{"id":1953,"date":"2012-04-20T13:22:50","date_gmt":"2012-04-20T17:22:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/?p=1953"},"modified":"2012-04-20T13:22:50","modified_gmt":"2012-04-20T17:22:50","slug":"was-hurricane-katrina-good-for-new-orleans-public-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/2012\/04\/was-hurricane-katrina-good-for-new-orleans-public-school\/","title":{"rendered":"Was Hurricane Katrina good for New Orleans public school?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Was hurricane Katrina good for the New Orleans public schools and what changes occurred within the school systems after Katrina hit?<\/strong> Post Katrina, New Orleans was a mess.\u00a0 New Orleans was known as the lowest performing school district in Louisiana and many of the teachers and students had lost hope and sight of a good education.\u00a0 The city of New Orleans was in desperate need of help; in 2004, two thirds of the schools in New Orleans were rated \u201cAcademically Unacceptable\u201d under Louisiana\u2019s accountability standards.\u00a0 After Katrina hit, government officials took quick action and New Orleans was declared to be in \u201cAcademic Crisis.\u201d\u00a0 The Recovery School District (RSD) took control over the failing public schools and turned many of them into Charter Schools.\u00a0 The Pre-Katrina Era of New Orleans brought about, the rapid expansion of RSD, the removal of school attendance zones, the rise of charter schools, and a new group of teachers which improved the education system in New Orleans.<\/p>\n

While researching the questions of \u201cWas Hurricane Katrina good for the New Orleans Public Schools,\u201d I came across many conflicting articles.\u00a0 For this assignment I thought it would be good to write about two sources that contradicted each other.\u00a0 One book called \u201cResilience and Opportunity\u201d gave the impression that Katrina was good for New Orleans, while an article called \u201cSqueezing Public Education: History and Ideology Gang Up on New Orleans,\u201d by Ralph Adamo explained the shortcomings that Hurricane Katrina brought to the education system.<\/p>\n

In chapter 3 of Resilience and Opportunity written by Andre Perry and Michael Schwarm-Baird, we see a whole chapter about the rebuilding of public schools after Hurricane Katrina.\u00a0 Perry and Schwarm-Baird say that Hurricane Katrina brought about three positive things to the school system: the rapid expansion of Recovery School District (RSD), the removal of School attendance zones and the rise of charter schools.\u00a0 With the RSD system, the state was able to take over failing public schools and turn them into better schools.\u00a0 RSD turned many of these schools into charter schools.\u00a0 During this time the government passed Act 35, which expanded the RSD schools because of its new rules.\u00a0 Schools were now considered failing if their School Performance Score (SPS) was below state average and now RSD only applied to schools that were in districts that were consider to be in \u201cacademic crisis\u201d (the district operated more than 30 academically, inacceptable schools or had more than 50% of its students in such schools) which was helpful for New Orleans obviously because their district was in academic crisis.\u00a0 The last part of this act said that the RSD had authority over the land and building occupied by the school that it took over therefore there was rapid reconstruction of all the school buildings.\u00a0 The RSD had five years to operate before the BESE can decide whether to return the school to local control.\u00a0 From what Perry and Schwarm-Baird explained, these schools sounded like they were making a difference in New Orleans.\u00a0 Perry and Schwarm-Baird also said that Post-Katrina most schools in New Orleans had attendance zones, which decided where students should attend school.\u00a0 Students were forced to go to schools that were in their local neighborhoods no matter if there were better schools around them.\u00a0 Pre-Katrina the government abandoned these attendance zones and gave students and parents free choice of their schools and most charter schools were required to take any student in the city.\u00a0 RSD made a common application process in order to help parents apply to these schools.\u00a0 Parents were please by these new rules but this also they also posed questions for the government, such as how will students get to these schools; transportation became a problem.\u00a0 While Perry and Schwarm-Baird stated all these great things that happened to New Orleans Pre-Katrina, Ralph Adamo seems to think differently.<\/p>\n

In Ralph Adamo\u2019s article he states that there was a rapid expansion of Recovery School District (RSD), there was the removal of School attendance zones and there was the rise of charter schools after Hurricane Katrina, but he say that some of these things were not good for Katrina. RSD came in and quickly took over most of the Public Schools in New Orleans but they did not open these schools in good conditions, Adamo says, \u201cRSD opened seventeen schools in the fall of 2006-schools that were inadequately staffed (many still have only a minority of certified teachers); that lacked books, food services, and other infrastructural necessities; and that started the year in school buildings that had either not been improved at all or were in the middle of reconstruction,\u201d (Adamo 5).\u00a0 Also the RSD staff realized that they had not opened enough schools for the amount of students that were attending these schools so they were forced to open more schools quicker, which turned into a disaster.\u00a0 Adamo also comments on the abandonment of the attendance zones.\u00a0 He explained that although it was good for parents to get to choose their school for their children, it lead to confusion.\u00a0 \u201c\u2026when the school year began in fall 2006, we saw a spectacle of confused and harried parents wandering all over town trying to make sense of their new “choices.” Instead of genuine community input\u2026\u201d (Adamo 4-5).\u00a0 Adamo also tries to argue that in times of crisis private companies try to make a profit off of these districts and they end up making a bigger mess and more confusion.<\/p>\n

I am doing more research to come up with my answer to the initial question, but from these two sources it is interesting to see how many people have different opinions about the topic.<\/p>\n

Bibliography<\/strong><\/p>\n

Adamo, Ralph. “Squeezing Public Education: History and Ideology Gang Up in New Orleans.” Dissent Magazine<\/em>. Web. 20 Apr. 2012. <http:\/\/www.dissentmagazine.org\/article\/?article=862>..<\/strong><\/p>\n

Liu, Amy. “Chapter 3.” Resilience and Opportunity: Lessons from the U.S. Gulf Coast after Katrina and Rita<\/em>. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2011. Print.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Was hurricane Katrina good for the New Orleans public schools and what changes occurred within the school systems after Katrina hit? Post Katrina, New Orleans was a mess.\u00a0 New Orleans was known as the lowest performing school district in Louisiana and many of the teachers and students had lost hope and sight of a good … Continue reading Was Hurricane Katrina good for New Orleans public school?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":151,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1953"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/151"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1953"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1960,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1953\/revisions\/1960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}