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
On Wednesday, District Court Judge Michael Caldwell doubled-down on his decision from March of last year and once again declared Act 1 [see full-text below] unconstitutional. In May, the Louisiana Supreme Court vacated Caldwell’s original decision and remanded the case back to the 19th Judicial District Court for reconsideration in light of subsequent case law. […] More
The one thing that is clear to anyone who’s attempted to read Mercedes Schneider’s blog is that she’s angry: angry at John Merrow, angry about Common Core, angry about evolution, and angry at Teach For America, along with a whole host of other things. However, she reserves her greatest fury for the Recovery School District’s effort to improve […] More
Recently Newsweek, the once-lauded news magazine that is now a shell of its former self, cast aside any lingering shred of respectability it still had with the publication of a highly distorted appraisal of New Orleans’ post-Katrina education system. The piece, entitled, The Great Charter Tryout: Are New Orleans’ schools a model for the nation – […] More
Part IV: Strategic Planning: The final installment of a four-part series exploring the reform of the Jefferson Parish Public School System JPPSS Superintendent James Meza turned to Mass Insight Education (MIE) for help in developing a plan that would help achieve his vision of a leaner, more decentralized school system focused on supporting schools. MIE’s collaboration with JPPSS […] 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
Part I: Introduction to JPPSS: The first installment in a four-part series exploring the reform of the Jefferson Parish Public School System Louisiana has garnered national recognition in recent years for “putting students first in its education policies,” and for its leadership in education reform. While much of this attention has focused on the transformation of […] More
Following the Orleans Parish School Board these days is like watching the remake of a lousy movie: the actors are different, but the protagonists are still boorish, the plot is still clunky, and you already know that it’s going to end badly. For those of us who suffered through the slow-motion car wreck that was […] More
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
Orleans Parish School Board President Ira Thomas is playing racially-charged, self-serving political games on the school board and the target of his machinations is once again OPSB Superintendent Stan Smith. On Thursday, the Times-Picayune reported that Thomas was trying to schedule an emergency meeting aimed at demoting Smith and possibly installing Armand Devezin as superintendent. However, Thomas was unable to secure the quorum […] More
With the final adjournment of the eight-week political marathon that was the 2013 Regular Session of the Louisiana Legislature yesterday, it’s time to step back and assess the session’s impact our state’s education policies. First, the good news… Thankfully, the most regressive education-related bills filed by lawmakers either failed or were rendered harmless through amendment. […] More
Former Recovery School District superintendent, Paul Vallas, has been in the news recently for comments he made during a May 10th panel discussion, “An Agenda for Public Education: Challenges and Possibilities,” at CUNY Hunter’s Institute for Education Policy. Over the course of the discussion, Vallas, along with the College Board’s David Coleman, NY State Education […] More
Peter Cook