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.

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.