New Orleans charter school frustrations reach a boil
Published: Tuesday, December 06, 2011, 10:45 PM
State officials in charge of approving new charter schools in New Orleans took intense criticism on Tuesday for a charter-application process that critics say too often shuts local educators and concerned citizens out of the school system. The state Department of Education is asking the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to approve only about a third of the 27 applications that came in this year. And, as has happened in years past, many of the homegrown organizations looking to open schools or run existing campuses did not make the cut.
View full sizeThe group that runs Dr. Martin Luther King Charter School in the Lower 9th Ward is poised to win approval for another K-8 campus. King Charter School sixth-graders were photographed on their way to the library on March 18.On top of that, the department is asking the board to close a charter that's run by a predominantly local, African-American board in Treme, citing poor test scores.
The result was a committee meeting in Baton Rouge on Tuesday -- the full board won't vote until today -- that brought out long-simmering racial
