Those New Orleans *Miracle* Charter AP Outcomes

On October 8, 2014, New York teacher Gary Rubinstein wrote a post on Louisiana’s May 2014 Advanced Placement (AP) outcomes. His post is aptly entitled, Louisiana Still Ranks Second to Last in AP Results. 

Of course such news must be spun; therefore, Louisiana Superintendent John White twists the result into Louisiana Among Nation’s Most Improved States on Advanced Placement Scores. 

As Rubinstein shows, Louisiana has ranked only higher than Mississippi on passing AP outcomes for the past three years. Not sure how being consistently second-to-last equals White’s “most improved.” But then, I am not a liar by trade.

In his post, Rubinstein includes a handful of scores on our New Orleans Miracle Schools. He was able to obtain such scores from a search engine in the Times-Picayune.

White does not do search engines. He has sabotaged the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) to such a degree that I doubt he has staff capable of accomplishing such sophistication– which is exactly as he would have it. Thus, we have a newspaper offering a search engine for LDOE data.

My purpose in this post is to provide readers with comprehensive information on the May 2014 AP scores for all New Orleans charter schools offering 11th and 12th grades. I used the Louisiana Association of Public Charter Schools (LAPCS) school directory as my source for what appears to be a comprehensive listing of charter schools in New Orleans. I then used the Times Picayune search engine to determine the number of AP test takers and the number (and corresponding percentage) of those scoring a 3 or higher on AP exams.

The Times Picayune notes that its search engine data was obtained from LDOE.

Some data is not clear.

What is clear is that the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) high schools were the ones to do best on the AP exams. Two of the five OPSB high schools (Franklin and Lusher) account for most of the New Orleans charters’ AP scoring “success.”

Sixteen of the twenty-two total New Orleans charter high schools listed have AP scores available. Five of these are OPSB schools.

I created a listing of all 22* schools’ AP information described above. I also included the year that each charter school was established.

New Orleans charters opened longer did not show better 2014 AP outcomes.

What is clear is that with only a couple of exceptions, the results are not impressive.

My spreadsheet of the data can be found here:

New Orleans Charter High School May 2014 AP Results

Once again, there is no miracle here.

To the districts nationwide that are watching the New Orleans Charter Circus with wide eyes, know that any reported New Orleans charter *miracle* patently contradicts its consistently unimpressive outcomes.

 

*I originally stated that there were 24 New Orleans high schools. I had to remove two from the list (the Jefferson charters) because they are not located in New Orleans. (Corrected 10-12-14)

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Schneider is also author of the ed reform whistleblower, A Chronicle of Echoes: Who’s Who In the Implosion of American Public Education