Research on Reforms, Inc.
October 2011 Dr. Barbara Ferguson and Karran Harper Royal
Charter schools are tuition-free, independently-operated public schools that admit students based on a lottery if more apply than can be accommodated. However, the lottery is skewed at Lycee Francais de la Nouvelle-Orleans Charter School and Audubon Charter School, each located in uptown New Orleans. Lycee Francais’ pre-kindergarten children, whose parents pay $4,570 tuition, are able to re-enroll into the tuition-free kindergarten, skipping any lottery. At Audubon, children whose parents pay $9,050 for a private pre-kindergarten, enter Tier 1 of the lottery and enroll first into the tuition-free kindergarten. Charter schools are to be open and accessible to all children. Skewing the lottery in favor of children whose parents are able to pay for pre-kindergarten is a misuse of the charter school concept.
To read the entire article, please go to: http://ResearchOnReforms.org/html/documents/DeceptionoftheLottery.pdf
Education Talk New Orleans 
fantasic and incredible.
keep this up karran, My reply above expresses my awe in what you are doing and uncovering. This is so not what New orleans needs.Thank you for all that you do.
This is a malicious report, aimed at harming these two schools, one with a very good track record and the other with a very promising one. The only reason they have paying pre-Ks in the first place is because they have no funding for them otherwise. I’m sure they’d both love to be funded. In France, school starts at age 3, not 5, so they need a pre-K program — They are French schools, not French immersion programs. And really, what are they supposed to do? There are children who start school there at 3 or 4 — so what happens to them if they don’t make it in in K? Is that fair to them?
Do you dispute any of the claims in the article? The article was not written based on anything but facts and the law. If there is inaccurate information in the report, please bring it to our attention and we will research it and correct the inaccuracies if there are any. There is no intent here other than reporting factual information to the general public. If there are practices that inconsistent with the law, but helpful to the parents and the school, then the public has a right to know about this.