New Orleans’ local schools are performing better since Hurricane Katrina washed away the city’s failing public education system:
Graduation rates went to 78% last year from 52% before Katrina—surpassing Detroit, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Oakland, Calif., cities also struggling to boost achievement among lower-income students. The share of New Orleans students proficient in math, reading, science and social studies increased to 58% in 2012 from 35% before the 2005 storm, state data shows.
It seems like many factors contributed:
The storm killed at least 1,800 people and displaced about 65,000 students, mostly low-income African Americans.
The Orleans Parish School Board fired its teachers after the storm, and the state board of education took control of all but the 13 best schools, which remain under the local board.
The state converted most of the campuses into charter schools, which hired their own nonunion teachers. Today, more than a quarter of the instructors are from Teach for America, a national teacher training program that recruits college graduates from around the U.S.
Since Katrina, the average teacher salary in New Orleans has risen slower than the state average but in 2011 was 20% higher than before the storm: $47,878 compared with the statewide average of $49,246, state data shows.
New Orleans, which previously spent about the same as other Louisiana districts, tallied about $13,000 per pupil in 2011, compared with the state spending average of $11,000 that year, according to state data. The city spent $8,000 per pupil before Katrina, records show.
Denver, Chicago and Cleveland have embraced school choice on a smaller scale, but none give as much freedom—to parents and campuses—as New Orleans does: About 84% of its 42,000 public school students attend charters, the largest share of any district in the U.S.
Public schools are graded, based on academic performance — but it’s not clear what that grade actually measures:
Of the nearly 12,300 slots available in the citywide lottery for this school year, 20% were in schools rated F in 2012, 29% in D schools, 11% in C schools, 14% in B schools and none in A schools, according to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal. Among the open seats were ungraded schools that previously had D and F ratings but recently changed operators.
Complicating results in the education marketplace, some families haven’t used their choices as expected: Nearly 35% of the approximately 6,700 students applying to transfer or enroll at a public school for the fall semester selected either D- or F-graded schools as their first pick, the Journal found.
Problem:
The storm killed at least 1,800 people and displaced about 65,000 students,
So you’re comparing two radically different populations. The key question is who did not return to the system? Most likely those who had fewer roots and less security, no homeownership, no insurance, etc. were more likely to end up in a totally different neighborhood or city. These are factors that correlate highly with success in school.
This would be like getting rid of a cancer ward in a hospital and replacing it with a plastic surgery ward for rich housewives and then noting the death rate at the hospital has radically declined and declaring that the doctors and administration must have gotten much better.