Greater New Orleans corps members teach in one of three southeast Louisiana parishes (what this state calls counties): Orleans Parish (city of New Orleans), Jefferson Parish (encompasses several New Orleans suburbs surrounding the city), and St. John the Baptist Parish (made up of more rural communities 30 miles west of New Orleans). All three of these parishes are among the lowest-performing districts in Louisiana, which ranks in the top two states for children living in poverty and the bottom two states for academic performance.
A sharp racial and socio-economic division exists in each of these parishes between public and private schools in the region. One out of every three school-age children in Teach For America’s partner parishes attends a non-public school—three times the national average. In the New Orleans area, 40 percent of children live in poverty while over 85 percent of students who attend public school live in poverty. While each of the school systems in these parishes face similar challenges, there are unique education reform initiatives underway in each one that Teach For America corps members and alumni are instrumental in leading.
Hurricane Katrina closed all Orleans Parish Public Schools—every school had some level of damage and 80 percent of facilities had significant damage or were completely destroyed. All 64,000 New Orleans public school students were then displaced with many of them attending school in Jefferson and St. John Parishes during the 2005-06 school year.
Orleans Parish is experiencing the most dramatic restructuring and reform movement in the region and has drawn national attention for its unparalleled efforts to build an excellent school system from the ground up. Pre-Katrina, only 37 percent of public schools in New Orleans were considered “academically acceptable” with a high school drop-out rate of approximately 54 percent. On the state’s 2004 high school exit exams, only 4 percent of Orleans Parish public school students scored proficiently in English and only 6 percent were proficient in math.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the hurricane’s catastrophic results represented an opportunity to fix one of the worst urban school districts in America. In November 2005, the Louisiana state legislature passed a bill that enabled the state to takeover 107 of Orleans Parish’s 128 public schools. In addition, a series of state and federal legislative changes encouraged the development of independently controlled charter schools that would be held to strict standards of academic and administrative performance.
Over the last two years, New Orleans has become the most chartered system of public schools in the nation. Approximately 60 percent of the city’s 84 public schools are public charter schools, independently controlled with limited oversight by either the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB), the Recovery School District (RSD), or the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. The remaining public schools are mostly in the hands of the RSD, with just a handful of schools directly managed by the original Orleans Parish school board.
Paul Vallas, the new superintendent of the RSD, not only wanted Teach For America corps members leading classrooms within the district in large numbers, he also recruited Teach For America alumni to join his ranks—during the summer of 2007, Vallas hired Teach For America alumni to take on director positions in human resources, finance, and special education.
Other corps members are teaching in Jefferson, St. John the Baptist, and Orleans Parish public charter schools. In Jefferson Parish, 16 corps members and 10 alumni work in clusters at a handful of the its lowest performing schools concentrated on the West Bank of the parish. In St. John the Baptist Parish, 16 Teach For America corps members and 14 alumni have a significant presence. With fewer than 7,000 students, approximately one out of every four students is impacted by a Teach For America teacher in St. John the Baptist Parish.
With increased numbers of Teach For America corps members and alumni leading at the classroom, school, and district level, we have the opportunity to influence the tipping point that will truly transform the landscape and outcomes of public schools into a national model of urban education reform. Numerous schools with a large presence of Teach For America teachers are already changing public education in New Orleans for the better. However, there is still tremendous room for improvement, as well as significant need for additional schools, school leaders, and teachers to serve the growing population of returning public school students to New Orleans.
| Partner School Districts: |
|---|
| NOLA Public Schools |
| Jefferson Parish Public Schools |
| St. John the Baptist Parish Public Schools |
| Ethnic Breakdown-Student Population-Orleans Parish |
|---|
| Total: approximately 33,000 |
| 83% African-American |
| 11% Caucasian |
| 3% Latino/Hispanic |
| <1% Asian-American |
| <1% Native American |
| Ethnic Breakdown-Student Population-Jefferson Parish |
|---|
| Total: approximately 50,000 |
| 50% African-American |
| 34% Caucasian |
| 10% Latino/Hispanic |
| 5% Asian-American |
| <1% Native American |
| Ethnic Breakdown-Student Population-St. John the Baptist Parish |
|---|
| Total: approximately 6,500 |
| 78% African-American |
| 19% Caucasian |
| 3% Latino/Hispanic |
| <1% Asian-American |
| <1% Native American |
| Percentage of Students Qualifying for Free/Reduced-Price Lunch |
|---|
| 99% Orleans Parish |
| 66% Jefferson Parish |
| 78% St. John the Baptist Parish |
| Placements |
|---|
| 35% elementary |
| 65% secondary |
| 31% hold special education assignments |
| 95% teach at a school with another corps member or alumnus |
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