The Great Charter TryoutA． Long before Sci Academy, a charter school in New Orleans, had graduated its first senior class, the school was being heaped with accolades ( 称赞). In September 2010, when Sci Academy was just two years old, its 200 excited students--then all freshmen and sophomores--filed into Greater St. Stephen Baptist church, next door to the school. Together with local dignitaries ( 显要人物 ), journalists, and a brass band, the students watched on huge screens as the leaders of six charter schools from around the country appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show. At the end of the show, they watched as Oprah handed each charter-school leader—including Ben Marcovitz, Sci Academy's founder—a $1 million check.
B． Sci Academy is a flagship charter school and a model of the new data-driven, business-infused approach to education that has won its worship in New Orleans. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, education reformers swept away what remained of the traditional public schools in what had been one of the nation's lowest- performing districts. In their place, charters promised choice and increased accountability( 负责制 ). More than 75 percent of New Orleans kids landed in schools controlled by the so-called Recovery School District, which was heavily dominated by charter schools.
C．"This transformation of the New Orleans educational system may turn out to be the most significant national development in education since desegregation," wrote Neerav Kingsland, the CEO of New Schools for New Orleans, the city's leading venture-philanthropy group incubating local charter schools, a year ago. "New Orleans students have access to educational opportunities that are far superior to any in recent memory."
D．But eight years after Hurricane Katrina, there is evidence that the picture is far more complicated. Seventy- nine percent of RSD charters are still rated D or F by the Louisiana Department of Education. Sci is one of two RSD high schools to earn a B; there are no A-rated open-admission schools. In a school system with about 42,000 mostly poor African-American kids, every year thousands are out of school at any given time-- because they are on suspension, have dropped out, or are incarcerated. Even at successful schools, such as the highly regarded Sci Academy, large numbers of students never make it to graduation, and others are unlikely to make it through college.
E. Figuring out what has taken place in the New Orleans schools is not just a matter of interest to local residents. From cities like New York to towns like Muskegon Heights, Michigan, market-style reforms have been widely considered as the answer to America's educational woes. New Orleans tells us a lot about what these reforms look like in practice. And the current reality of the city's schools should be enough to give pause to even the most passionate charter supporters.
F. With its chain-link fence and campus of module-like buildings--the result of a continuing post-Hurricane Katrina building shortage--Sci Academy doesn't look much like a model school. Freshmen, wearing the polo shirts and khakis of the school uniform, are required to walk along straight red lines that snake through the school's breezeways. Placards bearing slogans, such as "No Short Cuts; No Excuses" and "Go Above and Beyond," hang overhead.
G. Everything at Sci Academy is carefully designed to maintain discipline and focus on the school's principal mission, which is to get every student into college. Each morning, at 8 a.m., the teachers, almost all white and in their 20s, gather for a rousing thigh-slapping, hand-clapping, rap-chanting staff revival meeting, the beginning of what will be, for most, a 14- to 16-hour workday. Students arrive a half hour later, and if asked "Why are you here?" and "What will it take?" are expected to respond "To learn" followed by a recitation of the school's six core values: "achievement, respect, responsibility, perseverance, teamwork, and enthusiasm."
H. Both curriculum and behavior are elaborately arranged. As kids file into class, a teacher hands them their "entry ticket," a survey that helps determine how much students retained from the previous class. An "exit ticket" distributed at the end of each class establishes how much kids have absorbed. Information from the exit tickets, as well as attendance, demerits for bad behavior, and "Sci bucks" for good behavior, are keyed into the Sci software system by teachers every night to help monitor both student and teacher performance.
I. After the storm, the state fired the city's unionized teachers, who were mostly middle-aged African- Americans, an action that has been challenged in court. While a few schools have hired back teachers who worked in the pre-Katrina schools, the city now relies heavily on inexperienced educators--mostly young, white, and from out of town--who are willing, at least in the short run, to put in exhausting hours. But at many schools, including Sci Academy, plenty of teachers last for less than two years.
J.In New Orleans, teachers with certifications from Teach for America number close to 400, five times the level a few years ago. Within the RSD, in 2011, 42 percent of teachers had less than three years of experience; 22 percent have spent just one year or less in the classroom, according to "The State of Public Education in New Orleans," a 2012 report by the pro-charter Cowen Institute at Tulane University.
K. In part to help with this lack of experience, charter schools train teachers in highly regimented routines that help them keep control of their classrooms. The city's charter-school advocates argue that in the aftermath of the storm, when charter operators had to scale up quickly, they needed to start with basics: first order and security, then skill building. "Kids expect high school to be dangerous. They come to school with their backs up," explains Sci Academy's Marcovitz, a graduate of the elite Maret school in Washington, D.C., and Yale University. He says the routines--which are borrowed from methods pioneered by KIPP, a national charter chain that also operates schools in New Orleans--are intended to keep students focused and feeling safe.
L. In one English class last fall, a teacher who had been at Sci for about a year held forth on the fine points of grammar, including the subtle difference between modal and auxiliary verbs. As a few heads drifted downward, she employed a popular charter-school management routine to hold the class's attention. "SPARK check! " she called. The acronym stands for sit straight; pencil to paper (or place hands folded in front); ask and answer questions; respect; and keep tracking the speaker.
M. "Heads up, sit straight--15 seconds to go," she said, trying to get her students' attention. "All scholars please raise your homework in THREE, TWO, ONE. We need to set a goal around homework completion. I only see about one third complete homework."
N.It's a long way from the city's charter school roots. In the 1990s, the city's first charter school, New Orleans Charter Middle School, was built on a progressive curriculum that used experiential projects and electives,
such as bicycle repair and African dance, to foster a love of learning. The school became the most highly rated nonselective school in the city before it was devastated during Hurricane Katrina. But while its founders went
on to create FirstLine, now one of the leading charter operators in New Orleans, the progressive roots of the charter movement have been swamped by the new realities of a competitive charter marketplace.
O. Now, driven by both government policy and charitable funding--which rewards schools for preparing students for college and penalizes those that don't--most charter high schools in New Orleans describe themselves as "college prep." This may seem an admirable goal. But in a school system where the number of eighth graders who passed the end-of-course tests required to get into high school has, according to the Cowen Institute, virtually stagnated at about 60 percent, the push toward college leaves behind many of the most disadvantaged kids, who already face enormous hurdles because of poverty, parental abandonment, and one of the highest rates of gun violence in the nation. For some of these students, college is not necessarily a realistic goal.