Giving Compass' Take:

· The 74 reports on the inspiring education reforms made in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. According to Doug Harris, director of the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans, the new policies have increased the high school graduation rate and the number of students attending college.

· What difficulties do school boards face when composing new education reforms? Specifically, who and what do these reforms target?  

· Read more about shifts in New Orleans' schools.

Sweeping education reforms introduced in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina have dramatically lifted students’ chances of finishing high school and entering college, according to a new policy brief released this week by the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans. Even more striking, the new policies appear to have narrowed large gaps in educational attainment between advantaged and disadvantaged students.

The report was authored by Doug Harris, ERA’s director, and Matthew Larsen, an economics professor at Lafayette College. The alliance was formed by Tulane University to study the changes instituted after the hurricane, which wiped away most of New Orleans’s existing education governance structure. Prior studies have indicated that those changes — turning over nearly all of the city’s schools to charter operators and allowing families near-total freedom to choose where to enroll their children — brought major improvements in K-12 academic achievement.

The latest publication goes even further. While rising test scores offered strong evidence in the reforms’ favor, later-life outcomes are seen as better indicators of their effectiveness. The researchers find that the changes boosted the rate of immediate college entry for New Orleans students by 15 percentage points. College persistence (the rate at which students remain in college for two or more years) grew by seven points, while college graduation shot up five points.

Read the full article about New Orleans' education reforms by Kevin Mahnken at The 74.