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Amid Visits From Politicians, School Keeps Eye on Academics

Feren Pitts, left, a 21-year-old biology major at Dillard University, reviews math problems with 8th graders Jennifer Dennis, center, and Jolinda Brown in Eric Johnson's after-school tutoring class at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School for Science and Technology in New Orleans.

—Christopher Powers/Education Week

By Lesli A. Maxwell

New Orleans

The 2:30 p.m. dismissal bell had just stopped ringing as 11 8th graders at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School for Science and Technology flung themselves into desks inside Eric Johnson’s second-floor classroom.

They had wrapped up a couple of action-packed hours that included eating lunch with New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin, and taking turns rocketing down a towering, inflated slide that the mayor had arranged to be installed at King for the day.

But from 2:45 until 3:45 p.m, they were in Mr. Johnson’s grip, to receive one-on-one attention from the veteran teacher and three college students as they wrestled with a series of mathematics problems—all from a practice booklet meant to help prepare them...