Iberville Education Reform

 Iberville Parish Math, Science, & Arts Academy students start off the year with a free laptop computer for students in upper grades. This is just one example of how technology is integrated into the entire school environment.



New Laptops



Math and Science are emphasized, yet when you talk to individual students you find that they are most often even more excited about the art and performance offerings at the new Academies. Apparently the genius of this reform schooling concept is to offer a variety of great and exciting programs that make attending school fun and challenging.

Iberville Parish is split by the Mississippi River with the majority of the school population on the west side of the river. But Superintendent Edward Cancienne knew that if the new Math, Science, & Arts Academy was to get full public support, he would need to offer a great program for children on both sides of the river. Since there are no bridges in the area, that meant a smaller version of the Academy for the East side. According to newspaper reports, parents on the East side are ecstatic about the opportunities for their children offered at the brand new state-of-the-art, energy efficient facility in St Gabriel. Chuck Johnson directs operations at the East facility. A bond issue passed in 2008 has allowed construction of new buildings and lots of enrichment programs on both sides of the river.

In fact parents on both sides of the river are so impressed that in just 3 years a total of 780 students have transferred from private schools back into the public school system. For years the Iberville public school system had been plagued by the flight of serious top students (both black and white) to private schools. Now the kids are back, and the new concept Academies have a waiting list of over 400. Elvis Cavalier, Chief Academic Officer for the Parish, who runs this program says that more classes are being added as new  facilities are built. The West campus will soon have a STEM wing addition that will also add more classrooms.

So what is the secret of this impressive success story? Cancienne and Cavalier are not what today are considered "education reformers". They are more like old line professional educators who work with traditional schools. But if great offerings, teacher and student engagement, and parental involvement are measures of true reform, then these guys are successful education reformers. I tried to dig below the surface to report to you what I think makes this concept work. None of the ideas are new. They are simply put together in a formula that works for Iberville Parish:

• Excellence in all programs All students are exposed to accelerated classes in all areas of math, science and the arts.


• Exclusivity All parents want their child enrolled in a special program that is open only to the best. Yet the Academy programs have no entrance requirements for most students. Once enrolled, all students are required to maintain a 2.5 GPA and must maintain an excellent discipline record to stay at the academy. The program accepts first students that are classified as gifted & talented and their siblings but that's only 15% of the student body. All others are just regular kids who are committed to excellence. Most students are selected by lottery. According to Cavalier even with the strict rules the program has only a 4% student turnover rate.


• Total Commitment from teachers and administrators to the concepts of the Academies. Teachers don't mind making extra efforts when they feel appreciated by their administrators and parents.


• Balanced enrollment. The Academies maintain a 50:50 black-white ratio to ensure diversity.








Spanish club in Costa Rica

• No brain drain. The Academy program is not classified as a school. Therefore all student LEAP and iLEAP scores go back to the student's home school. Everybody benefits from the high performance of the Academy students. Cancienne believes that students in the home schools are motivated to perform better by opportunity to attend the Academy.


• Rewards. A great motivation for students are the special trips and perks for students who score at the mastery level on state tests. The kids I talked to were most excited about performing in the Orchestra and in plays.


• Dual Enrollment. High school students pursue dual enrollment college credit at every opportunity. Student body president Kristen Ellis expects to graduate with 30 hours of college credit courses.

For years, Iberville parish has struggled with a high dropout rate and a very low graduation rate.  Starting this year, the Academies are expected to help greatly improve those numbers.

According to Superintendent Cancienne, "The Math, Science & Arts Academies in Iberville have created a special culture of excellence and high achievement."

To me this is real education reform that works.

Cavalier and Cancienne with plans





  

More RSD Cover-up and Effective Education Reform Where the Reformers Least Expect it!

A couple of Times-Picayune reporters are using public records requests to finally bring to light major cover-ups of wrongdoing in the charter schools of the Recovery District. The first, were revelations by reporter Andrew Vancour that forced BESE to terminate the charter of the Abramson charter school based on child protection issues. The latest story came out Saturday and is by reporter Sarah Carr on cover-up of possible LEAP cheating at Miller-McCoy Academy in New Orleans.

The revelation of possible LEAP cheating in the Recovery District is not surprising. Many allegations have been leaking out about teachers having grades changed by administrators to pass failing students in the RSD, special education students being "helped" a little too much on LEAP, and different students having identical test papers. This latest story is based on complaints by up to 20% of the teachers at Miller-McCoy that students were prepped for LEAP with practice materials that could only have come from breaches of test security.

But the real shocker in the story is that State DOE policies for handling alleged breaches of test security almost encourage systematic cover-up of violations. That's because once the Department determines that violations of test policy may have occurred, they turn the investigation over to the local school system, for their recommendations and possible corrective actions including the voiding of test scores. As the testing experts quoted in the story point out, "there is a conflict of interest all the way up the line in investigating such allegations". Such conflict is even more pronounced in the case of charter schools that function as their own local school systems. Such schools often have hand picked boards of directors picked by the charter organizers who often serve as the administrators for the charter who are often the very people implicated in the cheating allegations!

The complaints of possible cheating were made by a group of teachers who said they were given the questionable practice materials by their administrators. The students had alerted the teachers to the claim that the practice questions were almost identical to the actual test. But when the school Directors conducted their investigation of the matter they did not bother to question a single teacher about the allegations. They only questioned the administrators. No wonder they concluded there was no wrongdoing!

One of the experts consulted by the reporter said that this process is like the IRS telling a taxpayer: "We have a problem with your tax return. Would you look it over?"

What's even more disconcerting about the DOE and RSD handling of this matter, is that the Department had the authority to void LEAP scores based on its own investigation. And in the case of a non-charter school accused of the same violation, in the RSD, scores were voided and administrators disciplined. (Yes this has happened before) One parent advocate said that the state wants the charters in New Orleans to succeed so badly that they look the other way!

All this makes us wonder; just how valid are the claims of "dramatic gains" in the Recovery District?

Did you know that effective education reform really is happening in Louisiana?

Later this week The Louisiana Educator will examine A new Education strategy that is attracting hundreds of students back from private schools.

Enrollment is open to all students
It's not a charter school
It's not a magnet school
It's not even a school!

But it is the most effective reform seen in recent years in the Iberville Parish school system. How do we know it's effective? Because students who had left the public schools in Iberville Parish and fled to private schools are returning to the public schools of Iberville in droves to participate in this truly innovative educational setting!

I'm still working on this post so please bookmark the Louisiana Educator and click on this site on Thursday, August 25 for a good description on how the Iberville education reform works. Maybe it could be tried in your school system!

Report on BESE Actions

The following report was sent to me late last night by LA School Board Association Consultant Don Whittinghill. I thought I would reprint it so my readers could get the very latest information on critical BESE actions. I'm pleased that BESE realized that it did not make sense to hand out contracts for teacher recruiting when we have a surplus of teachers!


Arrogance Put on Hold
BESE Says Hold ON!
The Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE), meeting today in Baton Rouge repelled a move by the State Department of Education to alter the way that BESE advisory councils operate.

BESE member Walter Lee chided the department for initiating an action that would have changed the way that the BESE-appointed Superintendents’ Advisory Council operates. He reminded DOE spokespersons that the council is created by BESE policy and that only the board has the authority to change operation of the councils. BESE also has an 8(g) Advisory Council, Nonpublic school Commission, a Special Education Advisory Council, and a Textbook and Media Advisory Council.

BESE also put on hold a pair of contracts that proposed to pay Teach for America $2,023,197 for recruitment and orientation of teacher candidates; and also $1,275,479 to the Brooklyn, NY, New Teacher Project for the recruitment, selection, training and certification of alternative route teachers.

These large contracts were proposed by DOE in the face of a reported surplus of teachers made by the state education estimating conference just yesterday.

The Department was also taken to task for its calculation of Graduation Cohort Index and Rate, statewide, using a policy that has not been officially promulgated. The policy was adopted by BESE in June, and published in the official state journal. Law requires that the public be provided time to comment on the Notice of Intent proposing the new policy. The rule would become official in November. However, under BESE grilling Erin Bendily, assistant deputy superintendent of the Office of Departmental Support, admitted that the application of the new policy was done because it was deemed to be the latest expression of BESE intent.

BESE member Louella Harding-Givins of New Orleans, protested that the department acted illegally as a Notice of Intent is a warning to the public that something is about to happen, and its intent is to provide the public time to comment and, perhaps, alter the proposal.

Linda Johnson, another BESE member questioned the entire early School Performance Score released this spring by the department.

Testimony was provided by Tom Spenser of the Lafayette Public School District, that the impact on 2011 SPS was significant. A graduation rate of 85% would have produced 9 points under currently established policy, but only 2.3 using the pending policy that was used. An 80% graduation rate earned by a high school would have earned 6.8 points with the current policy, but zero points by applying the pending policy.

The impact of such losses likely would have a significant impact on the number of schools earning an SPS below 65 this year and thus gain the designation of Academically Unacceptable School. The 2010 listing on the DOE web site showed that Stewart Elementary School, in Webster Parish scored 65.1. A 6.5 point reduction if applying the proposed policy would have cast the school in AUS. Potentially 89 additional schools would have been reported as AUS had the proposed policy been used in 2010.

The multi-million Teach for America (TFA) contract would cover the cost of eight TFA employees working an average of 50 hours per week another 1.5 employees would cost $406,314 for an average of 50 hours work per week, and $1,000,000 was proposed to pay for three employees who are expected to work 50 hour weeks, and one part-time consultant working 20 hours per week.

In still another action, BESE approved a Pre-K assessment that the DOE recommended should be deferred until later. A motion to reconsider the approval so as to allow three non-governmental agencies to consider the assessment proposals was not adopted.

In a nine hour committee schedule, BESE once again heard a variety of protests from New Orleans education activists Karen Royal Harper. Her protests about RSD facilities decisions, and how nearly a billion dollars had been spent, with little regard for repopulation patterns in New Orleans, drew some support from BESE members.

Don Whittinghill
Consultant
8/18/2011

Lavish State Funding for Education Alternatives

At a time when state funding for traditional public education has been reduced and frozen even as mandated costs have surged, some alternative education initiatives have received generous funding. In a guest editorial for the Monroe News Star Sunday, State Treasurer John Kennedy pointed out that the state has too many unnecessary consulting contracts. I agree with Mr Kennedy and want to point out just a few of the highly questionable Education Department consulting contracts. These include a no bid contract for the National Association of Charter School Authorizers and several appropriations for Teach for America recruitment activities.  Here are the line items in the budget of the LA Department of Education.

• $729,769 for professional services by the National Association of Charter School Authorizers to manage charter applications and to help review charter school contracts for BESE.


• $630,000 with the Teach for America organization to help recruit TFA recruits for different school districts around the state


• $468,468 for another contract with Teach for America to assist the State Department of Education in recruiting 600 TFA recruits.


• $1,267,250 for another contract with Teach for America to specifically recruit TFA recruits for the Recovery District and for the Louisiana Teaching Fellows program in Northwest Louisiana.

I have strong objections as a taxpayer to each of these appropriations.

 The first item of $729,769 to the National Association of Charter School Authorizers looks like a conflict of interest to me.  This group is set up to promote charters, not to look after the interests of public school students.  I believe the Department of Educaiton has attorneys and other highly paid staff who could better review these charter contracts. It is obvious from the recent action by BESE to terminate a charter after serious wrongdoing that this organization is not involved in monitoring alleged violations of state law or provisions of the charter contracts.

The three different appropriations for Teach for America, I believe are unnecessary to begin with and seemingly pay more than once for the same service. I have to ask why are these gifts to TFA necessary? Does the state pay our state colleges of education for all the work they do in helping school systems to place new teachers in local schools?

The Recovery District in New Orleans systematically lays off over 250 teachers each year by closing some schools and opening new ones. This helps to make room for the new TFA recruits. That's a slap in the face of laid off certified teachers who have achieved proper certification and have made teaching their real career instead of signing up for a two year stint in TFA before going on to their true profession. Many other school systems have cut back on teaching positions because of the budget crunch. Why is Louisiana not making efforts to find jobs for laid off certified teachers first, before bringing in more TFA recruits?

I believe that originally this idea to have a large pool of TFA recruits and the subcontract for the Louisiana Teaching Fellows came about because of a push by former Superintendent Pastorek to implement the new value added teacher evaluation model starting in some parishes this year. There was a proposal by some education reformers last year that if school systems could fire and replace the bottom 5% of their teachers according to student performance, that student test scores would improve dramatically. Pastorek had obviously bought into this hair brained scheme. (Most education researchers say there is no real basis for this theory)  In one of the memos concerning the new evaluation system sent to local superintendents last year, Pastorek sought to alleviate fears about teacher shortages caused by the new evaluation system. He suggested that the State Department would attempt to provide a source of new teachers to fill the vacancies created by value added firings. I guess that's the reason for the 600 extra TFA recruits in addition to the recruits by the Louisiana Teaching Fellows (Does anyone know who owns or runs the Louisiana Teaching Fellows?) for the Recovery District.

I hope the state auditors carefully monitor these expenditures and that the legislature considers not renewing such "no bid"contracts in the future.

The Tip of The Iceberg

This blogger applauds the decisive actions taken recently by Acting Superintendent Ollie Tyler and BESE President Penny Dastugue in revoking the charter of Pelican Foundation to operate Abramson Charter school. BESE was right also in approving their recommendations despite the threat of lawsuit by Pelican. Many education observers however, believe the Abramson Charter scandal is just the tip of the iceberg of abuse and cover-up in the charter school community. The linked Advocate article here describes concerns by the Dept. of Education about limited special education services and the high number of uncertified teachers employed in another Pelican school.  Several other charter operators in Baton Rouge and New Orleans seem to have problems ranging from inadequate special education services, to unsafe campus environments, to questionable LEAP rehearsal materials, to grade inflation and to questionable dropout figures (See my guest research paper at Research on Reforms.

Now some education researchers are looking at statistically improbable results of some LEAP and ILEAP testing results in RSD schools. At the same time, word is leaking out about teachers who claim to have observed testing irregularities such as LEAP test papers with identical answer sheets for different students, written test responses in the handwriting of the supervising teacher, and test rehearsal using test items almost identical to the actual LEAP tests.

These are the kind of abuses warned about by Psychologist Donald Campbell when accountability stakes are raised to such critical levels. Dr Campbell formulated an adage in the 70's that has become known as Campbell's law. Campbell's law states that "the more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social process it is intended to monitor. Thus the pressure to cheat on or game the school performance indicators.

Unfortunately now that our education policy makers have created this test based accountability monster, it is incumbent upon state education officials to step up monitoring and investigations to prevent cheating from totally distorting school performance results. If state officials do not act decisively now to prevent and expose test cheating and unethical test prep activities, they should be held responsible for any new scandals that may be exposed.

Acting State Superintendent Ollie Tyler has announced her intent to propose improved oversight of accountability requirements as implemented in state charter schools. Ms Tyler has indicated that she welcomes recommendations from all stakeholders. OK, then as a taxpayer and educator, I have a few recommendations. The following are proposals that I believe would increase the confidence of taxpayers that gaming of the system of accountability would be discouraged and hopefully minimized.

• BESE should adopt a policy that prohibits any form of retaliation (whistle blower protection) against any school employee who reports to the Department or BESE any alleged violation of state laws or policies related to school accountability.


• The Department should adopt a policy of investigating and monitoring schools that demonstrate statistically improbable LEAP or ILEAP test results or dropout data.


• The Department should investigate any alleged improper test preparation materials to determine if such materials should be disallowed.


• Strong sanctions should be imposed on schools or school systems that are determined to have violated accountability policies.

Charter Terminated

On Wednesday, after a long tense meeting, BESE terminated the charter of Pelican Foundation to operate the Abramson Charter School in New Orleans. The school will continue to operate as a direct run school under the Recovery District. The Board acted to approve the recommendation of Acting Superintendent Ollie Tyler who supplied the Board with a devastating packet of documentation for the numerous allegations of wrongdoing at the school over the last two years. (Click on this link to the BESE packet and scroll down to the documents presented to BESE) 

Pelican Foundation leaders had packed the BESE meeting room with bussed-in parents and children in addition to Foundation attorneys. The Pelican Foundation attorneys are challenging the charter termination partly on the grounds that they were not provided adequate due process by the Dept. and the Board. Due process is apparently a right that was not afforded to the teachers and staff who were fired after they exposed the wrong doing at Abramson.

Several members of the Coalition for Louisiana Public Education including this blogger asked the Board to tighten its monitoring of charter schools and to adopt a policy to protect whistle blowers who report violations by charters. The Board was presented with a list of questions about Department delays and improper handling of allegations about Abramson and other charters.

In a memo to the Board, Superintendent Tyler outlined a preliminary plan to improve monitoring and oversight of charters. BESE approved a motion requiring such a plan be presented to the Board.