Each semester, the Cowen Institute hosts Tulane undergrads that are completing their required internship through the Center for Public Service. This is a guest post written by a Research intern offering up his perspective on his experience, some of his most important research findings, and his thoughts on public education in New Orleans.
Each semester, the Cowen Institute hosts Tulane undergrads that are completing their required internship through the Center for Public Service. This is a guest post written by a Research intern offering up his perspective on his experience, some of his most important research findings, and his thoughts on public education in New Orleans.
In our recent publication, Case Studies of School Choice and Open Enrollment in Four Cities, we suggest that education stakeholders in New Orleans could learn from the successes and failures of school choice and open enrollment policies in other cities across the country. As the Recovery School District (RSD) prepares to implement its new citywide enrollment system, it should consider what lessons can be gleaned from past experiences in New Orleans as well as in cities that have successfully implemented an open enrollment public school system such as Cambridge, San Diego, and New York City.
Two weeks ago, the Recovery School District (RSD) released a list of the six direct-run high schools and three direct-run elementary schools it plans to phase out or convert to charters next school year. This announcement marks a positive move towards increased transparency by the RSD. However, the RSD’s plan to phase out these schools still leaves a number of students in chronically failing high schools over the next two to three years. The RSD must explicitly identify what steps it is taking to invest in and support these students whose schools have already failed them for far too long.
Using new data from GCR & Associates, we found that on average, public schools in New Orleans enroll about 23 percent of their students from within a one-mile radius. The percentage of students living nearby varies a great deal by school, school type, grade configuration, neighborhood, etc., and ranges from four percent at Ben Franklin Elementary and KIPP Renaissance High to 53 percent at Paul Habans Elementary. Both failing and not failing schools, as defined by a 2010 School Performance Score below or above 65, had an average of about 22 percent of students living within a one-mile radius.
In October 2010, the Cowen Institute launched the NOLA by the Numbers series to provide journalists, policymakers, community leaders, and the public with a comprehensive report on the latest numbers and data about public schools in New Orleans. On the sixth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and with the school year just beginning, we thought it made sense to take a quick look back at the changes that have occurred across the public education landscape in New Orleans since August 29, 2005. Here is NOLA by the Numbers: Then and Now, which uses state-released data from the 2004-2005 school year as well as the latest available data we have to describe the general state of public education before and after Hurricane Katrina.
Earlier this month the Louisiana Department of Education (LDE) released the results of End-of-Course (EOC) tests for its public high schools. EOC tests are, according to the LDE, “designed to measure whether students have mastered the knowledge, skills, and abilities at the end of courses” and are based on the state’s grade level expectations. EOC tests are replacing the Graduate Exit Exam (GEE) that was formerly given to all 10th and 11th graders. Students had to pass the GEE in order to receive a diploma from a Louisiana public high school. Beginning with incoming freshman in the 2010-2011 school year, students must pass three EOC tests, in Algebra I or Geometry, English II or III, and Biology or American History, in order to graduate. In this blog post, we will consider Algebra I passage rates for all public schools in New Orleans and by school type.
Background Over the past few weeks, the Times-Picayune and other news outlets have provided us with stories about alleged inappropriate contact between students and violations of state law, and even attempted bribery at Abramson Science and Technology Charter School. The school’s charter was recently revoked by the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education based [...]
Recently, the Louisiana Department of Education sent out a press release listing the public schools that are still “failing” under the state accountability system as well as those that have been removed from the list of failing schools based on preliminary School Performance Scores. Schools that are closing, whether their preliminary School Performance Score indicated [...]
Grading New Orleans on School Choice
| December 19, 2011In November 2011, the Brookings Institution introduced an interactive web application called the Education Choice and Competition Index (ECCI), which rated the top 25 largest school districts on policies and practices related to school choice. Despite being on the forefront of the movement toward school choice, New Orleans was not one of the school systems included in the ECCI due to its relatively small size. I decided to use the scoring guide to the ECCI to calculate my own grade for New Orleans.