U.S. Government Must Step Up to Rebuild Education in Gulf Coast, According to Report

NEW BOOKS

Education After Katrina: Time for a New Federal Response, argues that the government has not done enough to support education in the aftermath of the devastating Gulf Coast hurricanes of 2005. The report looks at how the hurricanes affected elementary- and high-school students in Mississippi and Louisiana: their dropout rate, test scores, health, and lack of teachers and other school personnel. The study finds that higher education and child care were also severely crippled by the storms and by a lack of federal support. By May 2007, just 1,738 children were enrolled in child-care centers in New Orleans — 27 percent of the number served before the storms. The report strongly criticizes the federal response to the disaster, noting that money for rebuilding the educational system made up just 2 percent of total U.S.-government spending for recovery. “Education is too important to be left to happenstance and the vagaries of resource-poor, crisis-driven, storm-decimated states,” the report argues.

Publisher: Southern Education Foundation, 135 Auburn Avenue, N.E., Second Floor, Atlanta, Ga. 30303; (404) 523-0001; fax (404) 523-6904; http://www.sefatl.org; 29 pages; available free for download on the foundation’s Web site.