The Best Thing for New Orleans

Recently Arne Duncan claimed that Hurricane Katrina was the best thing to happen to the schools of New Orleans. He has since retracted his offensive comments, claiming that what he meant to say was, "Subsequent to that devastating, devastating tragedy we have seen remarkable progress and that school system has improved so rapidly it’s been amazing to watch.”

Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, including its schools. Children and their families suffered through, and are now back at school -- but they face a new school system, one dominated by the private sector. Without adequate funding from the federal and state governments, the city had little choice but to turn over its system to non-profits and for-profit companies. Now, New Orleans has the largest number of charter schools of any city in the country.

In spite of the enthusiasm for the charters, they are riddled with problems (see Leigh Dingerson's chapter of Keeping the Promise: The Debate Over Charter Schools). Many exclude special education students and are physically inaccessible to the majority of students in the city, leaving them to the regular public schools or poorly-functioning charters. Moreover, low-income families spend much of their time getting their homes and neighborhoods back together, and do not have the time to navigate the school choices, leaving the school system with a few strong schools and still many poorly performing schools.

Arne Duncan wants us to see New Orleans as a model. A city largely dedicated to privately-run charter schools. Race to the Top funds require states to support charter growth, even though there is no research confirming that charter schools are better than public schools. Katrina has enabled private operators to take advantage of what Ken Saltman has called "capitalizing on disaster." Katrina wiped out the school system of New Orleans, and created an opportunity for private operators to come in and remake the schools without rebuilding or consulting the communities that the schools would serve. Indeed, these schools were remade as an essentially privately-run system.

Mr. Duncan, I ask you, who is benefiting from this system? The poor, and largely African-American communities of New Orleans are resilient, but still struggling to put their homes and neighborhoods back together. Some families are benefiting from the new schools, most are not. The charter operators, on the other hand, can open up shop easily and get public funds to run their schools. This does not seem like a model of urban school systems. We need high quality schools for all children, not a bunch of private operators who create good schools for some. Mr. Duncan, can you come up with a better model for urban schools?

Photo credit: Times Picayune archive