Excerpt from Politico: Morning Education
June 17, 2016
AN EDUCATION REFORM MANIFESTO: The Center for Education Reform released a “manifesto” this week responding to a reform movement that the advocacy group says is in crisis. Nowhere is that more apparent than in New Orleans, the group’s founder Jeanne Allen writes [http://bit.ly/1Q8uv3O]. “For education reformers — the people who dreamed of remaking not only schools, but reimagining school districts and entire education systems — New Orleans reminds us what is possible,” she writes. But now the New Orleans revolution is unraveling, she writes. “Instead of being feted and replicated, the path breaking and life-changing Recovery School District is being assaulted from all sides by the opponents of change,” Allen writes. “Even worse, in the name of ‘local control’ the fate of the charter sector is about to be put in the hands of an institution — the school board — which historically opposes giving any power to schools and autonomy to individual school leaders. This is the same structure, by the way, which doomed New Orleans students to violent and chronically failing schools before Katrina.” CER is redoubling its efforts to focus on innovation and opportunity, leveraging media and attracting new advocates to the cause. The manifesto: http://bit.ly/1W1Cjph.