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Education: A matter of choice
A matter of choice
Top-rated suburban districts, award-winning magnet programs and the growth of openenrollment charters are selling points for public education in the Baton Rouge area but challenges, especially with low-income students, remain. BY MAGGIE HEYN RICHARDSON
ISTOCK
YOU CAN LOOK at public education in Baton Rouge in one of two ways.
On the glass half-empty side, East Baton Rouge Parish is still crippled by educational inequity, home to a chronically C-rated public school system with D- and F-rated institutions disproportionately serving children in poverty.
The East Baton Rouge Parish school system’s enrollment peaked in 1976 and has dropped 40% since, due to breakaway school districts in Baker, Central and Zachary, suburban flight and a private and parochial school use rate that is one of the nation’s highest. And when families remove their children from the school system, advocates point out, they also take away their personal stake in its success.
“We have a school system that serves children in very different ways, particularly around race and socioeconomics,” says Adonica Duggan, president and CEO of Baton Rouge Alliance for Students. “We are doing an abysmal job of serving children who live in poverty, and that’s a lot of children in this city.”
But Duggan and other advocates also point out that there’s also a half-full side.
School choice, the catch phrase for enabling parents to opt into a better-fit school than the one their child is assigned to, is more popular than ever, largely due to the opening of close to 30 high-quality charter schools over more than 10 years. The expansion of such schools is positioning Baton Rouge as a national paradigm for school choice, says Baton Rouge Area Foundation President and CEO Chris Meyer, the founding CEO of choice school facilitator New Schools for Baton Rouge. Meyer speculates that by the end of the decade, 50% of all public-school students in East Baton Rouge Parish will attend an open-enrollment charter, with another 25% taking advantage of the school system’s magnet programs.
“I think Baton Rouge is becoming a national model for what high-quality educational choice looks like,” Meyer says.
So, what else might the future hold for public education in the Baton Rouge area?
‘CHOICE’ WILL BE AN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT SELLING POINT
Selling the range of educational options across the region will
CHRIS MEYER, founding CEO of New Schools for Baton Rouge and current president and CEO of the Baton Rouge Area Foundation continue to be the strategy deployed by the Baton Rouge Area Chamber, says President and CEO Adam Knapp.
“From a talent recruitment standpoint, we tell the story of the region,” Knapp says. That includes top-rated school systems in Zachary and Ascension and West Feliciana parishes, as well as numerous private schools, magnet programs and public, open-enrollment charter schools. “Commuting from home, where your kids are in school, to work 45 minutes away is just not uncommon among our peer cities,” Knapp says.
CONNECTING HIGH SCHOOL CURRICULUMS TO CAREERS
Under Superintendent Sito Narcisse’s leadership, the EBR school system’s new Pathways to Bright Futures program introduces options for students to earn college credit and gain career exposure while in high school. This includes adding more dual-enrollment courses, and even earning an associate degree in certain cases. The program will offer disciplines in technology, construction, liberal arts, health care and transportation. In addition, the school system is planning to introduce
more “focused choice” schools, which will give students and families more curriculum options. The new fine arts conservatory to be housed at Broadmoor Middle School and the Eva Legard Center for Coastal and Environmental Studies, a partnership with LSU and the Water Campus, are two such programs.
EARLY LEARNING EMPHASIS
Knapp says 95% of at-risk 4-year-olds are in a public early learning program, but more needs to be done to ensure birth to 3-year-olds are getting the early literacy they need to be successful.
“We at BRAC want to see a path to universal pre-K,” Knapp says. “Education and literacy starts at birth, and it’s so important we focus on early education.”
Not unlike the K-12 public school landscape, early childhood education is defined by two poles: limited, publicly funded early education programs and pricey, private or church-based day care programs, Meyer adds.
“We need to have an intentional focus on applying the lessons learned in our K-12 reforms to early childhood reform,” he says. “We need to be a statewide and national leader in how we put those pieces together.”
SCHOOL CHOICE EXPANSION
Sweeping education policy changes in the state in 2012 ushered in an era of charter school growth, including the addition of well-regarded national charter schools like BASIS and IDEA. Parents have voted with their feet, advocates contend, pulling their children out of underperforming neighborhood schools for better options. Moreover, parents who can afford private schools are also queuing up to participate in high-achieving charters.
Many schools have waiting lists.
“We have to continue to expand excellent schools,”
Meyer says. “It’s very easy for some folks to say, ‘we have enough,’ but I don’t think you ever have enough excellent schools until every family is able to make a choice. Let’s continue to expand high-quality schools of any kind that are in demand by families.”
Duggan agrees.
“This growth is driven by parent behavior,” she says. “When I am faced with a decision about the best possible option to educate my child, I learn how to navigate the system and find it. I think there’s an overemphasis in the discussion on school type, when all parents want is school quality.”
STUDENT ATTRACTION: Magnet schools, like Liberty Magnet High School, are expected to educate 25% of all public-education students in East Baton Rouge Parish by the end of the decade.
TIM MUELLER
