Tuesday 13 May 2008

New Orleans, New Education System

New York Times reported a slight increase in the state promotional exam (12%) despite the still under-performance as a whole (60 percent of high school students got an unsatisfactory ranking in standardized English and math tests, a figure three to four times higher than the percentage throughout Louisiana).

What happened was that after Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, the destruction

had offered, in a state official’s words, a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reinvent public education.” In due course, that opportunity was taken:...Stripped of most of its domain and financing, the Orleans Parish School Board fired all 7,500 of its teachers and support staff, effectively breaking the teachers’ union. And the Bush administration stepped in with millions of dollars for the expansion of charter schools—publicly financed but independently run schools that answer to their own boards. The result was the fastest makeover of an urban school system in American history.


If that millions of dollars were put into the old system, would it produce the same "improvement"?

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