Rough Start for Effort to Remake Faltering New Orleans Schools

Based on this article -- and what I've heard independently -- it's the charter schools (no surprise) that are doing the best amidst a chaotic situation in New Orleans.

While the state was working on its district, several local and national groups began creating charter schools, a system within a system that has grown to the largest group of charter schools in the nation. This fall, 33 of the schools are scheduled to open, receiving public money but operated by independent groups...

Thousands of public school students who were accepted into charter or city schools have already begun classes. Many openings went smoothly, and parents have lauded the range of choices that was not available before the storm.

But it will be years before it is clear whether those choices lead to higher student achievement and better school performance.

“I think things are looking much, much better than they ever looked,” said Tanya Fobbs, a food service worker with two children who will be in public schools this year. Ms. Fobbs applied to charter and traditional schools, and is waiting to hear where her children have been accepted...

Many reserve their harshest criticism for the Recovery District.

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Rough Start for Effort to Remake Faltering New Orleans Schools

By SUSAN SAULNY

Published: August 21, 2006

www.nytimes.com/2006/08/21/us/21recovery.html

NEW ORLEANS, Aug. 20 — On Debra Smith’s third attempt to enroll her younger sister in a public high school here last week, patience evaporated. For the student, disappointment turned into tears.

Ms. Smith said the school her sister, now a 10th grader, attended before Hurricane Katrina — one of just five the city is still operating — turned her away because of poor grades. Two other options were full.

“Why am I still sitting here begging to get a child into school?” Ms. Smith asked at a registration center teeming with confused and angry parents. Many saw their schools disappear with the storm, replaced by a small but labyrinthine system of state, city and charter-operated schools, each with its own rules, applications and starting dates.

“Why should I think the schools are going to be any better if they can’t handle the registration process?” she asked. “Where’s the space for these kids?”

For parents throughout the city, the first post-storm back-to-school season is having an inauspicious start. But it is perhaps most chaotic for those relying on a new state effort to rescue dozens of city schools that were a disaster even before Hurricane Katrina. The storm offered one of the worst school districts in the nation an opportunity for rebirth in the Recovery School District, state officials said...