School Performance In New Orleans

After Hurricane Katrina, some fairly radical changes were made to the public education system in New Orleans, which had long been a very poor performer. The bulk of kids were placed into a new Recovery School District that undertook a lot of "reformy" moves. And to a crude examination, it seems to be working very nicely:

It'd be better to have NAEP data instead of state test stuff, and it'd be better to look at demographic sub-groups rather than the whole pie, since the hurricane also presumably set off demographic shifts in the city. These kind of problems are a reason why it's too bad that so few cities participate in the NAEP Trial Urban District Assessment program which gives us much better data. So kudos once again to Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, DC, Fresno, Houston, Jefferson County Kentucky, Los Angeles, Miami, Milwaukee, New York, Philadelphia, and San Diego. But other big cities need to get on the bandwagon.

For now, though, New Orleans public school converging with the state average is good news for the city.