In this article, the author discusses the instructional challenges faced by educators this year in the 12,500-student Recovery School District (RSD), the state-run system that took over most of New Orleans' public schools after the storm in August 2005. Roughly 85% of the district's students scored at least two years behind grade level in reading last fall, when they took the first assessment in a series of benchmark tests--sobering results that were no better in mathematics. RSD superintendent Paul G. Vallas pledged to standardize curriculum across all 34 RSD schools and to put instructional strategies in place that teachers would use to address the vast numbers of low-performing students. Teachers, many of them rookies, would be trained, he said, and student scores would start to move up. Benchmark testing would gauge their progress along the way. However, with less than three months remaining in the academic year, adoption of the multifaceted academic reform plan has been uneven, teachers, principals, and district leaders acknowledge. To tackle the overwhelming numbers of high school students lagging in reading, district leaders made READ 180, a reading intervention program, the de facto language arts curriculum for many students.