New Orleans Public Schools is the largest school district in the state, enrolling more than 65,000 students. 93% of students are Black, compared to the city’s overall population which is 67% Black. 77% of students are from low-income backgrounds and qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.

77% of students are from low-income backgrounds and qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.

New Orleans' students face academic challenges:

• On-Time Graduation: Just over half of the classes of 2004 and 2005 graduate from high school on time (54% and 56%, respectively).
• College Enrollment: Only 37% of the New Orleans class of 2004 enroll in college the fall after high school graduation. For the class of 2005, even fewer–only 20% of graduates–enroll in college the next fall, due to the disruption of Hurricane Katrina at the beginning of what would have been the first year of college for many students.
• LEAP Proficiency: Across the state, 4th and 8th grade students take LEAP tests to measure grade-level proficiency in Math and English Language Arts (ELA). New Orleans 4th and 8th graders meet grade-level expectations (a score of “Basic” or above) at a rate significantly below the state average–lower by 20 percentage points or more on all tests.
• Low-rated Schools: 60% of New Orleans students attend a failing school rated “Academically Unacceptable” by the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE).

August 29, 2005 Hurricane Katrina strikes New Orleans. The subsequent failure of the levee system causes flooding to 80% of New Orleans, kills nearly 1,400 people, and displaces over one million people in the Gulf Coast region. The majority of New Orleans’ public school buildings are damaged or destroyed; fewer than 20 of the roughly 120 public school buildings citywide are usable.

Flooding after Katrina (Credit: FEMA - Jocelyn Augustino)

Storm-damaged classroom (Credit: Recovery School District)

Storm-damaged classroom (Credit: Recovery School District))

More than half of New Orleans’ public school buildings were built before 1940, and before the storm, nearly all buildings were still in need of significant updates and improvements. Damage caused by Hurricane Katrina worsened facility conditions significantly.

Pre-Katrina graph from “Vision 2000: Strategic Facilities Plan” by New Orleans Public Schools (Credit: Ken Ducote)

Condition of district-owned facilities after Hurricane Katrina (Source: 2008 School Facilities Master Plan)

Storm-damaged classroom (Credit: Recovery School District))

Storm-damaged Eleanor McMain High School (Source: Recovery School District)

Because so many families were displaced by Hurricane Katrina, only 25,000 students enroll in New Orleans public schools by October 2006—40,000 fewer students than were enrolled in October 2004.

Families continue to return to the city. More than 31,000 students enroll in New Orleans public schools by October 2007–an increase of 6,000 students from the previous year.

The Recovery School District and Orleans Parish School Board take a major step toward rebuilding school facilities by launching the “Quick Start” rebuilding program, which would result in the construction or total renovation of six school buildings in the next few years.

John F. Kennedy High School (Source: VergesRome Architects)

Fannie C. Williams Elementary (Source: Fannie C. Williams Charter School)

Langston Hughes Elementary (Source: Recovery School District)

L.B. Landry High School (Source: Eskew Dumez Ripple+)

New Orleans school performance has already dramatically improved in the few years since the storm. In 2010, 22% of New Orleans students attend a school rated “failing,” or “Academically Unacceptable” by the state, compared to 60% in 2005.

Fourth and eighth grade LEAP scores have improved by 10 or more percentage points or more in both ELA and Math since 2005.

John White, a former English teacher who had been deputy chancellor for the New York City Department of Education and a leader at Teach For America, becomes superintendent of the Recovery School District.

New Orleans receives its first official graduation rate since Hurricane Katrina. For the class of 2011, the New Orleans graduation rate is 77% —more than twenty percentage points higher than the class of 2005.

Likewise, college enrollment has improved. 59% of New Orleans students enroll in college the fall after high school graduation, more than twenty percentage points higher than the class of 2004. The New Orleans college enrollment rate now exceeds the statewide average.

The School Facilities Master Plan is amended with the input of educators, community members, and construction industry experts to ensure all students have access to quality learning environments. The new plan is designed to provide new, renovated, or refurbished facilities for 55,000 students.

Patrick Dobard, a former teacher and leader at the Louisiana Department of Education, becomes superintendent of the RSD.

The Recovery School District creates a citywide student expulsion policy and Student Hearing Office, to ensure all students are treated equally and fairly, and are only expelled for the most serious offenses. After a post-Katrina spike, expulsions began declining by 2010, but varying rules had made the process confusing and inequitable. The new policy and office respond to concerns from families, students, educators, and community members about inconsistent and unfair school discipline.

Some schools have begun a shift toward more restorative, holistic practices like restorative circles that focus on repairing harm over specific punishments. (This video from 2010, made by the nonprofit Kids ReThink New Orleans schools, focuses on some of those practices and the students that advocated for them.)

Dr. Henderson Lewis, Jr., a former high school math teacher, St. Bernard Parish School Board member, principal, and superintendent, becomes superintendent of New Orleans Public Schools.

Opportunities Academy (OA) is founded by Collegiate Academies as a pilot program for students with disabilities to help them succeed after high school; it will eventually become a charter school in 2017 and serve students with disabilities from across the district. Opportunities Academy aims to support these young adults in reaching their highest level of independence, personally and professionally.

For the first time, a Recovery School District school eligible to return to local control elects to do so: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Charter School. The school transfers to school board oversight for the 2015-2016 school year.

The school board hires BreakFree Education to open the Travis Hill School inside New Orleans’ juvenile detention center. A year later, Travis Hill will establish a second campus inside New Orleans’ adult jail. Travis Hill students will go on to win the competitive Aspen Challenge in 2023, a competition hosted by the Aspen Institute and the Bezos Family Foundation that asks high school students to find solutions to the most pressing issues in their communities.

Students at Travis Hill School (Source: Travis Hill School)

Travis Hill students after winning the Aspen Challenge competition in 2023 (Source: Nola.com; Credit:Sophia Germer)

About 45,000 students enroll in New Orleans public schools. This is about 20,000 more students than the 2006-07 school year, but still 20,000 fewer students than in 2004, before Hurricane Katrina.

Enrollment has continued to increase at a rate of about 3% annually for the past few years and the school board seeks to better understand how enrollment might continue to change in future years. They hire a demography firm to develop ten-year enrollment projections. These projections anticipate that enrollment will continue to increase each year for the next ten years, but at a much slower rate.

A Unification Advisory Committee composed of principals, charter network leaders, and education advocacy representatives oversees the school board’s development of a Unification Plan to transform the school district to best support a unified school district fully under local control. Act 91 required the plan as a condition of returning Recovery School District schools to school board oversight. The plan is officially approved by the school board in August of 2016.

Patrick Dobard, then superintendent of the RSD, announces the unification plan (Source: NOLA.com; Photo Credit: Matthew Hinton)

The New Orleans Career Center (NOCC) launches to offer career and technical training to New Orleans students. The New Orleans Career Center is a nonprofit that partners with employers to create career training pathways for high school students and adults in fields like healthcare, engineering, and culinary arts.

Students at the New Orleans Career Center (Source: NOCC)

Since the first year of the citywide expulsion policies and centralized Student Hearing Office in 2012-13, expulsion rates in the city have decreased significantly. In 2017-18, the New Orleans student expulsion rate is 0.15%, compared to the statewide rate of 0.74%.

After more than two years of planning, collaboration, and implementation, schools begin the school year as part of a unified district, with all former Recovery School District schools joining the school district governed by the Orleans Parish School Board.

Schools continue to improve; only 12% of New Orleans students attend failing (“F” Letter Grade) schools, down from 60% in 2005. Students are making academic gains even as the state has transitioned to more rigorous standards and more challenging state tests.

Graduation and college enrollment rates continue to rise. 75% of the class of 2019 graduate on-time and 61% of seniors enroll in college the next fall, exceeding the state’s college enrollment rate.

Graduation and college enrollment rates continue to rise. 75% of the class of 2019 graduate on-time and 61% of seniors enroll in college the next fall, exceeding the state’s college enrollment rate.

In fall 2019, enrollment reaches its highest level since 2004 with 46,500 students enrolled in New Orleans public schools.

School district leaders rename the unified system of schools to NOLA Public Schools (NOLA-PS).

On March 13th, 2020, Governor John Bel Edwards orders all public schools to close in-person operations for at least a month as a result of the COVID-19 public health emergency; this emergency closure is quickly extended through the end of the school year.

Heading of the proclamation from Governor John Bel Edwards regarding the impact of COVID-19 in schools (Source: Gov.Louisiana.Gov)

For the first time since 2006, enrollment in NOLA-PS schools begins to decline, with nearly 1,700 fewer students enrolling in fall 2020 than in fall 2019. Public school enrollment has declined nationwide since the pandemic began so this does not seem to be a problem specific to New Orleans. However, school and district leaders begin to consider whether these declines might be caused by factors other than the pandemic, and perhaps the beginning of a longer-term trend.

Students across the state take LEAP tests in Spring 2021 for the first time since the pandemic began. Statewide and in New Orleans, these test results show significant declines due to COVID’S interruptions to learning. For these reasons, the state issues “simulated” school performance scores, but suspends school Letter Grades and other accountability measures for the year.

After a mix of distance and hybrid learning models in the 2020-2021 school year, all students return to in-person classes at the start of the 2021-2022 school year. Schools and networks engage in careful protocol for COVID-19 safety, including the use of vaccines.

COVID-19 vaccinations in schools (Source: @KIPPNewOrleans Instagram)

Student enrollment declines once again. 43,700 students enroll in NOLA-PS schools in fall 2021, which is about 1,000 students fewer than the previous school year. This is unexpected since the enrollment projections commissioned by the school district in 2016 anticipated continued increases in enrollment through 2025.

NOLA-PS partners with New Schools for New Orleans to develop an Enrollment Landscape Analysis to better understand these enrollment trends. The analysis is completed in spring 2022, showing that lower enrollment is likely due to declines in the city’s overall population and birth rates. The analysis anticipates that enrollment will continue to slowly decline in future years. The analysis also shows that many schools across New Orleans are enrolling significantly fewer students than they planned for, which negatively impacts the ability of schools to afford the staff and resources necessary to best meet the needs of students.

Based on this analysis, NOLA-PS begins to take actions according to a new priority–District Optimization–to right-size the number of schools and facilities in order to ensure that limited school funding resources are used efficiently to support continued academic improvement for New Orleans students.

New Schools for New Orleans (NSNO) hosts the first-ever New Orleans Excellence in Teaching Awards (NOETA) Gala to honor the teachers of the year at every New Orleans public school. Like NOLA Teacher Fest, it will become a fixture of the school year.

In May, NOLA-PS and the Recovery School District celebrate the completion of the post-Katrina School Facilities Master Plan. After 15 years, 89 public school buildings have been rebuilt or restored for students’ use. The new buildings are state-of-the-art and sustainably built to LEED Certified standards. They include features such as 3D Printing labs, media centers, full gymnasiums, new auditoriums, and early childhood classrooms.

New Orleans graduation rate for the class of 2023 is 79%, compared to 54% for the class of 2004–an increase of 25 percentage points.

Economically disadvantaged students in New Orleans graduate at a higher rate than the state average.

65% of these graduates enroll in college the next fall, compared to only 37% for the class of 2004. New Orleans graduates enroll in college at a rate that is 8 percentage points higher than the state average.

New Orleans college enrollment rate also exceeds the state average for most student subgroups; 11 percentage points more for Black students; 14 percentage points more for students with disabilities; and 7 percentage points more for economically disadvantaged students.

NOLA-PS and Children’s Hospital New Orleans partner to create the ThriveKids Student Wellness Program, which aims to support the physical and mental well-being of students. ThriveKids will bring health services and practitioners directly into New Orleans’ public schools.

New Orleans voters approve the continuation of the School Facilities Preservation Millage, renewing the collection of property tax used for ongoing maintenance, repair, and preservation of New Orleans’ public schools. This is expected to result in $420 million over the next twenty years for emergency repairs, like replacing a roof after hurricane damage, as well as regular planned maintenance, like fixing the HVAC system if the air conditioning goes out on a hot day.

The citywide expulsion policy and Student Hearing Office continue to operate and keep the student expulsion rate in New Orleans consistently low–significantly below the statewide average. In 2023, New Orleans’ rate was 0.1% compared to the state’s rate of 0.8%.

New Orleans students continue to rapidly regain the learning lost during the pandemic. New Orleans students show improvement at double the rate of the state on LEAP ELA and Math tests since the Spring 2021 tests, which were the first LEAP tests given after COVID-19 hit.

New Orleans’ strong improvement is seen across all student subgroups. New Orleans schools demonstrate strong “Top Growth,” surpassing the statewide average for all students and major subgroups, and earning the highest Top Growth for Economically Disadvantaged students among all districts statewide.

Students meeting “Top Growth” are those who have not yet reached their individual goals of Mastery or Advanced on the LEAP tests, but have made significant progress—so much so that they are expected to reach those goals in future years. Top Growth also includes students who significantly outperform students with similar characteristics across the state. These data are important because they help us understand the trajectory for growth in the future.

For the first time since the Louisiana Department of Education began rating schools, there are no failing schools in the school district–a dramatic change from 2005, when 61% of New Orleans public schools were considered failing, or “Academically Unacceptable.”

Looking at LEAP assessment data, we see that these statewide gains were driven by New Orleans. In the same years the NAEP grade 4th Grade Reading tests were administered, New Orleans saw a 4 point increase on “Mastery and Above” on the 4th Grade LEAP English Language Arts test.

New Schools for New Orleans continues to explore enrollment trends in its fourth annual Enrollment Landscape Analysis, now called the School Sustainability Analysis. This year’s analysis shows that “district optimization” efforts have helped enrollment levels across K-8 schools, but there is still work to be done to ensure schools are sustainable across the district.

NSNO School Sustainability Analysis

NSNO School Sustainability Analysis

NSNO School Sustainability Analysis

NSNO School Sustainability Analysis

NSNO School Sustainability Analysis

NSNO School Sustainability Analysis

NSNO School Sustainability Analysis