Although it never was that great, and private, segregated schools were
all over New Orleans and Metairie long before Katrina, the school system
in New Orleans, post-Katrina, has been transformed into a bunch of
(union-busting) charter schools.
Why? Because of a claim that public schools had a graduation rate of 54.4% pre-Katrina. This was widely publicized as the reason to "reform" (We must *reform*, dammit!).
The truth? That 54.4% is a fabrication. Here are the actual graduation rates:
Year # grads total # of seniors OPSB grad rate
1998-99 3,507 4,583 76.5%
1999-2000 3,604 4,473 80.6%
2000-01 3,450 4,409 78.3%
2001-02 3,471 4,395 79.0%
...from this article (which you'll have to read for the details of sources and methods of calculation).
"But this surely presents a marketing problem for those who would have the public believe that the charter school takeover in Orleans [Parish] “raised” the graduation rate to 77.8% in 2012, as NOLA.com claimed in 2013…"
Notice that this propaganda is in the service of the school charter / privatizers, which is promoted as some kind of panacea. "We cannot possibly have a society guided by votes (public ownership) v. dollars (private)" is the line of talk.
Margaret ("There Is No Alternative") Thatcher even declared there is no such thing as society, only collections of individuals. Childhood poverty tripled in the U.K. after Maggie was through with those younger individuals.
...So...I remain astonished and surprised at how deep the neo-liberal privatization project reaches. It's even willing to distort something as obscure as the graduation rates in New Orleans.
But there you have it.
Why? Because of a claim that public schools had a graduation rate of 54.4% pre-Katrina. This was widely publicized as the reason to "reform" (We must *reform*, dammit!).
The truth? That 54.4% is a fabrication. Here are the actual graduation rates:
Year # grads total # of seniors OPSB grad rate
1998-99 3,507 4,583 76.5%
1999-2000 3,604 4,473 80.6%
2000-01 3,450 4,409 78.3%
2001-02 3,471 4,395 79.0%
...from this article (which you'll have to read for the details of sources and methods of calculation).
"But this surely presents a marketing problem for those who would have the public believe that the charter school takeover in Orleans [Parish] “raised” the graduation rate to 77.8% in 2012, as NOLA.com claimed in 2013…"
Notice that this propaganda is in the service of the school charter / privatizers, which is promoted as some kind of panacea. "We cannot possibly have a society guided by votes (public ownership) v. dollars (private)" is the line of talk.
Margaret ("There Is No Alternative") Thatcher even declared there is no such thing as society, only collections of individuals. Childhood poverty tripled in the U.K. after Maggie was through with those younger individuals.
...So...I remain astonished and surprised at how deep the neo-liberal privatization project reaches. It's even willing to distort something as obscure as the graduation rates in New Orleans.
But there you have it.
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