John White and summer interns

For many collegiate and post-collegiate people, internships are the salary-free way into the job you want. Some interns are paid, many, many more are not. Some interns work during the summer and off time from college, some work for years. That's not news. What is news, however, is that John White may be spending $2.5 billion on invisible interns in the DOE. The DOE is supposedly broke; many parishes have not had raises in years and teachers, para-professionals, admins and whole schools have been shut down because of lack of funds. Hence, the idea that money is being spent on interns could boggle the mind. http://crazycrawfish.wordpress.com/2014/06/29/did-ldoe-hire-100-summer-interns-at-25000-a-piece/ When people ask why the schools in Louisiana perform so poorly, or why the schools in the most prosperous cities perform so poorly, or why so many people feel so hopeless, this is why. Corruption is the name of the game, folks.

Making history or making mistakes?

It has recently been publicized, first through The Washington Post, that The Recovery School District has officially closed the last of its schools, making New Orleans the first city in the country to be completely charter (with the small exception of a few open enrollment schools in Orleans parish, mention in the Times Pic article here). Many people are proponents of the charter system. To the average outsider, charter schools in New Orleans seem to have improved the performance of it students, at least improving school SPS scores above a failing rank; however, few people, know much about the differences between charters, charter management organizations and district run schools. In New Orleans, the conversations are quickly becoming moot.

Many eyes have turned to our city as an example of the charter done right but are we really making history or making mistakes that the children of the city will have to pay for? Charter schools were supposed to open up school choice by allowing families to send their children to any school in the district, not just the one closest to them. What has happened is the school have since been franchised to owners who have few people to answer to. Some people might say that absolute power corrupts absolutely; can this happen to the charters and their boards? Jessica Williams wrote an interesting article on the topic at "The Lens. New Orleanians might want to take a closer look.