Ah, the status quo. It dogs education reformers in every state, and prefers failing systems to sweeping change. It’s a given opponent in the battle for better schools, and so most of us whittle away at the “but this is the way it’s always been!” mentality as much as we can each day.

But what if there was no status quo? What kind of system might you create? What kind of technology would you use? How would you hire new teachers? Whose advice would you seek? Where would you put your schools? How would you organize them?

Because of Katrina’s terrible devastation, New Orleans public schools had to essentially start from scratch. But they didn’t rebuild the same schools that they had. No, they drastically altered the makeup if their public schools, making Charter schools a part of their public school plan.

From Edweek:

[...]There are the many new faces of educators who have come from all over the country to a city where an unprecedented, state-led effort has been under way to reinvent public education after the devastating storm and the mass exodus of students it caused.

[...]Charter schools, only a small presence before the storm hit on Aug. 29, 2005, now are ascendant, representing about 70 percent of the city’s 88 public schools. With more of the independently operated and autonomous public schools still opening, and others expanding, charters are estimated to serve at least two-thirds of the public school population this academic year, a far higher rate than in any other city.

[...]School choice has become a central and defining characteristic of public schooling in the city; previously, choice was largely a matter of families opting out of the public system to give their children a private or parochial education.

“Parents are now given a choice and not just told to go here,” said Sharon L. Clark, a New Orleans native and the principal of Sophie B. Wright Charter School, in the Uptown section of the city. “We have 20 percent [of students] from nearby, and the other 80 percent are citywide, from New Orleans East to the Lower Ninth Ward to across the river.”

Early state test returns suggest that, on average, the city’s public school students are doing substantially better than before Katrina.

“We’re experiencing a dramatic increase in academic achievement,” said Paul G. Pastorek, the state superintendent of public instruction. “But perhaps more importantly, we have a revival of public schools in New Orleans. And it’s a revival that has a lot of legs.”

Mr. Pastorek and others acknowledge, though, that the city has a long way to go. For example, as of last fall, 42 percent of public schools were still rated by the state as “academically unacceptable.”

[...]A poll, conducted last November for the Scott S. Cowen Institute for Public Education Initiatives at Tulane University, suggests fairly robust public support for some of the key changes, including chartering.

Yet, only 32 percent of voters said they think the public schools have improved since the storm, while 17 percent said they were better beforehand, and 30 percent said they were about the same.

Rene Lewis-Carter, who was a principal in a regular New Orleans public school before Katrina, sees the changes as positive.

“I know that what we were doing pre-Katrina did not work,” she said. “It was just years and years of institutional neglect.”

The main change she sees in her job now, as the principal of Martin Behrman Charter School, a K-8 campus in the Algiers section of New Orleans, is the autonomy.

“For the first time in my career, I’ve had the opportunity to make decisions and implement those that were best for the population that I serve, and if they did not work, … to just throw them out,” the principal said. “I’ve had the opportunity to choose and place the best teachers.”

Mr. Pastorek said another significant change is the influx of talented people from outside New Orleans who are now leading or teaching in the city’s schools.

“We’ve been successful in creating a pipeline of talent to New Orleans that we’ve never been able to attract before,” he said, citing as examples the work of nonprofit organizations such as Teach For America, the New Teacher Project, and New Leaders for New Schools. “We have an environment where innovation and creativity is paramount. It’s welcomed, it’s nurtured. People see what’s happening, and they want to be here.”

One new school that appears to be thriving is the New Orleans Charter Science and Math Academy. Although its students on average enter as freshman four to five grade levels behind, it’s now one of the city’s highest-performing public high schools.

Dubbed Sci Academy, the charter has an intense culture focused on preparing students for college.

“We have a mission of college success for every kid who walks in our door,” said the school’s founder and principal, Benjamin Marcovitz.

Its faculty includes people like Kaycee L. Eckhardt, who grew up in Louisiana and is now starting her third year at the school. She had been teaching and living in Japan for several years when Katrina struck, and recalls asking herself: “What can I do for New Orleans? I don’t know how to build a house. … One thing I can do is teach. I’ll try it for a year.”

Ms. Eckhardt said she spent her first year working in several schools run by the RSD. “I was transferred twice before October,” she said.

Her teaching experience that year was frustrating, she said, but she found a kindred educational spirit in Mr. Marcovitz, and joined Sci Academy for its launch in 2008.

“I was drawn to the vision of the school,” Ms. Eckhardt said. “We all start with the belief that if you give students consistency and have high expectations for them, and treat them with respect, that they can do anything they want.”

[...]For New Orleans families, one of the biggest changes after Katrina is dealing with so many school choices in a city where neighborhood attendance zones have been eliminated.

All RSD-run schools, as well the charters it oversees, are open-enrollment. (The charters conduct lotteries if they have more applicants than spaces.) In the Orleans Parish system, which after the storm retained control of the city’s highest-performing schools, some charters use academic criteria to help determine admissions, according to Aesha Rasheed, the executive director of the New Orleans Parent Organizing Network, which publishes an annual parents’ guide to the city’s public schools.

Now, there are still flaws. There are still enrollment problems, still many schools that need to improve significantly. But this epic turnaround, even in the midst of a weary, disaster-torn city, shows that the status quo was holding back a lot of potential for student achievement, opportunity and overall district improvement.