Children Left Behind

I've been asked on numerous occasions why Schools Count Corp. continues to aid NOLA schools five years after Hurricane Katrina ripped apart the city and a good deal of its education system.

Part of the answer has to do with the fact that the RSD and public schools simply continue to need our assistance. Too few resources are provided to many of these schools. When supplies do reach these students, all involved are exceedingly grateful for our outreach.

Further, as noted education historian Diane Ravitch points out in her recently published book The Death and Life of the Great American School System, our schools and its teachers are held hostage to standardized test score results. Over recent years this has led to a trend towards merit pay and the creation of all sort of privatized schooling, among them, charters. Often, the latter situation, has led to children, who are disadvantaged, being left out of the loop; that is, left behind. The 'better' performing students in NOLA RSD and public schools, as well as at other inner city public schools in America, are recruited to charters or other privitized schools, leaving lower achieving students to languish.

Can you imagine public school students, staff and school administrators being told that they are doing something wrong or not measuring up because of this so called 'skimming?' How on earth are such schools suppose to have better test scores when they have far too few resources and children who are homeless? How can such schools perform when disadvantaged students really don't have free choice?

It is our goal to assist students, teachers, parents, and school administrators of schools who are at the mercy of the above noted scenario. In short we are doing our best to help students, who have been shortchanged by a failed NCLB and the emerging situation in which a good number of public schools have to fight against the perceived notion that charters are the panacea for its possible ills.

Tomorrow I will comment on how recent studies have indicated that a majority of the nations charters aren't performing all that well.

Yes, schools need improvement. Closing doors, shutting off opportunities and making standardized test results the lynchpin by which success is measured is both misguided and harmful. You'll see just how true this is when I comment on charter performance in tomorrow's blog.

Dick Flesher