Young New Orleans public school students have become less likely to change schools than other Louisiana students in the years since Hurricane Katrina, suggesting the district’s education changes have reduced mobility, finds a new report.
Analysts at the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans found that 67 percent of the district’s elementary and middle school students stayed inthe same school they had attended the year before, compared with 60 percent in 2004, and those held back in the same grade dropped from 9 percent to 4 percent in the same time period.
In high school, however, stability has decreased slightly, from 64 percent in 2004 to 62 percent in 2011.
Schools run by the Orleans Parish school board before and after the post-Katrina changes had only about half as much mobility as schools taken over by the Recovery School District, and charter schools also had lower mobility compared with Recovery District schools.
