This page offers a summary of all our findings to date. Having released more than 60 policy briefs and technical reports, we believe it is important to show how our findings fit together and what larger lessons they might provide for policymakers and practitioners. As with our policy briefs, the key conclusions below are based not only on our individual findings, but also on patterns across our studies and analyses by other researchers.

A much more extensive discussion and interpretation can be found in the book Charter School City, written by ERA-New Orleans Founder and Senior Advisor Douglas N. Harris.

---

Conclusion #1: The New Orleans reforms led to large gains in average student achievement and increased rates of high school graduation, college entry, and college graduation in the first decade after they were implemented. Student outcomes have stabilized since then.

Conclusion #2: Equity in educational outcomes improved in some areas, but wide gaps by socioeconomic status and race/ethnicity remain in discipline practices, school climate, and segregation in schools.

Conclusion #3: A key factor driving improvement in average academic performance was the gradual process of closing and taking over low-performing schools.

Conclusion #4: A 13% increase in school spending likely contributed to student gains. However, these funds were used mainly to cover an increase in administrative spending. Instructional spending declined.

Conclusion #5: Transportation costs doubled, and students are traveling farther to get to school.

Conclusion #6: The city’s reforms significantly changed the teacher workforce and the way teachers viewed their work.

Conclusion #7: Student surveys suggest that the quality of teaching is somewhat below the national urban district average, especially in classroom management and caring.

Conclusion #8: The reforms had some other consequences, including a reduced focus on the arts and decreased access to early childhood education.

Conclusion #9: We do not find evidence of other potential consequences for student mobility, diversity in programs, and crime rates.

Conclusion #10: The state’s school voucher program, the Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP), a related type of school reform, had negative impacts on participating students’ math and English scores, and no effects on college-going.

Conclusion #11: New Orleans faced a unique set of circumstances after Hurricane Katrina. Whether other cities can expect similar academic benefits from New Orleans-style reforms is uncertain.

Conclusion #12: NOLA-PS is already above-average on academic outcomes compared with other urban school districts. To reach a higher bar, local leaders will have to address remaining distrust among key stakeholders and disagreement about the roles of the district and other key actors.

---

Conclusion #1: The New Orleans reforms led to large gains in average student achievement and increased rates of high school graduation, college entry, and college graduation in the first decade after they were implemented. Student outcomes have stabilized since then.

We analyzed the effects of the reforms on student outcomes using a number of methods that compare New Orleans students to similar ones in other districts that did not experience the school reforms. This helps to ensure that New Orleans did not improve based on factors that were affecting the entire state.

We find that test scores rose by 11-16 percentiles compared with these similar students and districts, depending on the subject and analysis method. (Figure 1 shows just the difference between New Orleans and the other districts, so the rising line to the right means that New Orleans improved faster.) Other important indicators rose as well: the high school graduation rate increased by 3-9 percentage points, college entry rates grew by 8-15 percentage points and college graduation rates grew 3-5 percentage points. The quality of colleges that students attended and some measures of college persistence also increased, while others were unchanged.

Early on, critics considered several other potential explanations for these gains, including that the hurricane had changed the population and which students were attending New Orleans schools. However, we have tested these alternative explanations and find that the school reforms caused the vast majority of the improved outcomes. (School funding is an additional possible explanation. See Conclusion #4.)

Figure 1: Student test scores increased for all tested subjects in New Orleans, as well as college entry and graduation rates.

Figure 1.A: Math Scores

Figure 1.B: ELA Scores

Figure 1.C: College Entry Rates

Figure 1.D: High School Graduation Rates

As shown in Figure 2, the district moved from near the bottom of the state on most measures to near the state average. Most student outcomes peaked around the 10-year anniversary of Katrina (2015) and have since plateaued. At the same time, Louisiana increased its standard for test scores from “Basic” to “Mastery”, which could explain the different trends for the two test levels. New Orleans students did experience steeper declines in test scores after the COVID-19 pandemic than in districts across the state, but they have also made up for these declines in most outcomes over the past two years.

Figure 2: New Orleans schools ranked at the bottom of the state when Katrina hit, but have moved up to the middle on most outcomes.

Conclusion #2: Equity in educational outcomes improved in some areas, but wide gaps by socioeconomic status and race/ethnicity remain in discipline practices, school climate, and segregation in schools.

The reforms helped reduce educational opportunity gaps for Black and low-income students, at least in terms of high school graduation rates and college outcomes. Results are more mixed in terms of test scores. Some results show that opportunity gaps in test scores worsened, and others suggest no change. We also found differences in students’ perceptions of their schools by race/ethnicity; our survey of New Orleans youth has consistently found that Black and Hispanic students report less positive educational environments than White students. Figure 3 displays the results from our most recent survey, conducted during the 2023-24 school year. You can find out more about our New Orleans Citywide Youth Survey here

Figure 3: Black students in New Orleans perceive poorer school climates than White students.

Unlike most of our other work, we do not have survey data from before Katrina and therefore cannot determine whether these disparities are related to the reforms.

There were additional troubling signs of inequity in the first several years of the reforms: schools apparently selected students rather than students choosing schools. The expulsion rates increased 1.5-2.7 percentage points (140-250%) in the early years. This finding has implications for racial equity, since across the state of Louisiana, Black students were twice as likely as White students to be suspended.

Over time, several of these consequences were alleviated as the city re-centralized certain aspects of the school system, including implementing a citywide expulsion system and a common enrollment system called the OneApp/NCAP (NOLA-PS Common Application Process). Suspension and expulsion rates returned to near pre-Katrina levels. Some schools have significantly reduced suspensions through the use of alternative behavioral management systems such as Positive Behavior Intervention Systems and restorative practices.

Finally, there were fears that charter schools would increase segregation. At the high school level, we find evidence for increased segregation by race and income, but not by special education status. We find no strong evidence of increased segregation at the elementary school level. In fact, enrollment of Black and other nonwhite students increased in high-performing schools after they joined the centralized enrollment system. However, in one respect, equitable access has worsened. A policy change instituted in 2019 prioritizes admission at most elementary schools for applicants who live within a half-mile of the school. We find that this gives White and high-income students an advantage in securing a seat at high-demand schools.

Conclusion #3: A key factor driving improvement in average academic performance was the gradual process of closing and taking over low-performing schools.

Under the reforms, non-profit management organizations are hired to operate schools via performance-based contracts. If schools do not meet their benchmarks, then their contracts are not renewed, resulting in school closure or takeover by another non-profit management organization. This process has driven essentially all of the post-Katrina improvement. This was especially true in the first decade after Katrina; low-performing schools were replaced by higher-performing ones, which gradually lifted average student achievement.

There are multiple ways in which school closure and takeover can play a role, including replacing low-performing school operators with higher performers and creating pressure on schools to improve. On the other hand, it could be that students attending schools that are closed or taken over experience negative effects. We find that this is not the case, at least for elementary and middle schools (see Figure 4). If school governing bodies close or takeover the lowest performing schools, then even the students disrupted by this change still end up with outcomes that are at least as good as they would have been if the schools did not close. We have also found that providing priority and support to students in closed schools helps them end up in better schools the following school year.

The situation is a bit different in high schools since students have few years to adjust prior to on-time graduation. A change in school at this age might throw students off the path to graduation, though likely does help younger cohorts starting high school in the future.

Since 2020 the school district has experienced declining enrollment, making closure decisions more challenging. A new state law gives the district the authority to close schools if they are under capacity and some charter boards have voted to not renew their contracts. Under this context, school achievement growth may no longer be the main driver of closure decisions.

Figure 4: Students in schools that were closed or taken over experienced significant improvements in student achievement.

Given the focus of the reforms on performance-based contracts, the choice of performance metrics is critically important. School performance contracts reflect state accountability systems and generally reward schools based on students’ average test scores. However, since students come to school with different initial achievement levels, this tends to unfairly punish schools serving the most disadvantaged students. In contrast, “growth” measures account for where students start at the beginning of the year.

Our research finds that if government agencies gave growth measures equal weight to average test scores in their school performance ratings, then 24.2% of elementary schools and 32.9% of high schools in Louisiana would change performance categories (e.g., moving from a letter grade of F to D). Since changing letter grades would also affect which schools are shut down for low performance, we estimate this change in measurement alone would increase annual student test scores for the bottom fifth of all schools statewide by about 0.4 percentiles and increase the statewide high school graduation rate by 0.4 percentage points. (In Conclusion #8, we also discuss some other consequences of performance-based contracts).

The takeover process succeeded in New Orleans because the RSD and, more recently, NOLA-PS, closed schools based substantially on achievement growth. This is uncommon in school improvement efforts nationally where the focus is more on achievement levels.

Conclusion #4: A 13% increase in school spending likely contributed to student gains. However, these funds were used mainly to cover an increase in administrative spending. Instructional spending declined.

School spending increased relative to comparison districts because of changes in both government funding and increased philanthropic dollars (Figure 5). This remained true even after the initial spike in spending, which was apparently due to the slow return of students combined with the start-up costs for the new system.

Figure 5: The reforms increased operating spending.

Increased spending probably explains some portion of the reform effects, but debate remains about how much it contributed to students’ improved academic outcomes. Our research suggests that the increased revenues were partly driven by the reforms themselves, as public support for spending increased. Also, pre-Katrina schools were generally ineffective in converting school resources into school improvement, so increasing school spending alone very likely would not have generated the outcomes described above without the reforms.

We have also studied how publicly funded schools in New Orleans spent these additional funds. In the first decade of the reforms, instructional spending decreased by 10% ($706 per student) relative to the comparison group (Figure 6). This reduction was partly driven by reduced teacher experience and money spent on staff benefits. We are aware of no new evidence about whether spending patterns have continued to evolve after 2015.

Figure 6: The reforms reduced instructional spending.

As shown in Figure 7, there was also higher spending on administration (an increase of 66% or $699 per student), which could be explained by the loss of economies of scale in this decentralized system. Administrative spending includes responsibilities at the school-and district-level that contribute to administrator salaries, planning, evaluation, information, and technology. The educational models of charter schools involve higher management costs and perhaps a more top-heavy approach; schools hired more managers and paid them higher salaries.

Figure 7: The reforms initially increased administrative spending.

A more recent report shows that these changes in salaries persisted through 2018-2020. While teachers’ salaries were on average 8% lower in 2018-2020 compared with pre-Katrina, administrators’ salaries were on average 22% higher (inflation-adjusted). The student-teacher ratio was similar in 2018-2020 compared with pre-Katrina, but there were more administrators, aides and counselors per student. We compared these changes to those in neighboring Jefferson Parish and found much larger changes among New Orleans schools over this period.

Conclusion #5: Transportation costs doubled, and students are traveling farther to get to school.

School choice is intended to allow families to select any school that matches their children’s needs. However, choices are limited in practice as preferred schools may be far away and students are not guaranteed admittance to the schools closest to home. This limitation particularly affects low-income families that may have less access to personal transportation. Car access fundamentally shapes families’ school requests and placements.

Our research suggests that since Katrina, the average distance to school has increased by at least two miles. Also, from a sample of school bus stops, we find that the average time from each bus stop to school is 35 minutes (each way), and 25% of bus trips take 50 minutes or more to get to school. According to our most recent youth survey results, only 38% of students live in the same Planning District as their school and 10% live within the same neighborhood as their school, but this varies across the city. As shown in Figure 8, students in New Orleans East, the West Bank, and Uptown have longer commutes than the average. Students must leave earlier (usually before 7 a.m.) and get home later. Partly as a result of these longer distances, transportation costs have nearly doubled to upwards of $750 per student per year. Another possible cause of rising transportation costs is decentralization of school management, which makes it difficult for schools and management organizations to leverage economies of scale in busing.

Figure 8: Students in New Orleans East, the West Bank, and Uptown have the longest commute times.

Conclusion #6: The city’s reforms significantly changed the teacher workforce and the way teachers viewed their work.

Given that all teachers were fired and that schools gained considerable control over personnel, it is no surprise to see changes among the city’s teachers. Many of the changes appear to go against what are considered the hallmarks of school quality. Teacher turnover increased, as did the share of teachers with low levels of experience (Figure 9). Meanwhile, the share of teachers with advanced credentials decreased.

Figure 9: Teacher credentials declined after the reforms while teacher turnover and the share of teachers with low levels of experience increased.

In addition, the share of the teaching workforce that is Black decreased from 71% in 2005 to 49% in 2014 but then rebounded to at least 56% in recent years. These efforts have been hampered by the Trump administration’s decision to cancel a federal grant that was funding a citywide partnership to further increase the number of teachers of color. Also, in 2020, we found that school administrators and teachers who are Black on average receive lower compensation than their White counterparts.

These issues in the supply of teachers seem to be caused by several changes brought on by the reforms:

• Types of preparation programs. The number of students graduating from local universities with teacher credentials declined sharply. This is largely because charter schools tend to hire teachers from alternative routes, outside of universities. Many newly hired teachers came from teacher preparation and placement programs whose completers are less likely to stay in the profession.

• Lower job security. Except in a handful of schools, New Orleans teachers do not take part in collective bargaining. Our survey from 2014 found that teachers themselves believed that low-performing teachers were more likely to be dismissed than before the reforms (Figure 10).

• Autonomy. While charter schooling creates autonomy for school leaders, this is not always the case for teachers. Some teachers report having more autonomy, but more report less autonomy (Figure 10).

• Workload. Heavy workloads and teacher burnout were cited as major complaints by teachers who attempted unionization campaigns in their charter schools. According to newer teacher survey data from The New Teacher Project (TNTP), the heavy workload is a top reason why teachers leave New Orleans schools; teachers reported working an average of 46 hours per week.

This combination of less preparation, lower job security, less autonomy, and higher workloads—to go along with lower salaries (see Conclusion #4)—would increase turnover in any city and any occupation.

Not all the changes in New Orleans have made teaching less attractive. Some teachers may prefer an environment where their colleagues are held accountable for results. Returning teachers reported improved school culture and support for teachers and that schools are much more data-driven and goal-oriented, especially with respect to academic goals. (Reinforcing our point above, the TNTP survey also indicates that school culture is a key reason why some teachers stay). These improvements might have offset the increase in turnover and contributed to improved student outcomes more generally.

Some turnover is also natural and can be productive. With stronger teacher accountability, more lower-performing teachers exited schools relative to higher-performing teachers. Lower-performing teachers in New Orleans are 2.5 times more likely to leave their school than high-performing teachers, compared with only 1.9 times in traditional public schools located in neighboring districts.

However, the high overall turnover rate means that high-performing teachers were also more likely to leave New Orleans and the profession. In addition, while some school administrators took evaluations seriously and used them to be more reflective about their teaching, others admitted in interviews to trying to “game the system” through tactics like sending certain students out of the room when observers came by. This likely tempered the potential benefits of accountability.

Figure 10: Teachers’ views on how learning and work environments changed after the reforms.

Conclusion #7: Student surveys suggest that the quality of teaching is somewhat below the national urban district average, especially in classroom management and caring.

Our youth survey results have consistently found that New Orleans students report lower teaching quality than students in similar schools nationally. While there were some improvements in students’ perceptions of their teachers’ classroom management, encouragement of ideas and views, and ability to help students clarify and consolidate information immediately after the COVID-19 pandemic, our most recent survey in 2023-24 revealed consistent gaps with students nationally in teacher caring, classroom management, and teachers' ability to captivate students. As shown in Figure 11, 67% of students nationally reported that their teachers care about them, compared with only 48% of New Orleans students.

Figure 11: New Orleans youth plan to go to college at similar rates and plan to start a business at higher rates than students nationally.

We do not have similar measures of student perceptions of teaching quality from before the reforms. However, we do view these results as evidence that New Orleans teachers could be doing a better job of supporting students in the classroom.

Conclusion #8: The reforms had some other consequences, including a reduced focus on the arts and decreased access to early childhood education.

Earlier, we discussed some consequences for teacher supply, school spending, and more. Below, we discuss additional negative consequences not yet introduced. The introduction of charter schools reduced the availability of early childhood program offerings after the reforms. Before Katrina, most elementary schools in Orleans Parish offered pre-K. Charter operators were not required to keep these pre-K programs and state funding does not cover the full cost of educating pre-K students. The accountability system focuses on performance in grades 3 through 8, so charter school leaders do not have incentive to offer pre-K programs. Since early childhood programs became a part of the centralized enrollment system in New Orleans, there have been improvements in the support and information parents have access to, which has increased overall enrollment in these programs. However, New Orleans still lags behind the rest of the state in pre-K availability.

We also find that schools in New Orleans focused less on the arts during the first decade of the reforms. Fewer K-8 students in New Orleans enrolled in arts enrichment courses than in similar districts across the state. In 2018, arts educators reported feeling ignored and under-resourced compared to educators in tested subjects.

Figure 12: Pre-K seats in New Orleans’ schools decreased between 2005 and 2015.

Conclusion #9: We do not find evidence of other potential consequences for student mobility, diversity in programs, and crime rates.

Other feared negative consequences of the school reforms did not emerge. One concern has been that school choice would increase student mobility as families shopped around for the best schools, creating disruption for students and for their classmates. However, student mobility dropped (Figure 13).

Figure 13: The post-Katrina school reforms reduced student mobility.

Another potential concern, especially with the aggressive closure and takeover of schools based almost entirely on raising student test scores, is that schools might all look alike. However, New Orleans schools have maintained or increased diverse program offerings.

Finally, with an increase in exclusionary discipline practices in the early years of the reforms, there was a fear that more New Orleans youth would enter the school-to-prison pipeline. Our evidence does not support this. Rather, we find some evidence that the reforms reduced conviction rates among New Orleans youth, compared with similar students across Louisiana (Figure 14).

Figure 14: Convictions were lower in almost every year for New Orleans 7th-9th graders.

Conclusion #10: The state’s school voucher program, the Louisiana Scholarship Program (LSP), a related type of school reform, had negative impacts on participating students’ math and English scores, and no effects on college-going.

While our work is primarily focused on New Orleans charter schools, school vouchers are another form of choice-based reforms. With vouchers, families can use public funds to send their children to private schools (including religious schools). Our findings about LSP vouchers are as follows:

• The LSP showed negative effects on student outcomes after four years. The program seemed to get off to a very rough start with very large negative effects, before rebounding somewhat, then dipping again. The reasons for the initial “dip and return,” and the absence of positive effects three years later, have been a subject of active debate.

• A more recent study suggests that the voucher program did not improve college outcomes either.

• Our other voucher studies suggest that vouchers reduced racial segregation and decreased the percentage of students who were identified for special education.

The question is, why have the results been so poor? Four main explanations have been proposed. First, it may be that private schools are not as good as some think and that their often positive outcomes are driven by the demographics of those who can usually afford them. Second, the negative test score effects might be poor measures of achievement if the private school curricula is not aligned to state tests. Third, it is possible that non-participating schools are higher-performing and that they did not participate because of program rules (e.g., not using their usual admission rules). We did not find that LSP voucher schools differed on the direct measure of quality. Fourth, higher-performing private schools might not participate regardless of program rules because they want to maintain their exclusivity and status. Which of these explanations is more important is still unclear.

This voucher evidence takes on renewed importance with the recent passage of the Louisiana GATOR Scholarship in 2024, which greatly expands the population of eligible students. While the financing and other elements of this program are uncertain, this new voucher program could draw large numbers of students out of New Orleans’ charter schools, which have demonstrated academic success (Conclusion #1), and into private schools, where the academic effects have been negative.

Conclusion #11: New Orleans faced a unique set of circumstances after Hurricane Katrina. Whether other cities can expect similar academic benefits from New Orleans-style reforms is uncertain.

The post-Katrina reforms generated impressive results in terms of outcomes like test scores, high school graduation rates, and college entry rates. However, that does not mean that other cities will get the same results simply by copying the New Orleans model. New Orleans is distinctive in ways that made these reforms especially effective here:

• More Money. While more money by itself would very likely not have produced the effects reported above, the additional funding likely did amplify the reform effects. States and cities seeking to save money or increase student achievement without additional resources may be disappointed.

• Ample Educator Workforce. In the early reform years, the supply of educators expanded in New Orleans in ways that other cities will generally not be able to replicate. It was an attractive city for young people even before the reforms. Many apparently also wanted to come to New Orleans to help rebuild the city, while others, especially school leaders, may have come because the city became a national hub of school reform. (At the same time, that allure seems to have worn off. The outcomes of the reforms have been sustained despite returning to a more typical urban district teacher supply).

• Low Starting Point. New Orleans was one of the lowest-performing school districts in Louisiana, and the country, in the pre-Katrina period. A low starting point gave the city more potential to improve.

• High Private School Enrollment. Since before Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans has had one of the highest private school enrollment rates in the U.S., with one-quarter to one-fifth of students enrolling in private K-12 schools. With a thriving private school sector, high-income families could opt out of the public school system, which provided less resistance to the school reforms from these families.

Conclusion #12: NOLA-PS is already above-average on academic outcomes compared with other urban school districts. To reach a higher bar, local leaders will have to address remaining distrust among key stakeholders and disagreement about the roles of the district and other key actors.

State control of New Orleans schools ended in 2018, but the local district did not regain many of the powers that it held pre-Katrina, including school staffing, curriculum, and instruction. Rather, the reunification largely meant reinforcing the governance and management that had been in place under the state takeover, but shifting their practices to the local level. New Orleans created an entirely new type of local school district.

Strained relationships and confusion about roles among the district, school leaders, and the community remain. This is rooted in two main factors: first, the fact that the reforms were initiated by state takeover in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina without broad public input; and, second, the new and different role played by the elected school board. The community expects action when complaints are made, but the district has limited scope for action in schools because it no longer manages their day-to-day operations. Likewise, many schools want the district to provide more support—not just accountability—but this is arguably outside of the district’s capabilities. These issues will need to be addressed to support continued improvements in the school district.

Two additional issues have created further strains. First, in 2024-25 the district opened its first direct-run school (The Leah Chase School), and the school board directed the superintendent to draw up a plan to run more schools directly.

Second, the district recently discovered miscalculations in school funding, creating a loss of nearly $600 per student for schools. This, along with turnover in the superintendent position, may lead to further distrust in the district’s capacity to run the school system effectively.

Although student outcomes remained stable during and immediately after reunification (see Conclusion #1), there were some declines in student test scores and graduation rates associated with COVID-19. New Orleans faced greater health risks than many areas in the country and students spent more time learning remotely. Test scores from 2024-25 suggest that the city schools have made up the COVID-19 declines in most outcomes. An analysis of student achievement growth since COVID-19 done by the Stanford Education Data Archive (SEDA) ranks New Orleans schools among the top districts nationally in student learning rates.