Ever since the floods from
hurricane Katrina demolished large swaths of
New Orleans nearly a decade ago, the city has been reinventing itself – perhaps nowhere more radically than in its schools.
In so doing, New Orleans has become a sort of district-less school district, the first of its kind in the nation, in which the vast majority of students attend charter schools – free public schools that operate independently through a contract with the state or local board.
The results are drawing national attention.
Gone is a traditional central district office that assigns students to schools, hires and promotes teachers in negotiation with a union, and controls everything from budgets to textbooks. Instead, families here choose among charter schools citywide that – in exchange for their autonomy – have to meet certain benchmarks in order to have their charters renewed.
RECOMMENDED:
Are you as well-read as a 10th grader? Take our quiz.
Test scores and graduation rates have climbed steadily. And while there are fewer public school students than before the storm – 43,000, down from 65,000 – the demographics are similar: 90 percent African-American (compared with 94 percent pre-Katrina) and 82 percent low-income (up from 77 percent).
A surge of extra resources has helped: In 2010-11, for instance, per-pupil spending in New Orleans was about $13,000, compared with just under $11,000 statewide.
With 9 out of 10 students here attending charters, national policymakers are watching the New Orleans experiment closely. They're looking for lessons – from both its successes and its stumbles – as more urban districts see significant growth in the share of students opting for charter schools.
Nationwide, only about 5 percent of public school students attend charter schools. But in Detroit, 51 percent attended charters in 2012-13, and in Washington, D.C., 43 percent, reports the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Another four cities topped 30 percent.
In Tennessee, Memphis and Nashville are already replicating some of New Orleans' approaches, supported by a federal grant to turn around their lowest-performing schools. Missouri's board of education is considering a New Orleans-style takeover of the troubled Kansas City schools, replacing the district administration with a slimmer office that contracts with nonprofits to run schools.
As other attempts to improve chronically bad schools have failed, a coalition of political and educational leaders has grown in some cities that is "willing to consider more dramatic approaches," such as a reliance on charter schools, says Bryan Hassel, codirector of Public Impact, a pro-charter education consulting group in Chapel Hill, N.C. New Orleans is part of the reason, because it's a place where these "wholesale changes … have been tried and have shown some promising results," he says.
CHARTER EXPANSION: EXCITING, OR TROUBLING?
In theory, charter schools let parents "vote with their feet," creating a market-based approach that promotes competition among public schools and pushes them to improve.
But they've been controversial because as students migrate to charters they take public dollars with them. Critics say that can leave the students with the most needs concentrated in the traditional school system. In addition, the fact that some charter school operators are for-profit companies has led some critics to warn that charter schools, like vouchers, are just another way to "privatize" public education. Another source of resistance is that teachers in charter schools typically aren't unionized.
While many charter school advocates are conservatives, a growing number of Democrats – including President Obama and many advocates for disadvantaged families – have become supportive of the charter school idea.
In
Louisiana, only nonprofits and local school boards are allowed to run charter schools. But with charter schools so heavily dominating the landscape here, questions are being raised about the very nature of public education.
"When charter-schooling got kicked off 20-plus years ago, it did something fundamentally different – it said that school districts … weren't the only ones that were able to run public schools," says Andy Smarick, a partner at the nonprofit Bellwether Education Partners in Washington.
Now, the question is becoming whether districts have to run any schools, he says, because New Orleans has shown that "we can move government out of running schools" and have it focus on oversight instead.
What's lost in that, some say, is the historical purpose of public schools as a community endeavor that strengthens American democracy. When an elected school board no longer runs a city's schools, it "eliminates that space … where parents, educators, and public officials talk about what do we value for 'our' kids," says David Meens, an instructor in community studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
THE TRANSFORMATION
Louisiana's Recovery School District was designed in 2003 to turn around the state's worst schools. Before Katrina struck in 2005, the local Orleans Parish School Board had longstanding problems ranging from corruption to near-bankruptcy, but the RSD controlled only five of its 128 schools. After Katrina, the state gave the RSD control of 107 more schools, leaving high performers under local control.
Ever since, the RSD has been on a steady march to turn schools over to charter operators. By the start of the coming school year, 100 percent of the RSD schools in New Orleans will be charters. The RSD has also shut down or not renewed the contracts of six charter schools for failing to meet standards.
"Our model is about empowering educators that are closest to the children, to give them the autonomy to have great schools, but to have a strong accountability system in place," says RSD Superintendent Patrick Dobard. One of the RSD's key roles is "ensuring there is equity and access throughout the whole system."
