Ravaged by Katrina, New Orleans's already weak education system receives significant help from Tulane service organizations. The recently-revived Book Giving Tree runs seasonally, whereas Student Coalition for Action and Literacy Education provides year-round tutoring at a local public school.
According to the CIA World Factbook, the United States boasted a literacy rate of 99 percent as of 2003. At this same time, estimates record only a 40 percent literacy rate for the city of New Orleans.
The weakness of the local public school system and the limited cultural or familial emphasis on reading hold large responsibility for the low literacy rate. This especially affects members of the less-privileged socio-economic classes.
According to Michael Eric Dyson's "Come Hell or Highwater," "over 50 percent of black ninth graders won't graduate in four years."
Statistics like this push Tulane service programs to concentrate on education in New Orleans.
The Book Giving Tree ran as a Tulane CACTUS program before Katrina. People would buy books and record them on tape cassettes and then donate the cassettes to local schools.
"It stopped running after Katrina. People kept trying to pick it up but no one could really get it going again," Book Giving Tree organizer Laura Cox said. "This is one project I really wanted to get started before I left."
Cox decided to purchase books this year and send them to as many kids as possible, as people no longer use cassette tapes.
"The most effective way to improve a child or an adult's reading and writing skills is for them to read more books and articles and to write on a daily basis," local secondary school teacher Audra Ryes said.
She sent packets to the 52 public elementary schools in New Orleans asking for the names and book requests of each student. Thus far, 24 schools have responded with over 3900 book requests.
"We e-mailed pretty much everyone on campus and have saturated the New Orleans market. There's an article in the Gambit, one in the New Wave," Cox said.
2008 Woodie Awards
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