Education Next – Frederick Hess
“Last week, the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans held a three-day conference to examine what we’ve learned from a decade of post-Katrina education reform. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated the city. One consequence was that the New Orleans school district—for all intents and purposes, the second-worst performing district in the nation’s second-worst performing state—pretty much ceased to exist. In its place emerged a radical experiment in urban education that’s produced extraordinarily impressive results and extraordinarily heated local debate. Katrina killed 2,000 residents, forced a massive evacuation, and shut down the city’s schools for a year. In the aftermath, all district employees were terminated and the collective bargaining agreement was allowed to expire. The state took control of nearly all local public schools via the Recovery School District and rebooted the district as a system of charter schools. Meanwhile, organizations like Teach For America (TFA), the New Teacher Project, and New Leaders for New Schools, as well as major foundations, explored ways to pump talent and resources into the city.”(more)