Before hurricane Katrina ravaged the city in 2005, New Orleans had one of the worst performing public school districts in the nation. Katrina forced nearly a million people to leave their homes and caused almost $100 billion in damages. To an already failing public school system, the storm seemed to provide the final deathblow. But then something amazing happened. In the wake of Katrina, education reformers decided to seize the opportunity and start fresh with a system based on choice.
Today, New Orleans has the most market-based school system in the US. 60% of New Orleans students currently attend charter schools, test scores are up, and talented and passionate educators from around the country are flocking to New Orleans to be a part of the education revolution. It’s too early to tell if the New Orleans experiment in school choice will succeed over the long term, but for the first time in decades people are optimistic about the future of New Orleans schools.
And then the videos.
Part 1:
Part 2:
School choice works – let’s hope they can keep the unions and bureaucrats away from the kids long enough so that they can get an education. I’m not a big fan of libertarians, because they are often lousy on social issues and foreign policy. But I agree with them on school choice.
Don’t miss the previous story about Governor Bobby Jindal’s pro-life reforms in Louisiana.
Gov. Bobby Jindal signed three landmark abortion bills on Tuesday that significantly tighten the state’s regulations on abortionists and their practices, and opt out the state from the national health care reform’s abortion mandates.
Jindal signed two bills that were introduced and shepherded through the legislature by the Louisiana Right to Life Federation (LARTL). The Ultrasound before Abortion Act (SB 528) adds strict ultrasound requirements to the state’s informed consent laws. The law requires abortionists to perform an ultrasound on a woman at least two hours before she undergoes the induced abortion of her child, and before she is put under any kind of anesthesia.
Abortion facility employees must also follow a detailed script set forth in the legislation, offering pregnant mothers the opportunity to see the ultrasound image, hear a description of the image, and receive a printout of the ultrasound image. To guarantee compliance, legislators added a provision stating that abortionists failing to adhere to the law could expect to find themselves sued in civil court by their clients.
The other bill, the Abortion Insurance Opt-Out (HB 1247), prohibits health insurers from providing abortion coverage within the state-run health insurance exchange that will go into operation in 2014, as mandated by the national health care reform. A provision of the national law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, gives states the explicit right to ban health insurance companies receiving public subsidies under the state health exchange from providing abortion coverage.
The Louisiana measure even protects children conceived in situations of rape and incest, leaving just one exception for insurance companies – allowing them to pay for abortion in cases where the mother’s life is in danger from “a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury” including “a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself.”
Watch this video from left-wing CNN. (H/T Hot Air)
CNN is being blocked by the government from going down to the beaches to take pictures and film – so that they cannot convey the severity of the damage and the problems caused by the government and the Coast Guard dragging their feet in order to comply with red tape and regulations.
The Democrats are not really interested in solving the problem, they just want you to vote them. That’s the only problem they’re serious about solving.
WINTERY KNIGHT 