As I studied school psychology during my years at Tulane and volunteered at multiple elementary schools around New Orleans, I became passionate about education, specifically about the potential it has to impact the track of students’ lives. As graduation this spring quickly approached, I knew that I wanted to work in education, but was unsure [...]
On May 15th, OPSB will vote on whether or not to raise an additional $4,900,000 for public schools, by rolling forward a millage to increase property taxes collected by the board. The Cowen Institute strongly encourages the Orleans Parish School Board to roll forward its millage!
On February 27th, the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) applied to the U.S. Department of Education (USDOE) in the second round of applications for flexibility from the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). In exchange for a waiver from certain reporting and funding requirements under the Act, the LDOE plans to implement the Common Core [...]
Just before Mardi Gras, the Recovery School District (RSD) released its new annual school Equity Report. The Equity Report is one of the RSD’s commitments to New Orleans outlined last August, and the goal of the new report is to measure and make transparent the “things that make a great school truly great.”
Recent charter authorization decisions by the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) and the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB), have led some local community members and organizations, organized as the Coalition for Community Leadership in Education, to express frustration with the charter application process. In a city where nearly 80 percent of public school students attend a charter school, community groups and local educators must play a role in the creation and operation of charter [...]
The Recovery School District (RSD) is following through on its commitments to New Orleans. The RSD recently released information about their new citywide enrollment program (commitment number 6), which will be effective for the 2012-13 school year. The new enrollment program is intended to address many of the problems associated with open enrollment, thereby improving [...]
In our recent publication, Case Studies of School Choice and Open Enrollment in Four Cities, we suggest that education stakeholders in New Orleans could learn from the successes and failures of school choice and open enrollment policies in other cities across the country. As the Recovery School District (RSD) prepares to implement its new citywide enrollment system, it should consider what lessons can be gleaned from past experiences in New Orleans as well as in cities that have successfully implemented an open enrollment public school system such as Cambridge, San Diego, and New York City.
In early November, the RSD released its recommended school building assignments for its schools. The final assignments are due to be announced in December. The assignments are in essence the second half of the School Facilities Master Plan, which was adopted in late 2008. The master plan addresses how many facilities will be built or [...]
An Intern’s Perspective: Amanda Brackman
| May 14, 2012This last semester I had the opportunity of interning at the Cowen Institute as a research assistant for the policy team. Before signing on to be a part of the institute this spring, I worked as a volunteer at Lusher Charter School; an experience I enjoyed immensely. While working closely with children attending school in New Orleans, [...]