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The K-12 Takeover
Big Philanthrophy's bid to privatize education
Gabor, Andrea Publisher: Harper's Magazine
Year Published: 2019
Resource Type: Article
On the effects of the implementation of the charter school system in New Orleans.
Abstract:
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Excerpt:
The system operated on a bottom-line approach known as the portfolio model, which seeks to manage schools like stocks in a Wall Street portfolio; like model rewards high performers (as measured primarily by test scores) with further investment and punishes poor performers by cutting off funding or by shuttering them. The promise of this model was the idealistic technocrats would run schools like businesses, emphasizing competition, financial incentives, and accountability.
Freed from bureaucracy and union rules, schools would blossom and adapt to meet the need of children. Families could vote with their feet; if they didn't like a school, they could choose another anywhere in the city. Schools that did not meed the grade would be closed, but new and better schools would open in their places. To realize these benefits, the New Orleans reformers stripped the locally elected school board of much of its authority and ceded control to non-elected charter-management oranizations and non-profit groups.
For the next decade, democratic oversight of the vast majority of New Orleans schools effectively ceased to exist. Instead, education policy was largely dictated by the charter establishment and a handful of wealthy donors.
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