Leadership and Crisis (10 page)

In 2005 Louisiana experienced the horrors of Hurricane Katrina. Over a thousand people died; tens of thousands were displaced. Some have said there was some kind of silver lining to this tragedy. They are wrong. There is no silver lining to a tragedy this devastating. But we did have a choice as to how we would rebuild.

The hurricane delivered a knockout blow to one of the worst performing school districts in the nation. In 2003-2004, New Orleans had fifty-five of Louisiana’s seventy-eight worst schools. In 2005, more than half of the 65,000 kids in New Orleans public schools did not have basic competence in math and English at the fourth, eighth, tenth, or eleventh grade levels, according to test results. Fully 74 percent of eighth graders had failed to show basic skills in English, and 70 percent scored below the basic level in math. Of the city’s 108 public schools, 68 were rated “academically unacceptable” by the Louisiana Department of Education.
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The district had lots of money,
but auditors estimated the school system was running a $25-30 million deficit—they couldn’t even state a precise figure because the financial books were in disarray. The Department of Education discovered that $70 million in federal money allocated to low-income students was misspent or simply missing. More than two dozen indictments for fraud, kickbacks, or theft soon followed. In 2003, the valedictorian for a New Orleans area high school got an 11 on the ACT, a score lower than 99 percent of the kids taking the test nationally. The structurally flawed New Orleans public schools let that girl down.
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The New Orleans Parish School Board operated like a centralized monopoly. Innovative ideas (like charter schools) were resisted and bureaucracy ruled. School administrators and teachers couldn’t repair a building or implement even minor reforms without the board’s authorization. Adam Nossiter, then a writer for the Associated Press, noted just months before Katrina, “In the dismal gallery of failing urban school systems, New Orleans may be the biggest horror of them all.”
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Katrina forced the city to begin anew. Nearly two-thirds of the city’s school buildings had been destroyed or damaged by floodwaters. While private schools set about to clean up and reopen quickly, public schools were mired in bureaucracy as much as mud and debris from the storm. So local leaders and the state Legislature pushed for the schools to be run by the Recovery School District that answered directly to the state. Seemingly overnight, New Orleans became the most chartered city in America, with nearly 70 percent of students in public charter schools. With this experiment, the state Legislature nullified the collective bargaining agreement between the New Orleans Parish School Board and the teacher unions. Charter schools are public schools, but they’re free to develop innovative solutions to meet the
needs of their students. And charter schools have no monopoly on local kids; parents can choose their child’s school. Not all charter schools are great, but competition will allow parents to at least make a choice.

Every student is different. When I was growing up I was inquisitive—in fact, sometimes
too
inquisitive. I drove my mom nuts constantly asking her what some word meant. One day I read a biography of Abraham Lincoln that explained how our sixteenth president was an “inquisitive” boy. I asked her what that meant, and she told me to look it up. I was proud when I discovered the meaning. “President Lincoln was inquisitive and so am I,” I told her smugly. “And you can’t be mad at me for doing what the president did.” For some reason she found this argument less than convincing.

Some children are naturally inquisitive, some possess a creative flair. Some are strong in math, others get lost in literature. Some are filled with potential but need someone unique to crack through a rough outer shell. Charter schools allow parents to make the right choice for their unique child, picking from schools that have been approved by state or local officials and are held accountable for their results. Because charter schools have to compete against each other, they tend to make a point of recruiting energetic teachers, focusing on academic performance, and offering creative and practical courses for students.

All sorts of charter schools have blossomed in New Orleans. Some focus on foreign language immersion. Others are based on the Montessori Model. National charter school entities, such as the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), now educate more than 1,000 children in the city. In the last four years, assessment scores have improved citywide in New Orleans. Individual schools have demonstrated even more spectacular results. In 2010, the Sophie B. Wright Charter School
celebrated that 62 percent of their 8th graders passed the Louisiana Educational Assessment Program (LEAP) test. This is a huge improvement from 2004-05, when the school still functioned as a regular public school, and 83 percent of 8th graders scored below “basic” on the test in English, and 76 percent scored below “basic” in Math.
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The New Orleans charter school system is not perfect. Initially, Louisiana law dictated that charter schools should not “be supported by or affiliated with any religion or religious organization or institution.” This was unnecessarily restrictive, because federal laws already prevent publicly funded schools from engaging in religious discrimination or conducting religious instruction. But there is no reason why we shouldn’t tap the expertise of churches and faith-based groups to help us reform and enhance our education system. As governor, I have worked to eliminate restrictions that have shut these groups out.

The key to success in charter schools is getting parents and the community involved, so we’ve tried to make parental involvement as easy as possible. We’ve also empowered teachers with a new law allowing a traditional school to become a charter school by a simple faculty vote. Traditional public schools often complain that comparisons to charter schools are not fair since charters face fewer restrictions and less bureaucracy. With that in mind, we passed the Red Tape Reduction and Local Empowerment Act that gives all our public schools the same flexible options charter schools have. A well-respected superintendent who headed our state association marveled, “The legislation was almost too good to be true; I thought I was dreaming.” With this flexibility comes accountability in terms of student performance. Schools that don’t improve will be taken over and reconstituted so their students succeed.

If we’re going to have successful schools, we need to be able to define and measure success. Louisiana has won national recognition for our accountability programs that track the performance of individual students, teachers, schools, and districts, and even tie that performance back to colleges of education that prepare our teachers. States can use high stakes testing, school report cards, and other mechanisms, but the important point is that parents must have access to easily understandable, quantifiable, and objective data about how their children are doing. That is why we passed a law giving Louisiana schools letter grades. Just as students get a report card, so should our schools.

Beyond restructuring our education system through choice and competition, we need to return discipline to the classroom. Kids today should not fear going to school because bullies are on the prowl; and teachers should not worry about how to handle troubled students. We are all familiar with the terrible school shootings in places like Columbine, Colorado, and Red Lake, Minnesota. But other acts of violence and intimidation happen every day that we don’t hear about. A survey a few years ago asked teachers what they needed most. Higher pay ranked beneath everyday concerns like a better teaching environment, more authority to deal with unruly students, and more parental support when they did so. Likewise, a survey by Southern Media and Opinion Research found the number one problem teachers face in the classroom is classroom discipline, followed by lack of parental support. National surveys have revealed similar concerns by teachers around the country.
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We need higher standards not just in academic achievement but in personal conduct—the two often go hand in hand. As governor, I pushed for and got a Teacher’s Bill of Rights as well as legislation that gives teachers more authority to remove disruptive students from the classroom. Moreover, if a student is suspended, the new law requires that he make up all the schoolwork he’s missed. Suspension should not be vacation. And we get parents involved, too. The law allows the courts to require parents to attend after-school and Saturday behavior intervention programs with their kids. If they don’t cooperate, the parents can be fined or required to perform community service. Similarly, kids who fail to meet school attendance requirements or are constantly late can now have their driving privileges suspended.

High standards are an expression of love—I learned that from my parents and teachers. By tolerating lower standards we have hurt our children. We need to raise the bar for everyone—students, parents, and educators. It’s a sad commentary on our education system that we need to import scientists and engineers because we can’t produce enough of them here at home.

Finally, let me address the thorniest issue of all: equal opportunity in education. It sounds good. All Americans believe in it. Only one problem—we don’t have it. If you grow up poor in a place with failing schools, your future prospects are diminished because you’re probably not going to get a good education. It’s that simple.

Liberals claim to champion equal opportunity in education, but most of them oppose the most effective solution: school choice. Why? While liberals hysterically claim school choice would destroy public education, their real concern is their fear of the teacher unions, which
lose power to parents through school choice. Liberals also reflexively oppose any policy that might benefit religious schools.

School choice takes many forms—vouchers, tax credits, charters, student scholarships, and transfers to better public schools are a few. I favor whatever works, depending on the needs of the community. The successful methods we’re using in New Orleans—charter schools and scholarship programs—could serve as a model for other cities looking to secure a good education for their poorest, most vulnerable kids. I’m for what works.

Communities with failing education systems nationwide need to act fast to expand school choice. Telling parents to wait for the failing school in their neighborhood to improve on its own is offensive and absurd. Their kids are growing up
right now
, and these kids need a good education
right now
. No amount of money will fix the problem, though school choice really can. But the Democratic Party, teacher unions, and their allies are standing in the way, blocking the school-house door.

Consider this: what actually happens to a kid who is trapped in a failing school? Maybe the kid works hard and succeeds anyway. But the odds are just as good that this kid will struggle and fall through the cracks. Maybe you don’t care much, since it’s not your kid, but of course you
should
care, because that kid is a fellow American. And if nothing else, you should care because we need every kid to succeed in order to continue growing our economy.