New Orleans to become ground zero for school choice

(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 storm”. 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.”

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“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 America”, 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…)

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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.