But we do know stuff about the government aprioristically.

The idea of public school being the appropriate means to educate children in the optimal manner befitting a free society is where the problem lies. It is the free society that allows for the best progress in education, not the other way around! This is true from every point of view except from the perspective of despotic control. Reforming public school is analogous to reforming slavery and just as confused. True reform would be the same for both: abolition.

I always try to steer clear of talking about race as something that quantifiably matters. Nevertheless, it’s inevitably the first thing that is pointed out about the newly elected school board. To me, what interests me more about the newly elected members are that 1) they did not attend New Orleans public schools and 2) their children do not attend New Orleans public schools. This is neither good nor bad, but it’s definitely a first in my recent memory.

This election probably reflects New Orleanians’ lack of faith in the ability of those within the institution to fix the institution. We’re not alone, that’s the trend all over the U.S. So, now we have a lot of outsiders, lawyers and such, trying their hand at educational reform. I want it to work. But, as someone from within the institution, the constant votes of no confidence start to sting.

Some background before I go on: the school board only has direct control of 5 schools (the ones that were not deemed persistently failing before the storm) and loosely oversees a bunch of charters, too. The RSD runs 34 schools and oversees 33 charters. Many of the school board’s schools selectively admit students and contain populations that are more ethnically and socio-economically diverse that the RSD schools’ which are almost exclusively high-poverty and African-American.

Many of the new members of the board don’t mind taking back the RSD charters, but are wary about taking back the traditional public schools. Without providing details, one member, Seth Bloom, proposed allowing the state-run schools to become Orleans Parish School Board schools one-by-one once they reach a certain level of success. Another, Woody Koppel, proposed chartering the schools that return to the school board in phases.

These solutions leave me slightly uneasy because they have the potential to perpetuate separate but vastly unequal school systems for an undetermined amount of time. While the state and local school board play hot potato with schools like mine (open-enrollment, less-than-stellar test scores), the kids and their teachers get a raw deal.