many who had missed school for six months, eight months, 13 months after the Hurricane and still came back to get an education. Children in our country, they want to learn. They’re resilient. They’re tough. We have to meet them half-way. We have to give them opportunity. And New Orleans is doing a phenomenal job of getting that system to an entirely different level.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2010/01/duncan-katrina-was-the-best-thing-for-new-orleans-schools/


Here is what they are saying locally now.........

http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2012/05/new_orleans_charter_schools_ar.html

[HiPointDem]

6. that's what the mouthpiece of the ruling class is saying. here's what the people are saying:

"Like many charter schools in the city, Sci Academy is indeed a strict place. Last year the school suspended 38 percent of its students at one point or another, state data show. That compares with a state average of just below 10 percent."

"cheerleading for Charter Schools always manages to overlook the fact that, going on seven years after Katrina, most of the city's charter schools are performing poorly when measured by state standards; and Sci Academy, which grew out of the old OPSB Science and Math magnet school, was performing well before The Storm, too."

This 'Academy' is sort of a scam, being able to select students, kick out the duds, and pay 25% more to teachers. This is probably the next fraud the Times-Picayune should investigate, like the prison article. Most of these guys, like Ben Marcovitz, make over $200k and dont get paid what you think a 'new' principal is making. We are talking about people that have been in the education (teachers) system only 4 or 5 years. Folks like Marcovitz are not here to 'help' New Orleans, they are here to 'help' themselves. They will be gone (from New Orleans) soon after the 'charter' school scam gets EXPOSED.

The 9th grade EOC tests were "exempted" from their intensive learning classes at New Orleans Military and Maritime Academy, some of the families of these 9th grade students are complaining that this could be held against their child, for the future. I am still trying to understand how certain intensive learning groups can be eliminated from testing that would see their measurement of the full academic year in Algebra, ELA.

There is so much hidden money in public education that it will take years for this scam to unravel. Adams and Reese (Pastorek's former law firm) forms a non-profit and bam! opens the New Orleans Military and Maritime Academy. Where are the scores? Ha! Well you know, they get a free ride this year. Priestly disappears and OPSB opens something else under a new name. Bam! Where are the scores? Well you know, they get a free ride this year. Adams and Reese is legal counsel for ACSA. Bam! Give the ACSA non-profit another year of public money, Lourdes Moran and Tommy Robichaux. There aynt no such thing as a free lunch. I don't care what the propoganda machine says.

[HiPointDem]

10. The Myth That Charter Schools Have Saved New Orleans

Montana is right that under the current education system, in which most city schools have been taken over by the state, and many of those converted into independently chartered schools, it's become extremely difficult for students with special needs to find a school for enrollment. For those who do land in a school, services for students with mental disorders, behavioral problems and physical handicaps are lacking... Families have attempted to place their disabled children in schools, but they have either been told that the school doesn't have special-needs services or been told, gently, that their child would be better served at another school. These problems occur often enough that a due-process complaint has been filed against the Louisiana Department of Education on behalf of 4,500 students in the city with disabilities.

"New Orleans Charter Schools Redefine Education Reform," reads: "The standardized test results for fourth, eighth and tenth grade public school students have gone up since the storm hit in 2005. This may have something to do with the increasing presence of charter schools, though it is not clear." But test scores in those grades were already rising before the storm hit. Between 2003 and 2005, fourth-grade math results grew by 9 percent. Between 2007 and 2009, those results grew by 9.5 percent. In eighth-grade math, the growth in the percentage of kids scoring above basic levels between 2003 and 2005 was greater than the gains between 2007 and 2009. There has been a slight improvement in eighth-grade English and in math at the high school graduate level, but in both categories, the improvement in test scores builds on progress that was already occurring before the mass chartering of New Orleans.

So far no link has been found between improved test scores and charter schools. A report on education included in "The New Orleans Index at Five," a study released by the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center and the Brookings Institution, states that a "correlation between academic growth and the major post-storm reforms has not been demonstrated."

Today only 38,000 students are enrolled in New Orleans schools, compared with 65,000 in the year before Katrina. You simply cannot make the argument that test scores are improving without figuring in the fact that some 40 percent of students -- a lot of them struggling with poverty and disabilities, the kinds of students who might well lower test scores -- haven't come back. One indicator that many poor families won't be coming back is that, for the first time, New Orleans' suburbs now have a higher number of low-income families than the city: 92,752 versus 67,861.

http://www.theroot.com/views/myth-charter-schools-have-saved-new-orleans?page=0,1

[eppur_se_muova]

18. Thanks for that, and for the link.

The closer you look at charter schools, the more chicanery you uncover. And the biggest fraud of all is that they AREN'T improving student scores -- much less any broader, more meaningful measures of student success.

[jwirr]

19. Most private schools do not serve special needs children and they do not want to. There are a few

exceptions but not many. And they sure as hell do not serve children as severely disabled as my daughter. This move to privatize schools is going to hurt this group the most and it is a deliberate move. Wait until they find out that we take the money with us when we decide to enroll in another school. Money for special ed is from a separate fund that is the savings that come from closing the institutions and follows to client.

[Zalatix]

15. "There AYNT no such thing as a free lunch". Nice shout-out there, LOL!

[HiPointDem]

20. yeah, because it's so important that a commenter writes "aynt" than the rest of that commenter's

content about the special exemptions from testing some charters are getting, & the graft:

"There is so much hidden money in public education that it will take years for this scam to unravel. Adams and Reese (Pastorek's former law firm) forms a non-profit and bam! opens the New Orleans Military and Maritime Academy. Where are the scores? Ha! Well you know, they get a free ride this year. Priestly disappears and OPSB opens something else under a new name. Bam! Where are the scores? Well you know, they get a free ride this year. Adams and Reese is legal counsel for ACSA. Bam! Give the ACSA non-profit another year of public money, Lourdes Moran and Tommy Robichaux. "

[proud2BlibKansan]

8. More of what they're saying about LA charters:

Oprah-Backed Charter School Denying Disabled Collides With Law
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-21/oprah-backed-charter-school-denying-disabled-collides-with-law.html

NOLA charter schools: favoritism with community & parents shut out
http://parentsacrossamerica.org/2012/01/nola-charter-schools-favoritism-with-community-parents-shut-out/

Charter School Scandal Expands to State Department
http://louisianaeducator.blogspot.com/2011/07/charter-school-scandal-expands-to-state.html

[AnotherMcIntosh]

5. Clever indeed.

[4th law of robotics]

7. No teachers at all? I find that difficult to believe

do you have a link?

/not saying it isn't true, I would just like to see some proof first.

[CK_John]

9. Make friends with google or bing. nt

[4th law of robotics]

11. Kind of a douchey response to a fair question

you make an extraordinary claim then cite "google".

I heard that people who choose user names beginning with a "C" are 40% less likely to cite their sources. Just google it.

[TheKentuckian]

12. I'm sure there are classroom leaders of some sort to keep kids in line and send them to the office

They probably aren't actual teachers in any traditional sense.

[HiPointDem]

13. they have classroom monitors who keep kids on task as they watch videos.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002788956

[4th law of robotics]

14. The article referenced specifically mentions teachers

being present.

[HiPointDem]

16. they're not teachers. they're not accredited & they don't teach. they're lab monitors.

[proud2BlibKansan]

17. There are several private schools that have admitted they don't have enough teachers

And others who can't accommodate more students.

The school willing to accept the most voucher students -- 314 -- is New Living Word in Ruston, which has a top-ranked basketball team but no library. Students spend most of the day watching TVs in bare-bones classrooms. Each lesson consists of an instructional DVD that intersperses Biblical verses with subjects such chemistry or composition.
...
At Eternity Christian Academy in Westlake, pastor-turned-principal Marie Carrier hopes to secure extra space to enroll 135 voucher students, though she now has room for just a few dozen. Her first- through eighth-grade students sit in cubicles for much of the day and move at their own pace through Christian workbooks, such as a beginning science text that explains "what God made" on each of the six days of creation. They are not exposed to the theory of evolution.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/01/louisiana-makes-bold-bid-_n_1563900.html

[4th law of robotics]

21. Most public schools don't have enough teachers

But I wouldn't say they have no teachers.

[proud2BlibKansan]

22. The OP says "No teachers needed"

And that is true when schools use videos and computer programs. Note it doesn't say no adults needed. They will likely hire non-certified workers at minimum wage or barely above that to supervise the kids. But they aren't teachers.

[4th law of robotics]

23. It then says "No Teachers."

[proud2BlibKansan]

24. Exactly

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=793780