"The best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans"?
It wasn't that long ago that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan claimed hurricane Katrina was "the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans". Duncan's disgusting comment might have held some weight if the claim was actually true (although it would still be remarkably insensitive), but multiple scholars have raised questions about the so-called "recovery" of the NOLA schools. Most recently, the Institute on Race and Poverty at the University of Minnesota released a report, "The State of Public Schools in Post-Katrina New Orleans: The Challenge of Creating Equal Opportunity," which challenges the narrative of a miraculous recovery in the NOLA schools. It's certainly a must-read. Here's the executive summary:
Charter schools in New Orleans have been hailed as the silver lining to Hurricane Katrina. The state of Louisiana used the hurricane as an opportunity to rebuild the entire New Orleans public school system, and launched the nation’s most extensive charter school experiment. This report evaluates how this experiment has fared in providing quality education to all students of the public school system regardless of race, socioeconomic
