Reinventing America's Schools – New Orleans

It’s rare that any city gets a chance to wipe the slate clean and build a brand new public education system from scratch. One city did get a chance to start over, however. In 2005, after the third-deadliest hurricane in U.S. history, Louisiana’s leaders wiped the slate clean in New Orleans. Since Katrina devastated the city, New Orleans has improved its schools faster than any other city in the United States. Some experts even believe it has improved faster than any city in American history. This improvement would be impressive enough on its own, but it is occurring in a district in which 82 percent of the students are African American and 85 percent are poor.