Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2005 > December > 27 > Entry
Rebuilding New Orleans with choice
Hurricane Katrina has taught many lessons, most of them dreadful and difficult, such as reminding us of the legacy of racism as government policy.
But in one way, the disaster provided a rare opportunity.
New Orleans’ public school system has long been among the nation’s very worst performing and most dysfunctional. Katrina effectively closed down the system of 126 schools. All but a couple of dozen schools were destroyed and will need to be rebuilt. Now the question is — how should they be reopened?
Should the old school system, the one that was so hopeless and desperately bad, be recreated? Or should the city and state instead try to rebuild the schools in a way so that they might also be reborn?
The state thinks so. But the manner of rebuilding is controversial.
To start, the state has taken over the city’s schools and allowed a few to open now as charter schools. They’re now pondering whether all the schools should open as charter schools.
While I applaud the leaders there for trying something different, I think making all schools charters would be a mistake.
The biggest obstacle to making this work is the difficulty of finding more than 100 capable school developers to found and operate these new schools. In my experience covering the growth of charter schools in Dayton, it’s almost always been the most passionate and organized school developers who build the best schools. Where the state erred here, it was in approving half-baked charter school ideas without a thorough review of the operators and their plans.
What some of the most fervent backers of charter schools in Dayton found over time was that they really couldn’t reform the city’s education system completely from just outside the system. It’s not easy, and perhaps not advisable, to try to put your public schools out of business.
New Orleans probably will need some balance between traditional public schools and charters. But a smaller, more manageable system is probably a welcome development there.
Still, it would be nice to see some good result from Katrina. The opportunity to wipe the slate clean and rebuild that school system from scratch offers much hope.
Imagine the school system you deal with, whether you are a teacher, parent, student or citizen. Imagine if you could rebuild the system from scratch. What is the one thing you’d most like to change?
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Charter Schools and School Choice
Comments
By Mary
December 30, 2005 12:30 AM | Link to this
Starting from scratch in trying to mend a broken education system is like going in circles. It is like asking which came first - the chicken or the egg? Which came first - an uneducated culture or a broken education system? To fix a broken education system seems to require people who are very passionate about learning and education and the subject matter they teach. It also needs a culture very passionate about educaiton and learning. Which comes first - motivated educational leaders or motivated students and public? Both seem to need to exist simultaneously for an educaiton system to work.