Disadvantages Of Charter Schools

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Charter schools’ rise in popularity in the New Orleans’ school district came after Hurricane Katrina’s destruction in 2005. Hope for charter schools stemmed from the failed public education system beforehand. Hurricane Katrina offered a complete fresh slate for educators and students alike, at least so they thought. With inside lenses from Sarah Carr’s Hope Against Hope: Three Schools, One City, and the Struggle to Educate America 's Children, she reveals what was underneath these data-driven charter schools.
The New Orleans school experiment contains ineffective reforms that have come at the expense of the city’s most disadvantaged children through an almost all-white leadership, social control of students, and the segregation through means of charter schools’ flexibility should not be replicated in other cities. Parents and families must navigate through a maze of selective charters, each operating like an independent district with little oversight. Special-needs students have particular problems finding appropriate placements (Carr 128). New Orleans has also been a breeding ground for dictatorial “no excuses” method of teaching, for unseasoned Teach for America (TFA) corps members
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By November 2005, “the state legislature approved a measure that allowed the RSD to absorb any public schools in New Orleans whose performance fell below state average--not just schools beneath the “failing threshold” (Carr 65). The New Orleans’ school district was now under the control of state-level and national political interests, with state-run charter schools now populating the new Recovery School District. The new school board then in similar fashion of overhauling the teachers, decided to fire some thousands of unionized teachers and other school employees who were predominantly African-

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