On a flat stretch of land 10 miles east of New Orleans’ French Quarter, a school still housed in trailers but showing impressive academic results shines as a model of the charter movement in a city that has long struggled to educate its children.
The New Orleans Charter Science and Math Academy opened only four years ago, but is already out-scoring other schools in the city. Sci Academy, as it is known, came in third on state test scores last year, beaten only by two academically selective public high schools. It, by contrast, accepts all students.
“There is no magic here,” said the school’s founder and principal, Ben Marcovitz. “The process of getting to where we’ve gotten from where we started has been nothing but work and reflection.”
For decades, New Orleans failed its students. The year before Hurricane Katrina, 95 percent of the students fell below basic proficiency in English and math. The district was $300 million in debt, and corruption was so rife that the FBI set up a field office in its headquarters. The president of the Orleans Parish School Board has gone to prison on a bribery conviction, one of 24 school leaders to be indicted.
When the levees broke, the school system collapsed with them. Some 4,000 teachers were laid off to prevent bankruptcy, and only 16 of 126 school buildings were undamaged.
Today, three-quarters of students attend a charter school, publicly financed but privately run and typically exempt from union rules and other regulations. Only a handful of the city’s 88 schools are still controlled by the city’s traditional governing structure. Most are governed by the Recovery School District, created to take over the worst of the schools. In a nationwide first, its superintendent, John White, envisions a city made up entirely of charter schools.
“Insofar as a charter school allows for high accountability and high autonomy, then yes, that’s something we’re going to continue to do,” he said.
When Marcovitz created Sci Academy, he relied on training he received studying theater in college. Before a single student arrived on campus, he and his staff rehearsed the first day of school a half-dozen times.
“So you saw all these teachers out there on our campus talking to invisible children and miming … what the day was going to look like,” he said.
And because everyone was so well prepared, the day was successful, he said. They came away with a momentum that has stayed with them even when things go off course — as when they had to shelve William Golding’s modern classic “Lord of the Flies” because none of their students could read it, he said. The students started a phonics program instead.
Some of the school’s innovations seem small: a handshake at the beginning of the day as the students get off the bus, a signal to leave behind any problems while they are on campus. They follow their teachers with their eyes and walk within lines on the floors of the corridors linking the trailers, a way to move everyone to their next class quickly.
“They get a message that this school is unlike other schools that I’ve been in,” Marcovitz said.
Other changes are more far-reaching; one in particular developed a camaraderie much like a theater troupe. Small groups are assigned a teacher and stay together through their four years at Sci Academy. Known as advisories, they form a surrogate family for the students and an avenue for regular contact with their families.
“A parent calls the school and talks to the adviser — that adviser can tell you exactly how that kid behaved in all their classes, exactly what his grades are and what he needs to work on next,” Marcovitz said. “So it is actually like having a parent follow you around school all the time.”
And because a child’s developmental needs are being met, teachers can focus on the academics, he said.
Stephanie Wyatt, 17, enrolled in Sci Academy as a ninth-grader, then left when her family moved. But when she returned to the Ninth Ward, she returned to the school, too. The education she got in the intervening period was horrible, she said.
One teacher told students, “You all aren’t going to be doing anything good with your lives except for flipping burgers and asking people, ‘Do you want paper or plastic’ at the grocery store,” she said.
New Orleans’ schools are making progress. Nearly half of the students in the Recovery School District are now at or above the basic level on state tests, up from much lower levels five years ago.
“And that’s tremendous progress, but what it means is only half of our kids are at grade level and we’ve got to get to 100 percent,” White said.
To do that, he is moving ahead with reforms, even as the state teachers union and its allies have begun pushing back. Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican, hopes to name him the next state education superintendent, but the union is objecting.
White, who was brought in from New York City, would be promoted over deserving educators from Louisiana, said the president of the Louisiana Association of Educators, Joyce Haynes.
But in runoff elections last weekend, reformers won control of the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, likely giving White enough votes for the job.
The reorganization has hardly solved all of the problems. On one hand, a new state grading system found that nearly half of the schools got a D or an F. (Sci Academy got a C.) On the other, the charters schools are mostly doing well. Standardized test scores show that students at a majority of the city’s independent charter schools are outperforming their counterparts at traditional schools.
Marcovitz’s goal is to prepare his students for college in four years. Once that occurs, the school will have succeeded, he said.
And the only barrier to more schools like his is a belief that it is possible, he said.
“So that’s the secret ingredient, if there is one,” he said. “And the rest is just a ton of work.”
View Charter Schools: Myths vs. Facts
The New Orleans Charter Science and Math Academy opened only four years ago, but is already out-scoring other schools in the city. Sci Academy, as it is known, came in third on state test scores last year, beaten only by two academically selective public high schools. It, by contrast, accepts all students.
“There is no magic here,” said the school’s founder and principal, Ben Marcovitz. “The process of getting to where we’ve gotten from where we started has been nothing but work and reflection.”
For decades, New Orleans failed its students. The year before Hurricane Katrina, 95 percent of the students fell below basic proficiency in English and math. The district was $300 million in debt, and corruption was so rife that the FBI set up a field office in its headquarters. The president of the Orleans Parish School Board has gone to prison on a bribery conviction, one of 24 school leaders to be indicted.
When the levees broke, the school system collapsed with them. Some 4,000 teachers were laid off to prevent bankruptcy, and only 16 of 126 school buildings were undamaged.
Today, three-quarters of students attend a charter school, publicly financed but privately run and typically exempt from union rules and other regulations. Only a handful of the city’s 88 schools are still controlled by the city’s traditional governing structure. Most are governed by the Recovery School District, created to take over the worst of the schools. In a nationwide first, its superintendent, John White, envisions a city made up entirely of charter schools.
“Insofar as a charter school allows for high accountability and high autonomy, then yes, that’s something we’re going to continue to do,” he said.
When Marcovitz created Sci Academy, he relied on training he received studying theater in college. Before a single student arrived on campus, he and his staff rehearsed the first day of school a half-dozen times.
“So you saw all these teachers out there on our campus talking to invisible children and miming … what the day was going to look like,” he said.
And because everyone was so well prepared, the day was successful, he said. They came away with a momentum that has stayed with them even when things go off course — as when they had to shelve William Golding’s modern classic “Lord of the Flies” because none of their students could read it, he said. The students started a phonics program instead.
Some of the school’s innovations seem small: a handshake at the beginning of the day as the students get off the bus, a signal to leave behind any problems while they are on campus. They follow their teachers with their eyes and walk within lines on the floors of the corridors linking the trailers, a way to move everyone to their next class quickly.
“They get a message that this school is unlike other schools that I’ve been in,” Marcovitz said.
Other changes are more far-reaching; one in particular developed a camaraderie much like a theater troupe. Small groups are assigned a teacher and stay together through their four years at Sci Academy. Known as advisories, they form a surrogate family for the students and an avenue for regular contact with their families.
“A parent calls the school and talks to the adviser — that adviser can tell you exactly how that kid behaved in all their classes, exactly what his grades are and what he needs to work on next,” Marcovitz said. “So it is actually like having a parent follow you around school all the time.”
And because a child’s developmental needs are being met, teachers can focus on the academics, he said.
Stephanie Wyatt, 17, enrolled in Sci Academy as a ninth-grader, then left when her family moved. But when she returned to the Ninth Ward, she returned to the school, too. The education she got in the intervening period was horrible, she said.
One teacher told students, “You all aren’t going to be doing anything good with your lives except for flipping burgers and asking people, ‘Do you want paper or plastic’ at the grocery store,” she said.
New Orleans’ schools are making progress. Nearly half of the students in the Recovery School District are now at or above the basic level on state tests, up from much lower levels five years ago.
“And that’s tremendous progress, but what it means is only half of our kids are at grade level and we’ve got to get to 100 percent,” White said.
To do that, he is moving ahead with reforms, even as the state teachers union and its allies have begun pushing back. Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican, hopes to name him the next state education superintendent, but the union is objecting.
White, who was brought in from New York City, would be promoted over deserving educators from Louisiana, said the president of the Louisiana Association of Educators, Joyce Haynes.
But in runoff elections last weekend, reformers won control of the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, likely giving White enough votes for the job.
The reorganization has hardly solved all of the problems. On one hand, a new state grading system found that nearly half of the schools got a D or an F. (Sci Academy got a C.) On the other, the charters schools are mostly doing well. Standardized test scores show that students at a majority of the city’s independent charter schools are outperforming their counterparts at traditional schools.
Marcovitz’s goal is to prepare his students for college in four years. Once that occurs, the school will have succeeded, he said.
And the only barrier to more schools like his is a belief that it is possible, he said.
“So that’s the secret ingredient, if there is one,” he said. “And the rest is just a ton of work.”
View Charter Schools: Myths vs. Facts
