Students change classes during the first day of school at Landry-Walker High School on August 12, 2013. (Photo by Kathleen Flynn, Nola.com / The Times-Picayune)
Introductory Reflection by Raynard Sanders, Ed.D., Host of The New Orleans Imperative
In this week’s Louisiana Weekly’s article [see below] Journalist Kari Harden wrote an article about RSD move to a all charter school district.
In the article Kari Harden interviewed Leslie Jacobs and confronted her on the consistently low academic performance of RSD in the article she stated the following:
“Asked about the RSD’s persistently low rankings after close to nine years, Jacobs said that the question about the success of an all charter district doesn’t relate to performance, it instead relates to “system and governance.”
This unbelievable given Leslie Jacob’s annual and daily touting of the “unprecedented academic success” of the reforms post Hurricane Katrina on her web site, numerous interviews to the media and to conferences all over the country for the past 9 years.
The architect of ACT 35 and Mother of the Recovery School District is “finally” admitting to its academic failure!!
IT’S ABOUT TIME!
UNBELIEVABLE!!

New Orleans Nearing a ‘Privatized’ Public School System

By Kari Dequine Harden
 | Originally Published at The Louisiana Weekly. June 2, 2014
As the Recovery School District (RSD) shuts the doors on its remaining handful of traditional public schools, the start of the 2014 school year will usher in the nation’s first completely privatized public school district.
Every school the RSD took over following Hurricane Katrina and the passage of Act 35 — with the stated intent of “turning around,” was either closed or will be turned over—into the hands of private charter operators, creating the first all-charter district in the history of the United States.
For nearly nine years it has been on the backs of New Orleans’ children and communities that the “reformers” have conducted this grand experiment, the majority of whom have come from other parts of the country.
Now, as the “reform” train, (fueled by billionaire philanthropists and Wall Street investors), plows across thempathyeducates – New Orleans Nearing a ‘Privatized’ Public School System: