New Orleans takes a chance on charter schools
In his recent response to the State of the Union address, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal took the unusual step of drawing national attention to an issue in his own home state: education reform. He declared, “After Katrina, we reinvented the New Orleans school system, opening dozens of new charter schools, and creating a new scholarship program this is giving parents the chance to send their children to private or parochial schools of their choice.” His claim was no exaggeration: New Orleans’ public school system has seen almost a complete overhaul in the past decade. The Recovery School District boasts 33 traditional and 33 charter schools, and the Orleans Parish School Board goes even further, with only five traditional and twelve charter schools.
All this change has attracted the eye of Arne Duncan, the newly appointed Secretary of Education. On Friday, March 20th, he visited New Orleans with Senator Mary Landrieu (D-La.) to tour a few of its more successful charter schools, whose innovations make the city a viable candidate for one of the $5 billion grants to be given out next year to cutting-edge education reformers. “We’re hoping [the Secretary] will recognize Lousisiana as one of the premier investment opportunities,” Landrieu later told the HPR. The increasing numbers of charter schools bring innovation and improvement to New Orleans, yet traditionally-run public schools retain a significant presence in a district that is slowly regaining its self-assurance. As the end of the charter schools’ five-year contracts approaches, the attention of educators nationwide will focus on this resilient city and the implications of its grand experiment for education reform elsewhere.
Before the Storm
New Orleans’ transformation began in 2005, not long before Katrina hit. In an attempt to save many public schools from academic failure, the Louisiana state government created a Recovery School District (RSD) with all schools performing below the state average, giving the rest to the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB), with the twelve best turned into charter schools. The state takeover of failed schools through the Recovery School District has seen slow but notable success. “After the storm there was this opportunity because no schools were open and the city was desolate,” Rhonda Kalifey-Aluise, executive director of the Knowledge of Power Program (KIPP) schools in New Orldeans, told the HPR. “It took time to reopen and the state did what it had to do at the time and created a place where people could come in or return to.”
“There were five charter schools in the Recovery School District before Katrina hit. The public was totally unengaged pre-Katrina,” said Leslie Jacobs in an interview with the HPR. Jacobs, a former New Orleans School Board member integral to the creation of the Recovery School District, later founded Educate Now! to continue lobbying for “sustainable reform of New Orleans schools.” When Katrina struck, the New Orleans School District was both the largest and worst-performing district in Louisiana.
Today, education leaders in New Orleans are at a crossroads because the final path of direction for the school system is still unclear. Though the original legislation stipulated that within five years the state would take over failing schools and turn them around, “turning around schools is not for the faint of heart,” said Woody Koppell, president of the Orleans Parish School Board, in an interview with the HPR. “The process hasn’t come to fruition in the way that people have anticipated. There hasn’t been any sort of exit strategy, and we’re approaching the five year mark,” he added.
Competing Visions
Yet, many in New Orleans are conflicted over what the state takeover process will mean. Supporters of charter schools are confident that increasing the number of charter schools will have an immediate positive effect on the community because of their locality and emphasis on choice. Jacobs noted, “We have one of the most market driven [school] systems in the country, Every school is a school of choice… and money follows the students.” She expected that, by 2014, at least 75 percent of New Orleans students will be attending charter schools.
For Koppel, however, choice means something quite different. “I am a charter supporter, but I believe in moderation,” he said. “Choice means we have charter schools and regular schools. I don’t see how the model sustains itself as a completely charter district. We want to create traditionally runs schools that use a lot of charter methods.” As it currently stands, the momentum in New Orleans favors even more charter schools. But the arguments of Koppel and others who accord a place to traditional institutions have also found supporters, in light of the importance of institutional memory and the interdependence between the two school types.
As New Orleans’ public school system shifts away from state government control to a more decentralized and localized network, local and state leaders are finding themselves pulled in opposite directions. During his visit to New Orleans, Secretary Duncan was quoted by the New Orleans Times-Picayune as speaking against locally-elected school boards in urban districts saying, “You need leadership from the top.” Duncan is not entirely opposed to local boards, however, if they are willing to quickly close poorly-performing schools — his fear, common to top administrators, is that close community ties might interfere with tough decisions made necessary by state and national standards.
Like his fellow school administrators, Koppel would be inclined to disagree, arguing instead that the decentralization increases accountability. “There should always be some sort of local governing body watching over schools, someone who’s accountable to the public. I don’t want someone who dictates from the top,” he said. He believes that charter authorizers should not be involved in the daily activities of the schools — a point on which he agrees with their proponents.
Senator Landrieu happens to agree. “The state is going to have to step up and help with school construction and maintenance and continue to support the recovery district,” she conceded, “but the state should also look at giving more flexibility to parishes where schools are not failing — give them the flexibility and independence that allows them to be great.”
A consensus is emerging on all sides that a resolution of the state’s role within the New Orleans system is needed. Charters fear returning to the Orleans Parish School Board’s control, and the law does not currently mandate that they do. The future of New Orleans’ charter schools and their students thus remains terribly unclear.
A Bright Future
There is a strong pull from many innovators in the system to continue with multiple school boards and more local administration. Charter schools enjoy their own boards and the other public schools prefer the independence that localization brings. If the success in New Orleans’ charter and traditional public schools continues, the ‘decentralists’ are likely to gain even more supporters. Said Kalife-Aluise, “I think amazing things are happening for schools — everyone has been in pure action mode in terms of rebuilding.” She added, “Next, leaders and the broader community have to figure out the long-term, systematic political and governance structure.”
In his recent remarks, Governor Jindal claimed that “here in my state of Louisiana, we don’t care what party you belong to if you have good ideas to make life better for our people.” In that assessment, at least, he was entirely right: despite their differing visions for the future of the New Orleans schools, educators in the district remain united in their aim to, as Jacobs put it, “take regular kids and educate them to new levels.” Only five years after the experiment began, they are optimistic: as Sen. Landrieu noted, “In what was one of the worst school systems, [reform] is happening in the biggest way.”
Whether the success story continues will depend on the continued results of New Orleans’ great charter experiment — and its twin school districts’ ability to adjudicate between these diverse visions of education reform and bring the lessons of their former success to bear upon the troubled schools that remain.
Editor’s note: The original version of this article did not include comments by Senator Mary Landrieu (D-Louis.); the current version reflects those changes.
