Nine years after Katrina, we’re still asking the wrong questions about education
“Is the educational system better now than it was pre-Katrina?” It’s the question I hear more than any other. But the typical responses around test score growth miss how we should measure school performance in New Orleans.
It’s just over nine years since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in August 2005, and we’re still asking the wrong questions.
Rusted scissors, coins and other debris sit on the floor of an elementary school in the Lakeview neighborhood of New Orleans, La. File Photo. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
The operative question is are people in poverty better prepared for a disaster than before Katrina?I’m not talking about whether or not the city’s evacuation plan has improved. I’m asking if our impoverished neighbors have a greater likelihood of getting in cars, with gasoline, driving to North Louisiana, staying in hotels, eating, potentially enrolling in other schools or colleges and then eventually driving back to New Orleans, rebuilding their homes, getting business loans and having political influence to direct their own recovery?
In other words, is the realness of Katrina taken into consideration in our school reforms? Are we maximizing the opportunities that school reform gives us to equip New Orleanians for life? When you’ve been through a disaster like Katrina, preparedness is true to life.
We must close thecommunity gaps that make New Orleans the tale of two cities.
The nation looks to New Orleans for advice on education, but they need to be reminded why New Orleanians need better public schools. Around 100,000 people were held inside New Orleans, unable to escape for days. But let’s be clear, if Katrina didn’t barrel down the Gulf, a high percentage of that number couldn’t have left if they wanted to.
Floodwater didn’t trap 100,000 New Orleanians.
Katrina just exposed the greatest public policy disaster in the United States. It’s the same public policy disaster that lies in wait within many American cities. I used to say the failures of our educational system trapped largely black and brown bodies inside the Superdome and city. While there isn’t research that can tell us what school type those who were forced to huddle in the Superdome attended. It’s safe to say public schools failed them. However, policy failures in transportation, healthcare, policing and housing joined education to limit people’s ability to get out of harms way.
Over the last few months, I’ve released columns in the Washington Post and the Hechinger Report that essentially challenge if New Orleans and education reform are maximizing their opportunities to address what really traps people. These pieces have been met with extreme praise or criticism. The common theme among the criticisms is that schools can’t and shouldn’t treat all social ills.
Likewise, I’ve been told that school reform must focus on the needs of the child. As one person wrote Nine years after Katrina, we’re still asking the wrong questions about education | The Hechinger Report: