my high school is consistently the best in LA and often nationally ranked
Hello, Franklin alumnus. 
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Yep. Yourself?
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I also went to Franklin but only for two years, my grades dropped just below retention and I moved over to McMain.
I was very glad to be rescued from the torture of Catholic school (same one for 1st through 8th) by getting into a magnet but it’s criminal that those are the choices instead of having decent public education for everyone.
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McMain, I was just not academically driven enough to even wanna try getting into Franklin. 
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Don’t worry, they can fuck up clean water just as badly. The difference is that clean water is “worth” pursuing just because it punishes people for being poor and black. Poor education punishes people for being poor and black while also ensuring that white people vote republican.
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Pet peeves, don’t ignore a solution to complain about your ineptitude. Don’t provide an answer without showing your worth, and that means being honest about what you do, do not, intend to, and intend not to.
Hey that’s 3 mustangs. I went to McMain for 7th and 8th
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The water supply affects everyone. Water is the thread of life that binds all of humankind together. Don’t think for a minute that your supply isn’t on the private market. Clean water and free energy are the building blocks of the future.
You are right. I confused neoliberalism with actual progress, which is my definition.
“all charter school” means that charter schools can’t cherrypick their students. And since that accounts for most if not all of their “improvement” over public schools it is no surprise that they are not doing well in NOLA
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Cory is back again with an anti-charter school take that myopically ignores the context from which his cherry-picked data emerges. Passing reference to “changes to the assessment system”, but no attempt to understand what that means for student academic progress.
Assessment standards did get tougher, and that’s important. Louisiana proposed and had accepted a new plan for assessment under ESSA, the law that mandates how states and districts assess their students’ progress. Do these more challenging standards excuse the fact that nearly half of NOLA schools received a failing grade? No. But, it’s actually an indication that the assessment system is working. Charters must meet strict academic progress indicators to keep their charters. Those who do not must close–providing a level of accountability not seen in district schools. Cory doesn’t mention that six of those 35 failing schools have already been closed.
Cory also fails to mention that on the whole, this years test scores show that despite the tougher standards, NOLA’s student progress has been consistent–and actually showed a slight improvement in overall student performance. No mention, also, of the multiple studies that have shown that students in NOLA–especially black students–are more likely to graduate high school and more likely to go on to college.
When your goal is to paint education reform that gives black and low-income families (not just wealthy, white ones) choice in where they send their children to school as neoliberal capitalism run-amok, it’s much easier to ignore the students and families these statistics represent than to present a fair assessment of what happened in NOLA post-Katrina.
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Requisite notification that I’m a Sanders/Warren liberal who has worked in education for the last decade. I’m also a huge fan of Boingboing and Cory. But, I think Cory and Elizabeth are misinformed on charter schools.
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KKK hood.
How anyone managed to vote for him without hurling is beyond me.
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Does it matter whether neoliberals or evangelicals or deluded do-gooders are running the charter schools? Look at any medium-to-large city (exclude the suburbs, of course) that has instituted charter schools, and look at the failure rate. We are allowing profit to degrade the next generation’s ability to face responsibility for their lives on the planet, by teaching to tests and not teaching how to learn.
Maybe the Internet will spawn some app that encourages critical thinking, synthesizing knowledge and the scientific method with storytelling and creative exploration, and everyone will get the education they should have.
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It’s refreshing to read someone calling out just how crappy Catholic schools can be. I attended 1-12th and am astonished at how ill-prepared I was for college and life, in general.
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I can understand your confusion. The term “neoliberal” doesn’t relate to “liberal” like “neo-Nazi” does to “Nazi”. I blame whoever it is that decides what these terms mean for not being consistent.
It does, kind of. You just have to use the European use of the term liberal, more like libertarian, than the American use, which is largely synonymous with progressive. So, for an American, neoliberal is nearly synonymous with libertarian.
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