Zachery Westdyke

EDUC 332
Movie Response Paper 4: Rebirth: New Orleans
The Reformation of Public Schools: Collaboration Over Competition
Education reform in the United States is perhaps one of the most highly discussed and
debated topics in politics. Higher-up politicians and corporate investors seem to be riding on the
coattails of the success select charter schools have experienced, while more critical reformers
(including many parents of school-age children) see this new trend of charter schools as a
setback to progress. Supporters or either side both flaunt data backing up their arguments,
making it difficult to truly assess the effectiveness of both types of schooling. While a research
experiment randomly assigning students to different types of schools would be helpful, it would
also be unethical. However, we already have an experiment currently being conducted in the
United States, and its happening in New Orleans. After Hurricane Katrina, administrators and
reformers saw an opportunity to create an education system unlike anything that currently exists
in the United States. They used (and are currently using) the destruction as a chance to
experiment with the effectiveness of this recent craze in public education: charter schools.
While this experimentation has seen generally positive outcomes (in regards to test scores
and student achievement by-and-large), it has also led to the discouragement of students who
desperately need a rigorous school system to stay in school. Difficult students are often
pushed out of high-achieving charter schools and forced into some of the few remaining
traditional public schools which boast lower scores than the failing schools that existed preKatrina. While an increase in selective (almost exclusive) charter schools has led to some
academic progress, a better solution might be a district that remains selective in its chartering

process that is, one that holds its schools to a high standard of accountability yet completely
open and inclusive in its recruiting process.
In Rebirth: New Orleans, director John Merrow interprets and explores this experiment.
Beginning with a summarization of the education system in New Orleans pre-Katrina, Merrow
exposes the inadequacies and corruption within the public schools. As far as inadequacies go,
Merrow (2012) cites facts of students underperforming, students being passed along while not
necessarily being ready for the next grade, and schools being underfunded and falling apart. In
terms of corruption, Merrow (2012) then discusses the corruption within schools districts among
administrators, including teachers being mistreated and superintendents laundering money.
Merrow paints a picture which makes Hurricane Katrina seem like a gift from god: a chance to
try out a new system of education.
However, immediately following the destruction, what Katrina left was far from a gift.
Over half of the existing teachers had been fired, and most school buildings were still
dilapidated. The teachers who had been fired were replaced with new, young teachers (mostly
from programs like Teach For America). The reason for this: essentially the only remnants of the
past failing system of education were the teachers, and thus they had to be replaced in order for
a complete rebirth. Would all of these changes, including the increase in charter schools which
by and large had already shown to be as or less effective than traditional public schools,
really make a difference in New Orleans?
Merrow (2012) acknowledges the limitations of charter schools, stating that they had
rarely performed better than traditional public schools. Just as New Orleans public schools had
seen before Katrina, charter schools also gave rise to corruption. In Rebirth: New Orleans,
Leslie Jacobs, from the Louisiana State Board of Education, says she believes the largest reason

for the failure of charter schools is a flawed chartering process. Greg Richmond, President of the
National Association of Charter School Authorizers, was hired by Louisiana to review New
Orleans charters in a very critical manner. Jacobs claimed that only 6 out of the initial 44
charters were accepted a very selective statistic.
But, with new schools being chartered and a lack of teachers (most of them having just
been fired), there was a need to fill in the shoes of the experienced teachers. Young, enthusiastic
TFA members were welcomed to fill in these shoes by new superintendent Paul Vallas, a large
proponent of charter schools (Merrow, 2012). His main idea was setting high expectations, and
he saw TFA graduates as being the perfect way to do so for his students. This decision was
divided between parents and administrators: administrators generally being in favor of the
change, parents being more skeptical. Despite this division, the decision has seen generally
positive outcomes, with about one-third of students currently being taught by a former or current
TFA graduate (Merrow, 2012). This transition, however, may have been eased if so many
experienced New Orleans instructors hadnt been let off so early in the process.
The new charters were to be run as a business: they had 5 years to meet achievement and
attendance standards. If they didnt meet these standards, the charter would be revoked and
given to another group. This capitalist mentality creates a system of accountability among
schools, but it also creates an incentive for schools to recruit the best students. Paul Pastorek,
Louisiana Superintendent of Education, is quoted in the film by Merrow (2012) as saying, We
broke up the monopoly; were going to create competition. The competition created by charter
schools was not entirely positive, though, and led to a clear division between charters and
traditional public schools.

Charters, like the Sci Academy for example, made it really easy for special needs and
bad students to fall through the cracks. At Sci Academy, you could be expelled for a series of
demerits, which could easily have been a series of misdemeanors for wearing the wrong colored
socks. Charter school policies such as these ended up creating a system where traditional public
schools became, as Merrow (2012) referred to them, dumping schools. With this in mind, the
performance discrepancy between charter and traditional public schools in New Orleans is a nobrainer; traditional public schools receive all of the students that charter schools dont want to
teach because they are too difficult. As Merrow (2012) points out in Rebirth: New Orleans,
traditional public schools post-Katrina actually produced test scores far below the average that
existed before the disaster. Thus, the idea of competition creates a system of public education
similar to that of which we see today in private colleges: public charters fly under the radar by
using discrete and indirect methods of removing the tough-to-teach kids from their schools,
increasing what administrators and politicians really care about test scores.
But all this is not to say that an education system composed of 90% charter schools is the
wrong way to go. In fact, overall, the experiment in New Orleans has seen success. This
success, however, has come at the expense of a small minority of students who have been more
than neglected throughout the process. These are the students who dont quite fit the mold most
charter schools place them in. In general, these students are worse off than they were before the
reforms in New Orleans. Perhaps a better direction in which to head is one that the Sci Academy
takes on toward the end of Rebirth: New Orleans. The Principal, Ben Marcovitz, realized how
many students his school was losing from their harsh system of punishment for essentially
frivolous infractions. Rather than enforce a system that punishes unwanted behavior, Marcovitz
chose to create a system that rewards good behavior. He also said he chose to make the process

of being expelled longer and more difficult. This would hopefully reduce the number of bad or
difficult students that get pushed into poorer schools. If all of the schools, whether chartered
or traditionally public, could share the task of educating every student (a right that every child is
afforded), then the education system in New Orleans would be much better off than it currently
is.

Reference
Merrow, J. (2012). Rebirth: New Orleans. Documentary.