August 23, 2006--Fix the Friggin Schools!
Today marks the first anniversary of when Hurricane Katrina formed over the Bahamas. On that day no one knew its devastating potential. It struck New Orleans on August 29th. We know all too well what it left behind.
One would think that if the city wants its displaced residents to return, by now they would have schools ready for the children. Forget the fact that many of these kids missed a year of schooling. That’s bad enough, but how can you expect the city to come back to life if the school system is still a mess?
The NY Times reported recently about just how big a mess it is. (Article linked below.) Nearly half the schools theoretically ready to open do not have any administrators in place, much less teachers. As part of the “solution,” the state encouraged the establishment of charter schools.
Forget for a moment that there is gathering evidence that equivalent kids in public schools do better academically than children in charter schools. Let’s say that any school is better than no school. But in New Orleans most of the new charters have established admission standards so that the neediest students are effectively being screened out.
Forget the federal government. Though “Brownie” is no longer on the job the Feds are still not getting the job done. So where are all the private funders? Where, for example, is the Gates Foundation? Our largest, tax-exempt foundation with a huge, multi-billion dollar budget to improve America’s lowest-performing schools, is AWOL.
With their agenda to fund the establishment of small schools, isn’t New Orleans an ideal proving ground for them? There, sadly, they could have been working on a blank slate since all the schools were destroyed. For a measly few hundred million Gates could have helped the city set up scores of small schools and shown the nation both how this is a good approach to school reform and how serious they are about working with the most daunting of social problems.
To quote a 17- year-old who is waiting for his high school to reopen, “If they turn kids away, guess where they’re going to wind up? On the corner. You’ll hear about it when they get killed.”
One would think that if the city wants its displaced residents to return, by now they would have schools ready for the children. Forget the fact that many of these kids missed a year of schooling. That’s bad enough, but how can you expect the city to come back to life if the school system is still a mess?
The NY Times reported recently about just how big a mess it is. (Article linked below.) Nearly half the schools theoretically ready to open do not have any administrators in place, much less teachers. As part of the “solution,” the state encouraged the establishment of charter schools.
Forget for a moment that there is gathering evidence that equivalent kids in public schools do better academically than children in charter schools. Let’s say that any school is better than no school. But in New Orleans most of the new charters have established admission standards so that the neediest students are effectively being screened out.
Forget the federal government. Though “Brownie” is no longer on the job the Feds are still not getting the job done. So where are all the private funders? Where, for example, is the Gates Foundation? Our largest, tax-exempt foundation with a huge, multi-billion dollar budget to improve America’s lowest-performing schools, is AWOL.
With their agenda to fund the establishment of small schools, isn’t New Orleans an ideal proving ground for them? There, sadly, they could have been working on a blank slate since all the schools were destroyed. For a measly few hundred million Gates could have helped the city set up scores of small schools and shown the nation both how this is a good approach to school reform and how serious they are about working with the most daunting of social problems.
To quote a 17- year-old who is waiting for his high school to reopen, “If they turn kids away, guess where they’re going to wind up? On the corner. You’ll hear about it when they get killed.”
posted by Steven Zwerling at
11:31 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home