Howard Fuller, Ed Reform, and New Orleans
This time Berkshire has headed to talk to Howard Fuller for a conversation that underlines the degree to which Fuller is-- well, I don't want to say complicated. He has the quality I most admire in anyone working in a troublesome and contentious arena-- he manages to follow the issues and his values without getting sidetracked by labels, tribes and affiliations. Which means, of course, that he manages to piss off a wide variety of people (you can get a quick picture by looking at Lyndsey Layton's profile.from 2014 entitled "A civil rights warrior, or a billionaire's tool?")
Fuller has spent a lot of time on the reformster side of the street, so that is why it's extra interesting to find him explaining to Berkshire the many failures of ed reform in New Orleans.
It began, he says, with conversations over sixteen months with African-Americans in the community, asking two questions: 1) What do you think about education reform in New Orleans and 2) What do you think about black peoples' role in it?
The overriding theme that he heard? "This has been done to us, not with us."
Fuller asserts that some students are now far better off than before, and many are not. But even if there are good outcomes from the complete charterization of NOLA, if African-Americans have not had a significant role, and if this is all more disempowerment of blacks in the community, the reform is a fail. It is unsustainable, because there is no broad support in the black community.
Berkshire observes that New Orleans seems richer and whiter, and Fuller acknowledges that schools CURMUDGUCATION: Howard Fuller, Ed Reform, and New Orleans: