Never mind traditional public schools, some experts say it’s Catholic schools that are in real competition with charter schools. With independent public schools beginning to make a name for themselves in New Orleans, paid parochial schools are increasingly vulnerable to the temptation of free, college-preparatory education. Watch how the free price tag of a charter education convinced one family to give one religious school a run for its money.
About the Author: Alexandra Fenwick
is a multimedia journalist who has worked as a reporter in daily newspapers in New Jersey and Connecticut for four years, including one year as an education reporter. She grew up on the Jersey shore, split her high school career between public school and private boarding school and later studied writing at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. She had a happy childhood, rode her bike everywhere and rarely got detention. She is trying to replicate that experience as an adult. Her byline has appeared in the Baltimore Sun, the Los Angeles Times, the Stamford Advocate, the Tribeca Tribune and Condé Nast's Portfolio.com. She graduated from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism in May 2009 and is currently an associate editor of the Columbia Journalism Review.
Track the dramatic expansion of charter schools across the U.S. and trace the major factors in this important trend, with our interactive map and timeline.
Reporting Education -- Through the Charter Lens
Since early 2009, the Columbia News21 team took notebooks, cameras and curiosities to places such as New Orleans, the Twin Cities, Newark, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C., to explore the new marketplace of hybrid, public-private schools.
The result is this web site -- a deeply reported, richly multimedia and interactive web site, produced by a dozen Columbia journalism fellows, their editors and a group of new media producers.
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