"Everybody wants change. At the same time, everybody does everything so that things don't change."

I could not help but think of New Orleans when I saw this quote in The New York Times from German economist Wolfgang Nowak. He was talking about the economies of major European countries but he could have been talking about the Big Easy.

In New Orleans pre-Katrina, people have given lip service…for 40 years that I know of…to improving public education but in four decades public schools have gotten worse, not better, with the exception of certain jewels like Benjamin Franklin High School and New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. Politicians—both those who have gotten rich funneling funds from School Board coffers into their own pockets and those who have continually refused to vote sufficient funds for education—like to point to such schools, telling us what a good job they are doing.

But in the aftermath of Katrina, one of the first things to be cut to the bone was the public education budget, including funds for New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, which has put musical prodigies such as composer/performing artists Wynton Marsalis, Harry Connick, Jr., and Irvin Mayfield and writing prodigies like Anya Kamenetz, whose new book Generation Debt is being touted by national media including CNN, on the road to national success. Education, humanities, and the arts have, in fact, taken a beating every year, while politicians continue to squander resources on pork pies, frequently pork pies which fatten their own pot bellies. The same thing is true elsewhere, of course, but that doesn't make it right for New Orleans or all of those other American cities.

New Orleanians themselves are as much to blame for the rotten school system as the Legislature, which always has allocated insufficient funding for education statewide. In New Orleans, a majority of those who can well afford to vote increased taxes for schools have consistently failed to do so.

Most major cities in America have both private and public schools but New Orleans has had three schools systems. It's often said that middle-class parents breathe a sigh of relief when their children graduate from high school and go college because the city's private schools are more costly than many fine universities and where you go to high school has long been considered more important to a New Orleans student's futures than the college selected. In addition to reliance on private education, New Orleans is a Catholic city and the dominance of parochial schools in the past has made New Orleanians reluctant to pay higher taxes for public schools.

By failing to vote tax increases for public education, however, New Orleanians have been shooting themselves in the foot for years. The deteriorating schools, lack of educational opportunities, and, thus, lack of economic opportunities have resulted in heart-wrenching poverty for a growing underclass. While the vast majority of disadvantaged New Orleanians have been decent, hardworking, god-fearing, hospitable, fun-loving, and forgiving people, the lack of a future has resulted in fatal choices for a an increasing number of young men and women, who choose crime as a means of survival, drug use to combat despair.

Not enough money allocated has been one problem; improper use of funds is another cause of deteriorating public education.

At the state level, there has never been any justification for short-changing education. Political leaders have always, however, taken the path of least resistance or, alternatively, one that would line special pockets. Legislators have frittered away the state's considerable mineral wealth since oil was discovered. They have never imposed fair taxes on major out-of-state or even foreign oil companies or required them to repair the damage they do to the state's environment or to provide a real share of the job wealth in white collar positions for Louisianians. You can only wonder what the payback has been for generations of communal malfeasance.

Continuing to do business with the oil industry the way the state always has means continuing to squander the state's depletable resources, ensuring that education continues to deteriorate. Severance taxes, depletion allowances, tax incentives, all need re-thinking and fast action, not just double talk lip service.

I can't imagine why anyone would disagree with increased taxes on the oil industry in the wake of this past week's announcement that the retirement gift package from Exxon to its chief was an obscene $400 million on top of the $686 million he earned from 1993 to 2005, which translates to $144,573 per day. Can anyone doubt that Louisiana has been screwed by the oil industry? That the country is being screwed by the oil industry this very minute?

Then, there is the Homestead Exemption, an admirable notion at some level to encourage home ownership. Every single property owner, however, should pay something in property taxes, if it's only $300 a year, $25 a month. The exemption has been so high, however, and the value of homes assessed so low that many, if not most, homeowners who get city services pay nothing in property taxes. If politicians fear ousting by the voters if they decrease the homestead exemption, then a flat minimum of $300 a year should be established for all property owners, with funds realized dedicated to public education, not made available for more fat back. Alternative concepts would be to allow homestead exemptions only for senior citizens or only for families whose net income is below $25,000 a year. Keeping the way we assess and collect property taxes the same will ensure that nothing gets done to improve education.

The system of elected school boards has not worked, has instead provided lots of opportunities for political boondoggling. There's a lot of talk and some action right now about charter schools. I am not sure this is the right approach, especially for-profit charter schools. In some American cities for-profit charter school companies have proven just one more way to misappropriate funds for education. Charters may be the only approach right now for schools facing closure. The Little Red School House which has been successful in Manhattan, might provide the right answer for the French Quarter's only school, McDonough 15, for instance, an elementary school which services Treme and other adjacent neighborhoods, not just the relatively few students who live in the Quarter.

An alternative to investigate would be non-profit boards for each public school made up of teachers from each school and parents of students attending the school, a sort of Parent Teacher Association to administer each school, including hiring and firing of personnel, establishing not only standards for students but for teachers, using independent auditors to provide financial oversight.

As a result of improper funding priorities, of course, many talented men and women who would teach in public schools, have been lost to private schools or to education all together and some pretty stupid attitudes about schools and teaching and use of school facilities have become practically the gospel in public education.

The concept of lowering standards for both students and teachers in certain schools because students and teachers come from impoverished families or certain ethnic backgrounds is a horrendous form of classism and racism, guaranteeing that poor folks never break out of the viscious cycle of ignorance and limited earning ability. Improperly educated teachers will keep the cycle going, as will lowering expectations for students to make the mark.

Lowering of the standards in public schools has caused middle class American families, who in the past sent their children to public schools, to put their children in private schools and abandon the thing which made America so strong for so long, good public education. It's a way of reverting to segregation which makes me ashamed to be an American right now. (And did you see the news that Omaha has gerrymandered the school districts so that it now has three separate districts: white, black, and hispanic?)

Standards need to be raised, not lowered. Salaries need to provide teachers with the incentive to prepare themselves for demanding professional standards. When I was young, schools were after-hours community centers with lots of extracurricular activities for young people. They were places for adults engaged in school activities and other civic work to meet. As a result, communities took pride in the physical appearance, the care and maintenance of schools and school grounds. Now, most schools are padlocked as soon as the final class bell rings. Schools will get better if they once again become centers of neighborhood life.

Well-heeled New Orleanians have been willing to put up the bucks and volunteer countless hours to create such things as a state of the art zoo but little to improve the quality of life for human beings. Mind you, I am glad we have a good zoo. But it's time to put the people who have given New Orleans its heart, its personality, and its soul first.

New Orleans has been a dying city for at least the last 20 years. Katrina delivered a knock-out a punch.

It's time to do things differently if the old gal is to be resuscitated now.

And the Feds need to get out of Iraq now and put some money where it belongs…on educating our own people…instead of bankrupting us and turning us into a third world country, the laughing stock of a world which once envied us.