New Orleans Parents

didn't have any idea the whole point of charters is to leave a whole bunch of kids behind.

Paul Vallas is another corrupt administrator in charge of running an urban school district or a series of charter schools:

A crowd openly hostile to Recovery School District Superintendent Paul Vallas used a state board of education meeting to raise concerns about whether charter schools are leaving the most vulnerable children behind.

When Vallas stated at Monday's meeting that charters are doing "a heck of a job" educating public school students, the mostly African-American audience responded with jeers. Many speakers called for the return of neighborhood schools and expressed fears that many charters accept only students with high test scores.
paul_vallas.JPGEllis Lucia, The Times-Picayune archiveRecovery School District Superintendent Paul Vallas
"Charters don't want anything to do with our children. They're sending them away," said Brenda Valteau, who identified herself as a 1961 graduate of George Washington Carver High School. "We're losing our young people to the streets. It sounds like a conspiracy to me."

Most New Orleans public schools were deemed low-performing and in 2005 turned over to the state-run Recovery School District and converted to charters. The Orleans Parish School Board, which once controlled more than 100 schools, retains only 16: 12 of them independently run charters and four traditional public schools.

The Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education's Recovery School District committee usually meets in Baton Rouge, but it held its meeting at McDonogh 35 High School in New Orleans on Monday. More than two dozen parents, teachers and community activists spoke during the public comment section of the meeting, which sometimes took on a raucous air as speakers made provocative statements and the crowd made its approval or disapproval known.

Vallas is another know-nothing administrator. A letter in Substance News a couple of years ago warned about his disaster in New Orleans:

October 2, 2007

Dear Substance,

Poor, dear New Orleans. They are suffering through the aftermath of two disasters — Katrina and, now, Paul Vallas. In the September 4th issue of the Christian Science Monitor (a newspaper continually lauded for excellent reporting and printing the truth - and with a world-wide readership), Paul Vallas’ regime has been critiqued now that he is New Orleans’ new school superintendent.

Having left Philadelphia under the cloud of contributing, much, to the $100 million plus deficit within the public school system (amongst other travesties), Vallas was hired as the new school superintendent for New Orleans. He promptly “pink slipped” all of the experienced, mature African American (New Orleans) teachers just at the time when important strides were being made of reestablish the teacher union. This was no coincidence. The dismissed teachers remain bitter concerning the way they were treated by, as perceived, a white, elitist, central administration. Remember his minions follow him from city to city to city.

This is the same administration we had to deal with when Vallas was in Chicago. Thanks to the Chicago media, a totally inexperienced (in education) the entire nation was led to believe Vallas could walk on water and could no wrong. He, seemingly, is willing to do whatever is necessary to gain total control of any school system - in order to wreck it, the careers of experienced teachers, force early retirements, and weaken or dismantle any, and all, teacher unions.

As for New Orleans Vallas brought in all young, white teachers, and established, as a vast majority, charter schools. All of this was to improve test scores, and so on, because the mature, experienced African American teachers removed by Vallas could not - because of their supposed ineptness. As always - blame the teachers.

And now? Things are not going well. Societal influences, discipline problems, and so on, are surfacing. Whereas the previous, experienced teachers familiar with these students, their families and their neighborhoods could deal with and understand these problems. The new, inexperienced, white teachers and administration (who never lived in New Orleans until hired) are unable to be effective.

The Monitor article states Vallas likes to hear of new and/or innovative ideas, but will not stand for any criticism. No surprise there. Until Mayor Daley brought Vallas “in” he had had absolutely no educational experience. It does not seem much has changed - nor ever will.

All I can say is thank God Vallas was not able to return to Chicago as many of us feared and as our misguided media suggested (and hoped for). Our gain is New Orleans loss. And who really loses? Why the students, of course!

Sincerely,

Sharonjoy A. Jackson, Chicago

The Education Wars II: New Orleans

Desperate teachers from all over the country are flocking to the cesspool called New Orleans schools, which have been an experiment in the growing movement towards charter schools.

Note this outrage:

Louisiana is conducting a groundbreaking study of teacher effectiveness. It looks at teachers from different teacher education programs and compares how their students do on standardized tests. Teachers who came through Teach For America and other nonprofits did very well in that study. Teachers from TFA outperformed other teachers who had a couple years of experience under their belts.

But those results have raised concerns among local educators, like Andre Perry of the University of New Orleans. Perry leads a group that helps run six charter schools in the city.

Perry says he is concerned that teachers from TFA and other programs who "descended" on New Orleans from outside the area may not stick around as long as homegrown teachers. Regardless of the test scores, "what's needed is some longevity in the profession," Perry says.


In fact, the same effectiveness study showed that teachers from TFA are much less likely to stay than other teachers. Few lasted in the profession more than three years.

Of course TFAs don't stick around. "Teaching" isn't a "profession," it is just something to do for two years, like VISTA or the Peace Corps.

The Education Wars II--New Orleans

While New Orleans' teachers are being fucked over, principals, who typically are too stupid or unethical to be in a classroom, are pulling down big bucks in these charter schools, just like "executives":

Now in control of their own budgets, many New Orleans charter school boards have invested heavily in school leaders, with a few paying well into the six-figure range, doubling or tripling the salaries that principals earned under the old regime.

Atop the pay range sits veteran Kathy Riedlinger, head of Lusher Charter School, who earns $203,556, including a $5,000 yearly car allowance. Lafayette Charter School's Mickey Landry, recruited from a prep school in a national search, is No.¤2 at $186,000.

At Ben Franklin High School, Principal Timothy Rusnak, also recruited nationally, earns $150,000 annually. And Jay Altman, chief executive of FirstLine Schools, earns $132,000 to oversee both S.J. Green and Arthur Ashe charter schools.

Principals used to be lead teachers (hence the term "principal" meaning "principal teacher") with years of experience; now they are little different than the garden variety crooks in the private sector.

Our Dictator,

who should have been run out of D.C. along with his entire administration following the Katrina catastrophe, decided to rub salt into the wound of New Orleans by visiting the Crescent City on the second anniversary.

I am serious. He and his entire administration should have been forced to resign. This was such a monumental act of neglect and downright wrongdoing, the public should have run the administration out.

So when people start blathering about impeachment of both our dictator and our president, I want to laugh in their faces. Why didn't they pressure the administration to get out when their negligence all but destroyed one major American city, something that has NEVER happened in the entire history of this country?

New Orleans was our version of Pompeii, but it was not due to nature.