When Sharon Clark became principal of Sophie B. Wright School in 2001, the ?Uptown New Orleans middle school was riddled with the kinds of problems that had plagued the city’s public education system for decades.
Morale was low. Parents were disinterested and the school’s performance score, a statewide accountability measure determined by standardized LEAP test scores, was a dismal 24.7.
Just eight years later, Sophie B. Wright is one of New Orleans’ greatest success stories. The school’s most recent performance score has more than tripled to a 74.6. Parental involvement is strong, as evidenced by the standing-room-only crowd at the spring eighth-grade banquet. Perhaps most telling, the school is expanding into a high school this fall because its eighth graders routinely outperform many of the high schools in the district.
“Of the 116 eighth graders who graduated this spring, we’re keeping 101 of them for high school,” Clark says. “People love it here. They don’t want to leave.”
For Clark, who came to New Orleans from Phoenix and has worked under three school superintendents both pre- and post-Katrina, the secret to the school’s turnaround lies in the fact that it is a chartered school and has been so since early 2005. It was one of the first schools in the state to begin operating under a charter and Clark says the autonomy she has under the new system has enabled her to implement reforms that are paying off in a big way.
“It has allowed us to be more consistent in everything that we do in our staffing, policies, procedures and our mission,” Clark says. “It gives us autonomy.”
Sophie B. Wright is not alone. Charter schools across New Orleans, which account for more than half the public schools districtwide, are making record improvements. Spring LEAP test scores from New Orleans are better than they’ve ever been. More importantly, the rate at which they’re improving is faster than that of any other parish in the 10/12 corridor.
Granted, the test scores of New Orleans students are still comparatively low. But the improvement has been so great over the past three years that many across the corridor and the state are now taking a hard look at charter schools and asking the question: Is charter education is the answer for every public school district?
It’s a complicated question that educators, policy makers and political leaders are struggling to answer. Because while statistics would suggest that charters are the obvious solution to reforming troubled public education, stakeholders in the traditional system are opposed to giving up the power and the old way of doing business. They can’t deny the success New Orleans has had, but then again, they point out, New Orleans had almost no place to go but up.
“When you start out at a certain level, there’s always room to grow,” says East Baton Rouge Parish School Superintendent Charlotte Placide. “You have to look at where New Orleans started out.”
Where New Orleans started out was an ugly place indeed, statistically speaking. Before Katrina, only one in four of the city’s eighth graders scored at the basic level or above in English on the state LEAP. Fewer than one in three performed that well in math. Only half the fourth-grade public school students were meeting the state’s promotional standard and less than one-third of the eighth graders were. The system seemed beyond hope.
Then came Katrina, which wiped the slate clean and created a golden opportunity to rebuild the public school system from the ground up. With so many displaced residents, the entire bureaucratic structure of the Orleans Parish School System—already shaken by a federal corruption investigation—and the once-powerful teachers’ union were in shambles. Suddenly, the forces that had stood so firmly in the way of charter schools were almost completely obliterated.
In 2006, the first full year after Katrina, New Orleans had 17 charter schools. This fall, it will have 47 or more than half of the total 85 schools in the district. Nearly 60% of the children in Orleans parish now attend charter schools. By 2014, 75% will.
“What you have had in New Orleans is phenomenal growth,” says education reformer and former BESE board member Leslie Jacobs, who led the charge to create high-stakes testing in the late 1990s. “We are making transformational changes in education and it’s being led by charters.”
As proof, Jacobs and other advocates of charter education point to the most recent LEAP test results. Last spring, nearly 60% of fourth graders scored basic or above in English and 50% did in math. That may not sound particularly impressive, but it is when compared to 2005. That year, just 44% scored at a basic level or above in English and 41% did so in math. Eighth-grade scores are slightly lower for both years, but the overall growth rates remain comparable.
There are several reasons ?charters are making such a difference in Orleans, according to those who are closely monitoring the district. One is the mechanism of the Recovery School District, or RSD, which was established to takeover chronically failing schools. It operates some as traditional schools and 33 others as charters. The RSD has complete control over the schools, but is not hamstrung by collective bargaining agreements with the union or the bureaucracy of the school board.
“In other places where there have been mayoral or state takeovers of failing school districts, they inherit the whole thing and they swim upstream because they have the unions and the bureaucracy and the whole culture of failure,” Jacobs says. “What we’ve done with the RSD is strip away a whole bunch of stuff. Out comes the building, money and students and we get to start over without collective bargaining and school board.”
Equally important, however, is the quality of the chartering. Experts agree that chartering in and of itself is not the solution. Qualified organizations have to be selected to take over the schools, and top-flight educators have to be hired to teach the students. New Orleans has been fortunate in that it has attracted an unusually large number of young, motivated and talented teachers through organizations like Teach for America and City Year. This year, one in three Orleans parish public school students will be taught by a Teach for America teacher.
The inherent structuring of charter schools is another reason they tend to succeed—even when the students and the infrastructure are the same. A non-profit board often comprising civic and business leaders runs every charter school. There’s less bureaucracy, more efficiency and, above all, a single, common purpose: making that one individual school succeed.
“Instead of one big board overlooking 100 schools, each charter school has its own board of citizens and business people and they’re all focused on making that one school work,” says Bridgette Nieland, a board member on the Louisiana Charter School Association. “You’re getting people returning to supporting public education.”
Finally, choice has been a big factor in the improvements to Orleans public schools. Both teachers and students are free to pick their schools. It’s emboldening, according to advocates of the system, and has created a dynamic where students and teachers are more committed to where they are.
“There’s a market now,” Jacobs says. “Low performing schools are seeing their enrollment dip; higher performing schools are attracting people who want to be there.”
But just because charter schools are making impressive strides in New Orleans, does that mean they will work elsewhere? And is it really necessary in parishes along the corridor?
“I think it is,” says State Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek. “It’s a better form, generally speaking, of running a school system and so I think while you’re seeing some progress overall you’d see more progress and faster progress if you’d have more charter schools.”
The question, too, comes down to just much progress needs to be made in the 10/12 corridor parishes. On average, the 16 parishes not counting Orleans met or exceeded the percentage of students statewide who scored at the basic level or above on the 2009 LEAP tests. In English, 72% of fourth graders across the state and 62% of eighth graders scored at the basic level or above. In math, 62% of fourth graders and 59% of eighth graders met that baseline standard.
Those are not terribly impressive statistics. Viewed another way, more than a quarter of the students statewide do not even meet the basic level of proficiency in English or math. For the corridor parishes to be doing, on average, only about that well does not inspire confidence in their systems.
In fact, only St. Tammany, Livingston, St. Charles and Jeff Davis consistently scored higher than students statewide. East Baton Rouge, Jefferson, St. Martin, Tangipahoa and, in some cases, Acadia, consistently scored below.
But the charter movement has been fairly slow to gain a foothold across the corridor in all but Baton Rouge. Take Acadia parish, for instance. Seventy percent of both fourth and eighth graders in the parish scored basic or above in English on the LEAP test. But only 50% of fourth graders hit that baseline on the math test, while 67% of eighth graders did. Clearly, the parish has room for improvement and it is planning to implement some changes.
Beginning this fall, seven schools in Crowley, Rayne and Church Point will have special classes for at-risk students in grades K-4. Those students will be separated from the regular classes and given the extra attention they need.
“It’s easy to fail these kids,” explains Acadia Superintendent Johnny Bourque. “It’s harder to figure out what they need, but that’s what we’ll be doing because if we can put them in a special class and meet their needs now then they’ll be less likely to fall behind when they get older.”
Bourque says the individual attention and the flexibility his district schools will have with the so-called strategic placement program resembles what charter schools are able to do, namely to implement programs and curricula that attack the problem—regardless of collective bargaining agreements or school board policies.
Curiously, however, Acadia isn’t exploring the creation of charter schools as an option. Bourque cannot say why.
“There’s just no interest from anyone here to do it,” he says. “There have been no applications.”
One of the main reasons for the lack of interest in other parishes is because educational institutions are inherently resistant to innovation. The only reason charters took off in New Orleans is because the institutional structure there was thrown into disarray after Katrina. No other parish along the corridor was affected in the same way.
“These institutions are resistant to innovation; they really are,” Pastorek says. “They’re very resistant to charters schools, and though it’s becoming a little bit infectious it hasn’t spread through the whole corridor yet.”
One place where it has spread, however, is Baton Rouge. Currently, the parish has six charter schools that fall into two separate categories. Three are so-called Type 1 charters—Children’s Charter School, Community School for Apprenticeship Learning and JK Haynes Elementary.
They were formed in the late 1990s when charter school legislation was in its infancy—and not in response to any problems, per se. They are schools of choice—much like a private school would be, minus the price tag—and are strong schools with high test scores.
The other three are classified as Type 5 charters, which means they were chronically underperforming schools that were taken over by the state and converted to charters under its RSD. They include Prescott Middle School, Glen Oaks High School and Capitol High School. So far in their first year, improvement has been only slight, which parish Superintendent Placide points to as evidence that charters are not a one-size-fits-all solution.
“When you see charter schools with boundaries that are set and a certain population they must serve, such as the Type 5 charter schools then they have the same problems as other schools,” Placide says.
“When it’s a [charter] school of choice and the parents choose it and know the rules when they come then it’s successful. But then, most schools would be successful under those circumstances.”
But the Type 5 charter schools in Baton Rouge made important changes over the past year that will pay off in the long run, according to those working within the schools.
“Overall we are pleased with the successes we have had,” says Annie Morrison with Advance Baton Rouge, the non-profit organization that holds the charter for Glen Oaks and Prescott and also runs Point Coupee Central High School. “Obviously when you have schools that have had so many years of academic failure, problems don’t go away over night.”
In fact, for the first two months of the school year, Advance Baton Rouge was still in the process of opening the schools, so there were operational and logistical challenges that had to be met. But once those first-year hurdles were overcome, the charter organization was able to get down to the business of making some major changes. School days were lengthened by 30 minutes to eight hours a day, and the school year was increased from 182 to 192 total days.
“When you have kids who are two or three grades behind where they should be it only makes sense to lengthen their day,” Morrison says.
Teachers are also required to participate in a lot more professional development. They’re brought up to speed on the latest advances in their subjects and also given pointers on how best to communicate and connect with students who are accustomed to failure in an urban school.
Indeed, professional development is a big component of making charter schools successful and Advance Baton Rouge isn’t the only organization working on it.
The Louisiana Resource Center for Educators has an incubator that is training charter school administrators, putting three-member teams of new charter school ?applicants through a rigorous two-year program. The program is selective; last year 20 people applied. LRCE only accepted eight.
“If you don’t have good teachers it’s not ?going to be a good school and if you don’t have good leaders it’s not going to be a good thing,” says Mark Comanducci, director of reform solutions at LRCE. “We know how hard this is and it’s not a quick process.”
One of the teams trained by LRCE is applying to open a charter school in the Lafayette region. The other two are applying for charters in the Baton Rouge area. Comanducci is optimistic about the promise charters hold, but his enthusiasm is tempered by a realistic understanding of the limits of the charter school label.
“Just putting the name ‘charter’ behind a school is not going to make it a good school,” he says. “It has to be run by people who have a relentless drive, which is why you’ve seen so much success in New Orleans.”
Advocates of charter education believe the rest of the state—and specifically the high-growth parishes along the corridor—would also benefit from more charter schools. Realistically, they don’t think it will happen as quickly or as easily as it did in post-Katrina New Orleans. But they believe it’s important, especially for Baton Rouge.
“If Baton Rouge really wants to be an important economic development engine of the state, I think it’s going to have to look to non-traditional ways of educating its children,” Pastorek says. “That said, it’s going to be very hard to get the institutions to move rapidly.”
