A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford Arne Duncan said Katrina was the best thing to happen to New Orleans schools, and his successor, John B. King, doubtless feels the same. But “it’s all propaganda and phony numbers.” Even with more than a third of its poor Black students in exile, the New Orleans all-charter system ranks significantly lower than Louisiana public schools – and that’s after controlling for factors of race, class and qualifications for special education.
Tell the New Education Secretary: Charter Schools Flunk Out in New Orleans A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford “The gap between Louisiana charter schools – meaning, mainly, New Orleans – and public schools was the biggest in the country.”
Arne Duncan, the outgoing U.S. secretary of education, will be succeeded by an even more rabid professional privatizer of public education. John B. King, a Black and Puerto Rican native of Brooklyn, New York – and, like President Obama, a product of Harvard and Columbia universities – has spent his entire teaching career in the charter school business. King is a hit man for school privatization – the perfect credentials to take over from presidential buddy Arne Duncan, the ghoul who obscenely declared that “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans was Hurricane Katrina.”
Corporations stand to make hundreds of billions of dollars from privatization of education, so it pays to tell lies about what happened when Katrina provided the opportunity to illegally fire 7,000 New Orleans teachers, the majority of them Black, replacing them with young, largely white, non-union and ultimately temporary staff, and then converting all of the city’s schools to charters. The privatizers claim that test scores are way up in New Orleans, but studies show that it’s all propaganda and phony numbers. Charter schools do what they have always done: they select and retain students that tend to do well on tests, and discard the rest. That’s called “creaming” – taking the better-performing students right off the top. But, in New Orleans, the creaming preceded the charter school coup. One-third of the Black population was driven from the city, never to return. The schoolchildren among these displaced Black persons were disproportionately poor – precisely the demographic that does relatively worse on standardized tests. They never showed up for class in New Orleans newly charterized schools, leaving a more affluent mass of students to take the standardized tests. But, the charter schools continued the creaming students, in an attempt to boost the test numbers, especially at selected schools – all the while claiming that underperforming students were not being displaced.
That was a lie
“New Orleans’ charter school system flunks.”
Most of Louisiana’s charter schools are located in New Orleans. A study by the Network for Public Education effusive praise more effective educational evil than his outgoing boss, the obscene Mr. Duncan.
For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com.
The Axis of Resistance is shining a light on the reactionary regimes in the region who remain active and willing agents of imperialism.
Ending the war in Sudan will require real Sudanese dialogue to carve out a new political course. The people must be wary of a manufactured process, run by a political and economic elite…
The reactionary government of the Dominican Republic has continued to pursue its racist policies against Haiti, deporting Haitians while exploiting the nation for its economic gain. Widespread sexual…
Florida’s ban takes effect May 1, 2024, and the fate of Arizona’s abortion access is in the throes of legal, political, and legislative battles.
President Bola Tinubu’s lifting of fuel subsidies and liberalization of currency trade has pleased the IMF and increased hunger in Africa’s most populous country.
