Charter School Networks Failing, New Orleans all Charter District Gets low Grades.

So what’s the point of running parallel school districts when they offer up the same results and problems?

This study of larger groups of charter networks, thought to expand successful technics within their systems, did not achieve that goal.  

Edweek: A new national study on the effectiveness of networks that operate charter schools finds overall that their middle school students’ test scores in reading, mathematics, science, and social studies aren’t significantly better than those of students in regular public schools. The findings from the research group Mathematica and the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington Bothell: The researchers focused on charter-management organizations to explore whether that model could be effective for scaling up the successes of individual charter schools. CMOs exist in part to address the unevenness in quality from charter to charter … And the answer, she said, is that they haven’t had a significant positive effect as a group. 

So goes the legend of success at the all charter school district...New Orleans Is No Education 'Miracle'

Concerns about safety, academic rigor, counselor accessibility, and classroom management plague many high school students in New Orleans, writes Linda Tran, a recent graduate of one of them. The Vietnamese American Young Leaders Association, or VAYLA, surveyed a cross section of 450 students from six different public high schools among the schools overseen by the Orleans Parish school board and those in the state’s Recovery School District, asking students for their opinions. An Orleans Parish charter school with a significant white population received high marks across the board, while the remaining five schools averaged what amounts to a C or D in areas like safety, academic rigor, counselor accessibility, classroom management, physical environment, and affordability.

According to the Alliance for Excellent Education, one of every six New Orleans high schools fails to graduate at least 40 percent of its students. 70 percent of students say their classes do not have enough textbooks for every student; and half of students do not eat lunch every day. These are basic problems that still exist. Six years after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans’ public high schools are still plagued by severe inequities. Just talk to the students.