Were Special-Needs Kids Denied An Education After Katrina?
Leskisher Luckett describes her nine-year-old son Darren as a diamond in need of polishing. Education, she says, can provide the necessary buffing to unearth her son's natural glow.
But when the Lucketts relocated to New Orleans after fleeing from Hurricane Katrina, Darren's ADHD proved to be an obstacle his school's staff couldn't seem to overcome. Their collective solution was to lock the fourth-grader in a closet and use physical force to restrain his behavior. This proved to be barbaric in action and result. Now this young boy wants to give up on school -- a direct result of a school that gave up so quickly on him.
Education's role is to help students mature and grow by providing easily-accessible knowledge. The accessibility of the knowledge is as essential as its quality. But five years after Hurricane Katrina, a civil rights group alleges