On Thursday, the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) released annual school letter grades and School Performance Scores (SPS) – which are akin to number grades – for the 2017-18 school year. For the first time, the formulas used to measure school performance incorporate students’ growth from year to year on state standardized tests. Here’s how […] More
Update 11/15/2018: When this post was first published, it appeared that Kathy Hoffman, the Democratic candidate for Arizona’s State Superintendent of Public Instruction, had been narrowly defeated by her opponent, Frank Riggs. However, mail-in ballots shifted the tally in her favor in the week following the election and she was declared the winner on Monday, […] More
The United Teachers of New Orleans (UTNO) was once the largest union local in Louisiana and a powerful force in local politics. That changed thirteen years ago, when Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans, killed nearly 1,000 residents, and displaced hundreds of thousands more. In the immediate aftermath of the storm, the city’s perennially-failing public school […] More
The United States Supreme Court handed public sector unions – including the teachers unions – a major defeat on Wednesday with their decision in Janus v. AFSCME, in which a majority of justices agreed that mandatory agency fee laws violate the First Amendment rights of non-union public employees. In the 21 states with agency fee laws, […] More
A review of documents from a Jefferson Parish charter operator that applied to run a historic high school in New Orleans has revealed that the organization could be violating state ethics laws and has been flagged for serious deficiencies in its management and accounting practices. Last month, Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) officials unveiled a plan […] More
On January 15th, I sent a letter to the members of the Arkansas State Board of Education to bring their attention to the troubling revelations about Einstein Charter Schools that have emerged over the past several months. Last fall, the State Board of Education approved a proposal from Einstein to open a new charter school […] More
Red River United (RRU), the American Federation of Teachers-affiliated union representing educators in Caddo, Bossier, and Red River Parishes, is using bureaucratic hurdles and subterfuge in an attempt to prevent members from leaving the organization. A reader forwarded me a series of emails regarding three of the union’s current members who submitted a union drop […] More
Last week, The Intercept published an article by Aída Chávez and Rachel Cohen claiming that education officials in Puerto Rico are planning to take over the territory’s traditional public schools and convert them to charters. To put it bluntly, it’s a great work of fiction, but a terrible piece of journalism – one that’s piled […] More
This story has been updated with additional information below. The Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) released 2016-17 School and District Performance Scores and letter grades on Tuesday, and while the summative performance of the state’s public schools rose from a “C” to a “B” this past year, the results from New Orleans’ schools can only […] More
“What the privatizers are doing is they keep selling the same snake oil, school choice, as the answer to the problem. School choice doesn’t answer any problem. The biggest correlation in education is between poverty and test scores. If you think the test scores are too low, go to the root causes.” That’s what Diane […] More
Peter Cook