"Even when she was a little kid growing up in New Orleans, Stacey Gilbert knew she wanted to be a special education teacher. She remembers her reaction to the 1962 film The Miracle Worker, about Helen Keller, and watching other movies about children with special needs. In 2005, when Hurricane Katrina hit her hometown, Gilbert had been teaching in the city's public schools for almost two decades."
"But Gilbert didn't come back for months and when she did, she no longer had a job waiting for her. After Katrina flooded much of New Orleans, public education in the city came to a complete stop. As schools reopened, many as charter schools, most of the city's educators didn't get their jobs back. Instead, they were often replaced with young people who were both new to town and to teaching."
"People in New Orleans have strong opinions about whether the changes to the city's schools have been good or bad. "The people that did come down, they were well-meaning, but they weren't trained," says Renee Akbar, a professor of educational leadership at Xavier University of Louisiana, one of the city's HBCUs. The data, though, is hard to argue with: Test scores, graduation rates and college-going all improved, and are still holding steady."
Stacey Gilbert aspired to teach special education from childhood and had taught nearly two decades in New Orleans public schools before Hurricane Katrina. The storm forced evacuation and months away, and when she returned she no longer had a job. Public education halted and many reopened as charter schools, leaving most veteran educators without their positions and often replaced by young, inexperienced newcomers. Community members express concern about newcomer training. Measured outcomes improved—test scores, graduation rates, and college-going rose and remained steady—while teacher demographics shifted toward more white and less-experienced teachers by 2011.
Read at www.npr.org
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