Happy Friday, CharterFolk.
This is one I’ve wanted to do for a long time: bring together some of the most important architects of the remarkable success story that CharterFolk have constructed in New Orleans over the past two decades.
Dana Peterson, CEO of New Schools for New Orleans; Caroline Roemer, Executive Director at the Louisiana Association of Public Charter Schools; and Jerel Bryant, CEO at Collegiate Academies.
You can catch it on YouTube.
You can also get it on our website at this link where you’ll also find a transcript of the discussion.
You can also find it on all the platforms where you listen to podcasts.
I’ve been thinking that now is the optimal moment to have this discussion.
Not during the year of the 20th anniversary of the storm, but the year after, so that these Folk could share not just what we may have learned in New Orleans over the past two decades, but what we learned about our movement given the way the nation, and most importantly ourselves, talk about New Orleans.
Because if there is anything that irks me about the way we talk about our movement, it is when we are asked about what our future plans may be for the growth of charter schools in any city in America and we begin with an almost reflexive response:
Well, of course, none of us here are suggesting that what we want to do is make our city into New Orleans.
It is as though we feel some kind of ambivalence about what has happened in New Orleans, rather than fully adopting what I think is the common-sense orientation we should be taking toward it:
Who in the heck wouldn’t want progress like this for their city’s public education system?
A school district transformed. Kids learning at higher levels. A structure for public education that is foundationally healthier than what came before, one in which improvement is set up not only to be sustained, but to be built upon further in the decades ahead.
And that hesitation, that reflexive distancing, is what we mean by the title of this conversation:
New Orleans: The Charter North Star We Won’t Claim.
That is not to say that there are not many, many things that were gotten wrong. Or that there were not heartbreaking consequences for many people, including many educators who worked within the legacy system.
Over the course of our hour together, Dana, Jerel, and Caroline help us unpack these realities. Along the way, Dana talks about how a guiding framework of values has shaped efforts across two decades. Caroline discusses the ongoing state-level advocacy required to keep policies aligned with those values. Jerel repeatedly underscores that there is not just one New Orleans experience, but a series of experiences that unfolded over time as the charter school world and the broader community learned lessons and course-corrected along the way.
Below I provide some resources referred to in the discussion.
- New Schools for New Orleans Values and Approach
- A Link to Turnaround: The Reinvention of New Orleans’ Public Education System, a full-length movie by David Osborne. Highly recommended.
- Race and Education in New Orleans by Walter Stern
- Harvard study on post-COVID success in Louisiana schools.
- CharterFolk X Profile of Jerel Bryant from 2020.
- New Orleans Schools Celebrate B Grade, Prepare for Higher Bar.
- The Inconvenient Success of New Orleans Schools.
- School directly operated by New Orleans Parish gets two-year reprieve.
A last thanks to Jerel, Dana, and Caroline for taking the time to share their observations.
On we go.