New Orleans finally starts moving away from its failed all-charter approach

On a related note, believe it or not the Minnesota Star Tribune, of all outlets, has been publishing articles about how the charter industry/grifting con is failing this state.

In August, more than 300 students started the school year in the first traditional school run directly by the New Orleans school district since 2019. It’s the first time the district has opened its own school since Hurricane Katrina swept through the city nearly two decades ago.

The pre-K-8 school, named after New Orleans cultural and civil rights icon Leah Chase, came together in just a handful of months. Its opening ends the city’s five-year run as the only all-charter school district in the nation. Charter schools receive public funding, but are independently run…

(Superintendent Avis) Williams said the decision to open the school was what the board, and community, wanted.

“That was just something the community has impressed upon our board members, and they did vote unanimously for us to direct-run the Leah Chase School and for us to direct-run more schools,” Williams said.

Both the Recovery School District – a special statewide district created to manage underperforming schools – and New Orleans Public Schools had poured money into renovating and abating asbestos in the building that housed Lafayette Academy that is now the site of the Leah Chase School. That was one factor in wanting to keep this particular building open. But more than anything, the decision stemmed from a growing sentiment in the community, and among newer board members, that it’s time for the district to have a traditional school again, said Carlos Zervigon, a member of the Orleans Parish School Board whose district includes the Leah Chase School. - The Hechinger Report

Gates education "reform" has been a wretched, miserable failure

This article goes on to discuss just what a scam billionaire "philanthropy" is in general.

One of the myriad problems with billionaires like Bill Gates pouring tons of money into reshaping our education system is that people like Bill Gates are not educators. They rarely have even a small amount of education in what education is and should be. The way people like Gates have gone about financing and promoting “education reform” is a good example of their rudimentary misunderstanding of what public education should be. The billionaire philanthropist has used his “charity” to force legislation to filter taxpayer money away from traditional public schools and into the privately funded and run charter school systems that promise better education.

The Washington Post's Valerie Strauss reports that a new report, studying a partly Gates-funded initiative to use student test scores to evaluate teacher effectiveness, is out. That report says what almost every single education expert without a MBA predicted: you can’t, because test scores are not a good way to evaluate educators. The “project” cost municipalities participating in the educational dead end around $360 million. - Daily Kos