My daughter has a column up at Tech Central Station about good news from New Orleans concerning charter schools.

Katrina made the already-monumental task facing Alvarez & Marsal even more difficult and urgent. They may be able to improve the system in the long run, but certainly not with the speed that the post-Katrina reconstruction demands; in the short run, it’s likely to be the same bureaucracy in charge as before. And why would anyone want that? Indeed, private foundations, such as the Gates Foundation and the Aspen Institute, are reportedly willing to fund brand-new schools for New Orleans but not if the dysfunctional leadership remains in place.

Therein lies an immediate advantage of the switch to charter schools: charter schools sidestep the management mess because, to a large degree, they are self-governing. They handle their own budgets, manage their own personnel, and organize their own curricula, schedules, and policies. The role of the school district bureaucracy shrinks to handing out money and administering the accountability program.

Furthermore, the site-based management at charter schools makes them more flexible, a quality that will be particularly important in the uncertain environment of post-Katrina New Orleans. It will be difficult to predict how many students will come back, when and where they will show up, what their needs will be, and what sort of schools they will prefer. A system of many independent schools will be better able to adapt to a changing, unpredictable situation than a system of centralized control.

Another advantage of charter schools in New Orleans is that they may be able to, over time, improve the system’s miserable academic performance. Recently-released 2004-05 test score data show that 170 Louisiana public schools were rated “academically unacceptable,” and 68 were in Orleans Parish — over half of the district’s schools. On the Spring 2005 Graduate Exit Exam, high-schoolers in the district received “unsatisfactory” scores at a rate twice the state average; in many New Orleans high schools, over half of test-takers scored in the “unsatisfactory” range. The high-stakes tests for fourth and eighth graders had similar results.

While these poor-performing schools have been allowed to muddle on for many years, a charter school that consistently posted such low test scores would likely be shut down. The difference in consequences faced by charter and regular public schools gives charter schools much more powerful incentives to achieve. In addition, because charter schools are free to innovate — by trying out a new curriculum or experimenting with longer school days, for instance — they will bring fresh ideas to the table.

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