Two decades ago this month, Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans—and ushered in a radical transformation of the city’s schools that’s largely still in place.
The storm made landfall in Louisiana on Aug. 29, 2005, causing nearly 1,400 deaths and an estimated $125 billion in damage.
In the aftermath, Louisiana took over most of New Orleans’ schools—those that performed below the state average. All of the system’s teachers were laid off amid the restructuring and had to reapply for their jobs, and the teachers’ union contract was allowed to expire.
What emerged was a new, sometimes complicated network of charter schools—making New Orleans the sole city in the United States for years to have only charter schools—and a shift away from the traditional neighborhood school model, as well as an optimism that the transformation would usher in promising new reforms that could change the trajectory of education in the city.
Tension about New Orleans’ schools performance had been growing for years; the system routinely ranked near the bottom in the state and country for student achievement, high school graduation, and college attendance. The district also had a history of corruption and financial mismanagement.
The overhaul incorporated several relatively new improvement strategies that were growing in popularity at the time both in Louisiana and nationally—namely, charter schools, test-based accountability, and state takeovers of low-performing schools.
Two decades later, researchers have found the transformation of the city’s schools has resulted in improved student performance and graduation rates, especially as lower-performing schools were replaced by higher-performing ones. But the overhaul also led to greater teacher turnover and a teaching workforce that was less Black and experienced than before the storm; reduced availability of pre-K; a larger increase in administrative than instructional spending; and higher transportation costs as students attended schools spread across the city.
Amid the long-lasting overhaul, in 2017, Vera Triplett opened the Noble Minds Institute for Whole Child Learning as a charter school, primarily serving students with disabilities and from low-income families. A former teacher, Triplett started Noble Minds after years of working in juvenile justice and child advocacy with a philosophy of accepting students from all backgrounds and relying less on exclusionary discipline such as detentions and suspensions.
In December 2024, however, Noble Minds withdrew its plans to renew its charter after Triplett said she was notified by state education leaders that it would be denied, citing students’ academic performance.
Triplett says the reality is more complicated than what state data captured. To be punished for low test scores is unfair, she says, and contributes to instability and confusion many families in the city feel as they navigate their children’s education.
In a sense, the situation mirrors the tensions now inherent in New Orleans’ system of performance-based management that has seen many charter schools close: Does it reflect true success by the schools whose charters are renewed? Is it accessible to all students, including those who face particular challenges? What are the benefits and limitations of the continuing churn of charter schools since Katrina?
In 2025-26, Triplett will run Noble Minds as an independent school, relying on student tuition and philanthropy. Its conversion to an independent school happens just as a new reform push, Louisiana’s new LA GATOR scholarship program, which is providing about 6,000 families with public funds to attend private schools this school year, gets off the ground.
“Ultimately, myself and a group of parents said, ‘OK, we’ll do this on our own,’” Triplett said.
Triplett spoke with Education Week about Hurricane Katrina’s lasting impact on education in New Orleans, and how the tragedy has shaped her leadership style. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Why did you want to return to work in education post-Katrina?
I got back into K-12 education in the aftermath of Katrina because I wanted to come home, and I knew that if we didn’t get schools up and running, that it wouldn’t happen. So I came back home in approximately 2008 and got involved in the school reform movement.
I felt like we definitely needed reform in New Orleans, but I was not necessarily excited about the way that the reform process rolled out. We were absolutely in a situation where we were graduating people from high school that didn’t have the minimum literacy skills that they needed to be able to survive in the world. So there was something that had to happen.
I saw a lot of success in the aftermath of the reform movement. I saw a lot of really good actors doing good work and creating good outcomes for kids. But there was still a large segment of the population that wasn’t being addressed, and those were the kids that needed more help to be successful—kids where English wasn’t their first language, kids with special needs, kids that have been impacted by trauma and violence and needed their mental health tended to more than they needed traditional education at the time.
That is really what prompted me to start my school.
How did Hurricane Katrina affect your leadership style?
I think my lens is always going to be a compassionate one. The goal is always to make sure that I understand where an individual child or a family is coming from, and how I can be of service.
I experienced great personal loss, but I also experienced the loss of a segment of the culture that I grew up in.
I think Katrina leaves an indelible mark on every aspect of the New Orleans culture, but on education in particular.
I think, as a leader, it makes me want to preserve that culture for my students. I want them to see New Orleans for the great city that it is. It’s famous for its food, and its architecture, and its influences on food, music, and architecture all over the globe. I want them to understand all of the things that make us a great and unique city, too.
What lingering effects, if any, do you see day to day in your school from the hurricane?
A lot of the children that we are currently serving are children whose parents were absolutely impacted by Katrina.
In some cases, they had to leave and go to other states, and they’ve seen how education looked outside of Louisiana, outside of New Orleans, and in some ways that’s impacted how they advocated for their children as they became adults. They know there are things that don’t have to be how they’ve always been, because they’ve seen it in other ways.
So you see things like that, and then there are just residual effects on people’s mental health.
There is an emotional and psychological and behavioral toll that that kind of upheaval has on people. Lots of parents lived through Katrina and you see it even during hurricane seasons now, how they want schools to respond and prepare. I think that even translated to how they responded to COVID.
Lots of parents lived through Katrina and you see it even during hurricane seasons now, how they want schools to respond and prepare.
Their level of engagement is enhanced now because they want to make sure that their kids don’t go through the same things they did. And I get it. I understand. I think Katrina leaves an indelible mark on every aspect of the New Orleans culture, but on education in particular.
Is the LA GATOR scholarship program the start of a new reform chapter in the city, and what do you think about it?
I don’t think that vouchers are inherently bad things. I think that, if there is a family that wants to go to a school where there are fees imposed and they can’t afford it because of their financial situation, they should not be disqualified for making use of something that they think would be really good for their kids.
More broadly, in 20 years, I would think that we’d have learned enough to make sure that we never have to close another school again because of underperformance. Or, at the very least, we are digging in to what’s happening in schools for real, and not just using a data point or single measure. Because, for example, a school like mine where 30% of my kids are [in special education programs], we are never going to win the accountability prize. We’re just not.
I can see why people would say, ‘Well, we’ve got to try something different,’ because the original intent seems to have been distorted when 20 years later we are still shutting down schools.
