Analysis: A month of major education changes
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The news conference took place at a school that looked like a maze of wood decking and ramps connecting a series of portable buildings in eastern New Orleans, where boarded structures and weedy lots still say "Katrina was here."
Despite the bleak setting, the news was largely good. John White, new head of the state entity that has run most New Orleans schools since the storm — and which has taken over a handful of foundering schools elsewhere in Louisiana — announced standardized test scores that showed impressive improvement.
"The New Orleans system of schools works. Period. End of story," White declared. "And we cannot go back to a system that does not put children's needs first. These results should close the book on that question."
Not likely. White's mid-May news conference was one in a series of events in Louisiana education last month that make clear the book is still being written.
White himself was at the center of one of those events, almost as soon as he arrived to succeed Paul Vallas as superintendent of the Recovery School District. As it