The Times-Picayune: Secretary of Education Arne Duncan visits New Orleans school, talks of progress
Sarah Tan
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan visited George Washington Carver High School in eastern New Orleans Tuesday morning, and after touring the temporary classroom trailers and meeting with students and teachers, said he saw progress where there were protests just a few months ago.
A group of alumni protested in April when the state-run Recovery School District decided to phase out the high school, hire a new principal, and bring in two Collegiate Academy charter schools.
On Tuesday, Duncan remarked on the calm pervading the campus, as well as the significance of Carver's place in the New Orleans education reform movement.
"It's so important to be out at schools every day, and the work here in New Orleans is so very important to me on a broad range," Duncan said. "This school has gone through some pretty big changes, but I'm pretty inspired being here, it makes me hopeful about where this school is going to go."
Duncan highlighted the work of the Recovery School District as helping to make broad gains for a school system that was previously lagging. After touring the school, he met with student representatives and teachers to hear what they had to say about their school's progress.
Citing test score gains and increased graduation rates for Orleans Parish, Senator Mary Landrieu said that the Secretary's visit underscored the improvements that the district had made in the seven years since Hurricane Katrina. Landrieu made her remarks in a press conference in Washington, D.C. Tuesday.
"He recognizes that New Orleans is one of the leading cities in the nation turning around a failed and broken system," Landrieu said. "He's been supportive as we've gone through what some people have called a radical transformation."
"I think this school is in a very different spot now than it was a year ago," Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education
Duncan also touched on some issues of strife in the community, namely last year's Carver protests and the fact that though it has been years since Katrina, the school is still operating from temporary trailers. Members from the local NAACP were also present to greet Duncan, and asked questions about the new charters' efficacy and also the state of the school's current building.
"What are you basing improvement on?" community activist and NAACP education chair Katrena Ndang said. "Are these still the same students?"
District officials did not take any new students into the upper grades at Carver this year, and Collegiate Academies will take over each grade one year at a time.
"I think this school is in a very different spot now than it was a year ago," Duncan said. "[The trailers] are not ideal, but I've seen some of the best teaching in trailers."
