“Be ready for the biggest challenge of your life. Though books, advice, and observations are helpful, nothing can prepare you to step into the classroom on that first day. There will be many days where you’ll wonder why you ever chose this job, but there will be others where you’ll feel on top of the world. On the low days, just remember that nothing worth doing is ever easy.”
-2007 Fellow
Public Education in New Orleans
NOPS (New Orleans Public Schools) was struggling long before Hurricane Katrina. Buildings were in disrepair, the district was financially strapped, and student achievement was among the lowest in the nation.
In 2005 about 60% of students scored below basic in each of the four major subjects on the state’s Graduation Exit Examination.1 Nearly two-thirds of the system’s schools were “Academically Unacceptable” under Louisiana’s accountability system.2 The achievement gap between African-American and white students was twice as high as the gap between these groups of students statewide.3
The storm, however, provided an unprecedented opportunity to reinvent the city’s schools to successfully serve all students.
Legislation passed in November 2005 strengthened the previously existing Recovery School District (RSD), a state-run entity that takes over underperforming schools. The Louisiana Department of Education manages the RSD under the authority of the Louisiana Board of Elementary & Secondary Education (BESE). Under the new legislation, a school is considered to have failed if it is below the state average and operates in a system that is in “academic crisis.” A system is considered to be in crisis if it has at least one school identified as failing for four or more years.
The November 2005 legislation transferred 107 of NOPS’ 128 schools to the RSD. As a result, the governing authority for the majority of schools in New Orleans shifted from the local school board, known as the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB), to the state board (BESE).
Currently, both OPSB and BESE directly run schools and oversee a large network of charter schools. Charter schools are publicly funded but independently operated. These schools make up half of all schools in New Orleans, currently a higher percentage of charters than any city in the nation.
teachNOLA Fellows will be placed in the Recovery School District and in the city's highest-need charter schools.
A Changed Landscape
Eighty-one public schools are currently open in New Orleans. The Recovery School District controls 58 of these, running 27 as charters and the rest as part of a traditional school district. OPSB governs 12 charters and directly runs five schools as a separate, smaller district, while BESE directly oversees two additional charter schools.
Schools faced a myriad of challenges during the initial months of this reconfiguration. Building repairs lagged behind schedule, supplies were slow to arrive, and enrollment fluctuated on a daily basis. Now, more than two years after the storm, some school still operate in modular buildings or at temporary sites and the road to recovery remains long.
But New Orleans’ new public education landscape also offers a rare opportunity to create sustainable reform from the ground up, a sea change one expert said “is redefining urban education.” Urban systems across the country are looking to the city to see if this reconfigured network of schools can significantly narrow the achievement gap, As a teachNOLA Fellow, we expect you to be an educational pioneer who perseveres to advance student achievement despite these challenging times.
1 Louisiana Department of Education, “District Composite Report 2004-2005, Orleans Parish,” February 2006.
http://www.louisianaschools.net/lde/pair/DCR0405/DCR036.pdf
2 Louisiana Department of Education, “District Composite Report 2004-2005, Orleans Parish,” February 2006. http://www.louisianaschools.net/lde/pair/DCR0405/DCR036.pdf
3 “Recovery School District Legislatively Required Plan,” June 7, 2006. http://www.louisianaschools.net/lde/uploads/8932.doc