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No Excuses for This Charter School Lagniappe's Total Disregard for its Special Needs Students is Detestable, But not the norm in New Orleans Charters

by Peter Cook 6 March 2015, 16:23

On Tuesday, the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) released a scathing report detailing the findings from an investigation into Lagniappe Academies by LDOE and Recovery School District (RSD) officials. The accusations in the report [see full report below] include: Failing to provide legally-mandated services to special education students, then doctoring forms to make it appear […] More

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About Those ACT Scores… Mercedes Schneider Desperately Wants to believe the RSD has failed, but the data tells a different story

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by Peter Cook 19 February 2015, 22:19

St. Tammany Parish teacher, blogger, and inveterate pessimist Mercedes Schneider desperately wants to believe New Orleans’ Recovery School District – and by extension, its students – have failed. For years, she has taken to her blog to malign the district at every available opportunity, dismissing evidence of the RSD’s progress as either smoke-and-mirrors or outright […] More

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Fact-Checking Kristen Buras’ Flood of Lies Objective Truth Drowns in Attack on New Orleans Schools

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by Peter Cook 23 January 2015, 10:23

In the past few years, Georgia State University professor Kristen Buras1 has tried to make a name for herself by bashing the progress made in New Orleans’ public school system since Hurricane Katrina. She recently reached a new low with an article she wrote for The Progressive entitled, “Charter Schools Flood New Orleans.” For those […] More

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Louisiana Supreme Court Lays Post-Katrina Teacher Layoff Myths To Rest Ruling Sets The Record Straight On One Of The Most Controversial Events To Emerge From The Disaster

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by Peter Cook 11 November 2014, 04:50

On Halloween, the Louisiana Supreme Court dismissed a class-action lawsuit arising from the layoffs of over 7,600 New Orleans school employees in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The 5-2 decision represented a “stunning, wholesale reversal” for the plaintiffs, who prevailed both at trial and before the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal; those rulings had found […] More

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Don’t Bury The Lede: At-Risk Students Are Beating Expectations In NOLA High Schools [UPDATED 10/10/14]

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by Peter Cook 1 October 2014, 08:00

UPDATE – 10/10/14: On Friday, October 10th, John Ayers, Executive Director of the Cowen Institute for Public Education Initiatives announced they were retracting their report, “Beating the Odds: Academic Performance and Vulnerable Student Populations in New Orleans Public High Schools,” because it was determined the study’s methodology was flawed. Ayers released the following statement announcing […] More

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Three Things to Know About the Teacher Layoff Case

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by Peter Cook 4 September 2014, 08:00

This morning the Louisiana Supreme Court will hear arguments in the appeal of Eddy Oliver, et al. v. Orleans Parish School Board, the lawsuit brought on behalf of teachers terminated in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. In January, the Fourth Circuit of Court Appeal unanimously upheld an earlier ruling that teachers were wrongly terminated by […] More

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Fact-Checking UFT’s Attack on NOLA Schools

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by Peter Cook 31 July 2014, 09:00

I recently came upon an article attacking New Orleans’ public schools in New York Teacher, the official magazine of the United Federation of Teachers, which represents over 200,000 educators in New York City’s public school system. The piece, written by Micah Landau, a “staff reporter” for the union (“staff reporter” apparently being UFT newspeak for […] More

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When All Else Fails, File a Civil Rights Complaint

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by Peter Cook 8 July 2014, 16:55

In May, a national coalition that includes the Journey For Justice Alliance (J4J), the Advancement Project, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), and the National Education Association (NEA), filed a civil rights complaint [see full text of complaint below] alleging that the Recovery School District’s school closure policy “provides circumstantial evidence of intentional discrimination” against […] More

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Dear Steve Barr: Stop Making Excuses, Start Making Amends

by Peter Cook 12 March 2014, 08:30

Dear Steve, I was catching up on New Orleans education news yesterday, when I came across an article in the Times-Picayune focusing on Tuesday’s board meeting at John McDonogh Senior High School. I was surprised to read that you spent most of the meeting trying to deflect blame for John Mac’s poor performance since your […] More

in Louisiana, NOLA

Former New Orleans Teachers Win a Pyrrhic Victory in Court [Updated]

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by Peter Cook 21 January 2014, 08:30

Update 01/27/14: Leslie Jacobs, former BESE/OPSB member and founder of EducateNow!, says claims that the teachers’ lawsuit could bankrupt the Orleans Parish School Board are unfounded: “School boards are ‘political subdivisions’ of the state, and both the Louisiana Constitution and the Governmental Claims Act protect political subdivisions from having their property or assets seized in execution […] More

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Crazy Crawfish’s Attack on Sci Academy is All Talk, No Claw

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by Peter Cook 27 June 2013, 03:30

I generally refrain from challenging the absurd claims of the anti-progress Ravitchite fringe, since their pathological obsession with “proving” that education reform is part of a sinister corporate plot is clearly delusional, if not mildly amusing. However, now that long-time anti-edreform blogger and conspiracy theorist Jason “Crazy Crawfish” France has decided to smear Sci Academy – the highest-performing open-enrollment school in the Recovery School District and a […] More

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Future Is Now or Future Is Bankrupt?

by Peter Cook 19 April 2013, 01:57

It seems that while John McDonogh’s leaders were busy preparing for their close-ups on “Blackboard Wars” over the past several months, no one was minding the till. Jessica Williams of The Lens posted a story on Wednesday about a looming budget shortfall at John McDonogh Senior High School that could threaten its ability to make […] More

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