New Orleans School Choice a Winner : Success Instead of Failure

If there's one thing that the progressive socialist liberal democrats hate more then anything else is the successes seen for individual freedom of choice. Democrats are known by how many failures they have had in domestic and, of course, their foreign policy.

Bobby Jindal, a Republican as governor, has made the difference.

For New Orleans to show such success after the nightmare of the last 60 years of democrats controlling state politics, and the total failure of city government during the Katarina flooding, the democrats must be running for cover to begin their enviable attacks to come on the success of school choice that has benefited thousands of the poor and disadvantaged.

But hey, they're democrats - it's all about making sure no one succeeds more then anyone else, all the while the power broker democrats head to the bank with their ill-gotten spoils from the taxpayers.

New Orleans Tops School Choice and Competition Index
Source: Grover J. "Russ" Whitehurst and Ellie Klein, "The 2014 Education Choice and Competition Index," Brookings Institution, February 4, 2015.

February 9, 2015

How does your school district stack up against the rest of the nation when it comes to school choice? The Brookings Institution has released its 2014 Education Choice and Competition Index, ranking 107 large school districts across the country. At the top? New Orleans, Louisiana. Today, 91 percent of New Orleans students attend charter schools, and 78 percent of students graduate from high school, up from just 54 percent in 2004.

Researchers Grover Whitehurst and Ellie Klein scored districts based on 13 different categories, including:

• Are there alternatives to traditional public schools? If so, how many students are enrolled in them?
• Do students have access to free online courses? Do those courses count towards graduation requirements?
• Can parents choose schools for their children? Is choice based on first-come first-served or a lottery system?
• Does the school district provide performance data to parents so that they can compare schools? Is that information easy to understand?

After accounting for all 13 factors, the Recovery District School District in New Orleans was the only district to receive an A rating, but New York City and Newark City School District both received A minuses.

Who didn't do so well? Thirty-three school districts earned Fs. According to the report, "A letter grade of F…means that families have very little in the way of school choice other than the choice that parents can exercise by purchasing a residence within the geographical assignment zone of their preferred public school."

However, the authors noted that receiving an F on the school choice index is not necessarily an indication of poor student achievement. For example, it notes that Brownsville, Texas, has received awards based on student achievement and low achievement gaps compared to the rest of the state, yet it was third from the bottom in Brookings' school choice rankings.

Whitehurst and Klein elaborated on Brownsville's low ranking: "Students can transfer between schools in Brownsville only through a laborious application process with many requirements, including that the parent obtain the paper transfer application form in person at one given location for the whole district on one particular calendar day for the whole year."