It’s been 20 years since Hurricane Katrina destroyed much of New Orleans, Louisiana.
My wife and I happened to be in the Crescent City that weekend. I was scheduled to attend a College Board leadership conference, so we decided to make a weekend of it. As I was riding in from the airport, I noticed a jammed freeway heading out of the city, but little traffic traveling toward New Orleans proper. After asking my driver what was up, he told me there was a big hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico and that New Orleans was under an evacuation order. Once I got to the hotel, I learned my conference had been cancelled and folks were trying to get out of town as quickly as possible.
Being residents of the Texas Gulf Coast, my wife and I had experienced our share of bad weather produced by Gulf of Mexico storms. So we decided to take advantage of a French Quarter absent of tourists that Saturday night. We enjoyed a nice dinner, a few drinks along Bourbon Street, and a late-night beignet at Café DuMonde.
What I saw on the TV screen the next morning in our hotel room was frightening. The entire screen was filled with a large circle of a swirling storm named Katrina. When we stepped out on Canal Street, we were lucky to find a van serving as a taxi that took us to the airport for an early flight back to Houston, our hometown. The next morning, Monday, August 29, 2005, my wife and I were shocked to see the damage New Orleans was experiencing due to Hurricane Katrina.
New Orleans’ infrastructure was destroyed, including its K-12 public school system. Recently, The 74 published an article focused on how New Orleans’ public schools changed after Hurricane Katrina. In a two-part ABPTL series, we take a look at the reasons why New Orlean schools improved and why those schools still have a long way to go to achieve equity between all K-12 learners:
“School had been in session for 10 days when Hurricane Katrina made it way up the Gulf Coast and slammed into New Orleans. One Monday, August 29, 2005, the resulting storm surge breached major levees, leaving the city underwater. Only a handful of schools were unharmed.”
“As they contemplated the road to reconstruction, New Orleans’ leaders knew residents cold not come back without schools for their kids. But the district – at the time the nation’s 50th largest – was at an inflection point. Official corruption was so rampant the FBI had set up an office at district HQ.”
“A revolving door of leaders – the Washington Post dubbed it a ‘murderer’s row for superintendents – had failed to make a dent in some of the nation’s poorest academic outcomes. Louisiana’s legislative auditor called it a ‘train wreck,’ noting that no one knew how much money the district had.”
“As to what should come next, no idea was too radical, the interim superintendent at the time, Ora Watson told PBS.”
“Radical, indeed. Over the years that followed, New Orleans became the country’s only virtually all-charter school system. Outsiders eager to test their education reform ideas jumped to influence the experiment. School leaders took up the best innovations and joined forces to hammer out solutions to the thorniest issues.”
“It was the fastest, most dramatic school improvement effort in U.S. history – but one that came with steep racial and cultural costs. Now, on the 20th anniversary of the storm, the schools’ current and former leaders – and we at The 74 – are taking stock.”
“To tell the story of New Orleans’ dramatic turnaround, we’re focusing on six key data points, based on research from Tulane University’s Education Research Alliance for New Orleans; the Brookings Institution; Southeast Louisiana’s The Data Center; and local school system leaders. They are: academic performance, graduation rates and college enrollment; major demographic shifts in the teacher corps; changes spurred by a centralized student enrollment system; college-going and persistence; the number of publicly funded preschool seats; and the benefits of – and ongoing resistance to – shuttering underperforming schools.”
“Student test scores, graduation rates and college-going rose quickly – but mostly peaked in 2015.”
…
“Between 2005 and 2015, math and reading proficiency increased by 11 to 16 percentage points, depending on the subject and method of analysis, boosting the city’s schools from 67th in the state to 40th.”
“High school graduation rates rose by 3 to 9 percentage points, and college-going and graduation rates rose by 8 to 15 and 3 to 5 points, respectively.”
“Must of that progress is credited to the performance contracts to which the charter schools are held. Those that don’t meet their goals several years in a row lose their charters, which are then given to high-performing operators.”
“Overall, on state report cards, the school system rose from an F to a C during the first decade. But as Katrina’s 10th anniversary approached, community frustrations with the state takeover boiled over.”
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“A new, very young, very white teaching corps.”
“One of the most persistent, negative narratives about the post-Katrina school reforms is that white outsiders fired the city’s majority Black, veteran teachers and replaced them with an army of inexperienced, most white do-gooders from Teach for American and similar alternative training programs.”
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“Before Katrina, 71% of the city’s public school teachers were Black. The number dipped to 49% in 2014 and had rebounded to 60% as of 2022, while 70% of the students are Black. In 2005, 67% of local teachers had more than five years of experience. In 2022, only 51% did.”
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“The OneApp solution.”
“Before the state turned control of the schools back to a potentially weak elected school board, New Orleans’ school leaders got together and, competition notwithstanding, hammered out solutions to some of their most contentious, systemwide issues. In addition to the effort to make school funding fairer, most of the school leaders wanted to make enrollment and discipline more equitable.”
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“Initially dubbed OneApp, the system was touted as a way to give low-income families an equal shot at a seat in the most desirable schools. But in practice, it fell short. Many school resisted joining the effort, including all the selective-enrollment programs.”
…
“…A 2023 Tulane report found that in the 2017-18 enrollment matching process, Black applicants were 9% less likely to get a seat in their first-choice school than white applicants seeking the same placement.”
“Low-income applicants were particularly disadvantaged in securing a desirable kindergarten seat because they were less likely to meet the qualifications for geographic or sibling preference.”
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Part 2 tomorrow. Til then. SVB
A Better Path to Learning 
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