“All of us who are old enough to remember will never forget the images of our fellow Americans amid a sea of misery and ruin,” Mr. Bush said Friday. But twice, he said, “I hope you remember what I remember,” citing the work of military personnel, law enforcement and thousands of volunteers in rescuing, feeding, sheltering and rebuilding.

“In spite of the devastation, we have many fond memories,” he added, recalling sitting with Russel L. Honoré, the retired Army lieutenant general who coordinated the military response to the storm, “on top of one of those big ships, strategizing.”

Mr. Bush received an enthusiastic response from several hundred dignitaries, students and school staff members in the auditorium of Warren Easton Charter High School, on Canal Street, a former city school that was flooded and battered 10 years ago and reopened the next year as a charter.

But in the city at large, where signs of recovery are just blocks away from neighborhoods where little progress can be seen, bitter memories of the days after the flood are still common. The overhaul of schools itself has been polarizing, as more than 8,500 employees of the old school system, most of them from the city’s black middle class, were laid off in the first year.

“I guess I’m not feeling quite as magnanimous as some others are,” said Bob Mann, who was the communications director for Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, the governor 10 years ago.