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Big Shirley's Story
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Oh Baby: New Orleans Baby Doll Tradition Thrives
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Ben Franklin High School Performs Worse as a Charter School
by Dr. Barbara FergusonColumns & Departments
Ben Franklin High School Performs
Worse as a Charter School
When Ben Franklin High School was operated by the Orleans Parish School Board in 2004-05, its School Performance Score was 200.5. Following Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, Ben Franklin became a charter school, and by 2007-08, its score decreased to 165.2.
Thus, traditionally operated schools are better than charter schools? Obviously, the conclusions about why some schools are better than others cannot be answered by focusing on governance alone. Yet, this is what a nonprofit organization tried to present as their argument for charter school reform at a recent forum.
At the Educators Stakeholders Forum on March 19, 2009, a group desiring to bash the Orleans Parish School Board in order to promote their agenda for charter schools, distributed the following information:
The information was intended to show that the traditionally-operated OPSB schools were a failure since, between the years 2004-05 and 2007-08, 3 of the 4 OPBS schools decreased in their School Performance Scores.
But, had the group presented the data on the OPSB charter-operated schools, during the same time period, the same conclusions would have been reached about the charter schools. They also decreased in their scores. And, the net decrease for the charter schools was even greater than the net decrease for the traditionally-operated schools.
Charter vs. Traditional
The issue of charter versus traditional is misdirected. Years of research have shown that governance alone is not the answer to the problems of low achievement of educationally disadvantaged children and youth. Yet, in Louisiana, and especially in New Orleans, governance has become the issue.
Charter school governance is one of several innovations that No Child Left Behind proposed in order to overcome low achievement of educationally disadvantaged children. NCLB and its precursor federal laws are flowing documents, always being amended to incorporate new programs and ideas to improve education. Charter school governance was one of those ideas. It is based on the belief that poor families, whose children attend urban schools with highly bureaucratic centralized governance systems, are helpless to overcome the ills of these systems. Thus, NCLB authorized states to create “innovative schools of choice,” so that poor inner-city parents could opt out of the centralized school system.
The NCLB charter schools encourage innovations, targeted to children who are not learning in the traditional schools. NCLB charter schools are specifically “schools of choice,” with all children being given an equal opportunity to attend. The NCLB charter schools accept students by lottery if more apply than can be accommodated.
In a recent Times-Picayune article, the Harlem Children’s Zone schools in New York City were recognized for their innovations and success in educating Harlem’s underprivileged children and youth. These charter schools are modeled after the NCLB definition of a charter school. The article went on to say that students “entered the lottery to get into the Harlem” schools.
