Fighting for the Right to Learn in New Orleans

By Bill Quigley

“Of all the civil rights for which the world has struggled and fought for 5,000 years, the right to learn is undoubtedly the most fundamental…The freedom to learn…has been bought by bitter sacrifice. And whatever we may think of the curtailment of other civil rights, we should fight to the last ditch to keep open the right to learn.” W.E.B. DuBois, “The Freedom to Learn.” (1949)

"Education is the property of no one. It belongs to the people as a whole. And if education is not given to the people, they will have to take it." Che Guevara

""We wanted charter schools to open and take the majority of the students. That didn't happen, and now we have the responsibility of educating the 'leftover' children." Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary School Member (2007)

08/10/07 "ICH" -- -- There is a massive experiment being performed on thousands of primarily African American children in New Orleans. No one asked the permission of the children. No one asked permission of their parents. This experiment involves a fight for the education of children.

This is the experiment.

The First Half

Half of the nearly 30,000 children expected to enroll in the fall of 2007 in New Orleans public schools have been enrolled in special public schools, most called charter schools. These schools have been given tens of millions of dollars by the federal government in extra money, over and above their regular state and local money, to set up and operate. These special public schools are not open to every child and do not allow every student who wants to attend to enroll. Some charter schools have special selective academic criteria which allow them to exclude children in need of special academic help. Other charter schools have special admission policies and student and parental requirements which effectively screen out many children.

The children in this half of the experiment are taught by accredited teachers in manageable sized classes. There are no overcrowded classes because these charter schools have enrollment caps which allow them to turn away students. These schools also educate far fewer students with academic or emotional disabilities. Children in charter schools are in better facilities than the other half of the children.

These schools are getting special grants from Laura Bush to rebuild their libraries and grants from other foundations to help them educate. These schools do educate some white children along with African American children. These are public schools, but they are not available to all the public school students.

The Other Half

The other half of public school students, over ten thousand children, have been assigned to a one year old experiment in public education run by the State of Louisiana called the “Recovery School District” (RSD) program. The education these children receive will be compared to the education received by the first half in the charter schools. These children are effectively what is called the “control group” of an experiment – those against whom the others will be evaluated.

The RSD schools have not been given millions of extra federal dollars to operate. The new RSD has inexperienced leadership. Many critical vacancies exist in their already insufficient district-wide staff. Many of the teachers are uncertified. In fact, the RSD schools do not yet have enough teachers, even counting the uncertified, to start school in the fall of 2007. Some of the RSD school buildings scheduled to be used for the fall of 2007 have not yet been built.

In the first year of this experiment, the RSD had one security guard for every 37 students. Students at John McDonough High said their RSD school, which employed more guards than teachers, had a “prison atmosphere.” In some schools, children spent long stretches of their school days in the gymnasium waiting for teachers to show up to teach them.

There is little academic or emotional counseling in the RSD schools. Children with special needs suffer from lack of qualified staff. College prep math and science classes and language immersion are rarely offered. Class rooms keep filling up as new children return back to New Orleans and are assigned to RSD schools.

Many of the RSD schools do not have working kitchens or water fountains. Bathroom facilities are scandalous – teachers at one school report there are two bathrooms for the entire school, one for all the male students, faculty and staff and another for all the females in the building.
Danatus King, of the NAACP in New Orleans, said “What happened last year was a tragedy. Many of the city’s children were denied an education last year because of a failure to plan on the part of the RSD.”

Hardly any white children attend this half of the school experiment.

These are the public schools available to the rest of the public school students.

Who Started This Experiment

After Katrina, groups in New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Washington DC saw an opportunity to radically restructure public education in New Orleans and turn many public schools into publicly funded charter schools. Charter schools are publicly funded schools that have far more freedom to select the children they admit, more freedom in the way they operate, and more freedom in the hiring and firing of teachers.

This experiment has been controversial from the beginning.

Some people are very critical. According to a recent report on this experiment by New Orleans teachers, right after Katrina “a well-organized and well-financed national network of charter school advocates hastened the conversion of public schools by waiving previous requirements.” Without input from parents or teachers, these folks engaged in what the teachers called a “massive takeover experiment with the children of New Orleans at a time when most parents and students were widely dispersed in other parishes and states.” See NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY: How the New Orleans Takeover Experiment Devalues Experienced Teachers,” June 2007, (hereafter New Orleans Teachers Report).

Supporters like Governor Blanco hailed the experiment as "an opportunity to do something incredible." Others agreed. "We are using this as an opportunity to take what was one of the worst school systems around and create one of the best and most competitive school systems in America," said Walter Isaacson, vice chairman of the Louisiana Recovery Authority. "This is an unprecedented opportunity to rebuild the school system the way it should be," says Scott Cowen, president of Tulane University. The Tulane Scott Cowen Institute and other supporters have authored their own report on the experiment, STATE OF PUBLIC EDUCATION IN NEW ORLEANS, June 2007, (hereafter the Cowen Report).

How Government Created This Experiment

This experiment was started and approved while students and parents were not around to participate in the decision. Before Katrina, the process of creating a charter school was legally required to first have the approval of parents and teachers. Supporters of this experiment, many if not most of who do not have children in public schools, repeatedly argue that this experiment creates “choice” for at least half the parents and students. The irony is that few parents had any choice at all in creating the experiment involving their children.

The very first public school converted to a charter was done on September 15, 2005, while almost all the city remained closed to residents. The school board did not even hold the meeting in New Orleans.

While President Bush may have been slow to react in other areas after the storm, he made a bold push right after Katrina to help convert public schools to charters.

On September 30, 2005, the U.S. Department of Education pledged $20.9 million to Louisiana for post-Katrina charter schools. The federal government offered no comparable funding to reestablish traditional neighborhood or district schools.

In early October 2005, Governor Blanco issued an executive order which waived state laws which required faculty and parent approval to convert a regular public school to a charter school. The Orleans School Board then used this waiver to convert all 13 schools in the less-flooded Algiers community of New Orleans to charter schools without parent or teacher approval.

Then all four thousand public school teachers in New Orleans, members of the largest union in Louisiana, were fired – along with support staff.

The rest of the takeover was accomplished in November 2005 under new rules enacted by the Louisiana legislature. All this while most of the families of public school students remained displaced, many hundreds of miles away.

The New Orleans Teachers Report complained that “Proponents of the New Orleans takeover experiment created the false impression that the hurricane forced the state takeover or that a fair and uniform accountability system led to the state’s action.

In fact, the state changed the rules and targeted New Orleans schools in an attempt to convert all schools to charter status, not just the failing ones. Most charter schools are pre-existing schools that were converted to charter status. After the mass charter school conversions in the three months following Katrina, the RSD…authorized only three more charters….Of the 12 schools, the operation of all but three have been given to providers who are based out of state.”

Many foundations are contributing large sums of money to the experiment.

For example, the Laura Bush Foundation has generously donated millions of dollars to rebuild school libraries in schools along the gulf coast. Her foundation has given tens of thousands of dollars in grants to rebuild the libraries of 13 schools in New Orleans – 8 of which are charter schools and 5 are private catholic schools. Not one is a RSD regular public school.

How the Experiment Actually Operates

With a few exceptions, the state of Louisiana essentially now controls the public school system in New Orleans. There is little local control. The state has subcontracted much of the work of education to willing charter schools.

Of the public schools operating at the end of the 2006-2007 academic year, educating 57 percent of public school students, were charters.

This makes New Orleans the urban district with by far the highest proportion of publicly funded charter schools in the nation. Dayton Ohio has the second highest concentration of charter schools involving 30% of its 17,000 students.

This experiment has resulted in a clearly defined two-tier public school system.

The top tier is made up of the best public and charter public schools, which most children cannot get into, and a number of new and promising charter public schools that are available for the industrious and determined parents of children who do not have academic or emotional disabilities.

The second tier is for the rest of the children. Their education is assigned to the RSD (some are already calling it “The Rest of the School District”).

The top half of the schools are the point of this experiment in public charter schools. National charter school advocacy groups are pointing to New Orleans as the experiment which will demonstrate that publicly funded charter schools are superior to public schools.

However, the top half could not work without the bottom half. If the schools in the top half had to accept the students assigned to the second tier schools, the results of the experiment would obviously turn out quite differently. As the experiment is structured, students in the bottom half schools will be very useful to compare with the top half to see how well this works.

While some sympathize with the children in the bottom half, little has been done to assist those in the RSD schools.

How the Top Half Operates

Start with the money. Charter schools have more of it than the RSD schools.

Each charter school is given a share of the federal $20.9 million dollar grant. None of that money is available to non-charter public schools.

As the Cowen report notes, charter public schools also have advantages other than just financial ones over other the rest of the public schools. Though funded by tax dollars, charters are granted greater autonomy over staffing budgeting and curriculum than regular public schools. Charters have better facilities, fewer problems attracting staff and can keep school class size small.

Charters are allowed to impose enrollment caps. These caps allow them to turn down additional students who seek to enroll. This keeps pupil teacher ratios down and class sizes small – a universally recognized key to academic achievement.

Some of the top tier public schools have explicit selective enrollment policies which screen out children with academic problems. Most of the remaining charters are technically supposed to be open enrollment schools but require pre-application essays, parental-involvement requirements and specific behavior contracts – allowing these charter schools the flexibility to “manage” their incoming classes, rather than having to accept every student who applies. At nine schools, traditional public school transportation is not even provided, further limiting the choices.

A look at Algiers charter school association (ACSA) website illustrates how schools in the top half operate.

Financially, the ACSA budget reports expenditures of $27 million in 2006-2007, leaving an apparent surplus of $11 million. For 2005-2006, the ACSA was given $2.5 million from Orleans Parish School Board ($500 per student over and above their regular funding), a $6 million federal charter school grant, plus the state minimum foundation funds.

That is not all the extra money. The ACSA has also received several major grants. For example, in June of 2007, the ACSA was awarded a special $999,000 federal grant to help improve learning in American history. In March, 2007, Baptist Community Ministries announced a $4.2 million grant to create a network among the charter schools.

The ACSA website includes their application process, which specifically spells out that student applicants will NOT be considered “on a first come first serve basis.” Decisions on whether an applicant is allowed to attend will be based on several factors, including scores on state examinations and whether applicant has ever received any special education services for a learning disability or emotional disturbance.

Many of the other charter schools also benefit from special funds and special admissions policies. One of the most selective public charter schools, Lusher charter school, received millions extra in special grants from Tulane University, FEMA, the State of Louisiana, a German Foundation which gave $1.1 million to renovate the gymnasium, and other foundations.

Wouldn’t every returning student like to enroll in one of these schools?

Students returning to New Orleans who might seek to enroll in one of the top half schools are likely to be disappointed as the deadline for enrollment at most of the charter schools has already passed. For example, applications to enroll in Lusher charter for this fall were due December 15, 2006.

How the Rest of the School District Operates

By law, the RSD is required to accept any student who shows up and is prohibited from having any selective admissions policy.

From the beginning, Louisiana officials charged with making policy and operating the RSD complained that they were being left with educating the “leftover children” after the charters and the selective schools took the children with the best academic scores and best parental involvement.
Damon Hewitt, a civil rights attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and a New Orleans native, discovered the reference to “leftovers” in an email sent by one of Louisiana’s top education policy makers. The email is from Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) member Glenny Lee Buquet. She wrote in an internal BESE e-mail in January 2007, obtained by Hewitt in a federal case, “We wanted charter schools to open and take the majority of the students. That didn't happen, and now we have the responsibility of educating the 'leftover' children."

Who are the leftover children in the RSD? Hewitt again: “The students served by the RSD are typically those who could not get into any of the fancy charter or selective admissions schools. They are the average New Orleans students - talented, creative and bright, but locked in poverty and out of opportunity.”

The average New Orleanian child is our child. These children are the children of our sisters and brothers and cousins and coworkers. Yet they are categorized as, and treated like, something quite different by people in charge of public education.

The RSD has not been up to the job of educating New Orleans children because, from day one and continuing until today, it lacked the appropriate number and quality of people and the expertise to run a big urban school system.

One of the best illustrations of the problems of the RSD is their refusal to admit hundreds of returning New Orleans children to public schools in January of 2007. Instead, the RSD put these kids on a “waiting list.” Public outcry and two federal lawsuits forced a quick reversal and the kids were put into RSD schools.

At the same time as the RSD put kids on a waiting list, “Thousands of empty seats and dozens of empty classrooms could be found in charter schools or in the city’s selective or discretionary-admissions public schools” the New Orleans Teachers Report points out.

So why was there a problem? There was space for these kids in the charter public schools. But because the public charter schools are allowed to cap their enrollment they did not have to admit any new children. In reality, the main reason there was a problem was not space, but a shortage of teachers willing to work for the RSD.

Is it any surprise that the disorganized and under-staffed RSD was having problems finding teachers for their schools?

The New Orleans teachers report indicate many veteran teachers remain furious at the State of Louisiana and its RSD because they were fired and their right to collective bargaining was terminated. Teachers point out that veteran teachers hired in adjoining districts continue to enjoy collective bargaining along with the rest of the teachers. But not in New Orleans. Uncertified teachers were widespread in RSD schools.

In fact, certified teachers from around the country who wanted to help by teaching in New Orleans were directed by the Teach for NOLA recruitment website to charter schools. Uncertified teachers were directed to the RSD.

The RSD was still 500 teachers short at the time this article was written. In July of 2007, the RSD ran a $400,000 national campaign to try to hire an additional 500 teachers to start in the fall. The RSD is offering up $17,300 in relocation and other incentives to try to get teachers into the system. If there are any teachers reading this, please come and help the children in the RSD out – you are desperately needed!

As of July, the RSD was also working furiously to erect temporary modular buildings to house children when school starts in the fall. Meanwhile, neighboring St. Bernard Parish opened school in temporary school buildings two months after Katrina – nearly two years ago.

An indication of the fragmentation of the system are the many starting dates for New Orleans public schools. Some charter schools will start August 6, another on the 8th. Five start August 14, others in mid to late August. The two dozen or so RSD schools will open September 4 – in part to give more time to build new schools to open and to recruit teachers.

During 2006-2007 school security became a top issue. Consider the experiment of placing thousands of recently traumatized and frequently displaced children into schools without enough teachers or staff or facilities. Consider also that those who are charged with supervising the schools are inexperienced and understaffed as well. The logical outcome of such an experiment is insecurity.

The RSD spent $20 million on security. They had one security guard for every 37 students in 2006-2007, a rate nine times higher than the old public school security system. At one point there were 35 guards at RSD John McDonough Senior High plus two off-duty police officers. Thirty two guards started at another school in the fall.

This situation quickly prompted the Fyre Youth Squad, a group of high school students in New Orleans, to challenge the “prison atmosphere” at John McDonough High. There were more security guards than teachers at their school.

What impact does this have on education of children? Research shows that students feel more tense when they encounter security guards at every turn in a school, said Monique Dixon, a senior attorney at the Advancement Project, a Washington, D.C. civil rights organization that works with community groups on issues such as school discipline. "It becomes more of a prison on some levels where people feel they are being watched constantly instead of feeling protected," she said. "It creates a police state."

The financial implications of spending money this way are also troubling. While New Orleans spent $20 million on private security for around 50 schools, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported that the Philadelphia public school security budget for more than 260 schools was about $47 million, which included a 450-member independent police force, 150 auxiliary officers, and partnerships with more than 200 community members. In Detroit, the budget this fiscal year for the 400-member independent police force that protects the public schools, which has more than 100,000 students and more than 200 schools, was about $16 million.

Controlling students sometimes appeared to take priority over educating students.

Damon Hewitt points out that “the line between criminal justice policy and education got much blurrier over the past year and a half, as local schools have resorted to increasingly punitive approaches to school discipline. Relying more on police officers than community engagement, school officials' harsh responses to challenging behavior mirror public fear and sentiment about crime in the city. As a result, more children end up being suspended, expelled and arrested and sent to juvenile court. This phenomenon, which some call the School-to-Prison Pipeline, is literally robbing New Orleans of its most valuable asset - people.”

“Some say that children in New Orleans are suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,” continues Hewitt. “But they are really suffering from the impact of Continuing Trauma - trauma that plays itself out every day. To the extent that children do act out present challenging behavior in schools, a lot of it has to do with both this continuing trauma and unmet educational needs, especially for those students in need of special education and related services. We cannot suspend, expel and arrest our way out of this problem. In fact, those harsh responses only make things worse by depriving young people of much-needed educational opportunity.”

The academic results measured by standardized test scores given in spring 2007 at the RSD schools were predictably low. Nearly half the students failed in most 4th and 8th grade categories. Two-thirds of high school students failed in the Louisiana Educational Assessment Program (LEAP) and Graduate Exit Exam (GEE). The selective public schools had only an 18 percent failure rate on the GEE. LEAP scores for individual schools reported during the summer show what most expected, charter schools test better than RSD schools.

One current public school teacher, name withheld for reasons that will be obvious, was not hopeful.

“The public schools are totally fragmented. The struggles are still the same. Students still have difficult situations at home, some are still in trailers or living with too many people in one small home.”

“Schools still lack books and materials, which I don't understand. After Katrina there were so many offers of help, both physical and monetary. I don't think that the people in charge knew what to do to organize a decent response to the offers.”

“The RSD schools lack enough qualified and experienced teachers. The state Department of Education is well intentioned but they are barely dealing with the day to day issues and they still need to open more schools as people come back to the city.”

“Yes, it sounds dismal. I don't see any big changes for next year. I think many of the charter schools have promise. The charters usually have a committed administration and staff and frequently a committed parent body. That is the secret to success.”

Leigh Dingerson of the Center for Community Change in Washington DC, who has been researching the New Orleans schools after Katrina, sums up the problems with the New Orleans experiment.

“In the 18 months since Hurricane Katrina, the infrastructure of the New Orleans public schools has been systematically dismantled and a new tangle of independently operated educational experiments has been erected in its place. This new structure has taken away community control and community ownership of all but a handful of schools. Instead, independent charter management organizations - virtually all from outside the state - are now running 60 percent of New Orleans schools.”

“There are no more neighborhood boundaries. In a market-based model, parents are considered ‘customers.’ And they’re supposed to ‘choose’ where to send their kids to school. But since every one of the charter schools was filled to capacity, hundreds of parents had no choice at all for their kids.”

“Hundreds of kids with disabilities (who are often turned away from charter schools) are being placed in the under-resourced and over-burdened state-run Recovery School District. It’s their only choice.”

“This Balkanized school system is not closing a gap. It’s opening a chasm.”

The Cowen Report survey of the community agrees with much of the Digerson analysis finding that “for many in the community, the RSD-operated schools are viewed as an unofficial ‘dumping ground’ for students with behavioral or academic challenges.”

All indicators conclude that the RSD overall has done a poor job educating all the thousands of children in their half of the experiment, especially those with disabilities, because of RSD’s own lack of expertise and experienced staff and because the schools they supervise lack the necessary teachers, support staff, and resources.

Possible Positive Results of this Experiment

Given the disastrous start to this experiment, at least for half the children in public schools in New Orleans, are there any positive results possible?

Supporters of the experiment rightfully point out the dismal state of public education in New Orleans prior to Katrina. The public school system had a few elite schools that had some racial mixing in their student body, while most of the rest of the schools were underperforming even by Louisiana standards. Outside of the elite schools, the population of the student body at almost all schools was nearly one hundred percent African-American.

Teachers valued teaching in the elite public schools because they had less turnover, students with better test scores, solid parental involvement and more access to additional resources. There was widespread corruption resulting in over 20 convictions of school board officials or employees. While the national average term for a public school system superintendent was three years, from 1998 to 2005 the New Orleans average was 11 months.

At this point in the experiment, it is fair to conclude that the New Orleans public schools are still divided into some racially mixed elite and charter schools, while the other half of the schools must be classified as underperforming and nearly one hundred percent African-American.

On the other hand, supporters hope that this experiment will show the way to improve public education. It very likely will, at least for the half of the children fortunate enough to get into the top tier schools.

Politically, the real winners in this experiment are almost guaranteed to be those who back the idea of charter schools.

The New Orleans experiment offers tremendous opportunities for backers of charter schools. Up to now, charter schools have not proven superior to regular public schools. For example, in a 2004 Report “Evaluation of the Public Charter Schools Program,” the U.S. Department of Education study of charter schools in five states found “charter schools were somewhat less likely than traditional public schools” to meet state performance standards - but cautioned that the study was unable “to determine whether traditional public schools are more effective than charters.”

But in New Orleans, where the best public schools have been converted into charters and the kids most in need of good schools have been systematically excluded from the top half of the public schools and placed into a dysfunctional system – the charter schools in the upper half are guaranteed to demonstrate better educational outcomes than what education officials call the “leftover” public schools.

If charter schools cannot prove themselves superior with this New Orleans deck stacked in their favor, they should quit and go home.

Apart from charter school backers are there others who are likely to see positive outcomes?

A real positive outcome would be if the experiment could translate the advantages of the top half of the selective schools into success for the rest of the public school children as well. There is little evidence of that happening at this time.

The creators of this experiment acknowledge that a large percentage of the children are being left out. "The bottom line is we are very hopeful about this system of school models that is emerging, and we are showing a lot of progress," said Tulane University President Scott S. Cowen. "But we still have challenges to overcome to fulfill that vision."

Negative Possibilities of This Experiment

Twice as many people in New Orleans think the public school system is worse now than those who think it is better, according to the Cowen Report.

Tracie Washington, civil rights and education attorney and head of the new Louisiana Justice Institute, points out the differences in the schools that she has heard about from hundreds of families.

“Think about the fact that we had parents who had the misfortune of sending their children to schools in two different systems -- RSD and a charter. Now if your daughter attended Lusher charter or Audubon charter, they always had hot meals, clean toilets, books, library, certified teachers, after school activities, AND NO ARMED GUARDS AT THE SCHOOL SITE. Your son had the misfortune of attending RSD schools like Raboin High School, or Clark, or John McDonogh. No books, cold food, essentially an armed encampment. Same family – same mom and dad, same home environment; but the daughter is treated like a student and the son is treated like an inmate at the State Penitentiary at Angola. Actually, they are treated better at Angola because there's a library and hot food is served!”

While the Cowen Report underscores the importance of saving the RSD, there has been no determined or comprehensive community or political attempt to rescue the RSD nor the thousands of children assigned to it.

There is a cruel point in this experiment. Unfortunately, if the RSD continues to do poorly, that makes the selective charter schools appear even more successful. Thus the worse the RSD performs, the better the charters look. Those who have access to the top half will push ahead, those who do not will fall further behind.

Danatus King of the New Orleans NAACP says many think the public education system is intentionally designed by those with economic power to keep other people’s children under-educated. “If you keep them uneducated, you can control them easier. There is a power structure in New Orleans that has existed for hundreds of years. They don’t want to see it changed because if it’s changed then it is going to hit them in their pockets. It is going to be hard to keep those hotel and restaurant workers from unionizing and demanding more money and better working conditions. It is going to be more difficult to attract folks to that industry when they are well educated and have other opportunities. If you keep them uneducated, you can control them easier.”

National critics like the Center for Community Change complain “The Bush Administration was instrumental in creating this new chasm between the “haves” and the “have nots” in New Orleans. Rather than create the world-class public schools that all New Orleans kids have deserved for so long, the Bush Administration invested in an ideological experiment to make a pro-privatization, anti-public education statement.”

“In a school system based on free market principles, schools become individual contestants – for the best teachers, for the best students, for the most resources, and of course…for the best test scores. They can only do this because they are not required to provide access to every student within their community.”

“There must be, backing up every large scale charter system, the schools for the children…who are “un-chosen” by charter schools.”

“The very existence of charter schools in New Orleans, at this point, is dependent on the availability of a universal access network of schools alongside it. And those schools, the schools with the state run Recovery School District, are struggling with more than their share of kids with disabilities and less than their share of teachers and resources. To win, there must be losers.”

Thus, the failures of the RSD will make supporters of charter and other restrictive admission schools appear even more successful. So where in this experiment is the incentive to make sure that the half of the kids left out have a fighting chance for a decent education?

The Future of the Experiment

Where does the experiment go from here? The RSD is supposed to return control of the public schools to local control after five years. Charter schools are supposed to only be chartered for five years. What happens in the next five years? No one knows. Really. No one knows. And if no one knows, then the likelihood of the left behind continuing to be left behind is extremely high.

Parents do not need five years. They already know which half of the experiment they want their children to participate in. Will the powers who created this experiment dedicate what is left of their five years to try to create a system where ALL children have choices of quality education, or will the underserved half of the schools remain as a control group for the privileged schools?

The Cowen Report, overall supportive and hopeful for the experiment, admits "There is no system-wide responsibility, accountability, vision or leadership to guide the transformation of all public schools for all New Orleans students," and no "unified, widely-endorsed vision or plan" exists to chart transformation of the entire public school system.

Will race and economic segregation increase or decrease as a result of this experiment?

Tracie Washington, speaking both as a civil rights attorney and parent, thinks any future success for all children will only come through serious struggle.

“What we need - to repair the New Orleans Public Schools systems (plural) and, indeed, the public hospital, the public housing, the criminal justice system, and our system of worker rights - is vision, opportunity, and resolve.

“Our vision must embrace the entire community in the plans to rebuild a state of the art school system. White folks don't send their children to public schools, so stop going to them for advice.”

“Our opportunity requires that those in power release the resources for our community to fulfill its vision for public schools.”

“And we need to demonstrate resolve. Resolve is what the community must stand together with as we demand the right to an education for all our children. We have to resolve that we will fight, we will scream, we will holla, we will call out your family, we will stop the economic engine of this entire city from running (yes, the entire city), until our children are given a fighting chance for a decent education.”

The New Orleans Teachers Report insists that the dual and unequal systems of schools in the city which intensify the educational disparities that existed before Katrina must cease. They call on policymakers to provide more physical classroom space and educational materials for every student, and provide the best qualified teachers possible for every child. Families must be able to send their children to a neighborhood school — charter or not — that is staffed by qualified, mostly experienced teachers. Finally they ask that teachers and their unions be made full partners in the rebuilding and revitalization effort.

The Cowen Report’s recommendations seems to start modestly, but perhaps not. Their first recommendation? Make sure everyone can get into a public school this year. Other suggestions include: making sure all students have access to diverse high-quality options; limiting enrollment barriers and open access schools in every neighborhood; fair distribution of resources to all schools; strengthen the RSD and create a process to return public schools to local control; get high quality principals, teachers and staff; support excellence at all schools; and create short and long-term plans for action.

Two huge groups of kids are notably missing from all the official and unofficial plans for the future of the experiment – the newly arrived children of thousands of Latino workers, and much larger group – the tens of thousands of those still displaced who want to return. While there is little current accurate information on either of these groups of children, they are absolutely at risk in this experiment. And they are unjustly being left out of public policy debates about the future of public education in New Orleans.

Signs of Hope

Wherever there is injustice, there are also signs of hope – usually in those who are standing up despite the injustices and struggling, despite the odds, for what is fair.

“Education activists and organizers, including youth, have really gotten busy since Katrina,” Damon Hewitt points out. “Groups ranging from the Douglass Community Coalition and to the Downtown Neighborhood Improvement Association's Education Committee and the FYRE Youth Squad have stepped up their responses to educational inequity, despite having precious little in the way of resources to do the work. Their demands for equity and justice have been loud and clearly articulated. And there are some signs that their efforts are starting to bear fruit in the creation of after school programs and the like. Community members who have long advocated for best practices and community-centered approaches to issues like school discipline may finally be starting to have a real say in how policies are crafted and implemented.”

Hundreds of NAACP members and supporters marched at the Louisiana Capitol to protest against injustices in public education. The NAACP is also considering economic boycotts as a tool to raise awareness of the problems facing public schools.

Some see hope in the fact that there is a new Louisiana Superintendent of Education and a new New Orleans School Superintendent. Will either or both be able to help create some fairness and equality and competency where little exists? One can hope. Tracie Washington waits. “I am pleased with the efforts being made by the new administrators. But really at this time we are still simply repairing damage wrought over the last two years. To be sure, the new people at the top did not create this mess. However, there are hundreds of bureaucrats and the members of the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education who sat and watched as our children suffered after Katrina. I will not forgive them for their acts of cowardice.”

One concrete sign of hope is the New Orleans Parents Guide to Public Schools – a step by step handbook on how to select the right school for children. Aesha Rasheed of New Orleans Network is the editor of the handbook. The 95 page book includes a list of all public schools open in New Orleans as well as a map that shows where they are, followed by information pages on each school that shows the address, a photograph of the building, the grades it serves, its mission statement, the size of the student population, how to register, whether there are special requirements for enrollment, the type of transportation provided, what health and child care services are available, any special programs and extracurricular activities. While one could hope that it would not take outsiders to create a description of the schools in the system, the guide is helpful for parents trying to navigate the current maze. See http://www.nolaparentsguide.org

One of the greatest hopes for change is the students themselves. Students are speaking out and demanding changes in the fragmented disorganized public schools. They are telling their stories locally and across the nation

Jade Fleury, a New Orleans public school student, challenged a group of educators in Washington DC recently. “Bring us together to make a change. We should be able to collectively put our ideas together to help one another. BRING US TOGETHER! Why are we developing more and more separate schools and not more neighborhood schools that the whole diversity of young people in the neighborhood can attend?”

The Experiment and the Fight for the Right to Learn Continue

Our community understands there is an experiment going on. Everyone may not totally understand how this experiment got started, but the results are obvious and troubling.

The nation is watching. Charter school advocates are working furiously to make their half of the experiment a success. Those committed to the education of rest of the children had better be working as hard. What is happening in New Orleans is an experiment about what people hope will happen to communities across the nation.

Jim Randels, a 20 year veteran teacher in the N.O. public schools, posed the challenge to those who seek to remake public education today – “My need as a teacher is to see someone who will come in and do a charter that works within the attendance boundaries of an urban neighborhood. Demonstrate to us that innovation can happen in a school that’s like the majority of public schools in urban settings. Will you commit to work in an attendance boundary? Will you commit to working with the same amount of resources that all of us work with?”

The public school system is a reflection of what is occurring in all our public systems post-Katrina. Public healthcare and public housing are going the same way. Those with the economic and political power are re-making the public systems with public funds the way they want them to operate. Naomi Klein calls this disaster capitalism. Those with the money see disaster as opportunity to reshape and profit formerly public systems.

Those at the top have effectively privatized the best public schools and erected barriers to keep others out.

But, the people excluded are fighting for a voice in this experiment of choice.

These fighters recognize that false reformers are always willing to experiment on someone else’s children.

The truest indication of the fairness of this experiment is that, so far, not one of the supporters of this experiment have demonstrated a willingness to send their own children to a RSD school. So, the experiment, and the fight, continue.

Until the day dawns when the educational rights of all the “leftover” children will be treated as just as important as the educational rights of our own children, the fight for the right to learn will continue.

Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. He can be reached at quigley@loyno.edu