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AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the education system? Is New Orleans being used now as a way to model charter schools, when you had, for example, a number of months ago, all the teachers of New Orleans fired?

TRACIE WASHINGTON: If this is a model for chartering schools in the nation, we are in severe trouble. This state decided in the fall, absurdly, to engage in an experiment, and the statute states that this is an experiment with our children, that it was going to take over all of the schools, show us it could do better by engaging chartering organizations to come in and use new models for education in this community.

Well, that's not what happened. First of all, most chartering organizations didn't come in droves to take over schools in New Orleans. That's number one. Number two, the state, which never wanted to run schools in the city of New Orleans -- Cecil Picard said -- he's our state superintendent -- he didn't want to run schools down here. Well, then they were, quote, “stuck” with opening schools. And it has been a haphazard process, with bureaucrats in the State of Louisiana Department of Education trying to figure out, how do you open doors, how do you get books ordered inside of schools, how do we order security, cafeteria, transportation?

What ultimately we've seen, Amy, is that there was a promise that 56 schools would be opening this fall. We have, you know, a portion of that number of schools being opened. Many of the schools are still in a state of disrepair. And we have tiered levels of education here, such that if you are in elite charter schools, you get excellent services on the one hand, but you may not get the same quality of services on the other hand. Yet, the elite charter schools may not offer services for all, such that special education children, children with special education needs, may not be serviced.

Children who need transportation to and from school will not be serviced. My son cannot get transportation to and from school. If you're not a stay-at-home mom, if you can't get off work at 3:00 in the afternoon, woe are you if you want to get your child into one of the elite schools, because they will not provide transportation. That's ridiculous. If this is a model for the country, then our poor and, frankly, our African American children will not be educated. They will be underserved.

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