The Big Easy Revisited

On Katrina anniversary, Bush lauds charter plan in New Orleans.

In a wide-ranging national address last week in New Orleans, President Bush highlighted the promise of charter schools as a force against the city’s persistent poverty and an upgrade to a dysfunctional school system.

Speaking on the first anniversary of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, the president said the conversion of most of New Orleans’ public schools into publicly funded charter schools was “a novel plan to address failure that had caused—in many cases, was a root cause of poverty.”

He appeared on Aug. 29 with first lady Laura Bush at Warren Easton Senior High, a 93-year-old facility that flooded after the storm. The oldest school in the city is now run by a private foundation under a charter granted by the...