A review of records of the board of directors of Hynes Charter School has revealed that two board members may have violated state ethics laws by failing to recuse themselves from votes on the school’s partnership with the University of New Orleans (UNO) to open a new K-8 campus. The board members in question, Janice Janz […] More
When it was announced last November that Hynes Charter School would be partnering with the University of New Orleans (UNO) to open a new K-8 campus in fall of 2019, district officials portrayed the move as part of their broader mission to expand access to the city’s highest-performing schools. “We are very thankful to see this partnership […] More
This Thursday, the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) will vote to elect a new leader. OPSB District 1 representative John Brown, who has served as board president for the past two years, cannot run for re-election due to term limits. As a result, members have been engaged in behind-the-scenes discussions in recent weeks to decide who will […] More
As I detailed in a post last week, the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) recently released annual school letter grades and School Performance Scores (SPS) for the 2017-18 school year. A conversation on Facebook spurred my curiosity to find out how many students were attending A, B, C, D, and F-graded schools in New Orleans. […] More
The CEO of a local charter management organization, which was investigated by the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) after a report on this blog raised questions about its management and financial practices, is being accused of financial impropriety in a lawsuit filed by his own brother. On March 28th, I published a post – “Red […] 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
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
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
The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) spent less overall in Louisiana in the past fiscal year than it did in F.Y. 2016, but the union boosted its funding for charter school organizing efforts in New Orleans by more than forty percent. An analysis of expenditure data from AFT’s 2017 annual report to U.S. Department of […] More
Peter Cook