What, then, for those who had no means to move to higher educational ground?
School buses flooded after Katrina struck.
image courtesy isteve.com
The pre-Katrina city had a forty percent illiteracy rate, and it was projected that fifty percent of African-American ninth graders would not graduate high school in four years, if at all. Government and clerical work is the primary career path for an illiterate adult. Louisiana had spent $4724 per child and ranks 48th in the country for teacher salaries.
It was also estimated that 50,000 students in Louisiana were absent from school on any given day, and roughly 45 high school students dropped out of Louisiana schools everyday. A chunk of African-American men ended up in Angola Prison, a former plantation where inmates still do slave labor. Ninety percent of inmates of Angola Prison die as prisoners.
This has caused industry to abandon the city; students of these parochial schools have roughly a sixty percent rate of attending out-of-state universities and colleges; out of these students, over half will pursue their careers out of state.
It's no wonder that the education system would not be able to sustain a disaster. The city is viewing this as an opportunity to rebuild the entire system from scratch - and rebuild it better. When the population can't even move back to the city, though, it's difficult to build an entire school system.
Hardin Elementary School in Orleans Parish is still not open.
image courtesy The Seattle Times.
The educated population was fleeing the city; the uneducated population experienced such low incomes that they did not serve industry well as consumers. Unemployment skyrocketed. The next post will examine in deeper detail the failing industry of New Orleans.
sources:
Jordan Flanherty: "Notes from Inside New Orleans."
Paul T. Hill, Jane Hannaway: "The Future of Public Education in New Orleans" (the Urban Institute).
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