Posted on 07/08/2010 9:14:01 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
If we could start over from scratch in building our public education system, how would we do it? In New Orleans, that question was far from academic in 2005 after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. In fact, the question was literal; at the end of the 2005-6 school year, the city only had six schools in operation. Before Katrina, they may as well have had only six, as they had one of the worst-performing school districts in the nation. As one person relates in this Reason TV video, one school had a valedictorian who could not pass a graduation exam in six attempts despite getting straight As in high school.
New Orleans had a choice in creating a new school system — and choice became a first principle, as Nick Gillespie explains:
Before hurricane Katrina ravaged the city in 2005, New Orleans had one of the worst performing public school districts in the nation. Katrina forced nearly a million people to leave their homes and caused almost $100 billion in damages. To an already failing public school system, the storm seemed to provide the final deathblow. But then something amazing happened. In the wake of Katrina, education reformers decided to seize the opportunity and start fresh with a system based on choice.
Today, New Orleans has the most market-based school system in the US. Sixty percent of New Orleans students currently attend charter schools, test scores are up, and talented and passionate educators from around the country are flocking to New Orleans to be a part of the education revolution. It’s too early to tell if the New Orleans experiment in school choice will succeed over the long term, but for the first time in decades people are optimistic about the future of New Orleans schools.
The key attributes are competition, parental choice, investment, and an end to the union deathgrip on New Orleans schools that kept children locked into failing schools and failing classrooms. Parents in New Orleans have hope now that their children will get educated rather than baby-sat, and that will provide a renaissance of its own to a city struggling to get back on its feet.
Otherwise, we’ll end up with this, courtesy of Bob Ewing at the Daily Caller:
Everyone knew OSP would be a bargain. DC has among the highest spending per pupil in the nation. At a conservative estimate of $17,542, the public schools spend over $10,000 more per child than the $7,500 spent through the scholarship program.
But would OSP achieve measureable results?
The answer is a resounding yes. Previous studies by Wolf showed an improvement in academic performance, to the point that a student participating in OSP from kindergarten through high school would likely be 2 ½ years ahead in reading. The key finding in this final round of research, Wolf told us, was the graduation rates. OSP dramatically increases prospects of high-school graduation.
Wolf pointed to research showing that high-school diplomas significantly improve the chance of getting a job. And dropouts that do find employment earn about $8,500 less per year than their counterpoints with diplomas. Further, each graduate reduces the cost of crime by a stunning $112,000. Cecelia Rouse, an economic advisor to President Obama, found that each additional high school graduate saves the country $260,000.
Simply put, OSP has a profoundly positive effect not just on students, but on the city and the country as a whole.
So when it came time for Congress to reauthorize OSP, it would seem to be a no-brainer: Expand the program.
Instead, they killed it.
Of course. They haven’t had a Katrina to refocus Congress on what ails education; instead, they’re acting in thrall to the teachers union. Be sure to read it all; it’s as depressing as the Reason TV video is uplifting.
Someone posted on the site :
I wonder if Bobby Jindal was quietly working on this, before the oil well blew in the Gulf!
Maybe some other school systems could use a good hurricane.
I had not realized that all of the national education ass-ociation union members had been swept out to sea. Somehow, no tears are being produced.
Shhhhh don’t tell anybody... LOL
The OLD FASHIONED public school system educated generation after generation of American children. It took in the children of immigrants right “off the boat” and educated those children as AMERICANS.
The OLD FASHIONED public school system was instrumental in the creation of the greatest nation in the history of the earth. There were no educators...there were TEACHERS in the classroom. Immigrant children were taught in the UNIFYING English language, even if they spoke the old language to their parents.
These children rose to assist in the building of this country as they assumed HIGH positions in law, science, medicine, industry, music, art, sports and the general advancement of their adopted land.
THEIR children went to war and, at high cost, saved the world.
Today, the chief occupation of the EDUCATORS of the USA is thinking up excuses to explain that the failure of the school system is, naturally, someone else’s fault.
Any OLD FASHIONED teachers around?
N.O back in the late 1990s removed George Washington’s name from a school, replacing it with a black’s name because Washington was a “slaveowner”.
Hopefully they are focusing on other things to improve the terrible schools. (although I think, all in all, it’s going to be a futile effort)
One thing to remember is that many of the children from New Orleans are now in the cities and suburbs of Houston and Dallas. The academic test scores in many schools with a high number of refugees were lower than in previous years.
The improvement in NO’s school system is a combination of better schools and better students. When you have better base materials to work with, you have a better end product.
A subject always taught, but NOT on the listed schedule was DISCIPLINE. Children were taught how to act and behave in society, and in the language they understood, even if that language was a firm SWAT.
Acting up got you a visit to the “OFFICE”, which was worse than Siberia. In my school you had to go see HILDA V.
Imagine a VALKYRIE astride her steed, just minus the horned helmet and shield, but WITH her sword. That was HILDA V. and you did NOT want to face her.
Today, the brat has his own lawyer and the administration is cowed by a school administration afraid to lose a vote, no matter the damage it does.
Both pre-K and post, public school students in New Orleans have been overwhelmingly black and poor. Apart from a few magnet schools, white children are almost entirely absent from the public schools here.
ping for later
RE: When you have better base materials to work with, you have a better end product.
How does one qualify as possessing “better base material” ? Is this in-born?
If so, it seems that you can only go so far with a worse base material. For instance, no amount of forcing wood to be non-combustible is going to make it non-combustible. It’s just it’s nature. In the same way, if you were born to be like wood ( your base material ), how’s spending another $20,000 a year on you going to make you like Iron ?
I’m not talking about race, I’m talking about students willing to learn. When the students want to learn, they can learn ANYTHING. It doesn’t take that many disruptive thugs to make it impossible to teach. Many of them came to Texas. Fights and thefts increased at the high school my friend’s daughters attended as soon as the refugees arrived. Quite frankly, the crime rate went up in the areas that saw large numbers of former NO residents.
Still, for the kids that were borderline students, having at least some of the bad seeds no longer in NO wouldn’t hurt.
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