Letter: Achievement Zone transformative

Children who live in poverty are too often confined to the lowest-performing schools. In Baton Rouge, more than 16,000 — or 1 in 3 — students attend a failing school.

Nearly half of the students in Baton Rouge performing below grade level are concentrated in the North Baton Rouge area. Students in the zone live in communities where more than 1 in 3 adults have less than a high school diploma and crime is four times greater than the city average.

This leads to fewer opportunities, fewer chances for success and creates a bleak reality for future generations. That limits options for families and communities and that should be unacceptable to all of us.

The good news is we have an opportunity to change the course. The Baton Rouge Achievement Zone is the result of a targeted approach to lift kids out of underperforming schools and create conditions needed for transformative change.

By creating a unique partnership between the Recovery School District and the East Baton Rouge Parish Public School System, we can create an education system grounded in accountability, parental choice, diverse educational delivery and shared enrollment.

We believe educators — not bureaucrats — are best-positioned to make decisions in schools that drive student success; that schools should develop innovative programming that compete for student, family and community interests; that parents deserve optimal choices that ensure bright academic futures for their students; and that the destiny of our students should not be determined by their ZIP codes.

In New Orleans we are seeing what’s possible when the power of educators is unleashed, and innovation and drive for change become the new normal.

Sci-Academy — a charter high school founded in eastern New Orleans in 2007 — graduated its first class of students in June 2012.

Today, 96 percent of those students attend a four-year university, 91 percent of them are the first in their family to attend college. Further, many are on academic scholarship despite entering high school after years languishing in and shuffled between bad schools where neglect and indifference were the standard. Students now look forward to futures paved with opportunity, and not one in which they are too often exposed to the harsh reality of violence and drugs in distressed communities.

This undoubtedly will change the trajectory of possibility for future generations to come and that’s great news for our state.

We can and we must remain vigilant in our efforts to ensure access to a great school for students in North Baton Rouge and beyond. The success of our city, parish and region depends upon the ability of all of our students to get a great education.

Patrick Dobard, superintendent

Recovery School District

Baton Rouge

Comments

1) Comment by teacherguy - 27/02/2013

It amazes me that our leaders have forgotten why public services were "invented" in the first place...because for-profit entities either won't or are incapable of providing adequate services at the bulk scale level for the general poverty-stricken masses. Public schools are the answer to what ails this country, but instead of trying to improve what we have any longer...the plan has become destroy public services (hospitials, schools, prisons, etc.) and reinvent them later (because private services will take the money till its gone and close up shop causing a crisis for these services later on). If this TRULY is the plan, 1. Say so. 2. Set a time table and collect the money being saved. 3. Start giving us a taste of what public schools of the future are going to look like when we have the funds to transform them. At least then I could see how short term sacrifices will reap long term benefits. What I see happening today is a scheme to lower state costs in the education sector via the cannibalization of public education services...what are rural districts going to do when the public education services are bankrupt and the charter schools giving them competition apologize for not being able to continue any longer and simply close up shop? They are not required to stay open long term...whatcha gonna do, then????? You are going to reinvent public education...but without devoted career teachers cause they flew the coop, or redirected occupations over the years, when they refused to take jobs in charter/voucher schools where benefits and salaries have not been attractive to long term career personnel. (Don't get me wrong, long term career personnel exists there, just not at the quantity of public education.) Why is there a need to take away teacher certification? Because they can't get enough career teachers to go into poverty-stricken/charter schools. Someone said in a post below...the best public school teachers should be forced to go to the most needy schools...here is a clue why they can't do that...most of the best teachers would quit before going there. Don't get me wrong...we will put our time in at a "tough school", but getting at the "better schools" is our promotion. You take away our promotion, you wouldn't even have good teachers in the best schools. Ask EBR how it worked for them moving teachers to schools they didn't want to teach at...the best of the best were cherry-picked by the surrounding districts. Teacher quality is on its way up in the better districts...and on its way down in the failing ones...the only evidence I have for this statement is the need to higher ANYONE with a college degree...that is a masked way of saying OMG...we need warm bodies for our classrooms and the hope is if they have a college degree...that'd be better than the emergency certificate personnel we've been creating. (Emergency certificate means not a qualified teacher.)

2) Comment by Noel Hammatt - 27/02/2013

@Phil and @Whatnow: The so-called "reformers" have been condemning the "failing" schools and school systems for years, without ever investigating the reality at these schools. All of this is part of a long history of efforts by the Chicago School of Economics along with their handmaidens, ALEC and a variety of profiteers. All of this has been documented over the years, and their goal has been to take as much of the $600,000,000 plus K- 12 tax dollars into the hands of for-profit ventures as possible. We are talking serious profits here. Each of the many groups you have been seeing piously claiming they are for the children, not the adults, are churning profits, not for children, but for adults. John Spain, who is running the New Schools and the Achievement Zones from his cushy office at the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, is not making $300K+ a year to help children. It is to help bring money into certain local groups. As for some who say, but Noel, many of these people really are focused on doing what is best for children, I have to ask a couple of questions. If what they are doing is really for the children, why is so much money being funneled into a few peoples pockets. Look at the top-heavy Department of Education. There are more than a dozen people up there with no serious credentials other than being ideologically pure . They have no resumes that would qualify them for the $150,000 and up salaries, and many, as has been reported in the paper, don't even work here full-time. More importantly, why is the truth being hidden? If they are truly doing great things for children, why do we find access to the very data that would show this being denied. When a group decides that they know best, and that no one else has a right to see the data, I suspect collusion and deceit. When asked to produce evidence of the "many complaints" supposedly received from parents and teachers about the old website that had at least some data that had not been corrupted in order to make it unusable, the Department released only a few emails that actually were complaining about the NEW website, that has virtually no research-friendly data. Student achievement on the standardized tests we are using to supposedly "grade" teachers and schools, is subject to lots of impacts from outside of the schools. In fact, the evidence is that about 17% of student achievement can be explained by in-school factors. The rest, are factors ranging from early childhood experiences, exposure to stress and poor medical care, lead exposure, et cetera. Parenting, yes, of course, and just as soon as the profiteers find a way to profit off these factors they may acknowledge them. For now, they cannot afford to. There is no recognition of all of these outside factors by the "reformers" because they need to claim that it is the SCHOOLS that are failing in order to make profits for themselves. ALEC, BAEO, CABL and all of the other groups are not interested in truth. None of them have sued to get data released. None of them have been interested in true parental choice at all. They just want to be able to market their profit making schemes. How much money did the Baton Rouge Area Foundation make off of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation grants that came through their bank account? Did John Spain get a bonus for bringing in money for Advance Baton Rouge, a group that spit out teachers, principals and students an an incredible pace, yet totally failed to achieve anything for students, and has now lost all of their schools? Yet I suspect many made a nice profit off the operation. Follow the money, and ask yourself, why are the reformers afraid of the truth. Why are they always hiding behind shell fronts and "non-profits" that are anything BUT non profitable, for their top people. There is NO EVIDENCE that supports the idea that "failing schools" ARE, in fact, failing. Nor is their any evidence in the letter grades or School Performance Scores that the principal or teachers in that school are, or are not, of extremely high quality. We don't measure progress of the students in these schools when it comes to labeling a school a failure. Wait, that's right, John White just changed that, and did so in such a way that his Recovery School District will benefit from students doing better, but not meeting the standards. If this had been in place before, there likely would not BE a Recovery School District. Those who control the numbers, as I mentioned in my comments below, control the flow of truth. I think they make up their own "reality" in the data- crunching at the Department of Education. Because the TRUTH would set all of the reformers free, as in free of the profits from the taxpayers who are being lied to. Follow the money, and seek the TRUTH.

3) Comment by Whatnow - 27/02/2013

Why can't parish school systems that don't seem to work, look into those parish systems that do? Maybe it's the Superintendent of each parish that makes or breaks their system.

4) Comment by phil - 27/02/2013

Please wake up people. These are public schools that are run with your tax dollars and ALL of the public schools should be giving students the same EQUAL education at ALL schools. If there are actually low performing schools, then the public school system should have the ability to send the better teachers to those schools until those schools get better at educating. Since there seems to be a correlation between poverty and poor performing schools, then I have to possibly think there are other factors involved other than possibly having all of the bad schools in poor areas. Maybe it isn't the schools that are really the problem. So what is the answer? Let's create voucher systems and charter schools so some individuals can get rich off of a problem that should be able to be fixed by parents and by the existing PUBLIC schools? We all should know better.

5) Comment by teacherguy - 26/02/2013

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Va21reFDnSU&feature=share

6) Comment by Noel Hammatt - 26/02/2013

Short form of my comments: I read online the new Commentary articles and letters... First was "Our Views: The Bad Idea of the Month. Second was "Our Views: Move toward more openness. Third was "Inside Report: Sinkhole Critics-Oh Governor, Where Art Thou. and fourth was this letter about the Baton Rouge Achievement Zone. Heck, I thought all the titles were about this new boondoggle! Bad idea, hatched in secrecy and with no transparency or vote of the parents impacted... a giant sinkhole but with nice payoffs for a few.

7) Comment by Noel Hammatt - 26/02/2013

I guess it makes sense to claim success ahead of time, especially when every single school you have taken over in the Baton Rouge are is a rock solid "F" in your grading scale. So many things not mentioned in this letter speak to the lack of transparency in the Department of Education's Recovery School District. Missing from Dobard's excellent list of cliches is the truth about the history of the failure of the RSD. I won't list all the failures, just a few, I'll have a chance to come back after the paid cheerleaders of the "reformers" chime in. OK. First, Mr. Dobard and Mr. White head up the absolutely lowest performing schools in the state. Bar none. Now, the reformers will say, of course, they they were failing when they started. Point taken... but, they have had these schools for years, and what has been the result? (Note, many of the schools in New Orleans were NOT below the state "bar" for being labeled "failing," but one stroke of the pen enabled the Department of Education and the reformers to be able to say they were "failing" by changing the definition of failing for that one district. I have not found a single reformer who admits this openly, thought they know it is true.) In spite of a variety of what i think are patently deceitful practices only begun in the last few years by Pastorek, Dobard, and John White, the schools taken over by the state, as a whole, are doing lousy. Dobard mentions parental choice as being much more valid than "bureaucratic" decisions... yet how does Dobard walk this walk? He has never asked parents in schools in New Orleans whether they want their schools to be run by yet another group? Not once. He has never asked the parents in ANY schools run by the RSD whether they want to return to the oversight of their local school board. He and White have denied parents in St. Helena the right to attend classes in the local District's schools, even though this means that those parents have NO CHOICE other than to attend an RSD school. Now, where parents have made choices, in the schools run by RSD in the Greater Baton Rouge area, what has been the result? Overcrowded schools in EBR as parents left the RSD schools in droves. I suspect ALL of the students in the local RSD schools would fit in a single school, yet none of the schools, paid for by the citizens of Baton Rouge, were made available to relieve all the overcrowding at EBR schools, where the students bailing out of the RSD were enrolling! Now, what about all the students in the RSD for which there is no accountability? I can hear people asking, what do you mean? Well, I mentioned the deceitful "accountability" practices that allow the state to claim the RSD is barely a "D" school system instead of a solid "F": here are a couple. You might have noted that entire schools in New Orleans have no scores listed,Every time Dobard changes the management of a charter in New Orleans, due to its failing scores, and, I might add without ever asking a single parent in the school what THEY would like, even when changing administrations in the middle of a school year, that schools becomes a "T" school. Yep, presto-chango... an "F" schools disappears instantly, and it becomes a "T" school. Magic, huh? And a new trick... a student who is threatening your schools magical letter grade... in the RSD can be moved to the AMIKids program, where there are not subject to any accountability. Of course, they can also get rid of accountability for their school simply by getting rid of the students in other ways, but of course, with their numbers down so far, that might not be needed. What else does Dobard fail to share with the citizens of Baton Rouge? Oh, he did fail to mention that every one of his schools if failing, and that many of those students in "failing schools" are in HIS schools! Finally, he didn't mention how much money the Baton Rouge Area Foundation is set to make as John Spain heads up this new group. Remember, he was on the Board of the failed Advance Baton Rouge, the group that lost ALL OF ITS schools after years of failing to hold onto... faculty, principals, and of course, their students. Nuff said... I HATE that I can't use paragraph formatting. One last thing... the original agreement with EBR used Geographic Boundaries.... I wonder if anyone caught Superintendent Taylor's comments recently on that subject, where he specifically said he was NOT anticipating the Achievement Zone being a "geographic area. Follow the money... odes anyone have ANY IDEA how many principals and "leaders" from failed RSD schools are in charge now in EBR? And who is the consultant helping EBR to put this together? A former RSD official. Something scary is happening here.

8) Comment by 1ryben - 26/02/2013

I'll quit, but these people are playing us for fools. Im furious. They just come up with anything and it gets printed as gospel. When will The Advocate step up and do some cursory investigation. Can they ever present clear facts? Sure, they'll print a story and use the throw away line that "teacher unions and others disagree" or something similar but never tell us WHY! I know this is the opinion section but should they print everything without any fact checking? This is especially true when the letters are from someone with any time of title or authority. The letters section should not be a venue for press release. Lazy, The Advocate is just plain lazy, or biased. Shame on you either way.

9) Comment by 1ryben - 26/02/2013

"We believe educators — not bureaucrats — are best-positioned to make decisions in schools that drive student success" No, you don't. You say one thing, but your actions say another. Louisiana schools are governed from the top down. Doesn't sound like you believe educators can make decisions. It sure doesn't seem like the opinions of the teachers matter. Where are the educators in leadership positions within LDOE? Are we supposed to think 5 weeks of training and two years in a classroom makes one an education expert? An educational leader? Please, we're not that stupid.

10) Comment by 1ryben - 26/02/2013

Exactly how many failing schools schools have RSD turned around? What are the current grades for the RSD? Why would this be any different?

11) Comment by 1ryben - 26/02/2013

More smoke and mirrors. The Sci Academy is no miracle school. First year enrollment of 83. Second year, that class numbers dropped to 63. Third year 45. Where did these students go? Why aren't they enrolled in Sci Academy? C'mon, we're not falling for this.