After Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans in August 2005, the state-run Recovery School District took over most of New Orleans' schools, largely due to poor academic performance. The new system was meant to stress choice in education, allowing families to have a say in which school their children attend rather than having their children assigned to a school based on geography. Today, more than 90 percent of New Orleans students attend charter schools.
"The academic performance of New Orleans' schools has improved remarkably over the past ten years," the report's authors, Patrick Sims and Vincent Rossmeier, wrote. "With increasing test scores and graduation rates, everyone involved in education should feel proud of the progress made thus far."
The reforms were wildly successful. In 2005, 62 percent of New Orleans students attended a failing school. Amazingly, that number has fallen to just seven percent today. Ten years ago, the graduation rate was nine percentage points lower in New Orleans compared to the state overall. Today, the graduation rates are virtually equal.
3 comments:
Liberals don't like people to have choices.
Obama is dead set against school choice. Why anyone would support him is mind boggling to those of us who are intelligent and successful. Only a very stupid sort of person like those with IQ's in the imbecile range would support someone like obama who thinks the government knows what's best for someone's children.
utter, UTTER BS. The "choice" is between dog poop and horse poop. I lived and worked in NOLA from 2004 to 2013 and its education system is one of the reasons why many people have left...including my wife and I once our kids were of school age. More than half of the cheater, I mean charter schools are run my fly-by-night companies that suck up tax money through corporate welfare and then under supply students and teachers on basic things like supplies, class size and even basic accreditation. My neighbor's kid was sent home one day because the school's septic system backed up one day and filled the school with an awful odor for three days. It was later discovered that they had outsourced the maintenance work to the cousin of the principal. The teachers are also forced to teach to only exams which means my kids would have learned NOTHING in school but how to take a BS corporate exam. kids in NOLA learn more on the streets selling drugs and based on what I have seen of the schools...there is also more honor in that then working for one of these sleaze corporate welfare schools....
Post a Comment