At the end of January, Obama education secretary Arne Duncan told a cable news show (TV One‘s Washington Watch, 1/31/10), “I think the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans was Hurricane Katrina.” In reporting on Duncan’s remarks, the January 30 Washington Post apparently couldn’t find anyone to challenge the notion that Katrina was a good thing.
CNN aired a segment the same day featuring guests Roland Martin, a CNN regular and the host of Washington Watch, theprogram where Duncan made the remarks in question; and CNN education contributor Steve Perry, a magnet school founder, champion of vouchers and all-around public school critic.
Martin applauded the progress New Orleans public schools have made, citing improving test scores. But Perry, who said he agreed with Duncan, went much further, sounding frankly unhinged as he actually lamented that there could not be more Katrinas for the sake of U.S. education: “I’m saying that we can’t have a Katrina in all of the 50 states.”
Nowhere in the CNN segment or the Washington Post report was there anyone to challenge Duncan’s remarks or to explain that the reason New Orleans test scores have increased is that post-Katrina rebuilding has largely driven out the poor and black populations who had been so poorly served by the city’s schools pre-Katrina.
All in all, it was education coverage designed to make you dumber.
What we need is a political Katrina to blow all the bastards like Duncan out of DC.
That would be a beneficial climate change, wouldn’t it?
Is there anyone left in the Obama cabinet who isn’t a neocon in disguise?
RE: Nowhere . . . was there anyone . . . to explain that the reason New Orleans test scores have increased is that post-Katrina rebuilding has largely driven out the poor and black populations who had been so poorly served by the city’s schools pre-Katrina.
As a resident of New Orleans before and after the Federal Levee Failures — NOT Hurricane Katrinia — I would have to take exception with Steve Rendall’s assessment.
I am no fan of the privatization of public schools and I am no fan of Mr. Duncan. However, to suggest that the only explanation of the changes in education in New Orleans is the removal of the black and poor from the city is merely to substitute one ideological myth for another.
I am a strong proponent of public schools as well as being the product of a public education from kindergarten through graduate studies. However, I visited the New Orleans public schools prior to the Federal Levee Failures and they were dysfunctional in ways that sound like hyperbole to those who didn’t witness it firsthand.
Yes, the demographics of the city have shifted (best data: http://gnocdc.org/). However, other changes have included a dramatic influx of educators from across the country — some of the best and brightest and most dedicated to my mind. And they are making a difference in the new magnet and charter schools and in the public schools — where ever they are allowed to innovate and to teach. Real people making a real difference in the lives of children in New Orleans.
The pro-charter school / magnet school movement is using New Orleans to further their crusade. That is unfortunate and I hope they are not successful. For I firmly believe that public schools bring more than education to our Republic. However, countering their one-dimensional-propaganda with equally ignorant statements doesn’t help the progressive cause.
New Orleans is a beautiful, troubled, fantastic, complex city. Please take the time to get to know us. And please leave us out of your ideological ping-pong matches. We have been through enough.
The debate about education in New Orleans is a major one with national impact. Kids of color have been traditionally “under-served” by schools; in fact, schools in most of this country have stopped educating most kids of color. Study after study makes that clear.
Of course, as the Fair dispatch says, the impact of the “demographic changes” (as Geoff Coats euphemistically puts it) on the school system in New Orleans has been a major factor in this “turnaround”. You couldn’t have the kind of improvements we’re seeing there in this short time if all that was happening is good teachers moving in! To say otherwise is to demean all the teachers who were in New Orleans before Katrina and have been “there” in classrooms all over the country. Good educators are important; but policy, curriculum and approach to students’ backgrounds, culture and learning habits (to offer just a few examples) are also of great importance.
And so is whether you want a school system to survive or not.
There is a national movement ongoing to destroy public education. It goes hand in hand with the fact that most young people of color are facing life-threatening prospects (jail, drugs, weapon violence), that most youth in this country will not find a job when they’re ready and that they are all part of a world-wide crisis in young people’s futures. In short, our kids have no future and our societies, as currently structured, can’t give them one.
These “alternative” schools, while often great models for what a school could be, are often used as a way of society’s not dealing with its public schooling responsibility. It’s not just about Geoff Coats’ preferences: public school is a must for this society and should be a priority for all progressive people. It is essential to the continuation of a democracy and it is threatened by the current Administration’s policies.
Geoff Coats is a New Orleans businessman and booster and that’s great but in this case he’s not being helpful. A lot of people who “know” New Orleans from the inside would agree with the thrust of the argument he derides and the debate he derisively dismisses as “idealogical ping-pong” is critical to the survival of millions of kids of color. He’s the one playing that game: with the future of millions of kids at the other end of the table.
Hi Alfredo,
Funny, that in all my years of community organizing, running non-profits, and working on progressive causes in New Orleans, I haven’t run into you. Where are you? And how do you know me?
Peace,
Geoff
Obama should fire this clown.
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