Research Team: Lihan Liu, ​Education Research Alliance for New Orleans​; Paula Arce-Tri­gat­ti, ​Rice University​It has now been almost 14 years since the New Orleans school reforms start­ed. In this brown bag pre­sen­ta­tion, we con­sid­er how the edu­ca­tion sys­tem has evolved. On the one hand, we might expect the city’s intense test-based account­abil­i­ty to make schools more sim­i­lar, as schools pur­sue this com­mon goal. On the oth­er hand, the fact that schools have more auton­o­my, and par­ents have dif­fer­ent pref­er­ences, might mean that schools could become more var­ied over time. Which pres­sure seems to be win­ning out? Have school pro­gram offer­ings become more sim­i­lar, or are there now a wider vari­ety of options? Also, has test-based account­abil­i­ty reduced vari­a­tion in school per­for­mance by forc­ing out low-per­form­ing schools? We will pro­vide some pre­lim­i­nary answers to these questions.