The Very Rewarding Job of Saving Schools « Diane Ravitch's blog

The Very Rewarding Job of Saving Schools « Diane Ravitch's blog: "The original saviour of the Chicago public schools meanwhile went off to the Philadelphia public schools, where he saved them as he had saved the Chicago schools. Once again the media hailed a turnaround. The state-controlled School Reform Commission got annoyed when Vallas ran up an unexpected deficit, so he exited and went to save New Orleans. In New Orleans, Vallas won national media acclaim because he encouraged privately-run charters to open and basically put the public school system out of business (Hurricane Katrina had cleared the way). Millions on millions of private and public dollars poured into New Orleans to open charter schools. Now about 80% of the Recovery School District are enrolled in charters. No one thought it worthwhile to revive the moribund public schools. Why bother when so many eager reformers were eager to run their own schools. (Please ignore the fact that most of the New Orleans charters were rated D or F by the state and found to be one of the lowest-performing districts in the state–but that was before Governor Bobby Jindal took change of the State Board of Education and the State Department of Education)."

'via Blog this'