Before Hurricane Katrina, only 2 percent of New Orleans public school students attended public charter schools. Today, more than half of the kids — 53 percent — are educated in charters. This story includes very interesting perspective from Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform (emphasis is mine):
National charter leaders said they had not planned a massive takeover after Katrina. They said they just wanted to help. “Charter educators and friends took games and books and organized dozens of small classrooms while the national government scratched its head over what to do,” said Jeanne Allen, president of the pro-charter Center for Education Reform, based in the District. The Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), one of the most successful nonprofit charter groups, was running a New Orleans school before the hurricane and managed to start a school for flood evacuees in Houston within six weeks.
Meantime, here in North Carolina, the arbitrary cap of 100 charter schools remains in place, despite efforts to inform and educate policymakers by the North Carolina Education Alliance and other organizations. Considering that approximately 1 out of 3 North Carolina kids doesn’t graduate high school in four years, and that roughly half of African-American males won’t receive a diploma, one wonders how much longer our state’s education monopoly will continue to choke off opportunity for the kids the system does not serve.
Things can improve, but it takes leadership, as Locke Foundation Education Policy Analyst Terry Stoops explains. Stoops offers another charter related idea here.
