Hey Mrs. T! I think that I want to do education in New Orleans, and specifically how public education differs from private. And why the public school systems are so bad here, compared to the public school systems in Texas or other areas of the U.S.
Education is a GREAT issue for you to tackle and I'm thrilled that you are going to go in this direction. NOLA is such an interesting place to study because of the charter school movement here and you'll really learn a lot about federalism too because I'm going to challenge you to figure out the complex relationship between the states and the federal govt. when it comes to education. This is a great time to study education in this country too because No Child Left Behind is about to be reviewed/reformed and you can't discuss education without tackling NCLB.
The NY Times is a good starting point for learning more about this ground breaking piece of legislation plus President Obama's proposals for changing it. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/n/no_child_left_behind_act/index.html?scp=1-spot&sq=%22No%20Child%20Left%20Behind%22&st=cse
The reason I'm suggesting you start there is that NCLB changed education in this country forever when it was signed into law in 2001. It created the concepts of high stakes testing -- like LEAP -- that all public schools have to abide by. You'll need to figure out how NOLA stacks up nationally.
For NOLA specifically the place to go is definitely the Cowen Institute created by Scott Cowen, President of Tulane: http://www.coweninstitute.com/
They have a report on their web site that will give you the current status of education in our city: http://www.coweninstitute.com/resources/new-orleans-public-schools-101/
I'm hopeful that you'll get to go up there and interview some people by the time this is all done!
Education is a GREAT issue for you to tackle and I'm thrilled that you are going to go in this direction. NOLA is such an interesting place to study because of the charter school movement here and you'll really learn a lot about federalism too because I'm going to challenge you to figure out the complex relationship between the states and the federal govt. when it comes to education. This is a great time to study education in this country too because No Child Left Behind is about to be reviewed/reformed and you can't discuss education without tackling NCLB.
ReplyDeleteThe NY Times is a good starting point for learning more about this ground breaking piece of legislation plus President Obama's proposals for changing it. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/n/no_child_left_behind_act/index.html?scp=1-spot&sq=%22No%20Child%20Left%20Behind%22&st=cse
The reason I'm suggesting you start there is that NCLB changed education in this country forever when it was signed into law in 2001. It created the concepts of high stakes testing -- like LEAP -- that all public schools have to abide by. You'll need to figure out how NOLA stacks up nationally.
For NOLA specifically the place to go is definitely the Cowen Institute created by Scott Cowen, President of Tulane: http://www.coweninstitute.com/
They have a report on their web site that will give you the current status of education in our city: http://www.coweninstitute.com/resources/new-orleans-public-schools-101/
I'm hopeful that you'll get to go up there and interview some people by the time this is all done!