LONDONDERRY, N.H. — On the eve of Hurricane Katrina’s 10th anniversary, La. Gov. Bobby Jindal reflected on a decade of remarkable transformation in New Orleans schools.
“It is very easy to look back and say, ‘Hurricanes Katrina and Rita caused all of our problems’,” the Republican presidential candidate said at the New Hampshire Education Summit. “That’s not true and it’s not fair.”
Jindal pointed out that many of the educational problems in New Orleans predated Katrina. “There was a valedictorian in one school, a 4.0 graduate, who couldn’t get an ACT score high enough to actually go to college,” Jindal said. In addition, many schools lacked basic supplies and students often felt unsafe.
For years, the system was low on academic achievement and high on corruption. “There was so much endemic and systemic corruption,” Jindal said. Skimming schemes and other forms of corruption were so rampant the FBI had to set up its own desk in the school district’s office.
Hurricane Katrina or not, New Orleans schools needed saving. “It is hard to overstate how bad the public school system was,” Jindal said.
With many of the schools devastated by the hurricane, and much of the student population evacuated across the country, the state decided to take over many New Orleans schools. However, in the long-run, it didn’t actually want to operate them. “The state realized, we don’t have the capacity or the desire to operate every one of these schools. If we just go in and try to micromanage these schools, it’s going to be a mess,” Jindal said. As a result, the state-run district decided to make many of the schools it took over into charter schools.
Today, 90 percent of New Orleans students go to charter schools, and every family has a say in where their child will go to school. “New Orleans is a 100 percent choice city,” Jindal said. “Every parent decides where their children go to school. Even if your children go to the traditional public school in your community, you make the decision.”
Before Katrina, 60 percent of New Orleans students were in failing schools. Today, that number has fallen below 10 percent. Furthermore, the portion of kids reading at grade level doubled in five years. The graduation rate also rose by 20 percentage points, up slightly past 70 percent.
“I wouldn’t wish [Katrina’s’] devastation on anybody,” Jindal said. “It doesn’t take a Katrina to cause us to be able to do education reform. In some ways, you have our own education disaster happening today in many communities, where children are already trapped in failing schools. It shouldn’t take a hurricane to cause us to take the drastic steps, not incremental steps but the big steps, to change that situation so they can all have a chance to get a great education.”
Jindal has been the governor of Louisiana since 2008.
