Re: privatization to expand in Louisiana

[aburke5054@aol.com]

If they're conducting a national search for people to run schools that 
have long histories of low achievement, that seems like a good thing.  
Maybe they'll wind up with something a lot better than what they had 
before.  And if they're giving kids smaller class sizes, all the better.

Beyond that, I don't see anything here about sending kids to private 
schools.   Schools that are funded with public dollars, that are under 
the authority of elected officials, and that are operated under state 
law are public schools.  If your child were in a school were kids had 
been taught below grade level and the state brought in new people to 
run it and they got teaching up to where it should be, I doubt very 
much that you would be moaning about the evils of "privatization."

Art

-----Original Message-----
From: monty@fairtest.org
To: arn2-strategy <arn2-strategy@yahoogroups.com>; ARN-L 
<arn-l@interversity.org>; ARN-state <ARN-state@yahoogroups.com>; CARE 
<care@yahoogroups.com>; DC joint statement list 
<rethinkaccountdc@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Mon, 4 Feb 2008 3:35 pm
Subject: [arn-l] privatization to expand in Louisiana


privatization to expand in LOuisiana. Note at the end they are talking 
about establishing low studnet-teacher ratios? Any reason to believe 
the state helped districts do this with schools having difficulty 
before they turn to privatization? And for those from MA< note that 
Bill Guenther of MassInsight has become a go-to expert on this - no 
doubt having turned around many schools.


Monty


Published in Print: February 6, 2008 in Ed Week


Louisiana Seeks Partners to Take Over Failing Schools

State seeks operators to help with turnarounds beyond New Orleans.

By Lesli A. Maxwell

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Louisiana’s top education officials have launched a nationwide search 
for organizations to help them turn around academic achievement in 11 
chronically failing schools in districts around the state.


In doing so, education leaders must also decide whether to transfer the 
schools to the state-run Recovery School District, which took over most 
of the public schools in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. The 
prospect seems unlikely for both political and practical reasons.


The schools—all deemed “academically unacceptable” under Louisiana’s 
accountability system for at least five years—are the first wave of 
what will likely be as many as 48 schools that could be at risk of 
takeover by the end of the year, said state schools Superintendent Paul 
G. Pastorek.


To address low performance in such a large number of schools, Mr. 
Pastorek said, the state needs to seek experts in local school 
districts, national charter school groups, universities, for-profit 
education management organizations, and community organizations. 
Earlier this month, he sent out a formal request to dozens of such 
organizations to solicit their interest.


“With that many schools that will need intervention on the horizon, and 
they are spread out across the state, we need to think about the 
possibility of other operators,” Mr. Pastorek said in an interview. “My 
view is that the state, as an operator, should be a choice of last 
resort.”


In seeking outside operators to overhaul the most troubled schools, 
Louisiana is “ahead of the game,” said William Guenther, the president 
and founder of the Mass Insight Education and Research Institute, a 
Boston-based research and advocacy group that has developed a model for 
how states and school districts should do such “turnaround” work. Mr. 
Guenther said that within a few years, thousands of low-performing 
schools across the country must make dramatic improvements to academic 
achievement or face the most severe consequences under the federal No 
Child Left Behind Act.


“Most states have not looked at this issue of creating the right kind 
of conditions for turnaround, and Louisiana is clearly doing that 
here,” Mr. Guenther said.


“The real challenge for them is that the field of education has not yet 
recognized turnaround as a special discipline, which means there has 
been no funding for it,” he said. “So no one has really grown the 
capacity in organizations that could do this work, and no one has 
provided a home for people in schools who would be good at it.”


A Different Tack

Under Louisiana law, schools that are rated academically unacceptable 
for four years are eligible for state takeover and transfer to the 
Recovery School District, or RSD, a decision that is made at the 
discretion of the state school board. But in districts where more than 
50 percent of the schools have been in that category for four or more 
years, state law requires that the entire school district be swept into 
the RSD.


Two rural parishes, St. Helena and Madison, could be transferred into 
the recovery district by next fall.


But it’s unlikely that Mr. Pastorek would recommend, or the state board 
would approve, shifting direct management of failing schools outside of 
New Orleans to the RSD, which is run by Superintendent Paul G. Vallas. 
The RSD now consists only of New Orleans schools—35 are directly run by 
the district, and 26 are charters.


“I don’t think it’s a good idea to combine them per se with the New 
Orleans schools,” Mr. Pastorek said. “If we do place these schools in 
the RSD, there may be some shared services, but the leadership would 
have to be different.”


Before the state board makes a decision on how to intervene in the 11 
schools, each will have undergone a “quality review” that outlines the 
history of the school, the population it serves, and the programs it 
offers. Because five of the schools are alternative schools, Mr. 
Pastorek said the board will have to decide if using the state’s 
accountability standards at those schools is fair.


Four of the 11 schools are in the 43,000-student East Baton Rouge 
Parish district, while most of the rest are scattered among smaller 
parishes. All of them are high-poverty schools.


“The local school systems have had their opportunities to do this, so 
now we really do have to consider trying something very different to 
reach these students, who we know can learn,” said Walter C. Lee, a 
member of the state board and the superintendent of schools in DeSoto 
Parish in northwest Louisiana. “What it’s going to take is a low 
student-to-teacher ratio and a deep analysis of the deficiencies of 
every child in those schools that we can then use to develop something 
like an [individualized education program] for each of them.”


While national charter school operators may be the most likely 
organizations to offer their help, at least one state board member said 
she wants university partners to be given serious consideration.


“I don’t want to only have charters to choose from for this,” said 
Linda Johnson, the president of the board. “We do have many leaders in 
our state now that are very pro-charter, but the data on charters are 
still not all that explicit to say that they succeed.”


Mr. Guenther of Mass Insight said Louisiana will need to cultivate its 
own organizations for school turnaround work because of a shortage of 
national players.


“You can’t just import partners from outside the state,” he said. 
“You’ve got to be able to use partners that are going to have 
credibility locally.”








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