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Educators Discover That Tracking Displaced Students is a Challenge

Thousands of Louisiana students who were displaced by Hurricane Katrina may not have enrolled in school anywhere, according to the state schools chief, and Louisiana is hard-pressed to keep track of students who have dispersed to almost every state in the country.

Superintendent of Education Cecil J. Picard, during a Oct. 13 discussion with U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings and other educators held in Baton Rouge, said that there was at least a 20,000-student discrepancy between the number of children the state believes were displaced by the hurricane that hit the New Orleans area Aug. 29 and the number of students the state knows enrolled in classes throughout Louisiana and in other states.

“I would say there could be 20,000 to 25,000 who have not been to school yet,” Mr. Picard told the group, as reported in the Baton Rouge Advocate .