In New Orleans schools, it's like starting over

 

What's happening in New Orleans is really exciting -- and outrageously difficult!

When kids return to school this fall, they'll barely recognize the system. The district's post-Katrina collapse meant that the local teachers union was effectively dissolved — as was much of the power of the school board. Before Katrina, the parish school board operated 117 schools; it now operates five. Of the 58 schools reopened since Katrina, 31 are charter schools, run by private for-profit and non-profit groups but funded by taxes. Most of the rest are under state control, swept into a new system called the Recovery School District.

Charter school advocates frame the larger effort to rebuild New Orleans' schools as nothing less than historic, predicting that the city could emerge as the USA's school reform laboratory. Pastorek has called the bid "an opportunity to re-create education as we know it." But he admits finding enough teachers is "a tall order.

 

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http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2007-06-06-new-orleans-schools_N.htm

In New Orleans schools, it's like starting over

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By Greg Toppo, USA TODAY

 

NEW ORLEANS — Erin Greenwald first heard tales of the troubled public schools here a decade ago as an undergraduate at Tulane University. The Florida native tended bar at Antoine's, the renowned French Quarter restaurant. Many of her co-workers were parents who, despite modest means, spent thousands of dollars a year on private-school