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DIANNA HEITZ
Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Sunday that 2005's Hurricane Katrina was "the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans," since it forced the failing school system to start over from scratch.
Duncan, who was speaking on TV One's "Washington Watch," said that the education system has improved since the hurricane devastated the region, but the public schools still have a ways to go before they're up to par.
"I think the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans was Hurricane Katrina," Duncan said. "That education system was a disaster, and it took Hurricane Katrina to wake up the community to say that 'we have to do better.' And the progress that they've made in four years since the hurricane is unbelievable. They have a chance to create a phenomenal school district. Long way to go, but that -- that city was not serious about its education."
Duncan, in an interview Wednesday with POLITICO as part of the "Inside Obama's Washington" video series, called for "open and honest conversations" with parents about the quality of schools.
"I think we've been, as a country, far too reluctant to tell the truth," he said. "The truth can be good, it can be bad, it can be ugly, it can be somewhere in the middle. It could be that a school isn't working or the school is doing a phenomenal job. Or a district or, for that matter, a state. Or take it all the way down to the classroom."
