A few teachers and state education department investigator Folwell Dunbar had reported a slew of irregularities including unattended classrooms, institutional academic fraud, insufficient (or non-existent) service for special needs students, and a suspicion that at least some questionably qualified faculty may have been employed there as a means of gaming a visa program. Dunbar told the Times-Picayune that a contractor associated with the charter company attempted to bribe him during the course of his investigation.
These are serious charges, of course, but also politically important charges as they appear to demonstrate that simply contracting out public school management to private companies isn't going to magically ensure that we're getting a system any less corrupt or indifferent to the needs of students than the old NOPS edifice was.
The fundamental trouble with our approach to the school system lies with the ongoing work of our elites to carve out a sliver of seclusion where their children can be educated apart from the progeny of our more "undesirable" elements. Ever since desegregation, New Orleans has used the parochial schools as sort of an alternate school system. But not everybody who wants separate and unequal schools wants to pay through the nose for them. By incorporating some of the public schools into the stratified structure the charter movement seeks to solve this problem for them. If some charter schools may perform well that's nice. If some do not, that's not so nice. Certainly there are professionals working within the system, such as it is, to do the best job they can but none of that has anything to do with why the charters exist in the first place. The important thing is that parents in the elite club can make sure their children are going to school with other club members.
Of course there always could be something I'm missing. That's why last week I asked the charter advocates to tell us how the new structure might address the crisis at Abramson. If charters are supposed to reduce corruption and increase efficiency, isn't this their moment to do so?
The nearest approach to an answer we got was from Sobieski although it was more of a negative argument than anything.
I'd say take the charter school license in place at AHS, revoke the license, and start over. Maybe under the RSD, maybe split it into TWO charter schools, I don't know. There are probably several remedies. What I do know is that under the old OPSB there were NO REMEDIES.
Anyway here's the system's answer to how it plans to handle things.
Folwell Dunbar, a state education official who warned of problems at Abramson Science and Technology Charter School more than a year ago, confirmed Thursday that he was fired this week along with his boss at the department, Jacob Landry.
That ought to fix it.
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