(onlineopinion.com.au) “Much of the media interest in the first anniversary of the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina in August fixated on the negative. Sometimes, however, hurricanes have silver linings: when Hurricane Katrina demolished New Orleans’s public school system it gave the city’s educational landscape a much-needed clean slate.
According a New York Times report, New Orleans public schools were “among the most abysmal in the nation before the stormâ€Â. In the 2004 Louisiana General Exit Exams (GEE) for high school students, 96 per cent of New Orleans public school students scored below “basic†in English and 94 per cent scored below “basic†in maths. The public school district was corrupt and debt-ridden.
Now New Orleans is at the centre of a different storm, one that education pundits around the world will be watching carefully. Hurricane Katrina has indelibly changed schooling in New Orleans by giving it the opportunity to rebuild, almost from scratch.”
[...]
“Overnight, New Orleans, with nearly 70 per cent of public school students in schools of choice has become one of the most chartered cities in Americaâ€Â, write Kathryn G. Newmark and Veronique de Rugy in a recent article for the journal Education Next. Charter schools are publicly funded schools that are independently operated. They have budgetary and educational autonomy and are free to hire and fire staff but are accountable to state standards.
More public schools are set to open in the current school year but they will do so in a decidedly different environment. There are no assigned schools, meaning that any student can register for any public or charter school and they are enrolled on a first-come first-served basis or by lottery. Public schools will have to compete with the stronger and more adept charter schools for students and funding.
Not everyone is pleased that New Orleans is becoming a national model on choice, of course. The United Federation of New Orleans Teachers wants to return to a centralised system, but teachers unions have less power in the new order. Not only has union membership fallen from 4,700 to 300 since 2003, the traditional object of their influence, the once omnipotent school district central office, has shrunk from 1,000 staff to 57.” (more…)
====
The key here is going to be parental involvement. If parents were rarely involved with their kid’s academics before Katrina, all the charter schools in the world are not going to fix the problem. While this news may seem exciting for the school choice movement, I am a little concerned that parental involvement may not be as strong as what you would see in other cities. I hope that I am wrong on this one.
Sphere: Related Content
November 10th, 2006 at 9:44 am
The key is civic involvement as there will be a need for some parents, teachers and other adults in the community to compensate for the inadequacies of certain parents. It isn’t realistic or practical to expect all parents to exercise the same diligence — for whatever the reason — toward what is, essentially, a collective endeavor.
November 10th, 2006 at 10:12 am
Very true, but I think that you would also have to agree that if there is not a high percentage of parents that are not getting involved here, the cycle starts all over again. After all, parents are the only people (in most cases) kids see on a regular basis.
March 3rd, 2009 at 11:56 pm
Let’s see if the “boy’s from Philly (formerly Chicago) stick around long enough to take responsibility or credit for the “new” school system they setup in New Orleans.
They are notorious for coming in with an agenda that’s loud, full of sweeping chances, and a lot of money spent on self serving publicity for these changes (a lot of which amount to “reinventing the wheel” not really creating useful (to students) change.
They never stick around long enough to see the results or lack there of…of these changes.
After a lot of self promotion they move on to other more lucrative positions, and some new “Savior” is hired to fix the school district they just left.
In Philadelphia we just got a new Superintendent who thinks the system is a mess and intends to make sweeping changes, many of which includes creating more Charter Schools, for which there is no evidence that students do better.
If public schools that are identified as failing, get the same resources and rules as the new charter school designed to replace it, we wouldn’t need the new charter school.
April 29th, 2009 at 7:02 pm
I read this article with great interest. New Orleans has been my overall favorite city in the US for a long time. I simply love the culture, the history and the environment surrounding that city. The city has experienced serious problems at different periods in its history. Katrina certainly uncovered the latest problems with nature and the flooding and with the great differential in circumstances among various groups of citizens. In any event, I visit New Orleans quite often and I am pulling for an equitable and progressive recovery for New Orleans and all of its residents.
I have some brief comments on the public school situation. I am not involved in the New Orleans school situation, but a very close friend is a teacher in the “new” school programs. I intend to share some of her brief anecdotes on her experience within the charter school programs for your information.
My friend is a recent college graduate from a fairly elite college in the Northeast. She and her family decided that it would be appropriate to volunteer to teach in New Orleans while she prepared for her future. She was basically hired by a not for profit charter school company, who were setting up in New Orleans.
Her degree was not in education – it was preparatory for Law, Business, Urban Development or something. The company that hired her sent her for an extended training program to teach the teaching topics and techniques that would be applied in the classroom. They took a very bright and ambitious graduate and prepared her for a public school classroom. She was one of dozens, if not hundreds, of young adults who moved from all over the country to New Orleans to teach school. I don’t know if they displaced some local teachers and influenced the hiring of other locals.
I get the impression that the charter school company is actually working within each school building – not at another location.I recall her talking about meetings and discussions with the local teachers. I think that I also recall her talking about her classroom being on a different floor from the “regular” classes. This is anecdotal, I have not been there.
Her contract to teach ends after three years and she will probably move on, along with many of the other volunteers. There is a new group of volunteers being trained to replace the earlier group.
I believe my friend is doing a good thing for the New Orleans school system. It sounds like the not for profit charter school company is doing a good thing. I don’t have any insight into inner workings in New Orleans. In my opinion, the local teacher staff in the classroom and at the central office probably are related to the charter schools. The overall impact on New Orleans education and the school system itself is unknown.