Posted on 05/29/2014 6:59:18 AM PDT by ghost of stonewall jackson
new orleans The second-graders paraded to the Dumpster in the rear parking lot, where they chucked boxes of old work sheets, notebooks and other detritus into the trash, emptying their school for good.
Benjamin Banneker Elementary closed Wednesday as New Orleanss Recovery School District permanently shuttered its last five traditional public schools this week.
With the start of the next school year, the Recovery School District will be the first in the country made up completely of public charter schools, a milestone for New Orleans and a grand experiment in urban education for the nation.
***
By most indicators, school quality and academic progress have improved in Katrinas aftermath, although its difficult to make direct comparisons because the student population changed drastically after the hurricane, with thousands of students not returning.
Before the storm, the citys high school graduation rate was 54.4 percent. In 2013, the rate for the Recovery School District was 77.6 percent. On average, 57 percent of students performed at grade level in math and reading in 2013, up from 23 percent in 2007, according to the state.
Opinion surveys show support for charter schools but unease about the shuttering of all traditional schools, with just 41 percent of New Orleans residents backing the idea in a poll commissioned by the Cowen Institute for Public Education Initiatives at Tulane University in New Orleans. The changes also have been stirred racial tensions and claims of disenfranchisement.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
How is anybody disenfranchised if everybody still gets to go to a school? Oh - that's right: it's a standard term that must be used in this situation - like the term "racism".
wow! i hope to see good things come of this... i expect to... how pathetic of the 41 percent who are not in agreement with doing away with all the traditional public schools in the district... just who do they think should remain in those cesspools?
i read that wrong... sheesh--it is 41 percent who agree with the shutting down of all the traditional public schools... it's worse than i thought...
parents have absolutely NO control in government schools... everything is mandated by the CENTRAL government... public education has ceased being public education a long time ago... it is government education...
They dont answer to anyone, said Sean Johnson, the dean of students at Banneker, whose father attended the school while growing up in the Black Pearl neighborhood. The charters have money and want to make more money. They have their own boards, make their own rules, accept who they want and put out who they want to put out.
this is a benefit to the schools and students... they do not have to answer to the ridiculous bureaucracy that is government school... they can get to the business of learning...
The illiterates love those old failed schools that employed the unemployable and taught absolutely nothing but survival. Texas schools that accepted Katrina refugees were shocked at how far behind these students were. But there were some good football players in the group, so that was a plus.
Recently, in New Orleans, I saw many neatly dressed students, of all ages, getting on and off the City transit system. We passed schools with very high fencing. We didn’t understand what was going on there. How wonderful for the citizens of the city for the children to be learning and graduating at tremendous rates.
May NO be a light that shines for others to see!
Honestly, there have not been traditional” schools for decades.
What we call “traditional” schools is quite different from what the Washington Post calls traditional.
“Cesspools” works here.
This may be the thing which allows Bobby Jindal to recover from his hideous speechifying.
Thankfully in this case it won't matter - it's a done deal. Katrina was like the flushing of a toilet. Yep.
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