Why do I think Bobby Jindal is scamming us with faux Common Core lawsuits?

To be quite frank, I did not develop this idea on my own. I was asked whether I thought Jindal’s opposition to Common Core was sincere, and my response at first was “I don’t know, but does it matter?” My thinking being: whether or not Bobby Jindal opposed Common Core for the “right” reasons or for political reasons, was irrelevant. What mattered is that we had a former staunch supporter of the standards publicly recanting his position. I actually think this encouraged a lot of folks in the Anti-Common Core camp, and added to the nationwide movement and impetus to roll back or remove the standards across the nation. Which is great for folks outside of Louisiana, but most public school parents know we are still in a bind. At the end of the day, talk is cheap and therapy and tutoring for 700,000 Louisiana school children won’t be.

Jindal made some moves that seemed to indicate he had genuinely thought deeply about this situation (that he had put us in) and had a thoughtful plan for extricating us from it.

• Jindal held press conferences denouncing Common Core as a Federal takeover of education
• Jindal took numerous photo ops surrounded by opponents of Common Core
• Jindal appointed Jane Smith, a staunch Common Core opponent (one of his three appointees)
• Jindal (though his surrogates at DOA) declared the contract for the PARCC test invalid for not following proper laws and procedures (although DOA had previously reviewed and okayed this same contract.)
• Jindal sent a letter to PARCC telling them he was pulling Louisiana out of the testing consortium (something he apparently didn’t have the legal standing to do.)
• Jindal reduced John White’s purchasing power from 20k to 2 k without prior approval. (Meanwhile John White explained he’d actually been functioning under a 50k limit.)
• Jindal originally refused to allow BESE to hire a lawyer/law firm to being suit against him (but did allow a law firm connected to LDOE, TFA, and Reformers to bring suit against him on constitutional grounds and allowed BESE to sign on as a party to this suit without repercussions for his other two appointed BESE members.)
• Jindal appointed Jimmy Faircloth (a chief campaign donor who has never won a constitutional education case for the administration) to “defend” him from the lawsuit brought by Common Core supporters to allow Louisiana to purchase the PARCC test.
• Jindal brought forth a federal lawsuit against the Obama administration over the constitutionality of Race to the Top funding tied to Common Core and PARCC testing in relation to a 17 million dollar grant Louisiana eventually one in the third round of RTTT

   

All of these things sound positive, but the net effect to date has been nothing but jawing on national television, more photo ops and newspaper stories, more lawsuits, and chaos in the classrooms and homes. Common Core is more entrenched in Louisiana than ever.

 

Sadly I have detected a waning in interest in Common Core forums among opponents. I’d diagnose this as a blend of fatigue, resignation, and perhaps a yearning for eventual victory that has sapped the life from folks and the movement locally. Many are waiting to see how this develops. I don’t blame them. I was watching too. I fear this that is exactly what Jindal’s opposition was intended to do. Jindal inserted himself at the head of the angry mob of parents and teachers opposed to Common Core. He took up our banner (but with what appears to be a rubber pitchfork) and has led us in direction after direction; telling us he has a plan; urging us to follow his lead.

 

He is leading us through blind alleys and into dead ends, folks.

 

I was warned something like this was going to happen numerous times by insiders. Here’s an excerpt from one person I received in April.

I’ve watched with interest this whole story about Common Core tests the last few days.  I have been on the inside of the political circle.  I would bet my life on this.  Bobby Jindal, John White, and Chas Roemer came up with this strategy months ago.  Saying Jindal wants out — but White and Roemer have to sign withdrawal allows Jindal to be perceived as far right — less federal oversight, etc. — poising him for his presidential campaign.   But it also keeps Common Core testing alive in Louisiana.

I’ve had numerous other conversations with different folks on the inside, but this one sums the situation up very nicely. Every day I fear more and more that they were right.

This isn’t just some random guy like me speculating . . . this is someone that works with these characters and knows how they work. So let’s examine some of the signals and moves that don’t make sense if you were really trying to eliminate Common Core, and not simply trying to make a lot of noise about eliminating it.

• If Jindal really wanted out way back in April, when he first started making noise, why didn’t he talk to any of his handpicked and appointed legislators?
• Why did Jindal wait until after the legislative session was completely over in June to hold his press conference about getting Louisiana out of Common Core?
• Jindal has folks all over the legislature keeping an eye on bills and people, but anyone with a half hour and a black and white TV set could have seen the hundreds of parents being marginalized day after day while bill after bill to put the brakes on Common Core was shot down. The only indication that he was for any of these bills to remove Common Core were a few random support cards, but no one from his administration chose to speak or make a statement. In fact, even though those opportunities were offered to them they declined.
• Unless I am mistaken (admittedly it’s been a while since I looked), every BESE member that is for Common Core (except maybe Walter Lee) received maximum contributions from the Jindal campaign in the last BESE election. 2 of Jindal’s 3 BESE appointees are adamantly for it. Why has Jindal not asked them to resign (and appoint two folks that would shift the tide 6 v 5 if swing voter Walter Lee could be brought on board); if he really believes Common Core is an unconstitutional federal takeover of education as he has asserted in his recent lawsuit against the federal government?
• I think that last point should get two bullets, because. . . Seriously? Is he really keeping his appointees, Judith Muranti and Connie Bradford, onboard to represent his interests when he believes they are actively violating the Constitution of the United States and depriving Louisiana citizens of their Constitutional rights? And he wants to be President or even just a national figure??? You would think removing folks Jindal himself appointed on his state board of education, or even just calling for their resignation, would be a much more efficient and effective move than literally making a federal case out of this. It’s not like that would even be a new thing. Jindal did that before, with former Jindal appointee Tammie McDaniel, when she voted a way he didn’t like on a simple funding issue. But Jindal has said nothing and done nothing to his appointees violating the US Constitution and voting to sue him directly for violating Louisiana’s Constitution stating he has been disruptive and destructive. (He has of course, but his own appointees should not be saying that and retaining their positions if he is at all serious about his opposition to Common Core.) You would also think Jindal would have some influence over all the other members he donated to and brought to power.

   

But the truth is, even the federal lawsuit he is bringing is weak and destined to fail for three reasons:

1. His case is weak
2. His lawyer is weak
3. His time is short

Plenty has been written about number 2, Jindal’s representation, Jimmy Faircloth. The fact that he produced not expert witnesses and rolled over in his last case on this issue should be documentation enough. (Not to mention he has never won a Constitution education case he’s represented Jindal on – not that that is ordinarily bad thing except here. . .) While Faircloth might not be the best lawyer if you want to actually win a case, no one can say he isn’t generous when it comes to kicking back [legally of course] some of his “earnings” to his favorite employer in the form of campaign contributions. (This is legal in Louisiana as long as no one calls it a “kickback” or demands a kickback and – and it just “happens” organically. . . I guess. . . of their own volition/common sense.)

So instead I will explore the other two items.

It’s not that the argument the Jindal administration is making a federal case out of is not firmly grounded for some states, but at this moment Louisiana is not really one of them. US DOE did unconstitutionally grant itself waiver powers to ignore the legally defined sanctions of NCLB in the form of ESEA waivers. These waivers were put in place by US DOE to supplant NCLB (No Child Left Behind) requirements. These were put in place without Congressional approval and Duncan has required the defacto adoption of Common Core (or a nationally recognized curriculum of which only Common Core qualifies) in exchange for relaxation of the NCLB requirements. The NCLB requirements were designed to be unattainable, requiring 100% proficiency of all students in all subgroups (Limited English, poor, disabled) by 2014. Some threats made by US DOE are that all federal funding would be withheld if the states don’t meet the impossible standards of NCLB, or the sanctions of NCLB (which can be financially crippling) and will be vigorously enforced. So states can choose to weather the NCLB sanctions which no states can avoid, or adopt Common Core and tie those tests to teacher retention policies and also adopt a bunch of other Reform friendly destructive crap.

By “waiving” the sanctions imposed by the NCLB law that Congress did authorize, Duncan removed the incentive and urgency for Congress to fix the problem built into NCLB that all states faced because NCLB was designed to be structurally impossible to achieve by anyone. When Congress chose to turn a blind eye to the constitutionally questionable ESEA waivers, what resulted was a ceding of all powers to set rules and guidelines for federal funding to the Executive branch (Arne Duncan), rather than the legislative branch of government.

This is why many informed opponents of Common Core consider it a federal mandate and takeover.

(When the mainstream media chooses to ignore this direct line of influence and control it feeds into the conspiracy theories and theorists. To tell you the truth, media that refuses to acknowledge this direct connection is really stupid (or thinks we are), willfully ignorant, lazy, or is actually a part of a conspiracy to spread Common Core propaganda.)

So what has resulted from the imposition of unattainable standards and the refusal of Congress to act to remedy the situation is a requirement that states adopt Common Core (nationally recognized standards of which there was only one by definition: Common Core State Standards), or else.

However Duncan’s interference did not end there. He also added this requirement to the billions of dollars allocated to RTTT (Race To The Top) grants. Louisiana would be in a much better position to make the case these standards were imposed upon them unconstitutionally if Louisiana rejected them (as Oklahoma has done) and was subsequently sanctioned by Arne Duncan (as has happened to Oklahoma). However because Louisiana’s state Board of Education (BESE) is endorsing them, and not stating they are doing so because of a concern about funding being yanked, Jindal’s case is weak. He could make it stronger by kicking his own appointees and replacing them with anti-Common Core appointees, and then perhaps working out an “understanding” with the swing vote BESE member, Walter Lee, who is facing multiple indictments for various financial improprieties. I can see an easy win there, and then a strong federal case to be made when Duncan slams some sanctions down on us.

The basis of the case for arguing the RTTT grants are unconstitutional will be tied to the determination of whether the Federal government can define national standards and curriculum, or whether those are sovereign rights left to the states. Some states that received very large grants in the first or second round of RTT (during one of the greatest financial downturns in our nation since the Great Depression might have a case they applied for and agreed to these grants under financial duress.) However the 17 million dollars Jindal complains about in his federal lawsuit is chump change compared to the more than 800 million dollars Louisiana receives from LDOE for agreeing to the waiver conditions set in conjunction with Arne Duncan. The ESEA waiver process is where Arne’s chokehold over education comes from. 17 million dollars is what we find in our couches every year trying to fill the billion dollars shortfalls Jindal “balances” our budgets with every year, but it is an issue for some states that won significantly more than 17 million dollars..

Even so, a Federal lawsuit is not the short-term answer and not one Jindal can follow-through on. Jindal’s term is up in a little more than a year and he can’t run for a third term (thank the Lord). Not one candidate for Governor in the 2015 gubernatorial race supports eliminating Common Core. The front-runner and most well-funded (and diapered) candidate, David Vitter, has changed his position from staunchly opposed to rabidly in favor of Common Core. (I’m assuming he changed positions after he found out who had all the money.) That means this lawsuit will not amount to anything except more money for one of Jindal’s best campaign donors (Jimmy Faircloth) more headlines for him, and more wasted money and hopes for Louisiana taxpayers and parents.

The BP oil spill happened in 2010. We know who was responsible and BP has acknowledged their responsibility. We know who was damaged. That tragedy happened at end of Bobby Jindal’s first term; 4 years ago, but we still do not have a final settlement for the State or lawsuit brought to trial for Louisiana. What are the chances this lawsuit concerning our very US Constitution will have any meaningful results in the next year?

Will we wait 4 years for this to be resolved? How many Louisiana Governors will be have to go through before a settlement is reached?

That is what Common Core supporters (whom I must now re-include Bobby Jindal as) want. They want a full generation of our children to experiment on to see if Common Core works (even though the early results show abysmal failure.) But don’t worry, parents. I’m sure the next big education plan will be right around the corner for your kids’ kids. Maybe they will be more successful at taming the Educational Industrial Complex than we were?

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Standardized Lying

Student performance in Louisiana is dropping rapidly. The decline started just about the time John White became superintendent of Education and has accelerated rapidly with the introduction of Common Core in Louisiana schools. Based on a sample analysis of the very meager data LDOE finally released under threat of lawsuit it is clear that not only is student performance not increasing or staying steady, it Is in fact declining, and being masked by a lowering of the number of correct answers required to pass LEAP and iLEAP tests. Please refer to this post by Mike Deshotels and the analysis provided by Herb Bassett for the details. Below is an excerpt from Mike’s blog.

Here is the table supplied by the LDOE as a result of my public records request:

   

Notice that for 4th grade ELA, 4th grade Math, and 8th grade Math, there was a significant lowering of the percentage of correct answers needed to get a rating of basic. The Science and Social Studies percentages were changed very little from 2013 to 2014.

Would you like to know why such a high percentage of our students (64%) were able to reach the level of Basic this year on a more difficult 8th grade Math test? Herb Bassett calculates that using the same method of guessing described above, 8th grade students this year on the average would need to know only 20.2% of the math material on the test to reach the level of Basic.

 

What this means is simple terms is that Louisiana students are about 18% less prepared now in 4^th grade in English Language Arts, and 28% percent less prepared in Math by the time the reach 8^th grade than they were before John White and Common Core started being used in Louisiana schools. 8^th grade ELA seems to be about the same. (My guess is this ability evened out as children read more books outside of school. That’s actually how I acquired my skills.) 4^th Grade Math takes about a 10% hit in 4^th grade, and children’s abilities seem to deteriorate going forward based on the 8^th grade results.

This data actually matches up with information being supplied by teachers and parents. I can see why John White would have been so reticent to release this information except under court order and legal proceeding. This is not a local phenomenon. New York has discovered the same subterfuge in their state.

I don’t have magical powers, but I can confidently predict this is something you will find and see happening across the nation, especially in education Reformer infested territories. There is nothing standardized about the testing of Common Core, the only standardization comes in in the form of lying about it.

Proponents of Common Core, and the High Stakes testing required by it, have claimed the comparability of test scores across states will make for meaningful comparisons. To have this meaningful comparison, all states must teach the same curriculum and all must administer identical tests from one of the two federally funded consortiums (Smarter Balanced and PARCC). However neither consortium controls the cut scores; those are entirely in the control of the states. These scores can go up or down as local politics require.

Let me spell this out for you. If you want to show progress in your state you can artificially inflate the scores to show improvement. If you need to make a case for more charter schools and school closures simply lower the scores and take them over and then raise the score back to show that reform worked. That is exactly what Louisiana has done and no doubt other reform markets as well. The actual data shows the Reforms, including Common Core, have had the exact opposite effect, and a very dramatic one.

Even though the proposed tests are identical, even though the curriculum is identical, the actual scores and their meanings are left up to individual states to determine. That fact nullifies the argument for identical standardized tests and even the need for a standardized curriculum. Our scores, our levels of achievement, will not be and are not comparable to scores in other states. These tests are actually the opposite of comparable. NAEP and DEIBELS are national tests that are comparable, and neither of them requires a standardized curriculum nor extensive, expensive, technology intensive, obsessive testing, like Common Core does.

Most people won’t understand why that’s important. Even if some people do understand this shell game, most states will do whatever they can to prevent the public from learning about this practice in a timely manner (as Louisiana and John White has done). This is really a pretty important finding. It confirms anecdotal evidence many parents and teachers have experienced in school and in their homes. This finding drives a stake through the heart of the educational vampire known as Common Core.

Unfortunately Common Core vampires are very real. The corporately funded, Reformer and National teacher union embraced propaganda promoting Standardized Tests linked to Common Core as the cure-all for educational inequality and systemic and endemic poverty is the myth. Really, when you think about it, which is really the more believable reality?

The Violence and Hatred of Common Core Fanatics

It may come as no surprise to those of you/us who have been trying to point out the deficiencies of Common Core, that our input is often met with derision, hatred, venom and now even threats of violence. When I first wrote an article about my experience in with Common Core about a year ago I admit I did not fully understand what was going on, and that I was perplexed and confused by the homework at times. Many of us were. I understand Engage NY Curriculum is not the same as the Common Core standards, but it is derived from them and entirely related and relevant to discussions of Common Core. Moreover, in Louisiana the only State approved Tier 1 resource that LDOE endorses is Eureka, which is the “paid” version of Engage NY. From what I’ve seen this year the only difference between the two is that districts have to pay for Eureka products, and the branding at the bottom of the resource worksheets.

I wrote an entry on my blog to explain how many parents were feeling and because no one in power was listening to the complaints and concerns of parents. Many of us felt marginalized and maligned rather than engaged or listened too. Many folks who embrace the standards, like this teacher that recently posted on my blog talked to us this way when we expressed our concerns:

Sarah Berry, teacher (and provider of Common Core Teaching materials?)

Are all you people Fin crazy? Not a one of you know what the hell you are talking about. If parents can’t add their doubles then we have a bigger problem than we realize. As for the author of the original article; spend more time doing research than criticizing curriculum that you have no idea about. You have no degree in curriculum development (that is obvious) nor do you have a degree in education, your expertise is that you have a child. Just like you have a background in mathematics; that’s right, you had math in school and you learned just fine. Again, obviously not if you don’t know the benefits of doubles. What addition facts give most first graders difficulty? Oh that’s right, you don’t know your doubles so how in the hell would you know 6+7 or 8+9 or 5+7 Doubles helps student make sense of new problems by using their prior knowledge, something you have obviously lost! 6+7 can be seen as 6+6+1 more and is called a doubles plus one. Or you 6+7 could be seen as 7+7-1 and is called doubles minus one. But since your head is so far up your ass and you can only see how “you” were taught, not the benefits of teaching kids the “mathematics” vs. the short cut. When you get your teaching degree, earn your masters in curriculum design, spend time actually in the classroom teaching students, work as an administrator along side professional teachers, then you can write a blog regarding Engage NY math curriculum. And please do all the teachers in your area a favor, don’t have another child just because you can!

I had reports of many parents across various school districts being addressed this way by their teacher and other Common Core proponents. Perhaps Sarah does have all the credentials she implies she has, but what she does not have is people skills or the ability to work well with others. She may not want me to have any more children, but I don’t want her to be “teaching” any more children or engaging with any more parents. Based on this comment I would judge her as a disgrace to her profession. Fortunately not all teachers feel the same way Sarah does or I would be waging a war on teachers the way Reformers do. I actually try to support teachers and engage them constructively and I don’t think they should be evaluated just on a test score tied to a student tied to Common Core, like most, if not all, Common Core supporters do.

As victories are being made across the country against Common Core, it is clear that the strategy of marginalized and mocking parents and making children cry as a measure of rigor is not working. Amazingly this type of antagonistic attack below does more to enflame passions and solidify positions, but I’m sure it made the poster of this comment feel superior for a little while.

Chris Jenson (parent?)

And there are alleged teachers who completely agree with you in the comments. Amazing. I feel forced to point out that, as an adult who went through the old educational system, your clear lack of cognitive ability and problem solving skills, and most horrifyingly the “teachers” who agree with you, are the most telling examples of why we needed education reform in the first place.

I have seen and endured (and sometimes deleted) many of the comments because of racists, classist, and bizarre defenses that included call me and other parents [Expletive] Libertards, an ignorant hillbilly, nazi [expletive], redneck Teabilly/bagger, educational knuckle dragger, etc. I’m sure many parents have endured these insults also. At meetings I’ve attended or others have attended we endured hour upon hour of insults at the hand of Common Core supporters from LABI, Stand For Children, the Louisiana Charter Association, APEL, TFA, Chas Roemer [BESE President) talking to his sister Caroline Roemer Shirley (head of Louisiana Charter Association), as well as representatives from Exxon. We don’t all wear badges to identify who we support and oppose, Senate Education Chair Senator Apel, and these folks were quite brutal and obnoxious in their assessment of our intelligence, possible inbreeding, and sincerity of our tears being shed. We do listen quietly, and nod, and the report back. You have shown your true colors and made us enemies, probably permanently.

This situation is really unfortunate. I have come to meet some teachers that I believe really believe (it appears largely faith based) that these standards will help children. These teachers literally preach the gospel of Common Core, as they tell us in 10 to 12 years we will begin to see the fruits of our labor. I do not have the background in teacher, nor do I have your faith in a system that is fundamentally overly bureaucratic and flawed and that refuses to admit to its shortcomings. I cannot have faith in something that was sold under false pretenses to the American Public and which continues to be sold with lies by proven liars, Reformers.

It may be that Common Core, developed slowly and truly collaboratively, introduced gradually and with forethought and consideration of all stakeholders could have been successful.

If Common Core had not been tied to High Stakes tests for grading teachers it might be easier for people to buy this is for children and not corporations that seek to privatize education.

If concerns had been addressed thoughtfully and respectfully and if there was some local autonomy in the adoption, and possible changes to areas that even the developers of Common Core have realized they had to make it might have been more palatable to folks.

If Arne Duncan had not forced this upon states through Race to the Top Grants and ESEA waivers to free states of impossible No Child Left Behind standards it would have had less of a Federal Takeover feel.

If the messengers of Common Core were not many times proven liars about charter schools, Value Added assessments of teachers, virtual schools, massive school closings of poor children’s schools, and purveyors of temp teachers over experienced and more expensive ones it would have been met with less immediate skepticism.

If Common Core had not been adopted sight unseen in many(most) states, like Louisiana, and a true discussion had taken place, it would have been hard to say this was done clandestinely. Lying about this situation and telling parents the standards were around for 4 years ignores the fact that many parents had not been exposed to it until recently. It was your job, as education leaders, to reach out to parents and engage them before this blew up in your faces. You failed to do that and now you have a mess. Parents immediately objected when they were exposed to it for the first time, but you (officials and official channels) ignored them and forced them to create a grassroots movement bound by social media to spread the word and oppose you. No matter how many times Will Sentell from the Advocate prints that it was around for 4 years (since 2010) without objection or controversy, it does not alter the fact that most parents and children were not exposed to it, and when they did they immediately freaked out and were completely marginalized, ignored and disparaged by even the Secretary of the Us Department of education.

“All of a sudden, their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought … and that’s pretty scary,” Duncan said at the event Friday.

Do these folks really not get it, or do they think they can simply bully and bulldoze their way over parents like they have been doing to our children and teachers for years?

Now that parents have former their own channels of passing information and started to rack up some victories in various states, some supporters of Common Core are getting scared, and getting angry. People like Michael Mulgrew, Head of the United Federation of Teachers, are directing their anger at the wrong people.

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/michael-mulgrew-defends-common-core-punch-face-tools-article-1.1895301

Teachers union honcho Michael Mulgrew unleashed a venomous screed directed at anyone who would dare threaten his beloved Common Core agenda.

 “If someone takes something from me, I’m going to grab it right back out of their cold, twisted, sick hands and say it is mine! You do not take what is mine!” the head of the United Federation of Teachers shouted in a speech at a convention last month in Los Angeles.

The rant was posted Thursday to the Ed Notes Online blog.

“And I’m going to punch you in the face and push you in the dirt because this is the teachers’!” added Mulgrew.

Punching parents in the face might seem like a good idea to Common Core supporters, since their lies have failed to convince parents, maybe fear and anger will force them to back down? I kind of doubt it though. What it has done for me is to settle into a state of resignation. I can see you guys don’t want to talk. When you did talk you lied, and we caught you. Then you lied some more and we caught you again. Then you ignored us and shoved this down our throats and mocked us. You told us no one gives a shit what we think or feel like David Coleman, architect of Common Core, because that’s really how you see the world and our place in it.

(You can see the Coleman clip in the link below)

http://whatiscommoncore.wordpress.com/tag/people-really-dont-give-a-shit-how-you-feel/

Now Common Core proponents are using strong-arm tactics and threats of violence and telling us we are too stupid to have any children for you to teach. I admit, I do not want you teaching my children either. Many parents have been pulling their children out of public schools to homeschool them to escape teachers like you. That will work for a time, but I know corporations are forcing Common Core in private schools and homeschool legislation is next. In fact, in order for parents to be allowed to continue to homeschool their kids, they must still teach them some Common Core to pass the required tests. This is why you will find many parents that are now homeschooling their children continuing the fight against Common Core.

Will we simply wait 12 years for things to work out? I doubt we would have to wait that long for these to change, but not because of the needs of students. Now that textbook and testing corporations are so intimately involved with these “Standards” and the textbooks and supplemental materials that go with them, we can be sure they will be changing pretty quickly in ways that force the previous textbooks and materials into planned obsolesce so they can sell more, more frequently.

I am tired of trying to convince people by showing them an example here or a lie there. This becomes a never-ending cycle of lies and examples and counter-examples. I will even concede that some of the content and standards appear fine or even good in some cases. When we redesign our own curriculum I hope to keep the good, discard the bad, but most importantly retain local control of what and how we teach without regard for High Stakes Testing, just High Quality Learning. What is clear is that this was done poorly and that those that support this initiative failed to address the concerns of all stakeholders, and have switched to even more aggressive tactics which have permanently poisoned the well of public support.

 

 

Peter Greene: Why So Many Teachers Turned Against Common Core

Posts don’t get much better than this. Check out Peter Greene’s post (from Curmudgication) on why teachers (like him) turned on and rejected Common Core. I’m not a teacher but many of his reasons for rejecting it are 100% reflections of my own. Read Diane Ravitch’s summary of course, but the full post is really worth the effort to click through to get. Peter will remind you of many of the reasons you’ve been alarmed and have been fighting. It’s always nice to read when someone else really “gets it.”
Thanks Peter.

Diane Ravitch's blog

The conservative journal “Education Next” reported a poll showing that support for Common Core plummeted among teachers from 76% to 46%. Conservative supporters of Common Core think that teachers are afraid of accountability but that doesn’t explain why 76% thought it was a good idea last year.

Peter Greene explains the teachers’ change of mind, which he is well-qualified to do since he is a teacher.

Here are a few of the reasons:

First, writes Greene, was the lying.

“Remember how supporters of the Core used to tell us all the time that these standards were written by teachers? All. The. Time. Do you know why they’ve stopped saying that? Because it’s a lie, and at this point, most everybody knows it’s a lie. The “significant” teacher input, the basis in solid research– all lies. When someone is trying to sell you medicine and they tell you that it was…

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So LDOE’s website went down, how did that go down?

On Monday the 18^th the LDOE website, Louisianabelieves.com went down for a few hours in the middle of the day. This was immediately tweeted about by Will Sentell and covered in the Advocate and KATC-TV 3 and nefarious reasons were given for this brief outage. The implications of the articles covering this story were that this was somehow related to the Jindal administration’s ongoing pseudo-fight over Common Core. In a quote in Sentell’s article, John White correctly stated that the site went down because of the failure of DOA (the executive agency that reports directly to Jindal) to pay a 280$ bill. While technically accurate, this statement was surrounded by ominous sounding implications and was written to be intentionally misleading. For instance, it was further implied that the timing was fishy since this happened just before a ruling was expected in the legal case brought by some random teachers and parents, a corporately funded astroturf organization (BAEO) and a charter school operator over Jindal’s executive order to halt the funding of an improperly executed contract that was to be used to purchase Common Core specific high stakes tests. The Jindal administration’s spokesperson, Meghan Parrish, claimed that this was unintentional and that it was paid immediately.

I suppose the implication Sentell and others are trying to make is that this lawsuit was timed to coincide with expiration date of the domain name registration that was purchased 2 years ago and that somehow their cause is advanced by having the site down for a few hours before a lawsuit verdict is rendered in the case? I suppose if the site was down for more than a day, and that all news on the planet was acquired and distributed through the LouisianaBelieves.com website, that might make sense on some level, to someone. However the truth is actually much less sinister and much more interesting and newsworthy. Back in March of this year DOA consolidated all IT shops into one under the DOA umbrella. All IT expenses must be paid through DOA now. During this vast undertaking some licenses and registrations got lost, overlooked or never made it to the right people to keep track of them. The domain for LDOE’s website was one of those things. You can see the details on the IT Consolidation Plan/project here.

The Office of Information Technology with support from Deloitte Consulting initiated the process of creating a roadmap for transforming Louisiana’s IT environment into a consolidated model for service delivery in November 2013. The process included interviewing departmental/agency CIOs, business leaders, and staff, as well as examining the existing infrastructure, services and organizational structures of current IT operations. The IT Consolidation Plan was completed in March 2014, and 21 actionable deliverables were produced.

It’s a shame we don’t have folks that actually try to investigate and report the news, and prefer to report rumors and innuendo. Just who is the trusted news source, and who is the blogger here, anyway?!?!

The IT Consolidation Plan resulted in many agencies losing their employees on paper, while the employees remained in their current roles and offices at their respective agencies. I wonder how much all of this is costing or saving the state? Is this is resulting in better or worse IT service and responsiveness? I wonder how many more glitches like this are out there we don’t even know about? It would seem like someone should be investigating and reporting on that rather than choosing to make a big deal about a 5 hour outage because someone forgot to mail a check.

Is it any wonder bloggers like me exist?

Common Core Chaos, Loss and Betrayal

Recently I was interviewed by WAFB about the latest developments in Louisiana’s Common Core lawsuit saga and the recent court loss. You can see the full story here: http://www.wafb.com/story/26328975/common-core-debate-continues

On a personal note, I was amused that this was a story I’d watched earlier in the day while working out, but without sound. I remember wondering what the folks were saying, but figured it was just a bunch of face saving and sparring . . . and that I’d probably never know. I wasn’t far off of my analysis, but I was wrong about not seeing it again. A few hours later I was weighing in on the situation myself and ended up appended to the same video. Lol. That’s a strange feeling to be sure. Earlier in the week I was contacted by Motoko Rich at the New York Times to provide some background and commentary. I actually didn’t know I would end up being quoted, I’ve been contacted by reporters at various times and outlets to provide background info from a local perspective and I usually try to point reporters to other folks if I can. Tonight I was contacted by a producer from Al Jazeera, America to explain some of the complex issues and nuances in our Common Core battle. I’ve gotten some feedback that this contact makes people a little uneasy, but I try to keep an open mind. Maybe that’s my strength (or my Achilles Heel)? I prefer to think of it as the former.

Ultimately I can’t control what any of these folks do with the info I provide them, but I feel it is important to provide a counterpoint to the corporately funded Reform line on so many issues important to our community. Mainstream coverage is important and my blogging helps me break into that market. For instance, without mainstream media coverage by folks like Stephanie Simon at Reuters, I have little doubt that inBloom would still be in business selling out children’s data to not just the highest bidder, but any bidder.

Once this information gets out there, it’s going to be abused. There’s no doubt in my mind,” said Jason France, a father of two in Louisiana.

In case you were wondering, I think the above linked article by Stephanie Simon was perhaps the most important story in terms of raising national awareness of this issue as an issue that we should all be concerned about. We can’t know who our next Stephanie Simon will be ahead of time though.

I’ve provided info and interviews to folks at the Advocate, Reuters, LPB, Monroe News star, NPR, Louisiana Anthology, WBOK, Al Jazeera, Channel 2, Channel 9, and various New York Times folks on numerous occasions, researchers, documentary makers and many, many blogs. Sometimes it’s been flattering coverage, sometimes not so much. (You’d think I’d be better at it by now too, but hey, we can’t all be reality stars.) I’m still (not so secretly) hoping I get a call from the Daily Show or Colbert Report to do a segment or to even just be an audience member. (They had Michele Rhee on, and she’s a fraud who recently resigned her position at Student’s First in disgrace, so why not me, right?)

But wow, that was a digression, wasn’t it?

Let me bring this back in.

What I can control is the content of my blog.

Let me state up front: I did not initially flag Common Core as a problem. I was concerned with charters, virtual schools, data, VAM, privacy, RSD, school based corporal punishment, accountability, dropout rates, shadow schools, massive layoffs, excessive discipline rates, data quality, TFA taking over LDOE, vouchers, MFP funding, Special Education and 504 issues, poor teacher evaluation systems, and so forth. You’d think that would be enough! J

It took some researching, numerous discussions and investigations and real world experiences for me to see the harm it posed and the great corporate specter behind its creation and implementation. When I looked at my daughter’s homework assignments, Math especially, I became very alarmed and disturbed and wrote about my experiences. A lot of people identified with my raw post, which also contained details about how Common Core was secretly (basically since no one really knew what they heck it was) adopted in Louisiana before the Standards were even published or finalized. But the story didn’t end there.

A lot of parents had problems across the spectrum of Common Core assignments and curriculum. Some parents in some settings had minimal issues, or didn’t care. Organizations like LaBAEO and Louisiana Stand For Children came out strongly in support of Common Core. Most folks didn’t realize these organizations are headed by former senior staffers from the Louisiana Department of Education, Kenneth Campbell and Rayne Martin. I’m not sure of Kenneth’s situation, but I know Rayne is not an educator nor a parent. She is highly compensated by out of state funders and supporters of Common Core. She is a “reformer” that was living in Chicago until former RSD superintendent, the nomadic and politically connected Paul Vallas (former Illinois Governor candidate currently running for Illinois Lieutenant Governor after being chased out of his Connecticut superintendent position he was determined by their court system to be illegally placed in) brought Rayne here a half dozen years ago, and now she runs an organization called Louisiana Stand for Children (of which she has none.)

I showed up to BESE meetings where cadres of redshirted Exxon “Common Core cheerleaders” showed up for a few minutes and testified en masse about how awesome high standards were for STEM careers (ahead of all the parents who had been waiting all day to speak) and then filed out immediately after – after cheering each other on.

I attended meetings and heard stories from parents who had tried to meet with officials from the Louisiana Department of Ed, their BESE members, or in some cases their local school boards, where instead of listening to their concerns, they were lectured. . . for hours, and commanded to sit passively and just listen. At the end these folks giving presentations, like BESE members James Garvey, Holly Boffy and regional leaders like Gayle Sloan could not answer questions and did not register, acknowledge or report parents’ concerns, after wasting so much of parents’ time and patience.

This went on for more than a year into the implementation, and goes on today. The implementation of Common Core in Louisiana was also likely sabotaged by John White on purpose, with dueling implementation dates, conflicting messages, and what looked like (to me) as intentionally mixed signals. It is not even a widely disputed fact that the Louisiana implementation and rollout was terrible, uneven and completely bungled in many cases. Rather than acknowledge the failings, address parents’ concerns, and address or acknowledge widely agreed upon shortcomings in the initial rollout and gaps in the standards, LDOE and so many groups inside and outside the state closed ranks and closed their eyes to the chaos swirling around them; that they created. Rather than address the deficiencies head-on and honestly they chose to ignore them, to point to deficiencies in the old curriculum (in a never ending circular he-said/she-said finger pointing contest), or point to their lofty goals which for which they had no evidence their Common Core standards and curriculum could achieve – even if the goal was something everyone wanted to achieve.

Look! It’s magic, and 100% evidence and fact free!

Parents had and have real problems and questions with Common Core, and all they get are fluff PR pieces like this willfully ignorant infographic. Many of those opposed to Common Core are professionals, Engineers, Programmers, Writers, Doctors, Lawyers, PHd’s, Teachers, University Professors, Scientists. We understand what the STEM careers demand, because we work in them, and we are not buying what the Common Core folks are selling.

I understand this was a very ambitious project. I understand the goals on Common Core (I just happen to not agree with them.) I don’t think the sole purpose of public education is preparing students for community colleges and introductory careers they are never able to grow out of. There may be a place for those, but our current education system allows (or allowed) students to acquire educations in a broad range of subjects, to become informed and responsible citizens and to hopefully learn to enjoy learning for its own sake, and not just for test score or accolade. The US has never been leader in test scores that the Reform movement implies we were; or should aspire to be. We got where we are in the world based on our freedom of thought and creativity, neither of which are quantifiable or test well. Some of our greatest minds were not that scholastically adept or persistent. Bill Gates, who is pushing the college and career ready curriculum dropped out of college to found one of the most important tech companies of the last century (Microsoft) and became the wealthiest person on the planet in doing so.

Add to that list these innovative college dropout billionaires:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_college_dropout_billionaires

Many of who are pushing the Reform agenda and urgent need for increasing test scores. I have to wonder if we’d even have computers (at least to the extent we have today) now if these guys:

• Michael Del (Dell)
• Steve Jobs (Apple)
• Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)
• Larry Ellison (Oracle)
• Bill Gates (Microsoft)

had been subjected to Common Core instead of being able to experiment in their electronics garage hobbies and electives and exercise their imaginations.

I’m not suggesting college is unimportant or that everyone should dropout and try their hand at creating a tech startup. I am explaining why it is hypocritical for folks like Bill Gates to demand this as the only path for everyone and I am suggesting if we forsake education for the sake of test scores we are doing ourselves a vast disservice. This is the ultimate tail wagging the dog situation. Tests were meant to give us a baseline to judge student performance. Tests were never meant to be the end all be all for education. That move is beyond just foolish, it is destructive and ridiculous. But to understand why these successful and smart folks think they know more than you do, in fields they’ve never experienced success but which their vast fortunes allows them access to alter the landscape in fundamental ways. You must understand these folks think in data points. If something is not measurable it is not valued. Many things in life are important but not measurable. Faith. Love. Spirit. Freedom. Imagination. Creativity. Education is one of those immeasurable things too. We can roughly measure how many words you know, or math problems you can solve, but we can’t measure everything you know or might think. Education is not just about numbers and words, not just about what we know, but what we can create with our minds and what we can learn in the future. Once we leave schools, we no longer take tests, but we must always learn to live, to grow in our relationships with each other, to take care of our children, neighbors, family and country, and to master the skills of the various jobs we will hold throughout our lifetime. After formal schooling I’ve learned numerous computer languages, software applications, reporting tools and even picked up an avocation or two that required a great deal of self-study, motivation and very little in the way of formalized recognition and rewards. The latter is learning and education for its own sake. What I have described will be the majority of life for everyone but eternal academics. Preparing students for endless Common Core testing (so we adults can feel better about providing measurably identical “educations”) is not preparing students for life – quite the opposite.

So when Bobby Jindal seemed to come to our rescue in the anti-Common Core camp, I admit I was overly trusting. I had been assured this move was coming for months ahead of time. Bobby Jindal seemed to speak passionately and say the right things (for the most part.) I tried to explain away the warnings I received from numerous sources claiming this was a carefully orchestrated ruse. I really didn’t give him enough credit to pull that kind of ruse off, but I had been told this was a ploy to take the heat off Jindal from the conservative groups, Tea Party groups, and to give Jindal a stance and platform to differentiate himself from other potential Republican presidential candidates. Victories have been few and far between but I liked to think that wasn’t influencing my hopeful thoughts. . . but the pieces weren’t adding up. Jindal donated and channeled massive amounts of funding to candidates that put John White in place. Surely that would give him some pull with some of those folks? But every one of those folks he helped elect not only refused to consider his demand to end Common Core, they voted to sue him. . . personally. . . claiming he was violating the state’s constitution. Not a light matter. But that wasn’t all. Jindal appoints three members to BESE’s 11 member Board. He recently appointed Jane Smith, knowing she was opposed to Common Core, which seemed like a positive move. But she only had two allies on BESE to give them a 3 to 8 voting bloc. Jane has been a valiant fighter, but she’s not enough to alter the basic power equation. Jindal’s other two appointees also ignored their boss who appointed them and also voted (or allowed the others to vote at times) to sue the Governor who has appointed them as his representative voice. I can understand having minor disagreements, but this is a major, big time, enormous departure! Jindal has never been shy about seeking revenge on those who cross him, including a previous BESE member named Tammie McDaniel who Jindal demanded resign after she voted a way he didn’t like on a single issue. Tammie was replaced by Connie Bradford, who remains untouched for her seeming brazen defiance. That was a head scratcher. For a list of some of the other folks Jindal has sacked for even minor offenses look here. So that doesn’t add up one bit. If they were really defying the governor they could be “Tegued” as the term Tom Aswell from Louisiana Voice has coined to describe the consistent (until now) phenomenon of how Jindal handles anyone who disagrees with him to even the slightest degree in public.

But the final and ridiculous last straw is how Jimmy Faircloth, Jindal’s “defense” attorney chose not to defend Jindal’s executive orders to prevent LDOE from purchasing PARCC tests in a partial ploy to exert pressure on John White and LDOE to reconsider remaining in PARCC and Common Core. For the ruling refer to this and pay attention to page 4. I’ve copied the relevant section below, but here’s the gist. Jindal’s team did not present any witnesses, like Kristy Nichols, to explain how the contract procedures are supposed to work. Kristy was available for media statements afterwards and did testify at BESE, just not under oath. Jindal’s team did not explain or refute the claim that the damage irreparable. It was illusory, certainly not irreparable, and any “perceived” damage could be easily remedied numerous ways. Jindal’s team did not even make the correct argument to judge Hernandez, the one that they explained outside of court. Jindal’s team threw this fight. Their argument and approach wasn’t the strongest to begin with, but this loss is not just inexcusable, it’s ridiculous and intentional. I would much rather have an enemy I know, than an enemy masquerading as a friend, that betrays you at the last minute after you had placed your hopes with them. The chaos we are experiencing was intentionally fomented by John White, Chas Roemer and Bobby Jindal to distract people and wear them out. This betrayal was planned.

Sadly, this is just another ruse perpetrated by those in power to avoid listening to parents’ real problems, and another reason parents are right to fear and fight Common Core. I expect this distraction to last until Jindal leaves office. John White and Chas Roemer were correct when they stated Jindal’s opposition to Common Core was politically motivated. The irony is that they were quite likely complicit in the deception from the get-go; to increase all of their profiles. That ploy has worked. Now we get to decide if their profiles are ultimately positively or negatively impacted by this fiasco.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why the Jindal Loss Was Expected Regarding La.’s PARCC Injunction

What Dr. Schneider explains is exactly what I was afraid would happen. I was one if the first folks to publicly support and thank Jindal for his seeming change of heart on Common Core. Many folks told me this was all a carefully choreographed ruse. One of the first moves Jindal did was invite a score of Common Core opponents/leaders over for a photo op. (For some reason I was not invited. 🙂 ) I wondered at the time if that was what this was all about. I was encouraged by his seeming vigor and persistence. However, this feeble attempt makes me second guess my earlier support. Common Core is still being taught in all our schools. The PARCC tests will be bought and administered. Jindal has allowed his own BESE appointees to vote to sue him without any form of reprisals (unlike Tammy Mcdaniel, a previous Jindal appointee to BESE who voted against Jindal’s will once (not even to sue him personally) and he demanded her resignation.)

Jindal could have acted before the legislative session was over, and chose not to. All he has done is sew chaos in our education system. That is all Jindal has ever done since he first came to power. I suppose it was naive of me to think his latest moves would be any different.

A pity.

A shame.

Another tragedy for Louisiana.

deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog

On August 19, 2014, District Judge Todd Hernandez ruled that the Jindal administration’s suspension of the Louisiana state testing contract was to be temporarily lifted until the pro-Common Core (CCSS) full case against Jindal and his administration goes to court. (For backstory, click here.)

I was surprised at the judge’s ruling because the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) spliced the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) assessment into an already-existing “sole source” testing contract with Data Recognition Corp (DRC).

Pearson has been awarded the PARCC assessment contract, not DRC.

It is possible that Pearson could hire DRC as a PARCC subcontractor. As it is, DRC has been hired as part of a team to develop assessments for the other federally-funded consortium, Smarter Balanced. However, there is no way that DRC is the sole source for PARCC.

This means that Louisiana will fund an extra…

View original post 611 more words

Listen to my preliminary story on the RSD graduate cohort problems on WBOK this morning

Listen to me this morning from a recorded show on WBOK from 10:30 am to 11:00am about the RSD graduate and dropout issue I just covered in my last blog post.

http://streema.com/radios/play/20221

Some Sad truths about RSD’s Grad Rate and Dropout numbers

I have been warning LDOE for years that something fishy is going on with the grad rate across the state. John White, Chas Roemer and Reformers would just have you believe that “raising the bar” and having “higher expectations” for students is the only thing that Louisiana lacks. They ignore decades of history and Louisiana’s extreme poverty as contributing factors. It’s no coincidence that those who tell poor people poverty is not a factor that impacts academic success come from the most affluent segments of our society. Both Chas Roemer and John White attended some of the most prestigious and expensive private schools in the country and have parents with long entries in Wikipedia. Just average folks, like you and me, ya know? These folks tell us all we need to do is raise our standards, our benchmarks, and “Believe”.

When you operate this way in good faith (let’s pretend that’s what they are doing) you might really think you are making a difference, that only belief and high expectations is all that are needed to overcome poverty, abuse, neglect, dilapidated buildings, disparate funding, corruption, waste, fraud and disabilities. You might ignore facts that deflate the bubble of belief you’ve surrounded yourself in. You might surround yourself with only facts and people that confirm your beliefs. This is a great psychological device taught to people fighting periodic or clinical depression, but it’s a terrible idea to operate this way when you are in a position of supervising policy, especially policy you’ve defined and are called upon to defend. This is the only explanation I have for why LDOE released some figures that show just how abysmally they have been running RSD and our education system into the ground. Don’t get me wrong, I am thankful for this lapse that led to some real data being released that verifies what I have been saying for years, but it’s really the only explanation I can come up with for why they released it and didn’t notice the full implications of the data they claim drives so many of their decisions.

http://www.louisianabelieves.com/newsroom/news-releases/2014/07/11/louisiana-cohort-graduation-rate-continues-to-increase
http://www.louisianabelieves.com/docs/default-source/data-management/final-exit-code-pre-reviews.pdf?sfvrsn=2

You see, under Paul Pastorek, Louisiana’s first Reformer de jour of a few years back, Louisiana stopped investigating and auditing data . . . especially data coming from charter schools and RSD. At the department we knew full well that the data was both crappy in quality and dreadful in composition. Incidentally Paul Pastorek is back in Louisiana to start a new education endeavor. At the Department we knew him as Little PP (he’s like 5 feet tall) to Paul Vallas’s Big P (Vallas is 6’5″) or sometimes as LDOE’s Napoleon due to his small stature and imperious nature.

Paul preparing to command his TFA minions into battle with the “Status Quo”

I prefer to think of Paul as “Yosemite Paul” due to his infamous first rallying speech to the department, where he told us that solve Louisiana’s education problems we need to shoot fast and first, without aiming because:

• we didn’t have the time to waste readying and aiming our Reform guns to fix what ailed our state
• and because they had no clue to do and still don’t but Reformers always like to be seen doing something.

Former Superintendent of Louisiana and Chief of Change, Paul Pastorek, getting ready to Reform this mofo. BAM!

When Bobby Jindal met John White I’m told Jindal thought he would have a more pliable and less volatile and willful minion than Paul Pastorek and almost immediately gave PP his walking papers. Fortunately PP went to school with Sean O’Keefe who is the current CEO of Airbus (they went to school together) and Paul was able to land on his feet as a useless random lawyer at EADS, a subsidiary of a European aerospace company.

So what does all this have to with dropouts you might ask? Well Paul had stopped auditing data during his tenure and he left under less than friendly terms. It’s quite likely he did not reveal all the skeletons shoved into LDOE closets. It appears that John White and his staff unwittingly stumbled across a walk-in closet loaded with them. I’ve tried to show what was in these closets over the years with these posts:

Here is one of my posts from September of 2012
https://crazycrawfish.wordpress.com/2012/09/12/louisianas-dropout-numbers-dont-add-up/
one from January 2013
https://crazycrawfish.wordpress.com/2013/01/17/new-orleans-graduate-rate-miracle-or-make-believe/
And in this post I express my doubts you will ever get these reports, or many others, working again. . .

https://crazycrawfish.wordpress.com/2014/06/12/the-untold-data-crises-at-ldoe/
or this old nugget I wrote in March 2012 right after I left the department in February 2012.
https://crazycrawfish.wordpress.com/2012/03/25/louisianas-lack-of-an-accountability-system/

Recently LDOE did a partial audit of exit codes. In particular they were looking at some of the codes often used to hide “dropouts.” In practical terms, a student that does not graduate and stops going to school is a dropout. However, if the student, let’s say, transfers out of state, to a non-public school, goes the homeschool route, or dies. . .well we can’t really hold that school or any school we collect data on responsible for that, can we?

Exit codes were designed for schools to tell the state one of these situations has taken place. When this happens legitimately and is reported to the state in the form of an exit code, the state would no longer keep that student in the numerator or denominator. They are not a dropout. They are also not a graduate. They are a “legitimate leaver” in education parlance. When these legitimate leaver situations take place, records and documentation should take place. When a student transfers to a non-public school or homeschool the parents should fill out some withdrawal papers and the non-public school should make a “request for records.” Homeschooled students and parents also generate subsequent records, and students are required to take tests and provide updates about students’ progress. When a student transfers out of state the “receiving school” should have a record of the student, and that receiving school should make a request for records. These items go in students’ permanent files . . . if those documents are indeed generated, and really exist.

What often happens is this does not take place. What often happens is schools will “fix” their dropouts by simply coding all their dropouts as transferring out of state. They don’t graduate, although some districts simply code students with a graduate code too which really helps them out, but they don’t count against schools. Schools wanting to improve their images or escape accountability sanctions can freely “up code” their students from dropout to even graduates if they really want too, although the most common practice is to simply code them as “transferring out of state.” Historically this wasn’t a major issue, but as accountability has become more important, and as graduate cohort and dropout rates have become factored into as much as 25% of a school’s SPS score the incentive for up coding is enormous, the risk of getting caught or sanctioned very low, and this solution is easy breezy to do with plenty of people along the way able to claim ignorance and protected by plausible deniability if they ever do get caught.

What has happened to Louisiana and especially in RSD and probably charter schools and probably some traditional schools is that more and more schools have discovered the up coding secret and have used it to their advantage more and more every year. John White and LDOE made the mistake of actually doing a preliminary audit of these numbers and publishing them. Their “Reforms” are failures and their success is built upon lies. One of the metrics used to annually evaluate John White is the graduation cohort rate. Once LDOE realized just how bad this audit was his folks knew better than to turn over any more stones. But enough teasing, just how bad was it do you ask?

Try a 100% failure rate for RSD on for size.

I’m not kidding.

I think LDOE really felt all they needed to do was make the point that all direct run RSD schools will be closed this school year so it would finally be okay to release this type of info. Like, “hey, we know this is bad but we’ve released this report after closing them so there’s really nothing anyone can do and you should not waste your time worrying about them anymore.”

Believe me, this is not a one off, this is what all RSD info and stats look like when not masked or filtered. You might think hiding 14 dropout students is not a big deal, and you’re right in a sense. Of course LDOE should consider all students important, but RSD served thousands of students a year. . .what’s 14 out of 1400? The problem is this is just a very small sample that encountered 100% error rate. This is a small fraction of how many student RSD coded as transferring out of state without any documentation from this cohort. What’s more, this was done to make themselves look better than they were for many years, every year they were in existence, and they were always just about the worst in the state even with this help and the numerous instances of cheating I’ve gotten reports of and written about. Feel free to search my blog for examples.

So when I saw this report I asked LDOE if they wouldn’t mind giving me the schools behind these numbers, and the totals behind these partial audits. Much to my surprise they complied with my request. I still think they had no idea just how bad this info was. “Group Think” I suppose. They are victims of their own PR BS, and everyone left at the department is either a yes-man or knows better than to tell them they are wrong.

Here is the first report I received: Note: the obvious lack of charter schools on it. They were not audited (or even considered for auditing apparently.)

Data Notes: This report is for the May 2013 graduation cohort. Transfers out-of-state/country (exit code 10), transfers to private school (exit code 14), and transfers to home study (exit code 16) were included in the “legitimate leaver” review.
					LEA	Site code	Site name	Total Verified	Total Legitimate Leaver Exit Codes Reviewed (Codes 10, 14, 16)
					001	001007	Crowley High School	3	5
001	001021	Rayne High School	2	2
002	002001	Elizabeth High School	1	1
002	002004	Kinder High School	3	3
002	002006	Oakdale High School	6	8
003	003016	Dutchtown High School	11	12
004	004001	Assumption High School	2	2
006	006004	East Beauregard High School	2	3
006	006008	Merryville High School	3	4
006	006010	Singer High School	0	1
008	008001	Airline High School	8	11
008	008020	Parkway High School	7	10
009	009008	C.E. Byrd High School	6	9
009	009013	Captain Shreve High School	12	12
009	009025	Green Oaks Performing Arts Academy	0	3
010	010003	Alfred M. Barbe High School	14	15
010	010025	Sam Houston High School	4	4
010	010033	LaGrange High School	0	2
010	010052	Sulphur High School	16	21
010	010058	Washington/Marion Magnet High School	0	7
011	011001	Caldwell Parish High School	8	9
014	014009	Junction City High School	1	1
016	016008	Pelican All Saints High School	2	2
017	017010	Belaire High School	0	7
017	017088	Tara High School	1	6
017	017102	Woodlawn High School	5	9
019	019014	East Feliciana High School	1	2
022	022004	Georgetown High School	1	1
026	026010	Bonnabel Magnet Academy High School	2	7
026	026023	John Ehret High School	0	5
026	026051	Grace King High School	6	14
027	027006	Jennings High School	8	8
028	028002	Acadiana High School	4	9
028	028011	O. Comeaux High School	6	8
028	028019	Lafayette High School	8	11
029	029003	Central Lafourche High School	4	6
029	029026	South Lafourche High School	2	5
029	029029	Thibodaux High School	6	6
030	030006	LaSalle High School	3	4
031	031003	Choudrant High School	2	2
032	032024	Walker High School	6	8
032	032025	Walker Freshman High School	3	4
032	032042	Denham Springs Freshman High School	4	4
037	037036	West Monroe High School	8	11
040	040048	Tioga High School	4	6
049	049051	North Central High School	2	2
049	049052	Beau Chene High School	3	5
052	052013	Covington High School	3	8
052	052026	Mandeville High School	11	15
052	052035	Salmen High School	10	13
052	052037	Slidell High School	6	10
055	055015	Evergreen Junior High School	1	2
055	055020	Houma Junior High School	1	2
057	057001	Abbeville High School	10	10
057	057013	Kaplan High School	5	7
058	058006	Leesville High School	17	19
058	058009	Pickering High School	3	7
058	058012	Rosepine High School	3	4
060	060012	Minden High School	4	6
062	062001	Epps High School	2	3
064	064002	Calvin High School	2	2
067	067004	Zachary High School	6	6
069	069004	Central High School	3	7
318	318001	LSU Laboratory School	3	3
319	319001	Southern University Lab School	0	2
396	396004	Walter L. Cohen High School	0	2
396	396017	Sarah Towles Reed Senior High School	0	5
396	396026	G.W. Carver High School	0	4
396	396031	L. B. Landry High School	0	3

396 Is the LEA code for RSD New Orleans. This report shows the school LDOE audited were Cohen, Reed, Carver and Landry. They only asked for samples of 14 students at random and none of these students had any documentation to back up the transfer out of state. If you are curious about other districts and schools you can see their counts here. Some districts will legitimately have more transfers, like Leesville in Vernon Parish, which has Fort Polk. Some of these counts are dependent upon geography as well (Parishes bordering Arkansas and Texas have higher transfer rates, but not as many kids on the eastern part of the state like to move to Mississippi, the only state poorer than us. Go figure? However Orleans Parish had proper, code 036, had only around 30 transfers in the same exact geographic area. They don’t even show up on this report because the numbers are so low. I know this because I asked for the complete report of transfers, and I got that too! (At that point they cut me off realizing from my line of questioning how terrible the picture was that was developing.) I got my initial reports in a few days, and it’s been over a month since I’ve received any updates for my other inquiries. I was told those requests were sent to the “appropriate areas”, but I expect they will stay there until we get a Regime change at LDOE, BESE or the Governor’s office. Let me give you the second report so those who like to do their own analysis can do their own and confirm my findings if they choose.

The Louisiana Department of Education has modified and/or suppressed data reported to protect the privacy of students in compliance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) codified at 20 U.S.C. 1232g. The strategies used to protect privacy vary and may include rounding or other techniques but do not substantially affect the general usefulness of the data. Because of the privacy protections, numerical and percentage totals may not add precisely to the sum of the row or column to which the total refers.
					Data Notes: This report is from preliminary data, prior to data certification, for the May 2013 graduation cohort. All cells indicate a count/raw number of exit codes. Schools without transfers out-of-state/country (exit code 10), transfers to private school (exit code 14), and transfers to home study (exit code 16) were not included. Closed schools are included if they had legitimate leaver codes.
Site code	Site name	Exit Code 10 (Out-of-State/Country)	Exit Code 14 (Private School)	Exit Code 16 (Home Study)
Statewide	Louisiana	4410	1042	1494
001005	Church Point High School	<10	<10	11
001007	Crowley High School	15	<10	22
001017	Midland High School	<10	<10	<10
001021	Rayne High School	12	<10	17
001034	Iota High School	<10	<10	<10
002001	Elizabeth High School	<10	<10	<10
002002	Fairview High School	<10	<10	<10
002004	Kinder High School	<10	13	<10
002006	Oakdale High School	<10	<10	16
002009	Oberlin High School	<10	<10	<10
002010	Reeves High School	<10	<10	<10
002014	Elizabeth High School	<10	<10	<10
003003	Donaldsonville High School	11	<10	<10
003005	East Ascension High School	32	<10	<10
003014	St. Amant High School	31	<10	<10
003016	Dutchtown High School	38	16	<10
003025	Ascension Parish Alternative School	<10	<10	<10
004001	Assumption High School	<10	<10	15
005004	Bunkie New Tech High School	11	<10	<10
005016	Marksville High School	16	<10	<10
005018	Avoyelles High School	<10	<10	<10
005025	LA School for Ag Science	<10	<10	<10
006002	DeRidder High School	38	<10	12
006004	East Beauregard High School	<10	<10	11
006008	Merryville High School	<10	<10	<10
006010	Singer High School	<10	<10	<10
006011	South Beauregard High School	<10	<10	13
006021	Beauregard Alternative School	<10	<10	<10
007001	Arcadia High School	<10	<10	<10
007002	Bienville High School	<10	<10	<10
007003	Castor High School	<10	<10	<10
007006	Gibsland-Coleman High School	<10	<10	<10
007008	Ringgold High School	<10	<10	<10
007009	Saline High School	<10	<10	<10
008001	Airline High School	83	<10	<10
008006	Benton High School	20	<10	<10
008009	Bossier High School	30	<10	<10
008017	Haughton High School	39	<10	<10
008020	Parkway High School	45	<10	<10
008022	LA New Tech at Plain Dealing	<10	<10	<10
008035	Butler Educational Complex	<10	<10	<10
008037	Charlotte Ann Mitchell Educational Center	<10	<10	<10
009008	C.E. Byrd High School	60	<10	<10
009012	Caddo Parish Magnet High School	23	<10	<10
009013	Captain Shreve High School	50	16	<10
009022	Fair Park College Preparatory Academy	14	<10	<10
009025	Green Oaks Performing Arts Academy	25	<10	<10
009031	Huntington High School	29	<10	<10
009042	North Caddo High School	17	<10	<10
009045	Northwood High School	15	<10	<10
009059	Southwood High School	26	<10	<10
009069	Booker T. Washington New Technology High School	16	<10	<10
009073	Woodlawn Leadership Academy	18	<10	<10
009076	Hamilton Terrace Learning Center	<10	<10	<10
009093	Shreveport Job Corps Opportunity Center	<10	<10	<10
009095	Hosston Alternative School	<10	<10	<10
009100	Academic Recovery and Career Discovery Center	<10	<10	<10
010003	Alfred M. Barbe High School	40	31	14
010004	Bell City High School	<10	<10	<10
010014	DeQuincy High School	<10	10	<10
010025	Sam Houston High School	14	23	10
010026	Iowa High School	<10	<10	<10
010033	LaGrange High School	29	18	10
010051	Starks High School	<10	<10	<10
010052	Sulphur High School	37	71	47
010056	Vinton High School	10	13	<10
010058	Washington/Marion Magnet High School	17	21	<10
010064	Westlake High School	11	<10	<10
010072	Calcasieu Parish Alternative School	<10	<10	<10
011001	Caldwell Parish High School	<10	<10	19
012003	Grand Lake High School	<10	<10	<10
012004	Hackberry High School	<10	<10	<10
012007	South Cameron High School	<10	<10	<10
013001	Block High School	<10	<10	<10
013005	Harrisonburg High School	<10	<10	<10
013011	Sicily Island High School	<10	<10	<10
013013	ASPIRE	<10	<10	<10
014002	Athens High School	<10	<10	<10
014004	Haynesville Jr./Sr. High School	<10	<10	<10
014007	Homer High School	13	<10	<10
014009	Junction City High School	<10	<10	<10
014011	Summerfield High School	<10	<10	<10
015002	Ferriday High School	<10	<10	<10
015006	Monterey High School	<10	<10	<10
015008	Vidalia High School	24	<10	<10
015014	Concordia Education Center	<10	<10	<10
016004	Logansport High School	<10	<10	<10
016007	Mansfield High School	<10	<10	<10
016008	Pelican All Saints High School	<10	<10	<10
016010	Stanley High School	<10	<10	<10
016012	North DeSoto High School	10	<10	<10
016022	DeSoto Career Academy	<10	<10	<10
017008	Baton Rouge Magnet High School	14	<10	<10
017010	Belaire High School	31	<10	<10
017016	Broadmoor Senior High School	25	<10	<10
017038	Glen Oaks Senior High School	<10	<10	<10
017045	Istrouma Senior High School	<10	<10	<10
017056	McKinley Senior High School	22	<10	<10
017063	Northdale Superintendent’s Academy	<10	<10	<10
017065	Northeast High School	<10	<10	<10
017079	Scotlandville Magnet High School	<10	<10	<10
017088	Tara High School	39	11	<10
017092	EBR Readiness Superintendent Academy	<10	<10	<10
017102	Woodlawn High School	47	19	12
017127	East Baton Rouge Laboratory Academy	<10	<10	<10
017129	EBR Acceleration Academy	<10	<10	<10
018002	General Trass High School	20	<10	<10
019013	East Feliciana Parish Enrichment Academy	<10	<10	<10
019014	East Feliciana High School	<10	<10	<10
020001	Basile High School	<10	<10	<10
020008	Mamou High School	<10	<10	<10
020010	Pine Prairie High School	<10	<10	<10
020014	Ville Platte High School	<10	<10	<10
020018	Evangeline Central School	<10	<10	<10
021007	Franklin Parish High School	17	<10	<10
021025	Horace G. White Sr. Learning Center	<10	<10	<10
022004	Georgetown High School	<10	<10	<10
022005	Grant High School	15	<10	<10
022006	Montgomery High School	<10	<10	<10
022011	Grant Academy	<10	<10	<10
023007	Delcambre High School	<10	<10	<10
023015	Jeanerette Senior High School	<10	<10	<10
023020	Loreauville High School	<10	<10	<10
023022	Westgate High School	24	<10	<10
023024	New Iberia Senior High School	30	<10	14
023037	Alternative Center for Education	<10	<10	<10
024010	Plaquemine Senior High School	14	<10	<10
024017	White Castle High School	<10	<10	<10
024025	East Iberville Elementary/High School	<10	<10	<10
024026	Iberville Parish Optional Education Center	<10	<10	<10
025005	Jonesboro-Hodge High School	<10	<10	<10
025007	Quitman High School	<10	<10	<10
025010	Weston High School	<10	<10	<10
026010	Bonnabel Magnet Academy High School	52	<10	<10
026017	Helen Cox High School	24	<10	<10
026022	East Jefferson High School	26	<10	<10
026023	John Ehret High School	42	<10	<10
026029	Fisher Middle/High School	<10	<10	<10
026031	Grand Isle High School	<10	<10	<10
026042	Haynes Academy School for Advanced Studies	<10	<10	<10
026045	L.W. Higgins High School	36	<10	<10
026051	Grace King High School	72	<10	<10
026068	Riverdale High School	21	<10	<10
026080	West Jefferson High School	33	<10	<10
026107	Thomas Jefferson High School for Advanced Studies	<10	<10	<10
026119	Martyn Academy for Career Preparation	<10	<10	<10
026120	Douglass Academy for Career Preparation	<10	<10	<10
026123	Jefferson Chamber Foundation Academy	<10	<10	<10
027001	Elton High School	<10	<10	<10
027004	Hathaway High School	<10	<10	<10
027006	Jennings High School	10	<10	28
027010	Lacassine High School	<10	<10	<10
027012	Lake Arthur High School	<10	<10	<10
027014	Welsh High School	<10	<10	<10
028002	Acadiana High School	26	<10	17
028010	Carencro High School	20	<10	<10
028011	O. Comeaux High School	52	13	<10
028019	Lafayette High School	45	<10	<10
028027	Northside High School	<10	<10	<10
028046	Lafayette Charter High School	<10	<10	<10
028053	Early College Academy	<10	<10	<10
029003	Central Lafourche High School	15	<10	29
029026	South Lafourche High School	12	12	15
029029	Thibodaux High School	20	<10	24
029040	Virtual Academy of Lafourche	<10	<10	<10
030004	Jena High School	<10	<10	10
030006	LaSalle High School	<10	<10	<10
031003	Choudrant High School	<10	<10	10
031005	Dubach School	<10	<10	<10
031013	Ruston High School	23	<10	<10
031014	Simsboro High School	<10	<10	<10
031021	Lincoln Parish Career Academy	<10	<10	<10
032002	Albany High School	<10	<10	<10
032005	Denham Springs High School	26	<10	13
032008	Doyle High School	<10	<10	<10
032009	French Settlement High School	<10	<10	<10
032012	Holden High School	<10	<10	<10
032014	Live Oak High School	15	<10	11
032016	Pine Ridge School	<10	<10	<10
032017	Maurepas School	<10	<10	<10
032023	Springfield High School	<10	<10	<10
032024	Walker High School	21	<10	37
032025	Walker Freshman High School	<10	<10	<10
032042	Denham Springs Freshman High School	18	<10	<10
033002	Madison High School	14	<10	<10
034002	Bastrop High School	27	<10	<10
034022	Career Center	<10	<10	10
035009	Natchitoches Central High School	30	<10	<10
035026	Lakeview Junior & Senior High School	<10	<10	<10
035030	Frankie Ray Jackson Sr. Technical Center	<10	<10	<10
035032	Lakeview Annex	<10	<10	<10
036035	Warren Easton Senior High School	<10	<10	<10
036043	Benjamin Franklin High School	12	<10	<10
036064	Edna Karr High School	<10	<10	<10
036073	Priestley School of Architecture/Construction	<10	<10	<10
036079	Lusher Charter School	<10	<10	<10
036088	McDonogh #35 College Preparatory School	<10	<10	<10
036096	Eleanor McMain Secondary School	10	<10	<10
036163	New Orleans Charter Science and Mathematics HS	11	<10	<10
037019	Ouachita Parish High School	36	<10	<10
037025	Ouachita Parish Alternative School Program	10	<10	<10
037032	Sterlington High School	<10	<10	<10
037036	West Monroe High School	56	<10	14
037046	West Ouachita High School	27	<10	<10
037049	Richwood High School	<10	<10	<10
038001	Belle Chasse High School	20	<10	<10
038013	South Plaquemines High School	<10	<10	<10
039003	Livonia High School	<10	<10	<10
040003	Alexandria Senior High School	24	<10	<10
040006	Bolton High School	18	<10	<10
040011	Buckeye High School	<10	<10	<10
040014	Glenmora High School	<10	<10	<10
040019	Learning Effective Attitudes & Discipline Ctr	<10	<10	<10
040028	Oak Hill High School	<10	<10	<10
040030	Peabody Magnet High School	15	<10	<10
040033	Pineville High School	38	<10	<10
040035	Plainview High School	<10	<10	<10
040037	Rapides High School	<10	<10	<10
040048	Tioga High School	21	<10	17
040055	Northwood High School	<10	<10	<10
040063	J.S. Slocum Learning Center	<10	<10	<10
041002	Red River High School	<10	<10	11
042001	Delhi High School	<10	<10	<10
042006	Mangham High School	<10	<10	<10
042008	Rayville High School	<10	<10	<10
043001	Converse High School	<10	<10	<10
043004	Florien High School	<10	<10	<10
043006	Many High School	<10	<10	<10
043008	Negreet High School	<10	<10	<10
043010	Pleasant Hill High School	<10	<10	<10
043012	Zwolle High School	<10	<10	<10
043017	Sabine Career Academy	<10	<10	<10
044006	Chalmette High School	34	<10	<10
045003	Destrehan High School	21	<10	<10
045005	Hahnville High School	22	<10	<10
046002	St. Helena Central High School	<10	<10	<10
047004	Lutcher High School	12	<10	<10
047008	St. James High School	<10	<10	<10
048001	East St. John High School	41	<10	<10
048013	West St. John High School	<10	<10	<10
048026	St. John Alternative School	<10	<10	<10
048027	Leon Godchaux Alternative Program	<10	<10	<10
049010	Eunice High School	14	<10	<10
049032	Opelousas Senior High School	16	<10	<10
049051	North Central High School	<10	<10	10
049052	Beau Chene High School	<10	<10	25
049053	Northwest High School	11	<10	<10
049056	Port Barre High School	<10	<10	<10
049057	St. Landry Accelerated Transition School	<10	<10	<10
049058	Magnet Academy for Cultural Arts	<10	<10	<10
050004	Breaux Bridge High School	<10	<10	<10
050008	Cecilia High School	<10	<10	<10
050017	St. Martinville Senior High School	13	<10	<10
050021	St. Martin Parish Juvenile Training Center	<10	<10	<10
051006	Berwick High School	<10	<10	<10
051007	Centerville High School	<10	<10	<10
051012	Franklin Senior High School	<10	<10	<10
051021	Morgan City High School	19	<10	<10
051024	Patterson High School	<10	<10	<10
051039	West St. Mary High School	<10	<10	<10
052013	Covington High School	45	<10	19
052026	Mandeville High School	39	15	<10
052029	Pearl River High School	23	<10	<10
052035	Salmen High School	48	<10	<10
052037	Slidell High School	60	<10	19
052039	Northshore High School	39	<10	<10
052052	Fontainebleau High School	26	<10	<10
052054	Operation Jumpstart West Alternative Program	<10	<10	<10
052055	Slidell Pathways School	<10	<10	<10
052061	Lakeshore High School	21	<10	<10
053002	Amite High School	<10	<10	<10
053009	Hammond High Magnet School	24	<10	<10
053012	Independence High School	13	<10	<10
053015	Kentwood High Magnet School	<10	<10	<10
053017	Loranger High School	11	<10	<10
053024	Ponchatoula High School	24	<10	<10
053029	Jewel M. Sumner High School	<10	<10	<10
053044	Tangipahoa Parish PM High School	<10	<10	<10
053045	Florida Parishes Juvenile Detention Cntr.	<10	<10	<10
053052	Tangipahoa Alternative Solutions Programs	<10	<10	<10
054001	Tensas High School	<10	<10	<10
055005	H. L. Bourgeois High School	10	<10	<10
055013	Ellender Memorial High School	10	<10	<10
055015	Evergreen Junior High School	<10	<10	<10
055020	Houma Junior High School	<10	<10	<10
055031	Andrew Price School	<10	<10	<10
055034	South Terrebonne High School	<10	<10	<10
055036	Terrebonne High School	16	<10	<10
056002	Downsville Charter School	<10	<10	<10
056004	Union Parish High School	20	<10	<10
056010	Marion K-8 School	<10	<10	<10
056012	Spearsville K-8 School	<10	<10	<10
057001	Abbeville High School	11	<10	28
057006	Erath High School	<10	<10	11
057008	Gueydan High School	<10	<10	<10
057013	Kaplan High School	11	<10	16
057016	North Vermilion High School	<10	<10	<10
058001	Anacoco High School	<10	<10	<10
058003	Evans High School	<10	<10	<10
058004	Hicks High School	<10	<10	<10
058005	Hornbeck High School	<10	<10	<10
058006	Leesville High School	129	<10	11
058007	Leesville Junior High School	<10	<10	<10
058009	Pickering High School	45	<10	<10
058010	Pitkin High School	<10	<10	<10
058012	Rosepine High School	21	12	10
058013	Simpson High School	<10	<10	<10
058020	Vernon Parish Optional Program	<10	<10	<10
059006	Franklinton High School	19	<10	<10
059007	Mt. Hermon School	<10	<10	<10
059008	Pine School	11	<10	<10
059011	Varnado High School	<10	<10	<10
060005	Doyline High School	<10	<10	<10
060011	Webster Parish Achievement Center	<10	<10	<10
060012	Minden High School	11	<10	22
060018	Lakeside Junior-Senior High School	<10	<10	<10
060019	North Webster High School	25	<10	<10
060029	Hope Youth Ranch Alternative Center	<10	<10	<10
061001	Brusly High School	<10	<10	<10
061008	Port Allen High School	<10	<10	<10
062001	Epps High School	<10	<10	<10
062003	Forest School	<10	<10	<10
062005	Kilbourne High School	<10	<10	<10
062006	Oak Grove High School	<10	<10	<10
063003	West Feliciana High School	14	<10	<10
064001	Atlanta High School	<10	<10	<10
064002	Calvin High School	<10	<10	<10
064003	Dodson High School	<10	<10	<10
064009	Winnfield High School	<10	<10	<10
065002	Carroll High School	13	<10	<10
065014	Neville High School	31	<10	<10
065018	Wossman High School	25	<10	<10
065023	Sherrouse School	<10	<10	<10
065025	Career Development Center	<10	<10	<10
066002	Bogalusa High School	23	<10	<10
066013	Bogalusa New Tech High School	<10	<10	<10
067004	Zachary High School	26	19	<10
067009	Port Hudson Career Academy	<10	<10	<10
068002	Baker High School	<10	<10	<10
069004	Central High School	17	13	32
101034	Brentwood Hospital	<10	<10	<10
300003	Lake Area New Tech Early College High School	18	<10	<10
302006	Louisiana School for Math Science & the Arts	<10	<10	<10
304001	Louisiana School for the Deaf	<10	<10	<10
304002	Louisiana School for the Visually Impaired	<10	<10	<10
307001	Howard School	10	<10	<10
311001	AMIkids Southwest	<10	<10	<10
311002	AMIkids Baton Rouge	<10	<10	<10
311004	AMIkids Red River	<10	<10	<10
311006	AMIkids Northeast Louisiana	<10	<10	<10
318001	LSU Laboratory School	<10	10	<10
319001	Southern University Lab School	<10	<10	<10
323002	Grambling State University Lab High School	<10	<10	<10
333001	Avoyelles Public Charter School	<10	<10	<10
336001	Delhi Charter School	<10	<10	<10
343001	Madison Preparatory Academy	<10	<10	<10
343002	Louisiana Virtual Charter Academy	<10	<10	<10
344001	International High School of New Orleans	25	<10	<10
345001	Louisiana Connections Academy	<10	<10	13
361001	Crescent Leadership Academy	<10	<10	<10
362001	John McDonogh High School	18	<10	<10
369004	ReNEW Accelerated High School #1	<10	<10	<10
369005	ReNEW Accelerated High School #2	<10	<10	<10
377003	Pointe Coupee Central High School	<10	<10	<10
382001	Sci Academy	15	<10	<10
383001	Sojourner Truth Academy	<10	<10	<10
384001	Miller-McCoy Academy for Mathematics and Business	<10	<10	<10
389001	Abramson Science & Technology Charter School	<10	<10	<10
395005	Lord Beaconsfield Landry-Oliver Perry Walker High	24	<10	<10
395007	Algiers Technology Academy	<10	<10	<10
396002	Joseph S. Clark Senior High School	<10	<10	<10
396004	Walter L. Cohen High School	29	<10	<10
396007	Fredrick A. Douglass High School	<10	<10	<10
396011	John McDonogh Senior High School	49	<10	<10
396017	Sarah Towles Reed Senior High School	39	<10	<10
396022	Schwarz Alternative School	12	<10	<10
396026	G.W. Carver High School	25	<10	<10
396031	L. B. Landry High School	20	<10	<10
396042	International High School	<10	<10	<10
396043	Greater Gentilly High School	<10	<10	<10
396044	Hope Academy	<10	<10	<10
396045	New Orleans Career Academy	<10	<10	<10
396202	Capitol High School	<10	<10	<10
396203	Abramson Science and Technology School	<10	<10	<10
396204	Istrouma Senior High School	<10	<10	<10
396207	Pointe Coupee Central High School	<10	<10	<10
397001	Sophie B. Wright Learning Academy	<10	<10	<10
399003	Joseph S. Clark Preparatory High School	<10	<10	<10
A02002	Riverside Alternative High School	<10	<10	<10

What this report shows is that out of about 1400 cohort members for the graduation class of 2012 (the 2012 cohort is basically composed of all students that entered in 9^th grade in 2009, 10^th grade in 2010, 11^th in 2011 or 12^th grade in 2012 – minus legitimate leavers from the cohort), at a minimum 29+49+39+12+25+20 or a minimum of 174 students or 12.5% of the entire cohort and a maximum of around 210 or 15% of the entire cohort. What would this mean in practical terms? Try lowering the RSD’s grad rate to by far the lowest in the state.

http://www.theneworleansadvocate.com/news/education/9697755-171/new-orleans-area-high-schools

Did the rate really dip in 2013, or did RSD just cheat less?

According to my figures their rate should have been closer to about 52% when correcting for invalid and undocumented exit codes or approximately 20% below the statewide graduation rate.

Wow.

If the cheating stayed the same (which is almost would have had to since this takes place over 4 years and can’t be stopped in just one) the graduation rate for RSD in New Orleans could be as low as 45% or probably the worst in the nation. What’s more is this is only half of the story, but I will have to document the rest in future posts . . . but it’s bad. Really bad. When I realized just how messed up this situation was, I admit I lost it when I was communicating with the department. I demanded they tell me what they were doing to find these kids, to help them, why they didn’t audit the rest of these numbers. I talked to Darryl Purpera, the legislative auditor, to notify him of this situation, and found myself withdrawing and recoiling in horror. My background is in accounting and auditing, and Darryl and I both know what it means when you do an audit and find 100% failure rate, and then don’t increase your sample size. You already know the answer and don’t want to confirm it.

I found myself paralyzed for a while with a little self-loathing for not doing more to help these kids sooner. . . hundreds, perhaps thousands of kids, discarded like some much garbage, and masked by a few unaudited pieces of data. I hoped I was wrong, that LDOE would tell me they were sorry and actively trying to contact these kids and families to find out what happened. I was hoping a new report would be forthcoming and prayed that it would, but it has not. I sent another entreaty to LDOE earlier this week to please give me something, because this is so horrible. I told them what I would be writing if they didn’t give me something to mitigate my report. . .but still nothing. And this is only the half of it. The situation could be much worse.

What’s more, LDOE did not even bother to audit John McDonogh even though they had 49 students exited form the cohort has transferring out of state, or roughly 50% of their cohort for that year. The newspapers reported a high graduate rate for John McDonogh before they were handed over to Steve Barr and Future Is Now, but before that charter operator failed them, they were massively failed for years by RSD, and they can’t or won’t even try to find out how bad that situation is. The community is asking that John McDonogh be given back to the Orleans Parish school system which boasts an 89% graduation rate, one of the highest in the State, and virtually no students transferring out of state (let alone fictitiously doing so.)

RSD has failed. They have failed worse than we may ever know, but so much worse than has ever been reported to date. The charters schools in Orleans are mostly D and F schools, and are not being audited or properly overseen by the state. There is no credible reason not to return John McDonogh back to the community. RSD turned this school into the worst school in the country, many times over and in worse ways than we will ever fully know. RSD has closed, but their undue, undemocratic dictatorial influence carries on.

And let me explain something else. LDOE adjusted cohort counts for students found to be undocumented in the audit. They did not adjust dropout figures and have no intention of doing so.

Jason –

 The review was about verifying that legitimate leaver codes were used and to determine if the necessary supporting documentation was maintained. For the 2014 cohort, all LEAs will be reviewed on legitimate leaver codes. This review was not about dropout rates.

LDOE will not do a full audit for the 2013 graduate counts. The first full audit won’t be done until 2014, long after RSD is closed and basically unauditable because they will have no school personnel and no records to review. But this is only a portion of the story, which has statewide implications. What I want you to carry away from this article is that RSD was not just a failure, that should never been touted as a success or duplicated, but that Louisiana’s graduate and dropout numbers are inflated and deflated respectively. I will show how in a more complex post than this one. I also want those debating the future of John McDonogh to understand this school must be given back to the New Orleans community. RSD is a fraudulent and irresponsible organization that discards children with arcane data and incompetence. They are closed but they are not without influence. I have asked RSD and LDOE a half dozen times over the last month what they plan to do about the hundreds of discarded children, fraudulently coded as transfers out of state, and they have refused to answer.

I would like to know the department’s reasoning for not investigating more fully the most extreme offenders. ..not just in RSD but Calcasieu,  EBR, Jefferson, Monroe and so forth.  Especially when you get such high error rates, like 100% for RSD, you have to be concerned if any of that data is valid, and what actually happened to those kids??  RSD is directly run by LDOE. Those kids disappeared on your watch. Is anyone trying to contact these kids and families to find out what happened?

We know the answer. LDOE and RSD are the least accountable education entities in the state and they must not be entrusted with our children anymore. Disband the RSD and give back John Mac. Anything else is child abuse, and anything less is sanctioning it.

The RSD has failed, but from the ashes an Education Mecca has been born

The RSD, the New Orleans Recovery School District that was formed just prior to Katrina and used as an excuse an opportunity to wrest control of local schools and school districts from Orleans Parish and school systems across the state, has failed but without much fanfare in the local or national media. Katrina and RSD were lauded by many folks, including Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, as the greatest thing to ever happen to New Orleans. Arne probably read about this or wrote this for the Common Core history books that have been produced to go alongside the Math, ELA, and Science texts. (If you thought Common Core ELA and Math were bad, wait until you get ahold of the History and Science Common Core curricula. Local historians need not apply but that’s an article for another time.)

What happened in New Orleans is not that dissimilar to what we have done in other political enterprises. It’s a very common tactic called bait and switch in sales lingo. A salesman or store advertises a ridiculously low priced good or service, but once you show up at the store you find they are all out of that special deal, but you are in luck, they have something even better in store for you, and you will get first dibs on it! You are made to feel special and lucky and hopefully forget all about the original reason for your visit. If this is done well, you don’t realize you’ve been had and that the original advertisement was just meant to lure people in for the real sale where they offload a substandard product or something much more expensive and that you perhaps don’t really need.. If this goes poorly you write about it on blogs and Facebook, tell your friends not to shop there, and perhaps make a stink about it and maybe the vendor will give you a rain check or dust off a few of the special deal they had tucked away for persistent (bitchy) customers.

If you want to think of a political situation (without getting too political about it) consider the recent Iraq war that was sold to the nation on the pretext of WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction.) The US public was told there were weapons that could kill them and their families. They were told that these weapons were about to be handed over to terrorists with a penchant and expressed desire to use them. This invasion was not long after we had been already attacked on 911 so we were primed for this message. We were told by many media accounts that this would be a quick and easy war and that it would ensure our safety and prosperity for generations to come with minimal losses. We were told we would be met as saviors and liberators (not unlike many Reformers tell their fresh recruits before sending them into poverty stricken warzones in the States.). We were also primed by our recent early successes in Afghanistan to accept this idea. We were also historically conditioned to believe this was true from our first war with Iraq (although with much different strategic objectives.) To be fair, Saddam Hussein did himself no favors by trying so hard to conceal his actions from inspectors and doing his best to acquire chemical, biological and nuclear technology at every chance he got. But we were still wounded as a nation and spoiling for another war, and the Bush Administration was more than willing to sell us one. When it didn’t pan out the way they had planned, they simply switched from eliminating the threats of WMDs to effecting a regime change and planting the flag of Democracy in the Middle East. As we can see from the rise of ISIS, and the slaughtering of Christians and other minorities at their hands, and the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis and many thousands of dead Americans and allied troops, this was not an easy war and we did not ultimately “win.” (At least not in my opinion) The “new mission and goals” that we scrambled for at the last minute to create an exit strategy for one of America’s most serious foreign policy blunders of all time, did not last. Some folks will say we should have stayed longer, but how long would have been enough? Decades? Centuries? These ethnic groups have been fighting for Millennia. All we accomplished by getting involved was to give them something to unify against to fight. Us. The US. But the point I am trying to make here is that politicians frequently change their goals once their original plans have failed. Some will lie to you on purpose, upfront, to get you go along. They know you would never fall for (or agree to) the real plan and objectives if you knew what their real goal was upfront.

This is exactly what happened in New Orleans with RSD. I can’t be sure which camp the folks behind RSD fall into. Did they know it would be a failure at the outset and simply sell the public on the idea of RSD so they could secretly usher in an era and invasion of charter schools? Did they finally realize having Statewide entities run local community schools was as horrible an idea as it sounds? Who can say? Perhaps it’s a bit of both. What I can tell you is that RSD failed as it was originally sold to Louisiana. RSD was sold as a way to temporarily take over public schools and get them on a solid academic footing before handing them back to their home parishes. RSD has never handed any schools back in the 11 or 12 years they have been in existence. Many, if not most of their schools, became worse than the schools they took over. In some cases much worse, and had to simply be closed as happened to many schools taken over in EBR that just hold empty desks now, or in New Orleans like John McDonogh. John Mac failed as an RSD school, and became arguably the worst school in Louisiana under Future Is Now and Steve Barr’s leadership. What has happened in New Orleans was not a great rebirth of public schools, but an unmitigated slaughter in favor of charter schools. RSD still controls the approval process and construction for new schools, but they don’t run any, anymore thankfully. Even RSD finally agreed that they were incapable and incompetent in those roles. Now that the invasion is complete, and the city has been conquered, and all the former teachers disbanded much like the US government backed Shiite Iraqi Government disbanded the largely Sunni Army to their ultimate dismay. Reformers claiming victory from the failure of their original plan now tell this was their plan all along. This is what they were hoping to achieve, a completely privatized education Mecca that all Reformers in the US and around the world can turn to 5 times a day and wave dollar bills at in homage – to the sanctity of what they built there.

Already the cracks and strain is showing. Parents are left to wait for days in the sweltering summer New Orleans heat in the name of choice – as choice is shown to be false; a heat inspired mirage. Some details still leak out from time to time. In my next post I will show you some. . .

If your state is considering something like the RSD, tell them no. You tell them it was a complete failure in Louisiana and RSD got out of the business of being RSD in New Orleans. At least make them admit their real goal is to close all public schools and open them as charter schools. Make them tell you what their real plan is, but don’t let them tell you that the RSD plan is a template for anything but failure. If I had to five RSD a letter grade, like the state gives all schools and districts in the state, I would give them an F. But I can’t. They are so bad, they don’t even exist. The RSD was a lie and charter schools were the switch. And just like the result of most bait and switch tactics, charter schools are more expensive, they aren’t what we needed or signed up for and probably won’t last very long before we need to replace them with something else even more expensive – but the salesmen are pretty happy.