No more teachers, no more books, at least not the pre-Katrina kind. New Orleans had been known for having one of the most corrupt and failing school systems in the country. But it’s been two and a half years since the storm and despite difficulty, there has been new money allotted to schools, a purge within the system, and the implementation of a system focused on charter schools which is non-standardized and provides more teaching liberty and adaptability to cater to individual kids. With this, there has also come a slew of young and ambitious teachers, non-profits and those willing to leave the comfort of their towns and careers to help with potentially the largest educational overhaul in US history.

I strongly believe that we have a very short window of opportunity to achieve something historic and far-reaching in regards to public education in urban centers across this nation. For the first time in recent history, the resources, the politics, and for the most part, the talented people are all aligning to work together towards the common goal of providing an excellent public education for all children in New Orleans. Never before has an inner city educational system had the opportunity to reinvent itself and start over from scratch, correcting the wrongs of decades past.

That’s Mark Martin, who was kind enough to chat with alldaybuffet over e-mail and in-person about a new education project he’s working on in New Orleans– the following is a summary of our conversations. He’s the elementary school leader of the newly opened Langston Hughes Academy Charter School which has the goal of sending every student to college by preparing them for the best public and private high schools in the NOLA area. But Langston Hughes is also the first and flagship school in the larger organization NOLA 180—the first charter management organization in the nation with the specific mission to turn around failed public schools.

Within 3-5 years, we will take a core group of teachers and leaders from Langston Hughes Academy, our “incubator” school, and infuse them into a school determined to be failing by state accountability measures. We will re-charter this school under NOLA 180, and then this team will be charged to re-culture and turn around the failed school into a high-performing, successful public school.

Sound efficient? Maybe because it’s the brainchild of John Alford, a North Carolina A&T and Harvard business grad who decided to use his experience and expertise for good. It was his work establishing schools with KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) that made him an expert in education (he started with KIPP when they had 5 schools, they are now over 45 schools strong) but it was working in turnaround management with GM suppliers the greatly informed the inspiration for NOLA 180.

He realized that if businesses are failing, it’s a lot cheaper and saves a lot more hassle if you can get somebody there turned around than if you have to shut them down, go get another supplier or start another business. He wanted to turn that into a school model. Instead of having to disperse kids and disperse entire faculties when schools are failing, and shut them down, if you can just put in a core group of people who can get them turned around and headed in the right direction, then that saves a lot of trouble.

There are often only two options when a school is failing: one-leave it running with a possible state takeover that will change little, or two-shut it down and send everyone packing and out of luck. NOLA 180 offers an alternative, working with existing schools and with the state to turn them around–better than even starting new schools.

The KIPP model is to start new good schools, but it takes a long time. If you build a school that has a lot of really strong teachers and has this leadership pipeline, then every three or four years, you take out those teacher leaders, and a few administrators, put them in a failing school, re-culture it, get it headed in the right direction–that makes a lot more sense.

John won an Echoing Green grant to fund the idea and finally moved to New Orleans, early ’06 (he was asked to start the program before the storm, which delayed the plans). He started writing the charter and received approval in Feb ‘07 and the school opened its doors to about 110 students in August of ’07.

It’s a unique program that can work in New Orleans because, amazingly, over half of the schools re-opening are Charter schools, including Langston Hughes. It’s a big point of contention in the battle for the minds and school system of New Orleans.

New Orleans has relinquished control of a school system that had long failed it’s children in favor of a system of schools that are allowed to operate autonomously and with great accountability, doing what’s best for the kids within that specific school. In the past, too often schools have been plagued by uninspired tenured teachers and central office bureaucrats making decisions for schools without ever having actually set foot in those schools or having met the children, family, and staff that really determine what that school is about.

Where we have seen push back from community, for the most part, is where the community is uninformed about what charter schools are. The unions and others behind decades of failure want their influential positions back, and they have never been shy about charter-bashing in order to defeat our aim. But with our parents and families, they almost immediately know something about our school is going to be far different from the schools that many of them grew up in and in most cases, were failed by.

And being a charter allows much more freedom to deal with New Orleans’s unique situation. Many kids have been hopping around from school to school wherever they evacuated to (Texas, Baton Rouge) and some kids just did not go to school during the Katrina year at all. So to help, many of the high-performing schools are able to offer 50% more instructional time than traditional public schools.

Our kids go from 7:30 to 4:30 every day, so we have longer blocks of all the major subjects. And with the young kids, they’re not going to be as far behind, so we’re going to have a lot more enrichment type programs. Our goal is to expose them to a lot of things they’re not normally exposed to, like golf, tennis, the performing arts.

The great thing about starting our own thing is that we can do whatever’s right for the kids and we can pick and choose whatever curriculums we want. So I’ve actually been making all these school visits to see which curriculums are working, which are the easiest for teachers to implement, that get results.

New Orleans, more than any place in the country has a market-driven school system, for teachers, for students. There’s total choice. All the new charter schools are open enrollment so the kids can literally go to any school in the city that’s open enrollment, so if you’re not doing your job, you’re gonna lose kids.

But teaching in the Big Easy is not so easy, and comes with its own set of problems.

The thing about New Orleans schools, both as far as instructions and facilities, is that before the storm they were miserable. There was so much money being embezzled. For instance, the past president of the school board just got indicted for embezzling something like $100,000. And that was rampant.

But despite criticism over the relative inexperience of many teachers, the newness of these volunteers to the environment has definite advantages.

Most have a certain level of dedication and willingness to sacrifice that is unseen in a veteran teacher who has lost their dedication due to years of neglect from an nonsupporting and ineffective school administration or central office. The hope has remained constant despite the obstacles, and glimpses of progress and achievement constantly rain down over them giving them the drive and determination to constantly get better.

As with Alford, many of the newcomers are bringing with them new and innovative ways of thinking about New Orleans’s educational problems–as much informed by the world of education, as the world outside of it. And it’s the charter schools that Mark sees as the conduit for larger change.

One wonderful thing about having young, moldable, and able educators is that with a new system comes a very new and remarkably different way of “doing school,” and in a sense we need flexible people who are open to new ideas and new ways of thought to achieve this very entrepreneurial goal of reinventing public education in New Orleans.

We’re kind of borrowing best practices from other sectors too. For the most part, education in America hadn’t changed for the last hundred years. The classroom and the instruction looked the same, the students have changed a bit, but really the way education was done hadn’t changed a bit and it’s long overdue. There’s a danger with looking too much at business and saying lets run a school the way we run corporate America, but there are certain things we have to borrow. If business hadn’t constantly evolved over the last hundred years, we would have been left in the dark ages basically, so that’s kind of the way we look at education. It’s been left behind and we need to bring it into the 21st century, and charter schools are really the first schools that have been making a concerted effort to do that.

The process of rebuilding the education system of New Orleans is a big endeavor and an experiment for sure, one with a lot of weight.

The entire staff knows that the nation is awaiting our results, and many locally and nationally are hoping that we fail so that we can sink back into the old way of doing things, that allowed for this achievement gap in the first place.

And though ambitious and daunting, what they need now is help from willing people.

Human capital is the most important aspect of this movement, and we certainly do not have everyone we need to pull this off. Every single Langston Hughes Academy founding teacher left the comforts of their previous teaching positions or careers outside of the state of Louisiana to come and join the effort accomplish this historic feat. We need more people willing to take a risk, leave their comfort zone. We still have not reached the tipping point of achievement, but we are not too far from it. It’s still not too late to join this movement, but time and opportunity are slipping and we know we have none to waste in this effort.

But Mark has seen a positive response.

For the most part, the parents of New Orleans that I meet with are excited at the opportunity to finally provide their children with a great education without having to pay for it. I’ve had parents come to tears when they hear the degree of our academic program and dedication of our teachers, something they’ve never been able to afford to give their kids before, which can now be theirs for free. Despite the lingering doubts by some, many more initial skeptics have witnessed the good that charters have brought to New Orleans public education and are now supporting our efforts to grow the movement.

So what’s it like to be a part of this kind of project?

The work drives you. As long as our hours are, it fuels you and it keeps you going. I never intended to be in New Orleans, but it was just too great of an opportunity. I mean, we all kind of realize how much is at stake here. In a way, the eyes of the nation are on us in New Orleans, because it’s the first time you can actually rebuild an urban school system at scale. New Orleans is not a big school system, and so it’s really the first time in an urban setting that you can affect the whole thing by making these changes. And if we get it right, and we do what we think we can do in New Orleans, then the nation’s going to take notice and these school systems like in Atlanta that are not doing too hot but think they’re doing great, they’re going to realize that, ‘wow, we’re not doing what kids need.’ Our goal is to impact those systems by making a difference in New Orleans and doing what we’re doing.

And to those thinking about moving to New Orleans to teach, help with the rebuild, or even those just wanting to find more meaning for themselves and their skills.

If you are an educator or a socially-minded entrepreneur, now is the time and New Orleans is the place. There is no other opportunity in the nation to achieve so much with such a deserving group of citizens and young people. Regardless of age, race, political view or affiliation, this city is dying to get talented people into positions of influence.

Survey after survey informs us that finding meaning in one’s work far outweighs salary and status. The best part about New Orleans right now is that if you follow your passions and do what fuels you, you can find the latter two from above as well. The time to act however is now.

Mark is looking for talented teachers and staff who want to help with the movement, so if you or anyone you know of may be interested or able to help, you can search and apply for positions here or feel free to contact one of us at alldaybuffet or Mark directly at mmartin[at]nola180[dot]org.