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N'awlins relying on charter schools

In the Katrina rebuilding efforts, New Orleans is turning to charter schools:

The charter school movement, already bolstered in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina devastated public schools in and around New Orleans, got another boost Monday when federal officials announced a $23.9 million grant to create new charter schools in the state.

The grant was announced in a news release prior to a late morning appearance by U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings at Belle Chasse Primary School, near New Orleans.

In 40 states and the District of Columbia, more than a million children attend 3,600 charter schools, according to the Center for Education Reform, a charter-school advocacy group.

Nowhere are the percentages as high as in New Orleans, where 18 of the 25 public schools that are operating, or that are preparing to open post-Katrina, are charters.

School choice hits the Crescent City hard.  I wonder if it’s at least indirectly connected to stuff like this?

State Superintendent Cecil Picard, who effectively took over most of the city’s schools, says families returning from other states have seen functional schools, often for the first time. A few are asking him, "Can you promise me that I’m going to come back to something better than I left?"

If outsiders had visited New Orleans the day before the storm, they’d have seen a school district already in distress. Nearly two-thirds of the parish’s public schools weren’t meeting state standards. The city went through 10 superintendents in 10 years; in 2003, one high school valedictorian needed seven tries to pass the state’s 10th-grade math test.

Corruption was endemic. In 2004, the FBI set up a task force inside school district headquarters — a first in FBI history — to investigate "a lot of brazen stuff," says James Bernazzani, New Orleans’ special agent in charge. Among the cases: a payroll employee "just started writing herself checks" — for $240,000 in all.

The investigations have led to 26 indictments and 20 plea deals. "It was a failed, corrupt system," state board member Leslie Jacobs says.

In all fairness, the connection between aggressively introducing school choice via charters in the wake of Katrina and the city’s historically atrocious public schools is probably tenuous at best.  One of the many advantages of choice schools is the speed with which they can be set up, and families just don’t have the time to wait for the public school system to get it together.  But it’s pretty likely that families will demand better for their children once they’ve seen the comparatively better schools available in Texas and elsewhere. 

Some related thoughts on this will be addressed in a future post.  In the meantime, kudos to New Orleans for getting these kids some help.