State-run schools likened to separate district

The state’s push to revive troubled public schools in north Baton Rouge amounts to forming a breakaway school district that is likely to grow, a report says.

The seven schools that make up the Baton Rouge Achievement Zone “will essentially be a separate school system” within the East Baton Rouge Parish school setup with major financial and other implications, the study says.

“Eventually 20 or 30 schools could become members of the Achievement Zone,” according to the review, which was done for the Baton Rouge Area Chamber and the Baton Rouge Area Foundation.

The seven are Dalton Elementary; Crestworth, Glen Oaks, Lanier and Prescott middle schools; and Istrouma and Capitol high schools.

All of the schools are run by the state as part of the Recovery School District.

They were taken over after years of academic failure and, for most, put back under state control after being run by charter school operators who failed to make needed improvements.

The schools, much like failed public schools in New Orleans years ago, are getting increasing attention from private groups and state school leaders.

State Superintendent of Education John White has been calling for sweeping changes in troubled Baton Rouge public schools since November.

The issue also surfaced during a miniretreat held last week by the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.

BESE members were shown data that nearly two-thirds of the parish’s failing schools, with about 12,000 students, are located in a handful of ZIP codes north of Florida Boulevard, but excluding the Central, Zachary and Baker school districts.

The latest plan is designed to make enough improvements in the schools this year that top-flight charter operators will want to run them starting with the 2013-14 school year.

“It is much like New Orleans,” RSD Superintendent Patrick Dobard said. “It is about governance and basically empowering educators.”

The Achievement Zone also got considerable attention in the report, which was done by Jim Richardson, alumnus professor of economics at LSU, and Roy Heidelberg, visiting researcher at the school.

While public schools in New Orleans have struggled for years, many in Baton Rouge are not far behind.

The report noted that 53 of 76 schools in the East Baton Rouge Parish school system earned a D or F from the state last year.

“This means that 70 percent of the total schools in EBRPSS (East Baton Rouge Parish school system) are classified as failing schools by the Department of Education compared to 44 percent statewide,” the report says.

Earlier this year, a bid to carve out a new school district in southeast Baton Rouge — the fourth of its kind — narrowly failed in the Legislature amid heavy opposition from parish school leaders.

But Richardson’s report said the Baton Rouge Achievement Zone “will be the equivalent of creating a temporary breakaway school district,” and one that will cost the East Baton Rouge Parish school system state and local tax revenue and potentially hamper efforts to finance health care costs for retirees and bond costs.

The push to improve north Baton Rouge schools includes private partners, including New Schools Baton Rouge, Stand for Children and Teach for America.

Chris Meyer, who heads New Schools Baton Rouge, said his group hopes to raise $30 million, create 12,000 “excellent” classroom seats and add 500 teachers in the next five years.

Rayne Martin, executive director of Stand for Children, said her group hopes to recruit parents to lead “school teams” to advocate for improvements and play lead roles in attracting quality charter school operators.

“There is lost opportunity if you cannot get the community to drive some of these things,” Martin said of school turnaround efforts.

Teach for America has about 30 members in schools in the Baton Rouge Achievement Zone and alumni as well, said Michael Tipton, executive director of Teach for America South Louisiana.

Tipton said the group plans to help recruit principals, assistant principals and other educators nationwide to join the effort.

Teach for America is a national group that recruits college graduates, puts them through intense training and then sends them to troubled public schools.

Comments

1) Comment by iluvbtr - 20/08/2012

@phil- "SO what is the answer?" So glad you asked. The answer doesn't lie in changing the name on a building or changing teachers or changing administrators. The "so called" reforms ARE the "status quo" because they don't offer solutions to the underlying issues. Without intervention in a couple of key areas it is improbable that we will see any significant improvement in student achievement levels for children living in poverty. The first key intervention is to provide quality early childhood education to every child. According to Louisiana Believes 48% of Louisiana children enter schools without being "kindergarten ready". Supt. White in his August 18th letter to the editor suggested that "state agencies are collaborating on a unified system of prekindergarten guaranteeing every 3- and 4-year old in Louisiana an academic education before kindergarten". What he didn't say is that there is little to no chance the program will ever be funded. The other major key area that requires intervention is teen pregnancy. There are a variety of ways to approach the issue, but I am not confident our leaders are up to the challenge. How big of a problem is teen pregnancy? Here are some facts: Despite declines in rates of teen pregnancy in the U.S., about 820,000 teens become pregnant each year. That means that 34 percent of teenagers have at least one pregnancy before they turn 20. 79 percent of teenagers who become pregnant are unmarried. 80 percent of teenage pregnancies are unintended. Nearly four in ten teenage girls whose first intercourse experience happened at 13 or 14 report that the sex was unwanted or involuntary. The main rise in the teen pregnancy rate is among girls younger than 15* Close to 25 percent of teen mothers have a second child within two years of the first birth. The United State spends $7 billion each year due to the costs of teen pregnancy. Only one-third of teenage mothers complete high school and receive their diplomas. By age 30, only 1.5 percent of women who had pregnancies as a teenager have a college degree. 80 percent of unmarried teen mothers end up on welfare. Within the first year of becoming teen mothers, one-half of unmarried teen mothers go on welfare. The daughters of teen mothers are 22 percent more likely than their peers to become teen mothers. Sons of teenaged mothers have a 13 percent greater chance of ending up in prison as compared to their peers.

2) Comment by phil - 20/08/2012

Parents and public schools are both failing. SO what is the answer? Create another tier of public schools with charter schools and private schools and vouchers to add to the cost running the public school system, and then roll millages for property taxes forward to pay for some of the added expenses. So in summary - public schools do NOT get fixed, private schools and non-profit groups pushing vouchers get rich, and taxpayers pay for it all. That is my quick summary.

3) Comment by iluvbtr - 19/08/2012

@jeffsadow-The fact is that the RSD and the charter schools have failed miserably. What is the state ranking of the RSD? Isn't the RSD the lowest performing district in our state? Didn't the so-called reformers suggest that all we needed to fix EBR schools was autonomy and choice? And now we are going to expand charter schools and fund every church school with functioning DVD player? For the sake of our children's future this failed experiment needs to end.

4) Comment by Noel Hammatt - 19/08/2012

When logic and the evidence are not on your side, try argumentum ad hominem. When you do not have facts and evidence on your side, then by all means attack the messenger. As those who have read my comments know, I do not excuse schools from blame. I do, however, point out that no research suggests that schools and teachers have anything like the power suggested by the accountability plan in place. The letter grades, once again, bear no relationship to the quality of the school, or the teaching within that school Instead, they are nearly perfect indicators of special populations (selective enrollment, for example) and the percentage of students qualifying for free meals. 34% in "A" schools, on average, 45% for "B" schools, 60% for "C" schools, 80% for "D" schools, and almost 90% for schools labeled "F". If that pattern doesn't suggest something that we ought to be looking at, I don't know what is. I again point out that the gap between students who do not qualify for free meals, and those who do, is actually larger in the private schools, where in 4th grade reading and math on the National Assessment of Educational Progress is is over two years! So, anyone who would not expect to see a pattern between Letter Grades and the percent of students in a school qualifying for free meals needs to work on their math skills. Thanks. On other posts I have provided links to some papers that explain why failing schools, in fact, may not be failing at all. If you need some links to rational arguments and evidence as to why the current Louisiana accountability is absurd, please email me at [e-mail]

5) Comment by jeffsadow - 19/08/2012

I suppose Noel Hammatt would have no life without Sentell's articles. He certainly doesn't have an argument with his assertion that everything but the school systems themselves (perhaps to cover for schools' failure during his time on the EBR School Board) are to blame for their poor performances. But, case in point, he (and a few other commenters) can't even make a logical argument with this poor analogy about blaming doctors for poor health care outcomes. Let's see, if doctors had their patients under their direct care for 6+ hours a day 9 months of the year for 12-13 years and with tools of reward and punishment to place on patients who didn't do what the doctors wanted, maybe we could assign them some blame. But schools do have all of that, and some that break the traditional mold with similar student populations as EBR are doing much better. Then again, when a member of the school board can't even think logically, this fish rots from the head down, which maybe why voters finally got tired of this and fired him. And isn't it curious how the members/defenders of the status quo, who are so quick to formulate wild conspiracy theories about reform agents who they claim do not operate with the best interests of children and their education at heart, never will admit that perhaps it is the traditional special interests in the failing public schools that are the ones that put themselves before children and this is one reason why schools do poorly. The motives and interests of every single person connected to government-monopoly schools are as pure as the driven snow, while those outside that establishment are all evil and money-grubbing, right? Tell me another joke while you're at it.

6) Comment by Noel Hammatt - 19/08/2012

You have to love it when Will Sentell quotes from a document that has erroneous information in it, and doesn't even try to correct it. As much as he would like "D" or "F" schools to be considered "failing," the Department of Education does NOT give a school receiving a "D" Letter Grade as "failing." Page three of the "Louisiana Believes" document makes that perfectly clear. The rhetoric around the push for vouchers, tax credits, and the other myth-guided "reforms" simply required lies to be passed, so suddenly some were almost bragging about 44% of the schools failing. Wasn't true then, just as it wasn't true when some hard core haters of public education called "C" schools "failing." "Louisiana Believes" labels only schools receiving the label of ""F" as "failing." Roughly, think of it as the school with over 90% of the students qualifying for free meals, the lowest income category! Is it too much to ask The Advocate to just get the facts right?

7) Comment by Chucky - 19/08/2012

Sorry but i do not get it, if you can not pass 1st grade but are sent to second grade for 'social justice' or what ever, do not think they will flunk the next grade ?

8) Comment by Chucky - 19/08/2012

It is the students and family

9) Comment by Noel Hammatt - 19/08/2012

@whocares: Actually, I know for a fact of some of the people in that group who are actively seeking answers to lots of questions they have about this. Some have come to me, and they are very concerned about this. They had people there are the presentation where Heidelberg and Richardson talked about their research.

10) Comment by JohnStJ - 19/08/2012

Sure am curious as to what term of use my previous post violated. My best guess is that word that began with a "D" and ended in a "amn?" If so I'd appreciate a confirmation at the email account I registered under...I didn't evoke the God thing which is what usually makes the ejaculation offensive. (incidentally: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ejaculation first definition. :-) )

11) Comment by WhoCares - 19/08/2012

Where are the one community one school district people on this? They're the biggest hypocrites on the planet.

12) Comment by JohnStJ - 19/08/2012

****Comment Removed for Violation of Terms of Use****

13) Comment by Noel Hammatt - 19/08/2012

Has Teach For America betrayed its mission? http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/48688907/ns/us_news- life/#.UC_Bu938ucY A great read about one of the groups seeking to come in and pull children out of the river, and all they ask is that their top 15 people continue to draw their $200,000+ average salaries. Wendy Kopp officially makes a paltry $350,000 in direct compensation, though I suspect this is dwarfed by her fees for speaking engagements. These are old numbers, from the 2010 IRS 990 Form. On that form, TFA spent some $16 million plus on marketing, and directly spent $725,000+ on "influencing legislators." Teach For America reported a $338,000,000 fund balance on that IRS990. They can pull a lot of children out of the river for that, probably explains why they don't want to have everyone stop throwing them in!

14) Comment by timesright - 19/08/2012

I felt like my post was getting a little long. Decided to share some fiscal info on Teach for America with you: A tax exempt nonprofit, TFA reported annual operating surpluses of $35 million, $114 million and $37 million in its last three federal filings. Kopp, who earns $375,000 a year, supervises 1,800 employees — including a small army of recruiters. http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/48688907/ns/us_news-life/#.UDEdA6Pi6Sp Just follow the money! Teach for America needs proceeds from a benefit? Think about that question.

15) Comment by timesright - 19/08/2012

There is so much information out there as to the lack of success of charter schools across the nation. I like, Noel, keep wondering why the mainstream media in this community and across the state has not and will not keep the public informed and relay the facts. Tell the truth about these "astroturf" groups like Stand for Children, BAEO, Parent Revolution, StudentsFirst, etc. Supposedly they are all non-profit organizations. Ha! There funding sources have to come from somewhere. Just this past week a huge gala/benefit took place in California to promote "Won't Back Down" with entertainment in a production that in part aired on CBS Friday evening called "Teachers Rock". Some of the proceeds are steered to reach the pockets of Teach for America, a teacher source for the RSD schools and this new Baton Rouge Achievement Zone.

16) Comment by Noel Hammatt - 19/08/2012

@zealer99: Your reference to the medical profession reminds me that we don't blame the medical profession for the fact that Baton Rouge is number one is AIDS cases. We don't blame doctors for the fact that life expectancy in Louisiana is one of the lowest in the nation, or that the health and obesity problems in Louisiana are enormous burdens on our economy. "Reformers" who blame all the problems of "failing schools" on the teachers and the schools remind me of a story.Two friends, a teacher, and a "reformer" were standing by the Mississippi River arguing about the direction our state was heading. They suddenly noticed a child floating by, desperately trying to swim. They quickly jumped in and pulled the child to safety, only to notice another child floating down. Again and again they waded out into the treacherous river to save the children. All of a sudden, the teacher started to climb out of the river and head upstream. "What are you doing" cries the reformer,"I can't save all the children by myself! I need your help! Don't you CARE about these children?" Her friend replies, as she heads rapidly up the river: "Of course I care! Do the best you can, I'm going to find out who is throwing the babies INTO the river, and stop them!" We can save the children, we just can't do it with our head buried in the ideological sands of "reform."

17) Comment by redstickhornet - 19/08/2012

Thanks again N. Hammatt. for your comments. I swear, I don't think I could read these articles anymore if you were not on here. You cannot make this stuff up... @Zealer you are so right. But how much money has been poured into NOLA education since Katrina? I suspect enough to send everybody there to Harvard at least once. We may never truly know. You would think that some of the taxbusters here in BR would help us find out. Why? Because a massive effort is well under way to replicate NOLA in Baton Rouge. How MUCH WILL IT COST and how will we ensure that it works a whole lot better than the RSD in NOLA (or the RSD here for that matter)? These are the real questions.

18) Comment by zealer99 - 19/08/2012

Changing doctors when a patient is bleeding to death does not really help very much. The heart and soul of the failures of secondary and elementary education begins at home and transferring control of the schools is not going to help. We have an extreme social problem that money and management can't fix.

19) Comment by nimby? - 19/08/2012

two terms these days that make me cringe ; public , as in schools , health , transportation , etc. and non/not for profit . suggestion of corruption , incompetence while someone who doesn't have a clue draws an hefty salary . film at 11 ...

20) Comment by gary - 19/08/2012

Noel, some good stuff - I hope you will keep giving comments - they are very informative - some folks have got to take their heads out of the sand. Side note on John Spain - you ain't gonna hear a negative word spoken from any of the Manship's. I image it is just a matter of time before they do away with these comments.

21) Comment by phil - 19/08/2012

Isn't the smell of money sweet.? I think some of these organizations are like hound dogs and can smell tax money a mile away. Is this really being done to improve schools or is it being done to make profits? Just a question.

22) Comment by phil - 19/08/2012

Noel , here we are again making comments! Take a look at the IRS 990 forms for the BRAF, the BRAC group that receives city-parish tax funds, and all of the other nonprofits listed here and see how much the top people in those organizations get paid for their "nonprofit" activities. I will let you have the fun of doing the research if you have not already. I think maybe sometimes nonprofits are really nonprofit because all the money goes to the top people in the organization.

23) Comment by spqr - 19/08/2012

And no governor has a PR machine like the very corrupt, cruel, hypocritical, arrogant, elusive Piyush Jindal.

24) Comment by Noel Hammatt - 19/08/2012

Would it be too much to ask that the public be provided copies of any plans the state or the "non-profits" may or may not have for this "achievement zone" along with the research they are using to justify it? I have heard references to the Harlem Children's Zone, and interestingly enough, one of the premises of that zone is that schools alone can't do the job. The need for interventions and getting families to recognize their role as first teachers, and their homes as the most important schools, all are part of their goals up there. (Now, where have some of the readers heard that before?) Initial efforts to use the schools alone.... not so successful, in fact, they had to "throw out" all of the students in one of the grades that were not performing to standards. Wildly varying scores year to year in their schools. Heavily researched, almost totally unreported by the media, for after all, the HCZ controls over 200 million dollars in its coffers! Pays for lots of publicity! Just ask the reformers; you can buy lots of publicity!

25) Comment by spqr - 19/08/2012

And it should be noted that 47 New Orleans schools taken over by the state also have grades of D or F. As long as the Lane Grigsby's of the world donate millions of dollars to Piyush Jindal the Baton Rouge business elite will be allowed to decide education policy and award jobs and contracts to their country club pals. Follow the money.

26) Comment by Noel Hammatt - 19/08/2012

Why are some afraid to examine the patterns of academic achievement in order to try and understand what factors impact achievement. And why is it so difficult for some to understand that there is a huge gulf between conceptually understanding issues related to individual achievement and understanding the accountability system used by this state? The interesting point raised by tradewinns in the comment below is that he is "tired of hearing about the percentage of students on 'free lunch' etc." If he doesn't hear it from me, I have to ask, where is he hearing it? The state only mentions it when talking about the few selective schools succeeding with high percentages of "free lunch" students. The media outlets? Totally silent on the patterns I have pointed out to them, time and time again. What is also interesting, is that no one has claimed that the patterns I have shown are in any way inaccurate. They just, like tradewinns, put their head in the sand and continue to ignore them.

27) Comment by Noel Hammatt - 19/08/2012

Please read the following three comments in reverse order. You can finish this one first, if you desire. Thanks! You might also ask yourself "who benefits from this proposed new district." In spite of vehement and oft-cited claims to the contrary, there is no evidence that charters, achievement districts, and non-profits (or the state) have any more success at "turning-around" so-called "failing" schools, absent the various techniques we have found in research about "miracle schools" such as skimming, selective admissions and selective removals ("we don't expel students" say some charter school and voucher school operators, we just "counsel" them out.) and a favorite of the Recovery School District, "churning" the lowest performing students/schools. Churning explains why there are always fewer student scores being reported, and fewer school performance scores being released than there are school and students in the RSD.

28) Comment by tradewinns - 19/08/2012

i am tired of hearing about the percentage of students on "free lunch" etc. the only thing relative to fiscal and educational performance is if they can not afford to pay the electric bill so they have no power. that could interfer with night studing. if you would like to connect "poor" students to genetic mental abilities, that's different. the parents were intellectually inferior (that's why they are poor) and therefore they produce an intellectually inferior child. that would at least be a true reason and not a supercilious excuse. the true reason we have "failing" schools is the failing students' LACK OF EFFORT!

29) Comment by Noel Hammatt - 19/08/2012

John Spain is listed by the Secretary of State as the Director, Secretary, and the lone Officer of New Schools for Baton Rouge. No other officers are listed. John Spain was, or is, a Director of Advance Baton Rouge, a name which is conveniently left off of the article by Will Sentell. Advance Baton Rouge ran a number of EBR schools that were taken over by the state as "failing schools." Parents voted with their feet, removing their children from the schools and leaving the schools more and more empty (two of them totally empty right now) and had school performance scores that went down, not up. The Recovery School District, the lowest performing district in the state even if you only look at schools that were taken over more than three years ago, is taking the Advance Baton Rouge Schools over and is going to "fix them up enough" to make them sellable to the charter school operators. Yet John Spain is going to be given control of more money, and make no mistake, most of it will be tax dollars, not private money, to oversee yet another group that will claim a miracle. Chris Meyer and Rayne Martin, having recently led state efforts to privatize public schools as employees of the State Department of Education (Can anyone say "revolving doors?) are now heading up "non-profit" groups likely to bring in lots of state dollars from..... oh, the department they recently helped run!

30) Comment by Noel Hammatt - 19/08/2012

In New Orleans, many organizations with names similar to those you read about in this article have "Executive Directors" making more money than Superintendents in Districts with 500 to 5000 employees and, with School Principals in single Charter Schools making more than these same Superintendents. That's correct, "Non-Profits" whose top people, overseeing a dozen or so employees, are making more money than Superintendents, who are accountable to the public; are selected by our elected officials in open searches and with public input and media scrutiny, and who oversee organizations with thousands of employees. How much public input do you believe exists in these "Astro-turf" organizations masquerading as "grass-roots" organizations? Have no fear though; there is plenty of "public input" into these organizations. It just takes the form of tax dollars flowing freely and with little public oversight into the coffers of these astro-turf groups.

31) Comment by Noel Hammatt - 19/08/2012

Follow the Money. The reformers will tell you that lots of money is being spent in "failing public schools" (see http://educatorsforall.org/blog/2012/3/8/why-schools-fail-or- what-if-failing-schoolsarent.html) that, for their privatization purposes, includes "D" schools as well as "F" schools. What they won't tell you is that there is a pattern. "D" schools have an average of over 80% of the students coming from families qualifying for free meals while the students in "F" schools have over 90% on average, as a matter of fact. The majority of these families are working poor earning less than $20,000 a year. "A" schools have less than 35%, on average. Coincidence? Is this a pattern worth exploring? You be the judge. But these are facts and patterns you won't read about in the newspapers of Louisiana. As yourself, why not? Follow the money.