Making a Difference with New Schools in New Orleans

When I visited New Orleans before Katrina, I saw third world schools -- decrepit physical conditions, corrupt governance, and abysmal academic output. Based on my last few visits, I can report that some good has come out of the horrible tragedy of the hurricanes -- New Orleans has the highest percentage of students in charter schools and most of them are great.

A former shopping center near Tulane now houses one the most impressive concentrations of new school talent in the country. The heart of the operation, in the old shoe store, is New Schools for New Orleans (NSNO).

Matt Candler grew up in Atlanta, helped grow KIPP, and then incubated new charters for the New York City Center for Charter School Excellence. After Katrina, Candler was one of several talented educators to head south to New Orleans to help with recovery efforts (White House Fellow Marc Sternberg was another notable contributor).

Initial efforts to bring proven operators to town were partially successful, but Candler knew they needed to create more homegrown charters. New Schools for New Orleans, formed with grants from Gates, Broad, and Fisher, set out to create cohorts of great schools and local charter management organizations.

Scott Cowen, Tulane, played an important recovery leadership role. Jim Shelton, now leading innovation at the Education Department, and I met with Cowen as the water was receding from an abandoned campus. He chaired the city's education recovery efforts and helped architect a new educational vision for the city.

Charter leaders at NSNO spend at least 13 months in a well structured and supported program planning their new schools. They get help applying for a charter, planning their school, and hiring staff. They receive grant funding after reaching key milestones and benefit from the other education partners in the shopping center including:

• The New Teacher Project
• Louisiana's Charter School Association
• The Practitioner Teacher Program, run by The New Teacher Project
• Teach for America
• New Leaders for New Schools
• Scott Cowen's Institute for Public Education Initiatives

State superintendent Paul Pastorek, an attorney that left a lucrative practice to help post recovery, deserves some of the credit. He helped form the Recovery School District and hired Paul Vallas to take on RSD New Orleans. The two of them have created an environment that rivals New York City as the best school development hotbed in America.

Matt Candler has four schools to launch this summer, and will soon start planning his next contribution. He leaves a legacy of great schools and well prepared school leaders that will serve the community in the decade to come.

Follow Tom Vander Ark on Twitter: www.twitter.com/tvanderark

Comments

[Susan Oliver]

Tom Upchurch, longtime educator and advocate from GA helped with this recovery effort and told me "this probably wouldn't work without a storm, but we have many poor rural and urban schools in America that need some major push, not just working around the edges." Ed Sec Arne Duncan, ARRA funds -- $100Billion investment in schools, race to the top money -- all of it -- bring it on -- and in an impactful way -- hit RESET NOW.

[senga6]

Here is a question the charter school boosters never seem to want to answer: Exactly what percentage of public school students in New York or in New Orleans actually attend charter schools? If that number is less than ten percent, how can you realistically tout charter schools as making a big change in the education system? Isn't that a dishonest and politically expedient way to boost your profile as an "education reformer"? I have nothing against charter schools, but I am tired of the dishonesty. Charter schools are the new vouchers - a fake "solution" to the ongoing disaster that is our public education system.

[TopProf]

Prove two items: students are not specially selected, and teachers are fully trained and certified. Until then, let's keep enthusiasm under control. I am more apt to believe Naomi Klein, who placed the privatized schools after Katrina in the Shock Doctrine category.

[siddity]

It's a lot more than 10 percent in New Orleans. More like 60% of public school students . That will be up slightly from 58% or so who attended charter schools in 08-09. The Recovery School District -- which took over underperforming schools (meaning most of them in New Orleans), will have 38 charter schools and 34 traditional schools in the next school year. All are open enrollment and all have very high percentages of at-risk students. Some of those charter schools are now outperforming some of the select-admission schools operated by the New Orleans Public School system, which kept its high-performing schools. NOPS, by the way, has 6 traditional schools and 12 charter schools. The universities are involved, parents are more involved, and community groups are move involved. Parents for the first time have real school choice in NOLA and schools have been set free from a lot of the institutional obstacles they faced under the old school board (like not being able to fire bad teachers).