StickWithANose

As the public hand-wringing over the slow pace of re-development in post-Katrina New Orleans reaches its crescendo with the five year anniversary of the disaster, the subject of public schooling in NOLA is again receiving a lot of attention from news media. EdWeek mirrors other major media outlets in constructing a he said/she said narrative of moderate success with the caveat ‘challenges remain.’ Instead of de-constructing the narrative point by point I’d like to direct your attention toward this study from the University of Minnesota’s Institute on Race and Poverty that finds post-Katrina public schooling is a five tiered system segregated along the lines of class, race, academic achievement and disabilities. Here are some highlights from the study…

In the new system, public schools operate under five distinct governance structures that serve different student populations: Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) traditional public schools (which educate 7 percent of the city’s students); OPSB charter schools (20 percent); Recovery School District (RSD) traditional public schools (36 percent); RSD charter schools (34 percent); and Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) charter schools (2 percent)…

In 2009, 87 percent of all white students in the city attended an OPSB or BESE charter school, while only 18 percent of black students did so. In contrast, 75 percent of black students attended an RSD school (charter or traditional public) in 2009, compared to only 11 percent of white students…

OPSB and BESE schools in the city provide some of the most advantageous educational settings in the region. However, they do so mostly by skimming the easiest-to-educate students through selective admission requirements that allow them to set explicit academic standards for incoming students. They also shape their student enrollments by using their enrollment practices, discipline and expulsion practices, transportation policies, location decisions, and marketing and recruitment efforts. These practices certainly contribute to the selective student bodies and superior performance of these schools.

Suburban public schools—charters and non-charters—also provide good educational settings and outcomes. Suburban traditional schools are less likely to be segregated by race or income and test scores reflect this. RSD charter schools still skim the most motivated public students in the RSD sector despite lacking the selective admission requirements OPSB and BESE charters have. They do so by using their enrollment practices, discipline and expulsion practices, transportation policies, location decisions, and marketing and recruitment efforts. These practices almost certainly work to increase pass rates in RSD charters compared to their traditional counterparts. As a result of rules that put RSD traditional schools at a competitive disadvantage, schools in this sector are reduced to ‘schools of last resort.’ This sector continues to educate the hardest-to-educate students in racially segregated, high-poverty schools.

I’d like to make two points: First, these findings are not surprising in the least. They mirror the effects of educational marketplaces from Chile to Sweden. Parental choice and school competition create an incentive structure that leads to the sorting of student populations along the lines of class, race, and achievement. Second, the student sorting taking place coupled with the demographic shifts that took place as a result of Katrina make generalized comparisons between schools and the overall system pre- and post-Katrina very difficult. It is almost impossible to ensure that you are comparing similar student populations. In short, the supposed successes of education reform in NOLA is ephemeral at best.