Left to Right: Former Recovery School District Superintendent, Patrick Dobard; Former State Superintendent and CEO of Great Minds, John White; School Director, Phillis Wheatley Community School, Dione Singleton; Former Ambassador to Japan, Rahm Emanuel; NOLA Public Schools Superintendent, Dr. Fateama Fulmore; CEO of FirstLine Schools, Dr. Sabrina Pence.
(NEW ORLEANS) -- Rahm Emanuel spent Wednesday in the only state whose math and reading scores sit above where they were before COVID. By night he had been through a Tremé elementary school, a high school across town, and a town hall of parents who had not come to clap.
The morning opened at Phillis Wheatley, rebuilt in 2014 on a site that first served Black children during segregation. Dr. Sabrina Pence, CEO of FirstLine Schools, cited the Harvard and Stanford recovery scorecard: 99th percentile for reading growth, 98th for math. "The results matter, and they don't mean that the work is finished," she said. "They're really powerful evidence of what our children can do."
Former Recovery School District Superintendent, Patrick Dobard, grew up less than a mile away. Older siblings went through Clark when it still sent students to Tulane. By 2005 it was the lowest-performing high school in the state, before the rebuild he later helped lead. "This is my home," the City Fund partner said. That rise and collapse was the record Emanuel had come to test.
He wanted what moved reading and math, and how a building nears 95% attendance when so many students nationally miss a fifth of the year. "It's not some secret sauce," he said. "It's perspiration and it's persistence, but you can do something about it."
The answer was a system, not a program. Dana Peterson, CEO of New Schools for New Orleans, borrowed a line from The Wire: "All the pieces matter." Operators run schools. The district calls the number. Families choose instead of taking an address. If the pace holds, he said, New Orleans can become "the first major city in America, in which the majority of its kids, who are black and low income, are going to be on grade level."
John White, former state superintendent and CEO of Great Minds, said much of the country has walked away from responsibility. Here the work is a set curriculum and daily coaching. "A school is like a government," he said, "pieces that need to come together in a very precise way."
Dr. Fateama Fulmore, superintendent of NOLA Public Schools, said it depends on "role and goal clarity within the ecosystem where we all know our part." Orleans is now ahead of Jefferson, East Baton Rouge, and Caddo on mastery, "for the first time." "This is daily work. It's not one shot."
Nobody dressed up the middle grades. Dr. Pence said phonics is ahead of comprehension. White called the next crisis the student who passes courses and still cannot do the reading and math high school requires.
Classrooms made the claim smaller. Kindergarten counted September 30 out loud. Fourth graders had to say what a quote meant. Eighth graders tracked two brothers sharing a ring and shooting free throws and had to prove their bond was changing.
At G.W. Carver that afternoon, principal Jerel Bryant hosted the tour. Emanuel later said he watched a principal adjust a lesson as it happened. Daily training was no longer a claim at a table. It was a habit in the building.
That habit showed up again at the Louisiana Rising town hall hosted by Emanuel, at the New Orleans Career Center. Claire Jecklin, its founding CEO, said the center trains students at no cost, mostly in healthcare and the building trades. "Louisiana is number one for economic investment and number one for poverty," she said. "Workforce is part of the solution."
Emanuel told the room why he had come. "You're the only state out of 50 whose math and reading scores are above pre-COVID," he said. "What ails America can be answered by what's working in America."
High school, he said, cannot end at a diploma. In Chicago, a "B" average made community college free, and no student walked without a letter from a college, a community college, the armed forces, or a trade program. "You will not walk on graduation day until you tell us where you're walking to."
Parents took the evening off the scoreboard. One asked how to get families in the building. A report-card gift card, Emanuel offered. It had been a hit and miss in Chicago but stressed the importance of parental involvement. "There are three doors a child walks through that will determine their life: the front door of the home, the front door of the school, and the front door of the place of worship."
A mother whose son has level 3 autism asked how students with disabilities keep a path into work. Another said teachers could not tell her that her child needed an IEP. "You can't do that from a cubicle in D.C.," Emanuel said. "That's why I came to Louisiana."
Asked what to copy, he named three things he had seen at Wheatley and Carver. Accountability past the teacher. Training "every day when the bell rings, and sometimes before." A curriculum that is required. California made phonics optional. Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee did not. "Guess what? All three states, hockey stick on scores."
He left Louisiana's early-childhood model and the braided funding on his own list of things he said he still does not fully understand. The line he did not hedge was the one he arrived with. "I'm sick and tired of a country that has thrown in the towel on a generation of kids," he said. "We don't have a child to waste."