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This weekend, Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s take on New Orleans’s education system was aired on television. He said, “This is a tough thing to say, but let me be really honest. I think the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans was Hurricane Katrina. That education system was a disaster, and it took Hurricane Katrina to wake up the community to say that ‘we have to do better.’ And the progress that they've made in four years since the hurricane is unbelievable. They have a chance to create a phenomenal school district. Long way to go, but that -- that city was not serious about its education. Those children were being desperately underserved prior, and the amount of progress and the amount of reform we've seen in a short amount of time has been absolutely amazing.”
He attempted to commend the city’s advancements since Katrina, but instead offended a lot of people. I think the comment was inappropriate. He is right in being proud of the education system’s accomplishments since 2006 but to say Hurricane Katrina was the best thing to happen to the education system, is going way too far. It wasn’t the hurricane that caused positive changes in the school system. I thought it was obvious that it hurt the system. Schools were flooded (many still have not been rebuilt) and students were displaced. The hurricane wiped out the school system, demanding reform. But the system could have gone downhill, never placed back on its feet, easily. Instead, the people of New Orleans rebuilt the system because they saw it as a chance to make positive changes to their city. They could have easily pieced the system together as it had been for years prior to Katrina. Though Katrina demanded reform, it was the people who decided to make that reform advance New Orleans to become a better city for their children.