Opponents of New Orleans school reform gaining ground, supporters
Published: Monday, May 23, 2011, 7:00 AM
Lee Barrios, a retired middle school teacher from Mandeville, is a scathing critic of what's happened to New Orleans public schools since Hurricane Katrina.
State Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek, left, and outgoing Recovery School District Superintendent Paul Vallas, right, step aside to let John White, center, the new RSD superintendent, walk through a doorway at a news conference in April. Opponents of school reform in New Orleans have criticized White's selection, one calling him "whollly unqualified."Barrios calls the Recovery School District, the state body that took over most of the city's schools in the storm's wake, a failure and would like to see it abolished. She looks on charter schools, which are publicly funded but run by independent nonprofits, as money-making schemes. And she excoriates Teach for America, the national group that recruits promising college graduates to serve in schools with needy children, for putting, in her view, under-qualified instructors in classrooms.
When the state board that oversees the RSD met to approve the new superintendent last month, Barrios condemned the state's pick, John White, as "wholly unqualified."
To be sure, all this puts Barrios far to one end of the spectrum of opinion on school reform. But she's part of a broad push-back that has materialized this spring against changes in the way
