I’ll be on Garland Robinette’s radio show, “The Think Tank” on WWL AM 807/FM 105.3 on Monday to discuss the ongoing legal battle over a new funding plan for New Orleans schools. Earlier this week, attorneys for Lusher and Lake Forest, two selective-admissions charter schools under the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB), argued in federal […] More
Just when New Orleans is unifying behind a plan for a new era in school governance, the activist group Justice & Beyond is trying to drag the education system back to its dark ages. It was recently uncovered that the faux civil rights organization is backing three candidates in the upcoming Orleans Parish School Board […] More
A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog post that called out Lusher Charter School officials for making misleading, alarmist claims about an upcoming change to their school funding formula. Now, unfortunately, it appears that Lusher officials have decided to take their misinformation campaign a step further. On Monday, Lusher CEO Kathy Riedlinger and Board […] More
Although I like Jennifer “Edushyster” Berkshire personally, it’s safe to say that when it comes to education policy, we agree to disagree on most points. However, I think I finally found an education issue on which we are more-or-less aligned: independent charter school authorizers. On Tuesday, Salon published an interview Berkshire conducted with the authors […] More
Dear Lusher Parents: No, the sky is not falling. Contrary to what you might have read on Saturday in the Uptown Messenger, Lusher is not about to be pushed off the edge of a $1.2 million fiscal cliff. Lawmakers in Baton Rouge have not conspired to punish New Orleans with a law all its own. […] More
Well, Andrea Gabor is at it again. A few years ago, Andrea Gabor wrote an article for Newsweek that maligned the transformation of New Orleans’ public schools since Hurricane Katrina. At the time, I wrote a response that exposed the “inaccuracies, misrepresentations, and glaring omissions of fact” in her Newsweek piece – issues that made […] More
“Dozens of employees indicted or convicted on corruption charges. Tens of millions of dollars unaccounted for. Eight superintendents in seven years. Rock-bottom test scores. Shootings, sirens and police uniforms, often. The threat of bankruptcy and bounced checks, constantly. “In the dismal gallery of failing urban school systems, New Orleans may be the biggest horror of […] More
While we’re told “the cream always rises to the top,” when one considers the rogues’ gallery of corrupt and/or incompetent public officials who have brought disgrace to New Orleans over the years, it’s not unreasonable to believe the opposite is true in the Crescent City. In fact, New Orleanians have become so inured to failures […] More
Today I received several emails from Vimeo that they had taken down a few of my video clips in response to notices they received that I violated their Community Guidelines. Around the same time, Danielle Dreilinger, education reporter at the Times-Picayune, tweeted the following about these videos: .@petercook's anti-OPSB video, which apparently is so outrageous […] More
A RESOLUTION OPPOSING ASININE RESOLUTIONS FROM THE CONSTITUENTS OF THE ORLEANS PARISH SCHOOL BOARD WHEREAS, generations of young New Orleanians were denied an adequate education in the city’s public schools prior to Hurricane Katrina as a result of chronic mismanagement by Orleans Parish School Board; and WHEREAS, the State of Louisiana, as duly authorized by […] More
Part III: Determined Leadership: The third installment in a four-part series exploring the reform of the Jefferson Parish Public School System In an exchange over his proposed reorganization plan at a board meeting last April, Dr. James Meza said what, in effect, has been his mantra since assuming the district’s top post: “We’ve got to be […] More
Part II: Community Investment: The second installment a four-part series exploring the reform of the Jefferson Parish Public School System Although enrollment numbers had ominously fallen over the previous two decades, the introduction of statewide testing in Louisiana in 1999 brought the full extent of Jefferson’s problems into focus. And over the next several years, lagging test […] More
Peter Cook