Must we obsess about student test scores?

This is a cross-post from Chip's Journey. It connects with Amy Shuffelton's very interesting post below about testing children. I share her daughter's evaluation of the whole process.

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For too long, US education policies have defined progress in terms of student test scores, while ignoring the things that really matter. We've operated on the misguided belief that "learning the basics" is best accomplished by a narrow skills focus and micro-management of test scores.

This occurs despite the fact that few of us would be satisfied if our children could successfully answer multiple-choice questions, but failed to develop intellectual curiosity, cultural awareness, practical skills, a philosophy of life, a strong moral character, emotional balance, social fitness, sensitivity to social problems, or physical fitness. What a tragedy then, if the focus on skills per se (as with the failed No Child Left Behind Act) were not even necessary. What if one could help the whole child develop, including teaching basic skills? What if our current irrational obsession with testing actually stood in the way of the things we truly value?

The start of a new administration in Washington is a good time to ask whether we have the schools we need. Above all, it's not a time to seek ever-more efficient means to produce incremental gains in test scores.

We have an alternative to that in our own history. One of the best program evaluation studies ever conducted was the Eight-Year Study, research conducted between 1932 to 1940 by the Progressive Education Association (PEA). Thirty high schools participated. Instead of narrowly-defined subjects, there were broad themes of significance to the students. "The starting point of the curriculum would be life as the student saw it" (Benedict, 1947, p. 14). Moreover, the schools were community-based. "The schools believed they belonged to the citizens of the community" (ibid, p. 17).

The students from the experimental schools did only slightly better on standardized test scores, but they showed major improvement in other areas, including intellectual competence, cultural development, practical competence, philosophy of life, character traits, emotional balance, social fitness, sensitivity to social problems, and physical fitness. Students from the most progressive schools showed the most improvement, more than those in the somewhat-progressive schools, and much more than those in traditional schools.

Outcomes of the study included better forms of student assessment, innovative research techniques, new ideas for curriculum, instruction, and teacher education. But above all, it provided an answer to the questions above: It is possible to help the whole child develop, without losing basic skills. In fact, schooling can be conceived in such a way that teachers and community members are learners as well. Doing that appears to be the best way to help the individual learner, not drilling on perceived deficits, as we do now. And yes, the irrational obsession with testing actually stands in the way of teaching the things almost every parent, teacher, or citizen truly value.

References

Aikin, Wilford (1942). The story of the eight-year study. New York: Harper.

Benedict, Agnes E. (1947). Dare our secondary schools face the atomic age? . New York: Hinds, Hayden & Eldredge.

Testing

In a week of large steps for Americans, my four year old daughter took a small one. Thursday, I drove her to the psychology department of a nearby university, where she took her first test. On her behalf, my husband and I have applied to gifted schools in the Chicago Public Schools system, hoping she’ll be selected to attend one next year when she starts kindergarten.

Of course, it’s not the first time she has been tested. Within minutes of birth, like all children born in contemporary US hospitals, she’d been given the Apgar test. She got a perfect score, and when the doctors told us she had exceptionally good color for a newborn, I felt an unreasonable flush of pride. My husband commented later that he too was amused to find himself proud of her Apgar numbers, but we couldn’t help it. After more than 20 years as students, our emotional response to tests of any sort were well primed.

All the same, last week’s intelligence test felt monumental, a significant turning point in my daughter’s life. It was the first collection of data on her mind. Until Thursday, her mind was uncharted, unrecorded, and therefore private, her own. Her teachers have told us about what she draws, how she plays, her social skills, and how she’s developing in terms of school readiness, but that’s anecdotal. I’ve written emails and letters about her to family and friends, again anecdotal. I think about her thinking, but until now, her mind has been territory solely for her, her friends, her family, and others who know her personally and care about her. As of last week’s test, however, her mind is a public enterprise. Data has been collected, and the Chicago Public School System is the first of no doubt many institutions to start passing judgment on how she ranks compared to others. Expectations are different. Her mind, in one important way, is now public.

We could “go off the grid” educationally speaking, of course, but I believe strongly in public schooling, and I want her to be part of it. The test drove home what a significant choice that is.

It felt monumental to me, at least. I’d told her that she was taking a test, and told her that she should do her best but not worry too much about it, and she followed my instructions. She was curious, interested, and proud when the tester told her she’d “done good work”, but to her the afternoon seemed to be a lark – a chance to leave preschool early and spend extra time with her mom, with the promise of a cookie later, with the chance to run along the sidewalks chasing the geese that were wandering the campus.

After the test was over, my daughter and I set out in search of the treat I’d promised. We sat at a table in the student center, and she ate two doughnuts. (Not usually allowed, but I figured there ought to be some reward for conforming to adult expectations so cooperatively.) “Mommy,” she asked, “am I done taking tests now?” “Yes”, I answered, “that’s the only one . . . well, no. No. No, you’re really not done. Not at all. I mean, you don’t have to take any more before kindergarten, but once you get to school there are lots more. Lots.” I stopped talking, rather than scare her to pieces about this whole schooling enterprise. That evening we went to a basketball game, where she ate popcorn and danced in the aisles when the cheer squad performed. When we got home, she threw up.

Apply Obama pragmatism to Mideast

A great use of Deweyan pragmatism at work -- published by my friend and philosopher of education Mordechai Gordon -- published in today's New Haven [CT] Register:

IN the past few weeks, President Barack Obama has emphasized his commitment to being a pragmatist when it comes to tackling the pressing problems our country is facing.

When asked on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" how he would respond to the criticism of Democrats about his economic recovery package, Obama said, "If people have better ideas on certain provisions — if they say, you know, this is going to work better than that — then we welcome that." He repeatedly has stated he is open to any creative ideas that would help turn around the recession.

Obama's pragmatic approach is not new. During the campaign, he stressed his intention to review policies of President George W. Bush that had not worked and a willingness to try innovative solutions to ongoing problems. For instance, Obama pointed out that not negotiating directly with Iran and increasing sanctions on it have not helped deter Iran from trying to develop a nuclear bomb. He insisted it is time for the United States to try a different approach. Similar suggestions were made by Obama regarding policy toward Cuba and Pakistan.

Will Obama bring the same pragmatic approach he has advocated for the economy and Iran to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? It is too early to tell, but the initial signs have not been encouraging. Other than his commitment to deal head-on with Gaza and the larger Middle East conflict, we have no indication Obama or his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, are willing to shift toward a more pragmatic course to solve the Israeli-Palestinian problem. Indeed, the message they give is that the United States will continue to give Israel unconditional support and refuse to negotiate directly with Hamas.

What might a pragmatic approach look like? Clearly, the actions of the Bush and the Clinton administrations, which quietly stood by as Israel continued to build settlements and maintain its occupation of 3.6 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, have not worked. Likewise, the U.S. policy of not negotiating with terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah or "rogue states" such as Iran and Syria has not helped make the region more secure and stable.

A pragmatic approach entails a fundamental shift in perspective, requiring both Israelis and Palestinians to renounce violence and military solutions and recognize that negotiation and compromise are the only options that can lead to peace.

Such a shift would mean that the United States abandon its historical practice of showing Israel favoritism and giving it unconditional support. For example, the Obama administration should openly denounce Israel's economic blockade of the Gaza Strip and the enormous restrictions it has placed on the rights and liberties of 1.5 million Palestinians. It should meet with the Palestinian leadership in Gaza to try to persuade them firing of rockets aimed at civilian populations in Israel is not only immoral, but counter productive.

One option Obama might consider is calling a peace summit in which the United States would exert significant pressures on all sides to make concessions and reach an agreement.

Such a summit could be modeled after the 1978 Camp David accords and include representatives of Hamas so that all the relevant parties would have to speak to each other and negotiate directly. The guiding principles for this summit would be the creation of an independent Palestinian state side by side with Israel and a lasting peace agreement between the two nations like the one Israel has with Egypt and Jordan.

I suspect Obama's pragmatic approach to solving the economic crisis as well as other national and international problems will be a great asset for him. Adopting such an approach will protect him from being wedded to failed policies, as his predecessor was, that are based on ideological beliefs or falsehoods.

Obama said it best when he stated "you can't simply have the same reaction over and over and expect different results." I would urge Obama to heed his own advice in order to finally stop the cycle of violence in the Middle East and bring about a just and peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Mordechai Gordon served as a paratrooper in the Israeli army during the 1982 war with Lebanon. He is a professor of education at Quinnipiac University, 275 Mount Carmel Ave., Hamden 06518. E-mail: mordechai.gordon@quinnipiac.edu.

Unfettered Joy

(Cross-posted from http://technopaideia.blogspot.com)

"I learned to slip back and forth between my black and white worlds, understanding that each possessed its own language and customs and structures of meaning, convinced that with a bit of translation on my part the two worlds would eventually cohere." (Barack Obama; Dreams From My Father; 1995)

I find this particular aspect of Barack Obama's character especially compelling. Like many of my friends and professional colleagues...although not all, I see truth as socially constructed--perspectival and pragmatic--and find myself considerably impatient with people who believe that their own view of the truth is intrinsically superior to another equally-functional truth. The awareness of the reality that truth reflects experience as much as it reflects exterior "reality"--a major deconstruction of positivism that is also known as the hermeneutic circle--is, to my mind, the primary achievement of education. Educated people--like Barack Obama--understand that truth-seeking requires an openness to the way that reality is seen by others--and a reluctance to dismiss the statements of others as wrong or false based solely on the fact that those statements are different from one's own. Such an awareness takes time to develop--it is metaphysically counterintuitive and undercuts the traditions and habits of individuals and particular social groups. It requires a rejection of the tribal instinct that leads humans to distrust strangers, an further evolution of consciousness that has taken the species many millenia to achieve and which is clearly still beyond the grasp of many in our country and abroad. It seems especially difficult for people who achieve or inherit financial wealth to accept, for it requires an acceptance that such success may reflect the luck of the situational draw as much as it reflects one's ability or merit.

If it were easy for humans to adopt the perspective of others--if empathy with all humans regardless of situation were instinctual rather than aquired--if following the golden rule were easy rather than an enormous challenge--we wouldn't be constantly at war with one another, whether in the streets of Chicago or in the middle east.

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(Chicago Tribune, 1-19-09) WASHINGTON — A celebration of democracy quickly became an Obama family sing-along as the future first family danced, sang and channeled their inner Otis Day on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday.

The two-hour "We Are One" concert offered the family several moments of unfettered joy, whether it was Michelle Obama's delight at hearing Stevie Wonder sing or President-elect Barack Obama's attempt to teach his young daughters the "American Pie" chorus. The typically reserved Malia Obama even laughingly complied as her father tried to do the bump with her at one point....

As the entire National Mall danced to Garth Brooks' rendition of "Shout!" Barack and Michelle Obama showed their daughters how to do the dance made famous in "Animal House." Even the president-elect's mother-in-law, the stoic Marian Robinson, threw her hands in the air and laughed.

When Wonder appeared on stage a few moments later and played the opening chords of "Higher Ground," Michelle Obama jumped to her feet and motioned for her family to do the same. Soon the entire Obama clan was jamming to the 1970s funk song.

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It brings me great happiness to see Barack and his family enjoying themselves as he takes on one of the most difficult jobs in the world. While I do not envy them the responsibilities or loss of privacy that comes as they ascend precipitously to the heights of celebrity, I do empathize with the tremendous enthusiasm of so many here in Chicago and around the world at the possibilities this represents. The celebrations in Washington--while certainly scripted to some extent and caught in the nets of spinmeisters and image consultants--are, for many, truly celebratory: an occasion on which to focus on possibilities rather than pessimistic realities.

(Chicago Tribune 1-19-09)"...Bono, the Irishman and lead singer of U2, injected the only seemingly unrehearsed political note to the day. Just after Obama's wife, Michelle, blew him a kiss, he said the election of Obama represented "not just an American dream — also an Irish dream, a European dream, African dream, Israeli dream and also a Palestinian dream."

Many Americans--especially those who preferred John McCain's (or even George W. Bush's) fixation on national defense--can't understand the exuberance of Europeans for Obama--and dismiss African-Americans' pride as merely another instance of jingoism or even racism. But these cynical Americans are missing something vital and sacred: the real power of shared hope and the belief in the possibility of transformed human affairs in a global community. They are missing the importance of these events--the many references to Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr., for example--as potent symbols of this possibility. Their "realism" has become a barrier to the idealism that could flow from their deepest desires, if they could only give themselves permission to dream.

Seeing the Obama family relishing these moments provides--for me--an opportunity to project my own dreams onto them. Certainly these dreams will not be easily realized, and these people upon whom I project those dreams are just people--mere mortals thrust into the center of the world's attention by the exigencies of time and place as much as by their own strivings--but I don't really care right now. Most of all, I am allowing myself a few days of shared joy--with the Obamas and with the entire world--and allowing myself to believe in our shared dreams--in the hope that if enough of us do believe, reality itself may be transformed.

(Chicago Tribune, 1-19-09)"In the course of our history, only a handful of generations have been asked to confront challenges as serious as the ones we face right now," Obama said. "But despite all of this—despite the enormity of the task that lies ahead—I stand here today as hopeful as ever that the United States of America will endure, that the dream of our founders will live on in our time... For in these monuments are chiseled those unlikely stories that affirm our unyielding faith — a faith that anything is possible in America."

A conspiracy theorist in the classroom...

Each semester, in the undergraduate class that I teach, I tackle the question of how teachers should express their views in the classroom. One of the ways in which I break the ice on this topic is by introducing a court case that drew significant media attention in Canada in the 1980s: the Keegstra case.

From 1968 until 1982, Jim Keegstra (pictured left) taught social studies in the small town of Eckville, Alberta. In his classes, he taught that the Jews were responsible for virtually every significant negative event in Western history, and he also alleged that the Jewish conspiracy was still active and was seeking to bring about a "one world government." He expected his students to reproduce these views in their essays, and they were punished with low marks when they did not. In December of 1982, Keegstra was finally removed from teaching and, in 1984, he was charged with promoting hatred. He was convicted in the initial trial, but the case was subsequently appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada, where he lost his final appeal in 1990.

The fact that Keegstra was a conspiracy theorist is not all that remarkable; a search of the internet will reveal that there are a considerable number of individuals who currently hold similar views. Yet one thing that is particularly interesting about this case is the high degree of success that Keegstra had. He was a well-liked teacher and a popular figure in the community, and, in 1978, he became the mayor of Eckville. Even after he was charged, many of the students and teachers at Eckville High actively supported him. Five of his fellow teachers and several of his former students testified in his defence at the trial, and a majority of the students at the school signed a petition that called for him to be reinstated. Keegstra's replacement in the social studies class, Dick Hoeksema, encountered resistance when he tried to teach mainstream views--evidently, some of Keegstra's old students felt that their former teacher had been a victim of the grand conspiracy in which he had persuaded them to believe.

Another notable aspect of the case was the jurisprudence that it produced. Keegstra was charged under section 281.2 of the Criminal Code, which prohibits inciting "hatred against any identifiable group." In court, Keegstra's lawyer argued that this law infringed upon Keegstra's rights under Section 2(b) of the Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which holds that "freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression" is a fundamental freedom. Interestingly, the Supreme Court of Canada actually agreed with this argument--they held this law did, in fact, contravene Keegstra's right to free expression. However, the Charter contains an important qualfier, Section 1, which reads as follows:

"The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society."

The majority of the court ruled that the laws concerning promotion of hatred were, in fact, justified under Section 1 as "reasonable limits" to the rights granted under Section 2(b). (Notably, Section 1 may strike some American readers as strange since it allows a significant degree of limitation to be imposed upon the other rights specified in the charter.)

For the most part, in my teaching, I have used the Keegstra case as a device to get the students talking about the issue of what teachers are permitted to say. However, the case also raises some more significant questions:

1. Given the high degree of success that Keegstra had, should we be more concerned/vigilant about the possibility of students being indoctrinated?

2. The court maintained that teachers do, in fact, have a right to free speech that can be exercised in the classroom. Obviously, in the case of hate speech, that right is limited by Section 1. But can other kinds of teacher speech be limited? What, exactly, is the scope of this right?

In 2009, the Keegstra case seems to have fallen out of the popular consciousness for the most part (even in Canada), so I thought that it would be interesting to revisit it here. Perhaps some of you may be interested in using it in your own classrooms. If so, here are some references that you might find useful:

David Bercuson and Douglas Wertheimer, A Trust Betrayed: The Keegstra Affair (Toronto: Doubleday, 1985.

Supreme Court of Canada, R. v. Keegstra

William Hare, "Limiting the Freedom of Expression: The Keegstra Case," Canadian Journal of Education 15 (4): 375-389 (accessible through JSTOR)

Steve Mertl and John Ward, Keegstra: The Trial, The Issues, The Consequences (Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1985).

An Update on What ever Happened to the Schools in Post-Katrina New Orleans?

Here is an update on Margaret Crocco's post on "New Orleans and Its Citizens: Three Years Later" that addresses the effects on schooling directly. It is cross-posted from the Journal of Educational Controversy blog.

Editor: In our winter 2008 issue, we published a review of Kenneth Saltman's book, Capitalizing on Disaster: Taking and Breaking Public Schools. In his post below, Saltman adds to the conversation that was started by Margaret Crocco in her update on "New Orleans and its Citizens: Three Years Later" by sharing his views on what is happening to the public school system in New Orleans since the Katrina tragedy. We invite our readers to read the review, Smashed, by Christopher Robbins and join in the conversation.

A POST BY KENNETH SALTMAN

BEWARE TALES OF PROGRESS THAT ERASE THE FULL HISTORY OF DESTRUCTION AND DISPOSSESSION IN THE NEW ORLEANS' SCHOOLS

In my book Capitalizing on Disaster I detailed the vast experiment in neoliberal privatization orchestrated by right-wing think tanks and politicians in the wake of Katrina. I covered the imposition of a massive voucher scheme, no-bid contracting and corporate corruption by those with ties to the Bush administration such as Alvarez & Marsal and Rome Consulting, the dismantling of the public system and union by a for-profit consulting firm, and the replacement of public schools with a charter network. As I argued in the book this has to be understood as a concerted effort to dispossess poor and working class predominantly African American citizens of their communities by the business and political elite of the city and state and to turn them into investment opportunities. I contend that this is part of a much broader movement for privatization and deregulation which is not only about economic redistribution but about the redistribution of political control over public goods and services. As well, I argued these initiatives only make sense in relation to a history of racialized disinvestment in public services and infrastructure that resulted in a city with the least funded urban school system in the country. In short, I argued that the political right capitalized on natural disaster and in the process exacerbated the human made disasters that predated the storm. The consequences were a radical shift in educational governance and material resources away from those most in need of them. It seems to me that honest discussion about the state of the New Orleans schools and communities must take seriously this history and recognize that what is at stake in this is more than a vague notion of educational quality (especially the anti-critical kinds defined narrowly by tests scores) but struggles over material resources and cultural values by competing classes and groups. In other words the role that public schools play for a society theoretically committed to democracy has to be considered. When business and political elites wrest control of schools and communities from the public and then describe it as a gift to the public (the "silver lining in the storm") we are hardly approximating those collective ideals.

What ever Happened to the Schools in Post-Katrina New Orleans

I am cross-posting this message from the Journal of Educational Controversy Blog http://journalofeducationalcontroversy.blogspot.com/ The author only mentions briefly what has happened to the school system in New Orleans after Katrina. I'd like to get responses on the different reactions that I've read on the consequences for schooling that followed efforts to restore the city after the devastating hurricane and thought that readers of this blog would be interested in joining in the conversation. Please cross-post.

Here is the post from the January 1, 2009 Journal of Educational Controversy Blog.

New Orleans and its Citizens: Three years later

Editor: Authors Margaret Smith Crocco and Maureen Grolnick, whose article, Teaching the Levees: an Exercise in Democratic Dialogue, appears in our winter 2008 issue of the journal, give us an update on their groundbreaking curriculum that ties it to the artistic efforts to give voice to Katrina's victims. Margaret Crocco writes that our readers will find this quite different from what they might read in the popular media. We invite readers to respond to her post or to her article from our Volume 3 Number 1 Issue on "Schooling as if Democracy Matters."

A POST FROM MARGARET SMITH CROCCO

NEW ORLEANS AND ITS CITIZENS: THREE YEARS LATER
Margaret Smith Crocco, Teaching The Levees (Teachers College Press, 2008)

Anyone who saw Spike Lee’s masterpiece, When the Levees Broke, will remember its “star” – Phyllis Montana LeBlanc. Straight-shooting, opinionated, and profane, Phyllis and her husband, mother, sister and autistic nephew were stranded in New Orleans on August 28th 2005 as Katrina struck. Like many native New Orleanians, they discounted the warnings of a massive hurricane until it was too late to evacuate. As the water level in their apartment rose in the days after the storm hit , the rescue helicopters flew past, ignoring their cries for help and moving on to those in even more dire circumstances. Phyllis and her family climbed onto refrigerators to float through water infested with alligators and snakes the two blocks necessary to reach higher ground. Phyllis and her husband spent nearly three years in a FEMA trailer while the rest of her family was relocated to Houston so her nephew could get schooling.

Spike Lee’s decision to tell the story of Hurricane Katrina through stories such as Phyllis Montana LeBlanc’s was not just a brilliant directorial decision (witness the scores of cinematic awards the film has garnered) but a shrewd maneuver in addressing what’s been called the “psychic numbing” and “compassion fatigue” that often accompany natural disasters, genocides, and other human tragedies. If Lee’s intention was to provoke empathetic responses for Katrina victims, his strategy was on target, according to decision researcher Paul Slovic of the University of Oregon.

According to psychological research, we are far more likely to be motivated to help out in the face of disaster if we can put a human face on events. Slovic notes that “images seem to be the key to conveying affect and meaning, though some imagery is more powerful than others” (p.8). He goes on to comment that, “When it comes to eliciting compassion, the identified individual victim, with a face and a name, has no peer” (p.8). For a copy of the full article, see: http://journal.sjdm.org/jdm7303a.pdfOf course, Spike Lee offers not just one face and one story but well over a hundred faces and stories in his film, which is effective in conveying the multiple perspectives on these events. Over four hours of such narratives, interspersed with analysis and commentary by experts on poverty, race, science and politics, viewers of When the Levees Broke get a full sense of the human dimension, suffering, and costs of Hurricane Katrina. The film makes an extraordinary effort to use art to address the potential collapse of compassion in the face of so much misery.

In an appearance at Teachers College, Columbia University in September 2007 at the launch of the “Teaching The Levees” project, New Orleans City Councilwoman Cynthia Hedge-Morrell noted her gratitude for the tremendous outpouring of assistance from citizens—of all ages, races, and regions—to help New Orleans’ residents get on with life and rebuild (http://www.teachingthelevees.org/?page_id=90 ). I do not claim that Spike Lee’s film can be credited as the cause of this generosity. But to the degree that his film got the story out in such a compelling fashion on HBO, it is clear that When the Levees Broke gave a human face—or many human faces--to this epic story.

So, now, three years later, how are Phyllis Montana LeBlanc and New Orleans faring? Have compassion and volunteerism trumped the government indifference and belated investment in rebuilding to provide solace, support, hope, and meaningful recovery for residents of the city? Well, as you can imagine, the answer is a mixed one.

According to the Brookings Institute, which has produced an annual report on conditions in New Orleans since 2005 (http://www.brookings.edu/reports/2007/08neworleansindex.aspx ), positive signs can be found. In a report issued in late August 2008, Brookings indicated that New Orleans’ economy is improving; the population is returning slowly to a growing job sector; the trolley cars on Canal Street are reappearing (http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/index.ssf?/base/news-0/122768062889950.xml&coll=1 ). Eighty-seven public schools have been opened, including many new charter schools, with many new teachers recruited from around the country.

Affordable housing, however, especially for low income service workers in the city, remains a big problem. One prominent home rebuilding project (http://archrecord.construction.com/news/daily/archives/081211PittHouses.asp) has been underwritten by Brad Pitt whose “Make it Right Foundation” (http://www.makeitrightnola.org/) has garnered extensive publicity for the architectural distinction of its homes as well as their high-profile celebrity backer.The Brookings report also notes that “nonprofit groups, business leaders and some politicians are working hard to repair the city’s buildings and improve the criminal-justice and health-care systems.” Groups such as Women of the Storm, levees.org, Citizens for 1 Greater New Orleans, Catholic Charities, and the Citizens Road Home Action Team, among others, are leading the recovery effort on multiple fronts.

Nevertheless, the progress of recovery has proceeded at what seems a glacial pace to many residents of the city. The Californian hired to help rebuild New Orleans, Ed Blakely, has been the subject of much criticism for the slow pace of the recovery, his absenteeism, and the lack of visibility of Mayor Ray Nagin in the process (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/us/01orleans.html?_r=2&ref=us&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin). Unsurprisingly, many politicians have come in for criticism, at the city, state, and national levels. Many residents are hoping the Obama-Biden administration brings new attention to the city’s plight.

And what about Phyllis Montana LeBlanc? She wrote a book, which appeared in August 2008, while living in the FEMA trailer. Entitled Not Just the Levees Broke: My Story and After Hurricane Katrina, the book was published by Simon and Schuster. LeBlanc did an interview with Salon.com (http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/08/27/phyllis_montana_leblanc/ ) and seems to have used her faith and family to sustain her throughout the ordeal of the last three years. Spike Lee wrote the forward to the book, and it seems that her colorful personality and commentary have made her into something of a celebrity herself.

Despite the positive aspects of this update on New Orleans three years later, it is also clear that the devastation wrought by Katrina and the continuing debate about how best to remedy the damage and prevent further disasters continue. Let me conclude by turning to other works of art, completed and in progress, which can also be seen as efforts to put a human face on tragedy.

Perhaps you’ve heard of Trouble the Water, the “home movie” shot by self-professed “street hustler” Kim Roberts and crafted by professional filmmakers Tia Lessin and Carl Deal (http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/btm/feature/2008/08/21/trouble_the_water/), which won an award at the Sundance Film Festival. In the works is The New Orleans Tea Party by Marline Otte and Lazlo Fulop (see a clip on YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzA4UR-w8PQ ). This film gets at some of the controversies related to rebuilding—by whom and for whom and to what end, with footage shot in early 2008. It also addresses issues of politics—global and local related to Katrina—and the effects of climate change on the city. Finally, the award-winning filmmakers who created Revolution ’67 (http://www.bongiornoproductions.com/REVOLUTION) about the 1967 race riots in Newark, New Jersey, Marylou Tibaldo-Bongiorno and Jerome Bongiorno, are working on a “love story” set in Venice and New Orleans—two cities threatened with extinction in the face of global climate change and rising sea levels. If a love story can make the threat of global climate change and a world that is too “hot, flat and crowded” (http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/bookshelf/hot-flat-and-crowded), as Tom Friedman puts it, real to us, then it will offer an interesting twist on Slovic’s theory that putting a human face on disaster is the best way to trigger a response in action.

If there’s any good news in looking back at the tragedy of Katrina, it may lie in enhanced recognition of the need for more democratic dialogue and civic action about the problems we face as a nation. We can thank enlightened filmmakers like those mentioned here for helping motivate us to engage in both talk and action. With a new administration coming to Washington, DC in January 2009, we can hope that they will join the citizens of New Orleans and concerned citizens across the country in taking the steps necessary to prevent other such disasters and help residents of the Gulf Coast to continue to recover from the lingering problems associated with Hurricane Katrina.

See also our post by Kenneth Saltman:

BEWARE TALES OF PROGRESS THAT ERASE THE FULL HISTORY OF DESTRUCTION AND DISPOSSESSION IN THE NEW ORLEANS' SCHOOLS


In my book Capitalizing on Disaster I detailed the vast experiment in neoliberal privatization orchestrated by right-wing think tanks and politicians in the wake of Katrina. I covered the imposition of a massive voucher scheme, no-bid contracting and corporate corruption by those with ties to the Bush administration such as Alvarez & Marsal and Rome Consulting, the dismantling of the public system and union by a for-profit consulting firm, and the replacement of public schools with a charter network. As I argued in the book this has to be understood as a concerted effort to dispossess poor and working class predominantly African American citizens of their communities by the business and political elite of the city and state and to turn them into investment opportunities. I contend that this is part of a much broader movement for privatization and deregulation which is not only about economic redistribution but about the redistribution of political control over public goods and services. As well, I argued these initiatives only make sense in relation to a history of racialized disinvestment in public services and infrastructure that resulted in a city with the least funded urban school system in the country. In short, I argued that the political right capitalized on natural disaster and in the process exacerbated the human made disasters that predated the storm. The consequences were a radical shift in educational governance and material resources away from those most in need of them. It seems to me that honest discussion about the state of the New Orleans schools and communities must take seriously this history and recognize that what is at stake in this is more than a vague notion of educational quality (especially the anti-critical kinds defined narrowly by tests scores) but struggles over material resources and cultural values by competing classes and groups. In other words the role that public schools play for a society theoretically committed to democracy has to be considered. When business and political elites wrest control of schools and communities from the public and then describe it as a gift to the public (the "silver lining in the storm") we are hardly approximating those collective ideals.