Forbes.com's recent list of "the best education in the biggest cities" has New Orleans at number 5. No one seems more surprised about this than educators in New Orleans:
"I'm sorry, did you say the best or the worst?" school spokeswoman Tia Alexander responded when a reporter notified her of the recently released rankings.
To guide executives pondering a possible relocation, Forbes.com, an adjunct of the biweekly business magazine, looked at average home prices, high school graduation rates and the accessibility of colleges, cultural events and libraries in the nation's 40 largest cities. New Orleans came in at fifth place, trailing Boston, Salt Lake City, Raleigh and Baltimore and topping Philadelphia, Atlanta, Austin, Charlotte and San Diego.
Standardized test scores (including the SAT), teacher certification, and school building quality didn't enter into the list. And Forbes qualified their list with the following statement:
"Clearly, nobody really aspires to send their kids to public schools in a large city, so in a way, the list is more of a way to assess which cities are less awful than others," Forbes.com reporter Betsy Schiffman wrote in an e-mail message explaining the list's methodology.
Kinda takes the shine off the award, doesn't it? The list makes it clear that indeed, these big-city schools are being celebrated not so much for being great but for being better than the worst:
Public schools in many big cities have a reputation for sucking up tax dollars and churning out barely literate graduates. The Cleveland City School District, for example, has an abysmal 28% high school graduation rate, according to a 2001 study conducted by the Manhattan Institute, a New York-based conservative think tank. Still, some public school systems in urban areas manage to beat the odds and deliver high school graduates who have received a genuine education.
New Orleans has the cheapest median home price of all the districts in the top-ten, and a 70% high-school graduation rate (that is from the pre-exit-exam days; current figures put the rate at closer to 50%).
Regardless, New Orleans seems happy about "beating the odds":
"Yes, good news can come from New Orleans public schools," she said. "Despite the ongoing bad publicity written about the district, we are obviously doing something right given the size and challenges of the city!"
Posted by kswygert at February 20, 2004 10:21 AM