Truth Be Told: Power, Money and the Georgia Opportunity School District

Some politicians not only seek office, they relish in the power that elected officials have once they get there.  There is also a lot of money in politics, and there is money to be made, especially if you have connections.  You know what I mean?

The Georgia Opportunity School District is a politically motivated plan to enable the Georgia Governor’s office to take at least 20 schools per year out of the hands of local public schools, fire the principal and nearly 1/2 of the faculty at each school, and then turn the schools over to a for-profit charter management company which will come in create charter schools.  There is power and money here.  New Orleans did this just before Katrina, and we now know that destroying the public education system was a disaster, and the devil is in the details of recent NAEP test results.

Governor Nathan Deal is at the center of this effort. He adores the New Orleans Recovery School District.  He took a group of cronies on a junket last winter on the dime of a private company that stands to profit from Deal’s Opportunity School District.

Deal has, without any research evidence to support his view, decided that there are schools in Georgia that need to be rescued, and the best way to do that is to copy plans that have been enacted in New Orleans (New Orleans’ Recovery School District (RSD), and Tennessee.  These plans have been shown to be ineffective and have instead ripped the public schools in question from local control, and turned them over to outside charter groups.  In New Orleans, there is documented evidence that the RSD has been a failure.

University of Arizona researchers Francesca López and Amy Olson, using NAEP data, compared achievement between charter schools and public schools. The study compared charters in Louisiana, most of which are in New Orleans, to Louisiana public schools, controlling for factors like race, ethnicity, poverty and whether students qualified for special education. On eighth-grade reading and math tests, charter-school students performed worse than their public-school counterparts by enormous margins—2 to 3 standard deviations (please see “10 Years After Katrina, New Orleans’ All-Charter School System Has Proven a Failure, In These Times, August 2015)

Maybe this research was not available to Governor Deal, and the officials at the Georgia Department of Education.

Wrong!

Dr. Julian Vasquez Heilig collated research in August 2015 from Louisiana authors including Jason France, Mike Deshotels, Mercedes Schneider, Francesca Lopez, and Amy Olson.

In the research reported by Dr. Heilig, Louisiana had the largest disparity in student achievement between charters and traditional public schools.  Most of the charters in Louisiana are in New Orleans.

What was Deal and others in state government thinking when they modeled the Georgia Opportunity School District after the New Orleans’ Recovery School District?

Well, how about power and money.

When politicians such as Nathan Deal use questionable ethics, and little to no research to make a sweeping changes in Georgia education, it is our responsibility to question Deal, and vote NO on question 1 on the November 8th ballot.

The Opportunity School District is a politically charged football that is providing just the kind of outcome that unethical politicians love to have a hand in (and perhaps a hand out).

Questions for the Governor

• Governor Deal, why don’t you tell the truth about the Opportunity School District?
• Tell us who is being enriched by your plan, and why is it that your relatives are benefiting financially from the OSD?
• Will you follow the same plan carried out in New Orleans in which they laid off thousands of staff and teachers?
•  Will you tell us how the plan will be financed, and how much it will cost the citizens in Georgia?

Give us a shout, or email me at jhassard@mac.com.