Last week, a group of charter-school advocates associated with an advocacy group financed partially by the Walton family interrupted a campaign speech by Senator Professor Warren in South Carolina. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, a Warren surrogate on the scene, managed to calm things down. This was the first act of civil disobedience by charter-school activists aimed at a specific candidate in my memory. Since my turnip truck is in the shop, I had to walk to work today, and, while I was doing so, I began to wonder if the Waltons really wanted to make a point about SPWs wealth tax, which would hit them fairly hard.

In any case, not long after the above event, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported on the results of Louisiana’s most recent school performance reviews. Since New Orleans has been Patient Zero for education “reform” ever since Hurricane Katrina, that city’s schools were of particular interest in the review.

But a closer look reveals a startling fact. A whopping 35 of the 72 schools in the all-charter district scored a D or F, meaning nearly half of local public schools were considered failing, or close to it, in the school year ending in 2019. Since then, six of the 35 have closed.

While New Orleans has long been home to struggling schools, the data released this month are concerning. There was an increase of nearly 11% percentage points in the number of schools that received the state's lowest grades from the 2017-18 school year to 2018-19.

This year also showed the highest percentage of failing schools in the past five years. The closest comparison was in the 2016-17 year, when nearly 41% of the city's schools, including those then overseen by the Recovery School District, earned D's or F’s.

It should be noted that SPW's education plan, against which the protest was organized, leans heavily on transparency and accountability, two principles of which the charter establishment are not particularly fond, and on rolling back the gains made by the privatizers. She also would eliminate federal funding for new charter schools and also would ban for-profit charters, two proposals that would bring salty tears to the eyes of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, most recently seen advocating for loosening federal regulations regarding accusations of sexual assault on campus. Making DeVos irrelevant to education policy is a goal to which every sensible human being should aspire. She’s a fast-moving blight who is as knowledgable about her cabinet portfolio as the president* is about everything else. Which boggles the mind.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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