Time To Shut Down Public Schools?

Between the walkouts, safe spaces and stupidity, starting to think we should close all the public schools and start over. Studies have shown that while Teachers’ unions across the country are constantly demanding increased pay, there is little to suggest we’re getting any return on our investment.

I tweeted this out this morning… but it was the response that got me thinking…

@BiasedGirl That’s exactly what Hurricane Katrina did to the New Orleans public schools (made them start over). Replaced by great charters.

— Tomas J. Nally (@Steelweaver52) November 16, 2016

So to the Google Machine I went, as my peep was right, Post Katrina, New Orleans was forced to revamp their lacking public education system in exchange for Charter Schools. Turns out even MSNBC was impressed with the results of this forced experiment in School Choice. Not only that, the success also sparked a TV One Special on the subject.

In recognition of the 10-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, TV One’s News One Now dedicates an entire show to exploring the controversy surrounding the rebuilding and reorganization of New Orleans’ once failing school system with the premiere of The New Orleans Charter School Revolution: Ten Years After Katrina.

The only “controversy” I can find surrounding the move to Charter Schools is that it destroys the Democrats narrative which fights school choice. Democrats claim to want to help people, but only if they can find a way to tie to re-election. They demand higher salaries for failing teachers in failing schools, before they recognize that free market solutions apply to education as well.

As a taxpayer it’s especially hard to swallow all the condescension from Democrats about giving a hand up, when they’ve held that hand down for so very long. What’s more is that I don’t recall a sweeping wave of media coverage after this program hit its 10th Anniversary, probably because it was buried in all of the blaming of George W Bush, Dick Cheney and their weather machine.

In fact the New York Times did a “10 Years After Katrina” reflective, barely acknowledging what Roland Martin and the producers called “A Revolution”.

The city that exists in 2015 has been altered, by both a decade of institutional re-engineering and the artless rearrangement that occurs when people are left to fend for themselves.

Empowered by billions of federal dollars and the big ideas of eager policy planners, the school system underwent an extensive overhaul; the old Art Deco Charity Hospital was supplanted by a state-of-the-art medical complex; and big public housing projects, at once beloved and notorious, were razed and replaced by mixed-income communities with housing vouchers.

In a city long marinated in fatalism, optimists are now in ascendance. They promise that an influx of bright newcomers, a burst of entrepreneurial verve and a new spirit of civic engagement have primed the city for an era of greatness, or, at least, reversed a long-running civic-disaster narrative.

“Nobody can refute the fact that we have completely turned this story around,” said Mayor Mitch Landrieu, talking of streamlined government and year-over-year economic growth. “For the first time in 50 years, the city is on a trajectory that it has not been on, organizationally, functionally, economically, almost in every way.”

Democrats and the Media have a blindspot when it comes to education. As many have called it the Civil Rights Issue of our time, but are unwilling to take the necessary steps to fix the problem. The Katrina model shows us that Charter Schools make a difference, students improve as does their situation in life. We can wait for another Natural Disaster to wipe out the poorly functioning school systems, or we can take action to make public schools more accountable or replace them with better options.

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