The upside to Katrina

An educational failure and an administrative basket case, New Orleans' schools are seeing an education revival. From the Boston Globe: "The schools that Katrina built - How New Orleans could end up saving public education in America"

The destruction of the New Orleans public schools was part of the larger human tragedy that befell the Crescent City, but it is not a loss that many residents are mourning. Before the flood, New Orleans had become a poster child for what is wrong with urban education in America, with a long list of failing schools, the worst test scores in the state, and a history of corruption and fiscal mismanagement. The public schools in New Orleans were under water long before the levies broke.

What has happened since the disaster, however, is redefining urban public education. Instead of simply rebuilding the old district, based on the old institutions, policy leaders in New Orleans and Baton Rouge decided to start from scratch, fashioning a public education system based on new ideas and promising models of reform from around the country. From the wreckage, New Orleans is emerging as a bold experiment in what a city school system can be.

How bad were the schools in New Orleans? Between 1998 and 2005, enrollment fell by one-quarter as parents pulled their kids out. But there is new hope in the Crescent City now that the old bureaucracy has been washed away:

But if New Orleans emerges from the devastation of Katrina with a diverse system of excellent schools, we will see what urban public education can be without the political-bureaucratic structures that have so successfully smothered the reforms of the past. Such a real-life, large-scale example of a totally redesigned school system, developed under extraordinarily harsh conditions, promises to transform the debate about what is possible in public education.

Of course, it sounds like there's no place to go but up.