Laissez les bons temps roulez!

Isn’t that what they say in New Orleans? I wouldn’t know, because I have never been there before. Remedying that tomorrow with my dear friend Laura. I will be visiting the set of a TV show, meeting with top-notch reporters, and eating eating eating. I am also really looking forward to learning more about the massive upheaval of the city’s schools. It was nothing short of idiotic for Arne Duncan to say that Hurricane Katrina was “the best thing that happened” to New Orleans schools—myself, I like to take my school reform without 1,800 deaths and $80 billion in damages—but it is true that much of a bad system is being basically rebuilt from scratch. I have said this before, but Sarah Carr at the Times-Picayune has done a great job of documenting the clash between tradition and reform, between democracy and technocracy, that has become the underlying story of just about every education story coming out of the city.