re: #67 Charles Johnson

I think the reason why Democrats got on board the charter school initiative in NOLA is because the public schools really were getting awful. But this is New Orleans we’re talking about - every government office was basically corrupt at that point.

The right wing, on the other hand, pushed so hard for charter schools for a much more underhanded reason — to establish a precedent for their privatization agenda, and at the same time erode the boundaries between church and state by making it possible for these private — often religious —schools to take government funding.

That’s why I do think it’s a problem that the public school system in NOLA has been replaced by this essentially reactionary system.

It it was a true lottery, a really randomized lottery for every student in the school district, it might be okay. But then we know what would happen, we’d just get school district lines being redrawn so that the affluent could be in the ‘right’ lottery.

Education is the prime place where we should be striving for equitable opportunities and outcomes for all students, but we don’t, and the most visible way we don’t is allowing schools to be funded through property taxes, which helps to aggravate already-existing disparities in opportunity.