More than 100 public schools in New Orleans were flooded in the hours after the hurricane struck. The roughly two dozen schools that did not fill up with water suffered wind and rain damage. It was a devastating blow to old, already battered school buildings that were among the most rundown in the country. The devastation created an unprecedented…

Across New Orleans' still-emerging patchwork of regular public schools and charter schools, the emotional, social, and academic damage that the August 2005 hurricane inflicted on the city's children plays out daily, in disruptions to instruction, in schoolyard fights, and in classrooms half-empty because of chronic absenteeism. Over a three-month…

John McDonogh Senior High School's challenges, and similar hardship at other public schools that have reopened in New Orleans, were not part of the vision advanced by politicians and educators who saw Hurricane Katrina's destruction as an unprecedented opportunity for schools. To them, Katrina, terrible though it was, had delivered a chance to…