Posted on 08/25/2015 3:24:44 PM PDT by Clintonfatigued
Amid the rubble and rebuilding efforts, unseen by most Americans was a profound rebuilding of a major American city’s education system. Tragically, it took a hurricane to do this. But out of Katrina’s death and destruction rose one of the greatest transformations ever witnessed in American public education.
A decade later, education reformers highlight the “Katrina effect” in education innovation and reform.
Katrina left most New Orleans schools literally underwater. Most schools remained officially closed for months. Many New Orleans families fled the city to escape the floods and rebuild lives; some never returned. Many students who remained missed months of classes.
Prior to Katrina, reformers knew the Big Easy’s schools were symbolically underwater. Two years before Katrina, the Louisiana Legislature created a statewide Recovery School District to intervene in, and turn around, the state’s low-performing schools. At the time when Katrina struck, five failing schools in New Orleans had already been transformed into charters under the auspices of the RSD.
Following Katrina, the Legislature acted boldly, enacting a transformative measure to expeditiously transfer more than 100 chronically failing New Orleans schools to the RSD. State leaders, confronted by unprecedented natural disaster, chose to not only rebuild, but to boldly reimagine, New Orleans’ schools and acted with urgency.
City schools were closed, and all teachers removed from their posts. Rather than reopening the same failed schools, a comprehensive network of charter schools was authorized and opened. New teachers were hired.
This action led to the innovative “portfolio” system of schools found today in New Orleans, with 92 percent of students attending independent, charter schools.
Undoubtedly, the RSD response to Katrina has become one of the most important education reformations in America. Academic outcomes for public school students in New Orleans have improved significantly in the 10 years since Katrina.
(Excerpt) Read more at ocregister.com ...
This is a New Orleans phenomena, but those who support alternatives to public schools can learn a lot of useful information and apply it to their own ideas.
Measuring how many kids now are passing is not indicator of improvement.
And what I would be interested to know is.. how has the racial composition of these schools that have suddenly got amazingly better changed since Katrina.
The idiots, students, parents, and teachers all left and went to Houston, Baton Rouge, Kansas City, and other destinations. Guess which ethnic background were they?
Bush's fault, right?
The gang banging idiots were spread out to other systems and this diluted the crap pile into a manageable sludge.
You would not send you children to any charter school in New Orleans.
Don’t believe it.
That’s because they sent most of their problems to the Houston area and most of them never went back...
The “Katrina Effect” should be replicated EVERYWHERE there are government schools. Instead of a flood, bombs strategically deployed by the National Guard could clear out the failing schrools.
100,000 people left the city never to return.
Public schools = stupid people.
Public school kids = sorry, worthless, POS parents.
The rancid legacy of former governor Rick Perry, lives on in Houston where thousands of the dregs of New Orleans wound up. Some high schools got good football players out of the transferred students, but mainly, it was a losing situation for Texas, which absorbed all of the costs for the influx of students. At least they were U.S. citizens, unlike a good chunk of Mexico’s children that we pay to educate every year because unfortunately, we have the wrong neighbors.
NOLA?
That toilet needs to be flushed again.
I remember some politician in Utah sounding the alarm about what type of people were fleeing New Orleans; he was chastised for it, but he was absolutely right. Taxpayers inherit a nightmare population of mainly non-contributors, while politicians saw federal dollars with each imported gibsmedat...
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