Market Place – David Brancaccio
“After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans threw out its failing public schools and started over. It’s become the most sweeping experiment in America in the use of charter schools, where essentially private organizations figure out how they’ll use money that comes in from largely government sources. In part one of this series, we heard student and teacher experiences. Today, some numbers on success and failure. “New Orleans sucks you in,” Dorn says. ” I don’t want to leave and I’ll be here in the long run because I love the community.” Twenty-six-year-old Dorn is from New York’s Long Island and has a bachelors degree in philosophy and history. A few years ago, he enrolled in Teach for America, a non-profit that takes people looking for a worthwhile post-college assignment and puts them through a teacher’s boot camp before finding them work. Work it is — for Mr. Dorn, up at 5:30 am, in at 7:30 am.Phil Dorn, one of the teachers who came to New Orleans to join the charter experiment, was at his school getting ready for the coming year, weeks before the kids will arrive.”(more)