John White warns that school reforms movement won't survive unless it reforms itself
State Superintendent John White, a prominent figure in the education movement that turned New Orleans into a city of choice and charter schools, warned Tuesday that the movement is under attack and won't survive unless it reforms itself.
His companions "risk becoming part of the establishment" they once resisted, as they gain more power and charter schools become more mainstream, White told a crowd at the pro-charter American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.
New education leaders are also now ripe for attack from what White characterized as an anti-authoritarian populist movement in American that goes after whoever's in charge. And he urged advocates of change to move beyond a focus on urban education and failing schools.
He said inequity in education "has fueled the reform movement," but school choice proponents would become irrelevant if they remain focused only on poor students in inner cities, because inequity is complex and many people live in surburban or rural areas.
White ascended to the state's top education job as Gov. Bobby Jindal pushed a 2012