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EDITOR OF REDSTATE

In Which I Praise Arne Duncan

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  January 30th, 2010 at 09:52 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Arne Duncan is getting a lot of heat for telling the truth.

You heard me. Duncan said, “The best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans was Hurricane Katrina. That education system was a disaster.” Yep.

Duncan, of course, did not point the finger at teachers’ unions, the bloated bureaucracy, or any of the major causes, but the fact is that yes, without Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans could not have rebuilt its horrible school system on a charter school model.

That model is already showing great success. But for a natural disaster, it would not have happened.

There are many, many things to go after Arne Duncan for saying and doing. This is not one of them.

Of course, how exactly can you blame Bush here? Duncan may be made to walk it back for that reason alone.

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COMMENTS

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  • http://www.nighttwister.com NightTwister

    The Boulder Valley School District spent over $200K of their budget fighting against charter schools in other school districts, fighting it all the way to the Colorado Supreme Court, where they lost. Thing is…there are no charter schools in the BVSD area. Each school district controls whether or not they will fund them or not.

    Republicans are pro-choice when it comes to education. Progressives are anti-choice. Why every (R) candidate doesn’t embrace this is still a mystery to me.

    BTW, Charter schools almost always score in the top 10% of all schools state-wide. Why parents aren’t insisting on more of them is another mystery to me.

  • http://www.thehayride.com MacAoidh

    ….the improvement in both test scores and parent satisfaction as a result of Orleans Parish moving its schools to a charter model has been breathtaking. There is also a voucher/scholarship program going on in Orleans which has been highly successful along the DC voucher model.

    These successes prove that it’s not a question of “urban black kids can’t learn,” which is what the education establishment wants us all to believe. What it proves is a top-down educational system model is a failed model, and if you want to stay competitive with the rest of the world in education, just like in everything else, you have to compete locally first.

  • twomoon

    This outcome from Katrina puts a whole new spin on the economics term “creative destruction.” The progress of New Orleans education will be a story worth highlighting indefinitely. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

  • NeoKong

    are right twice a day.
    I believe that under Mr. Duncan’s tenure in Chicago that that the graduation rate for high school seniors fell to almost just fifty percent. What would he know about improving schools….? While I would agree that charter schools are often times better than public schools in urban areas that was a belief I held long before Arne told us.
    The statement itself was dumb on itself and if someone other than an Obama official had said they would be in trouble.
    It’s like saying that best to to ever happen to building codes in Haiti was the earthquake. Now they will be updated and strengthened and the Haitians will rebuild stronger house that won’t collapse.

    Can you imagine the firestorm had Glenn Beck said what Arne Duncan said ? Keith Olbermann and MSNBC could feed off that for a week like a pack of hyenas that wandered upon an elephant carcass.

  • acat

    … to restore the D.C. voucher program, then?

    Or will a tempest of tea partiers do?

    Mew

  • izoneguy

    I guess Haiti will become world class in education in a few years????

  • mriggio

    Admittedly, I may be reading too much into the article, but I think there’s a subtext here.

    As memory serves, a huge percentage of NOLA’s population resettled (some temporarily, some not so much) elsewhere. The relocated kids attended school; their parents observed the difference in schooling.

    “Many who had missed school for six months, eight months, 13 months after the Hurricane and still came back to get an education.”

    Arne says they missed school for 6-13 months; that’s hard to believe. What they missed was school in New Orleans for months on end. When they returned, both they and their parents, having experienced something better, wanted to improve things in their home city.

    A shame Lake Michigan is too small to support hurricanes; the Chicago public school kids (and their folks) are being cheated out of an opportunity to experience better educational systems elsewhere.

  • bk

    When you put that together with charters, the obvious answer is that the farther away you get from Orleans Parish School District control, the better the schools get.

  • MikeWas

    “teachers? unions, the bloated bureaucracy, or any of the major causes…”

    I doubt that was his point.