The Black Informant | African American Commentary, News and Community Building

NEW ORLEANS, La. — About two-thirds of students in New Orleans high schools that were taken over by the state after Hurricane Katrina flunked the state graduation exam, according to figures released Thursday.

About 40 percent of the city’s fourth graders and a third of the eighth-graders in those schools failed promotion exams.

When Katrina hit on Aug. 29, 2005, and flooded 80 percent of the city, it also shut down the city’s already troubled public school system, which ran more than 100 schools.

[...]

Most New Orleans schools performed poorly long before Katrina and the school system office was riddled with corruption, mismanagement and poor bookkeeping.

Even before the storm hit the state had stepped in, taking over a handful of schools and handing them over to charter organizations, while pressing the school board to contract with a private firm to run the schools’ financial operations.

After the storm, the Legislature, with backing from Gov. Kathleen Blanco, took over most city schools, chartering some and assuming operation of others by placing them in the Louisiana Recovery School District.

That district inherited problems which were only made worse by the storm, including dilapidated buildings and a shortage of qualified teachers.

[...]

Now check this out!

The state released scores by district, not individual schools, but some were compiling statistics on their own and at least one charter school is showing signs of success.

At McDonogh 15, one of the new charter schools in New Orleans, about four-fifths of the 25 eighth-graders and nearly two-thirds of the 50 fourth-graders passed the promotion test, development director Jonathan Bertsch said.

The student body isn’t elite: 92 percent of the students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches, and there were no academic or behavior requirements for admission.

Sixth- through eighth-graders were an average of three grades behind when they started the school year, Bertsch said.

“We’re just so proud of our kids and all the work they did. And of our teachers and administrators,” he said. (more…)

Come on folks! Are you seeing the pattern yet?