Joint Statement of the Coalition for Community Leadership in Education
It takes a Community to raise a child and we, the Coalition for Community Leadership in Education, are the Community! We represent a growing number of concerned residents of New Orleans desiring greater community ownership of our public schools. We share a common commitment to the academic, physical and emotional well-being of our children! We hail from all corners of our city and collectively reflect the diversity of our community to ensure there are high-quality academic options that can meet the needs of ALL children. We have responded to the very urgency of this moment by developing diverse school options to meet the critical needs of our children. We have been unfairly denied and told that the community from whence our children hail is inadequate to effectively educate them. Today we stand as a community demanding a fair and equitable process for chartering schools that allows local groups to fairly compete in the opportunity to educate our children.
We want a level playing field and reliable process in which to compete. The current tone of the education reform movement in New Orleans is that of corporate reform and community disenfranchisement. This is evidenced by minimal local leadership of local charter schools, the diminishing role of locally elected officials with decision-making power on public education issues, and community groups’ inability to successfully gain charters to local public schools. In the last round of charter school applications filed with the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, no charters were granted to any of the new community groups that applied. Several of us have tried unsuccessfully a number of times to secure charters. We are concerned that being community-led and driven organizations is a scarlet letter for groups navigating the BESE/NACSA charter application process.
Too many students are underserved by the existing school models. Data from the 2010-2011 school year indicate that in the Recovery School District, four of every ten students did not graduate from high school and countless others dropped out of the system prior to high school entry. We are proposing innovative and evidenced-based approaches to address these unmet needs that have been proven to increase student achievement and graduation rates. Many of our Boards are already working with the schools and students we aim to serve, and we have data proving our collaboration with the schools increased student attendance, improved teacher retention, and increased student performance by two grade levels.
We are demanding that our hard work and due diligence to build a successful application be met with transparency, consistency and reliability that is incumbent upon any public process. Instead commitments to build technical assistance programs have not been honored, rules have changed mid-stream, and most egregiously there is clear evidence that the same standard is not consistently applied in evaluating each application. As a Coalition, we have identified specific actions that can remedy problems in the charter school application process:
1. The current charter school application process is flawed and highly subjective. RESOLUTION: Publish the rubric upon which charter applications will be evaluated including the weight assigned to each component of the application. Like most competitive processes, including the Federal Government’s Race to the Top program and i3, applicants are afforded a clear understanding of the standards to which the applications will be held and the respective weight assigned to each section. We demand the same standards be applied to the state’s charter application process.
2. There is an uneven playing field. The charter application process disadvantages community groups because it requires significant human and financial resources to navigate that are more accessible to large, corporate charter management organizations and those currently in existence. Most successful applicants were provided with technical assistance and financial support to develop a high quality applicant. Local groups have not been afforded access to these resources. RESOLUTION: We are calling on the Louisiana Association of Public Charter Schools, New Schools for New Orleans and Louisiana Department of Education to leverage the significant philanthropic investments that have been made in building charter schools in our city to build a viable technical assistance program to support local groups who are committed to excellence and who will ultimately bear the tax burden of sustaining what is built in this city.
3. The current effort lacks due process. RESOLUTION: All decisions concerning the 2011 charter application process are halted. We demand an appeals process be implemented to give applicants the opportunity to respond to concerns identified in their applications simultaneously while the application cycle is still active as opposed to waiting until after the application cycle has end. We are recommending that the entire process be formally reviewed.
Make no mistake – we are resilient and committed to the education of our children! We are demanding a fair process that empowers communities to lead changes to improve public education in New Orleans. We expect resources allocated for community engagement in the school transformation process be directed towards supporting community groups participating in the charter application process. We insist on community-led, sustainable reform of public education in New Orleans.
